Re: Soap bubbles?

Randall Joiner wrote:

 >Instead of a hard limit, wouldn't a scaling limit rectify those
problems?
Ie. X
 >number of fighters for Y tonnage/hull/points/foo?

Aside from the problems with PSB logic (when even fighter weapons have 
ranges measured in hundreds of kilometers and each game turn represents 
several minutes - which are the orders of magnitude most FT scales I've 
seen use), it is hard to come up with a reason why the number of
fighters 
attacking a single ship should be restricted which is better PSB-wise
than 
"because I say so" :-/ ), it is difficult to get the scaling limit
right.

For example, the "1 fighter group per 10 Mass of target ship" idea 
suggested recently (IIRC that one was yours?) has very little effect
except 
against ships of TMF 10 or less (which can only be attacked by a single 
group each) - 4-5 fighter groups is usually sufficient to take out a
light 
cruiser, 8-9 groups will almost always nail a heavy cruiser, 20-30
fighter 
groups will make a very nasty dent in most superdreadnoughts and fleet 
carriers, etc. If you make the limit too restrictive instead you can
easily 
risk neutering the fighters completely... and exactly what "too 
restrictive" is depends a lot on how strong the enemy point defence is.

To elaborate on the PSB logic problems, here's an example (note that the

numbers were chosen to exaggerate the size difference between the ships 
involved - with more "realistic" values, the difference will be
smaller):

For the purposes of the example, let us assume that
* Fighter weapons have an effective range of 10 km (extremely short 
compared to the more commonly used time/distance scales in Full Thrust)
* An SDN is a cylinder 1 km long and has a diameter of 200 meters 
(extremely large in GZGverse terms, but not in other backgrounds)
* A strikeboat is cylinder 10 meters long and has a diameter of 2 meters

(*very* small, no matter what background you're gaming in - indeed, in
most 
backgrounds this wouldn't even rate as a fighter, but for the purposes
of 
the example let's consider it equivalent to a small Full Thrust
scoutship).

The volume of the SDN is 3.1*10^7 m^3, while the volume of the
strikeboat 
is 31 m^3. The SDN therefore has a volume one million times larger than
the 
strikeboat; in FT terms it can be estimated to have a TMF about one
million 
times larger than the strikeboat.

The surface area of the SDN is ~690,000 m^2; the surface area of the 
strikeboat is 69 m^2 - ie., the surface area of the SDN is ten thousand 
times larger than the surface area of the strikeboat.

The volume in which a fighter needs to be in order to fire at the ship 
(below referred to as the "engagement volume" of the ship), is the
volume 
stretching from the ship's surface and 10 km straight out into space
(since 
the fighter weapons were assumed to have a range of 10 km in this
example). 
For the strikeboat this volume is 4.2*10^12 m^3, and for the SDN this 
volume is 4.6*10^12 m^3... so the the SDN has an engagement volume about

10% larger than that of the
strikeboat.

If the size of the engagement volume is what restricts the number of 
fighters able to attack a given ship in a single turn (which is what
most 
proponents of the "restrict number of fighter attacks per turn" concept 
argue), a million-fold increase of the target ship's mass would only 
increase the number of fighters able to attack it by *one tenth*! And
this 
is with fighter weapon ranges which are shorter than what today's ASMs
can 
manage - if the space fighter weapons can fire out to, say, 100 km
instead 
then the size difference between the two engagement volumes disappears
when 
you round the fractions...

***
Jason Bradley wrote (in reply to another of Randall's posts):

 >I also understand your point about soap bubble carriers and modern day
CVN.
 >Of course with out getting too much into a "reality" debate, you will
never
 >see carriers unescorted enter into a war zone,

The reason you never see WET NAVY carriers unescorted in a war zone is
that 
the aircraft they carry can't deal with all types of threat to the
carrier. 
If they could, the carrier would be able to provide its own escort. Full

Thrust fighters are capable of handling most threats (the main exception

being enemies which load up on scatterguns), which makes Full Thrust 
carriers rather less dependent on escorts than their wet-navy
counterparts.

Question for Jason: Do you have access to the Full Thrust rules, and if
so 
have you read them? At the moment it seems as if you're trying to
discuss 
fairly intricate details of rules you don't know how they work, which
makes 
some of your suggestions look a bit impractical or even non-sensical.

The point you (Jason) make about space fighters not necessarily having
to 
be decisive are important, though - in the current version of Full
Thrust 
(ie., with the Fleet Book rules), a single standard fighter group plus
its 
bay costs about as many points as a frigate. Seen as a unit, the fighter

group also has about as many "hit points" and about as much firepower as
a 
frigate.

So, a question for Randall: when a fighter group has about the same 
firepower and durability as a frigate, and also costs about as much as a

frigate, should it not also have about as big an impact on the battle as
a 
frigate would have? Frigates usually don't contribute much in the middle
of 
a capital-ships battle either, after all - they do a lot better on the 
fringes of the battle.

(Of course frigates also tend to be rather too weak for their NPVs -
that's 
what the CPV system is intended to fix, cf. the other thread - but even 
with the CPV making small ships worth their points cost a single frigate

will only rarely be very decisive in larger battles since its points
cost 
is so small compared to the fleet's total points value...)

Finding a middle ground where fighters can be useful in moderate numbers

without risk of being totally overwhelming en masse is exactly the goal
the 
playtest list is aiming for. Whether or not we'll succeed, well... we
have 
some promising ideas. Hopefully they'll live up to their promises :-7

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry