Re: Fighters and Hangers

--- Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:
> At 11:33 PM -0800 3/2/04, Jared Hilal wrote:
> >
> >At the most basic, a fighter acts like a small battery that flies
> >around and shoots.  In the regular FT fighter rules, each fighter
> group
> >has a single 6" range band and rolls a number of dice equal to the
> >number of fighters remaining.
> 
> 
> I had always understood fighters to actually move 
> to point blank range from their 6" stand off to 
> actually engage the ship they targeted. Rather 
> than fire from 6 MU away.
> 

The FT rulebook quite clearly equates it to a short ranged 'C' battery.

The visuals from many settings, like B5, SW, and BSG, all show long
range fire.  Have you ever played an FT game in these settings?  How
did you PSB it?

Some questions:
How do you play your "close pass"?  I.e. do you move the fighter group
into contact with the ship or leave it in place?

If it is left in place, this can be interpreted as the fighters
returning to their start point after the attack.  In this case, the
question arises Why must they return to the same point?  Why can't the
move to any point within 6 MU of the target ship?

How do screens work?  Do the fighters get so close that screens are
ineffective?  In the Starfleet Wars FT2 conversion that Dean Gundberg
used to have on his website, ship fire at less than 3" range was
considered to be "inside" the screens.	Wouldn't your interpretation of
fighters mean that ALL fighter attacks would be "inside" the screens in
this setting, making fighters even more powerful?

How many other people interpret fighter attack range to be the attack
run with only firing as a close pass to the target ship? 

J