Re: [FT] F***ters [was: Operational game]

> The whole fighter balance issue is a tough one. For one thing, you
have to
> take _all_ the fleets into consideration, including the Phalons with
their
> PBLs. I suspect that by the time Nathan has played enough playtest
games
to
> find the problems and sort them out, the playtest lists' proposal will
be
out
> in one form or another...

The problem is that you allow integrated fighter attacks (multiple
fighter
groups attacking one ship with all the defenses of that ship split up
among
those groups) without integrated anti-fighter defenses.  The reason for
this
is to allow aside with only few fighter groups to be effective.  The
problem
is that it means fighter attacks in mass are not balanced.  StarFire
took a
different approach, integrated fighter attack and integrated fleet
defenses.

The only fixes I can think of is to make ADFC's much more common
(possibly
to include reducing mass and/or points of the system), or the seconded
PDAF
phase where every ship in the fleet in range can shoot at them.  The
fighters will still get a nasty first strike, but they will take a lot
more
casualties or burn a lot of endurance to avoid the casualties (which
means
they have to run home to the carrier much more often).	Note that the
idea
of fighters burning endurance to reduce damange could be extended to
fighter
dogfights which would add more depth to the game (as well as making
endurance very important).

ias