RE: [FT] Yet Another, another fighters suggestion

But I notice that free FC's didn't make it into FB1... :)

The problem with that idea is that you are mandating an official
requirement for design.  And while most groups will pick and choose
their rules/house rules, it makes it difficult for quick "meet and beat"
battles where you pick from stock ships.  If every single stock ship
comes equipped with a PDS for certain mass, then there is no point in
taking any ship that carries only a single squadron of fighters.  You
then effectively eliminate the use of small number of fighters as a
viable weapons system, even in small games since you have to pay for
fighters (the extra mass and point cost) but everyone gets PDS for free.

To balance it, the basic cost per mass of ship needs to be increased (so
that PDS aren't entirely free) but then you penalize people who could
care less about mounting a PDS on a mass 20 boat and would rather have a
couple extra points to beef up the weapons to a torpedo or needle beam. 
Then you penalize people who want dedicated AA cruisers with 20 PDS's
and a couple ADFC's.  The great thing (and biggest flaw) is that FT is
generic and allows a huge number of ship designs and with some
adaptation, ships from a large variety of backgrounds.	It's practically
the Linux of the starship gaming world. The variety though, makes it
tough to truly balance the point system.

--Binhan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: kevinbalentine@verizon.net [mailto:kevinbalentine@verizon.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 5:03 PM
> To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
> Subject: RE: [FT] Yet Another, another fighters suggestion
> 
> 
> Well, it's not unprecedented. In FT2, ships got a certain number of 
> fire controls based on their mass. That didn't get too slippery :-)
> 
> On 4 Feb 2004 at 15:22, B Lin wrote:
> 
> > Then to balance it out, for every X mass, a ship would get 
> Y fighters...
> > 
> > For every Z mass it gets A beams, B torpedoes, C shields, D 
> Fire controls, E ...
> > 
> > Watch for the slippery slope... It's slippery. :)
> > 
> > --Binhan
> >