Re: [FT] Yet Another Fighters Suggestion

Hugh Fisher wrote:

> >The main game problem with this proposal, as with Alan's suggestion
which
> >has already been playtested and rejected even more times than yours,
is
> >that 6+ fighter groups is enough to take out just about any FB1 ship
> >smaller than a dreadnought - so if you use FB or FB-like ships, you
get yet
> >another incentive to use dreadnoughts and larger ships only. Nice if
you
> >want to play WW1-in-space rather than WW2-in-space, but it doesn't
make the
> >game any more balanced...
>
>6+ fighter groups is a superdreadnaught sized fleet carrier against a 
>smaller ship: what other outcome would you expect?

The only reason why those superdreadnought-sized fleet carriers are 
superdreadnought-sized in the first place is that they carry enough 
direct-fire weapons and defences to defeat at least FB1 battlecruisers
in 
one-on-one gunfights. If you keep the carrier back and only send the 
fighters into the fray, then that's equivalent to sending a SDN into
battle 
after shutting its screens and half of its weapons down and also ripping

out half of its hull boxes.

In that situation, I would not expect the SDN to do particularly well
even 
against a significantly smaller ship. Would you?

6 fighter groups *by themselves* - including the cost of their fighter
bays 
and the engines and basic hull structure needed to support them, but 
*without* all those extra screens, weapons and stuff the FB carriers are

equipped with - only cost about as much as a battleship, yet I wouldn't 
call a fight between an FB1 battleship and 6 fighter groups "even".
Sure, 
the fighters will get roughly handled, but the battleship is almost 
guaranteed to end up *destroyed*. To me, if one side in an equal-points 
fight is almost guaranteed to get destroyed while the other side isn't
then 
that does not look "about right for the points".

My main point however, though I don't seem to have made it very clearly,

was that while your and Alan's proposals don't have a very big effect
for 
ships smaller than a dreadnought they make the larger capitals
considerably 
harder for fighters to take out than they are now (unless of course the 
carriers are also very big - in your proposal that is, not in Alan's).

This extra "hardness" against fighters gives yet another incentive to
use 
dreadnoughts and larger ships only; conversely the extra power gained by

fighters based on very large carriers gives yet another powerful
incentive 
to make the carriers very large as well. Since there already are a
number 
of other factors which make large ships overpowered compared to their
own 
points cost of smaller ones, adding yet more reasons not to use small
ships 
does not strike me as a particularly good thing for the overall game
balance.

>(Plus, from my experience testing, the 6 fighter groups will still get 
>rough treatment if the battleship in question has an escort cruiser
friend.)

For the cost of that escort cruiser friend, the fighters can add another

three or four groups to their numbers. That's sufficient to at least
keep 
the CE occupied :-/

>4 fighter groups, your typical light carrier, is much more
>of an even fight against a battleship, but enough to over
>power a cruiser. Again, that's about right for the points.

As with the fleet carriers, the typical FB CVLs are rather heavily armed

and/or protected. Even the NAC Inflexible class is able to take on most
FB1 
medium cruisers with a reasonable chance of success; the other FB CVL 
classes can defeat at least a heavy cruiser in a one-on-one gunfight.

Their 4-group fighter strikes (plus bays etc.) *without* all those extra

weapons and defences on the carrier cost about as much as a large heavy 
cruiser or small battlecruiser, yet as you say are able to take on an
FB1 
battleship on even terms. Would you expect a large CH or small BC to
take 
on a BB half again its size on even terms? If not, how can it be "about 
right for the points" when *fighters* costing about as much as that
large 
CH or small BC take on a BB on even terms?

***
In my experience the fighter balance problems you get in FB-designs-only

games are a mild breeze in comparison with what you can get with custom 
designs. As far as I'm concerned, if a fighter-balance fix doesn't work
for 
custom designs then it doesn't work at all.

***
> >This and and several similar numerical limitations (including Alan's
> >proposal and variants thereof) have already been tested. They all run
into
> >the above problem with making dreadnoughts and larger even more
desirable
> >than they already are; some of them have additional problems as well.
>
>Evidently those people who have tested and rejected numerical
>limitations never bothered to actually inform the rest of the
>list that they'd done so.

Not so much "never bothered to" as "were not allowed to". Those tests
were 
done by the GZG playtest group, and we're not allowed to talk completely

freely about what we're doing to people outside the group. Apologies if
my 
previous reply (where I did inform this list about those tests) was a
bit 
curt; I don't have very much time for emails at the moment.

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