FT Fighters was Re: FT Newtonian Acceleration

Robertson, Brendan wrote:

>As FT is abstract anyway, I usually abstract out the fighters to fit
the
>capital ship scale.
>In SW, 12 fighters = 1 FT squadron; which gives 6 squadrons on an ISD
(1
>interceptor, 3 TIE/In, 2 Bomber)
>
and

Laserlight wrote:

>>Just say "A six-strength fighter group consists of 10 [or 20, or 30,
>>whatever] actual fighters"
>> 
>>
And

Allan Goodall wrote:

>assume one TIE fighter in FT terms represents 2 "real" TIE fighters,
and keep everything scaled.
>
Reasonable approaches.	However, at a certain point, approx. 2-3 SW 
fighters per FT "fighter", smaller ships, like the Lambda Class Shuttle 
and the Corellian Freighter (Millennium Falcon) have the same firepower 
and staying power (hull/shields) to equate to 1 FT "fighter" (2-3 SW 
fighters), thus dropping off the bottom of the FT ship scale.  The more 
you scale this up, the more small ships start to drop off the bottom 
end.  You very quickly get to where the Corellian Corvette/Blockade 
Runner/Courier/Gunship drops off.

Additionally, once you have accounted for the troops, vehicles and 
interface transport of the Assault Legion (even at 2x or 3x more than 
"standard" FT mass rate to equal the scaling of the fighter groups), 
plus the weapons, you quickly get a ship that is huge (in FT terms).

The same happens with a Cylon Base Ship, even if you count each 25 
fighter Phalanx as a FT fighter group (more than 4:1), there are still 
300 fighters, so 12 phalanxes/fighter groups.  And the 
Baseship/Battlestar is not just a carrier, but also has significant 
weapons and is a fast ship ("Fastest ship in the fleet").  Again, a 
really big ship.

Allan Goodall wrote:

>The Fleet Books give tonnage stats for the ships, but the FT rules are
quite clear about being generic as far as ship size is concerned. So,
it's not necessary for a Star Wars ship to be, oh, 800 TMF (I pulled the
number out of thin air) because Lucas says the tonnage is X and a GZG
400 TMF capital ship is 0.5 X.	Instead, you could make your SW ships
400 TMF,...<snip>  
>
Actually, I have never seen a dwt number about SW ships.  Only linear 
dimensions.  And a wedge-shaped 1200m VSD or 1600m ISD is a lot more 
than 800 TMF, like maybe 250,000 or 400,000.

I did this (what you suggest) with ST ships, re-scaling to 1 MASS = 
1,000 quoted tons.  This kept the capital ships, like the TOS  & movie 
Enterprise 's in the c. 200 TMF range (Federation & Ascension c. 
250-300).  However, because the ships are scaled 10x, I had to scale 
down fighters by a lot so that they a) weren't too powerful and b) could

be fit in a ship in the appropriate numbers.  It still meant that TNG 
ships are off the scale, even at 10x scaling (Ambassador class Ent-C = 
3.71 Mt = 3,700 ST TMF = 37,000 FB TMF).

Scaling B5 ships also required a reduction in the abilities of fighters,

as compared to, for example, Narn G'Quan / Centuari Primus = 300+ TMF 
and Narn Bin'Tak / Centuari Octavian = c. 400 TMF.

>I've played around a little bit with my own background universe and I
tend to create 
>capital ships in the same sizes as cruisers in FT. Why? Because FT is
too slow to play games with a dozen capital ships on a side in a
reasonable amount of time.
>
>I do admit that there is a limit to scaling downward. Once you get low
enough you have a hard time placing enough weapon systems on the hull to
represent all of the weapon mounts, and you have a hard time
differentiating ships within the same size class. 
>
In our group's home grown ships, the capital ships tend to be over 300 
TMF, with a big jump down to large escorts (heavy cruisers) at <150 TMF.

When you say "a dozen capital ships on a side" do you mean alone or 
"with appropriate escorts"?

J