Re: [FT] Fighter thoughts

On 14 Apr 2004 at 10:20, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

>  Actually, I have seen the Beta rules.  At first glance, I think
>  they'll do nicely.  I agree, the "send the fighters ahead" idea won't

>  be a good one with normal fleet book ships.	The problem is that
>  if this tactic is legal, it allows people to design carriers with
>  nothing more than ftl, drives, and fighter bays. 

Which they were doing anyway. Search the archives for 'soap bubble 
carriers'.

The new fighter rules are, in part, an attempt to make fighters burn 
CEF faster so that they need to return to the carrier to resupply. 
Hence carriers need to stay closer to the action and need to be 
designed accordingly.

>  Then they can build a fleet of these
>  and small ships to move the fighters.  The carrier launches the
>  fighters, then moves in the opposite direction as fast as possible. 

It's an all ot nothing tactic. If the fighters don't devastate the 
enemy quickly they'll run out of CEF and be picked off whilst trying 
to make it back to the carrier, and heaven help the carrier if it 
tries to close the distance to pick them up.

Not much different to normal the challenge facing standard fighter-
heavy fleets.  

Or to put it another way, how is this any different to the carriers 
steaming in at full speed and launching the fighter when close? It 
saves on the cost of the courier, runs the risk of the losing all the 
fighters in one go if the carrier blows up on the way in, but 
otherwise is much the same.  

>  With all the offensive firepower concentrated in the fighters, you
>  should have little problem overwhelming the enemy.  As a matter of
>  fact, this is probably an excellent fleet philosophy if it was
>  possible in "reality".

As soon as the courier comes within beam range of the opposing fleet 
it gets targetted by enough B3s (or worse still B4s, Stingers or 
Pulsar-Ls) to ensure its destruction. No more courier. The fighters 
are suddenly escorting nothing and are then limited to standard 
fighter movement rates whilst still some way out from their target.  

To really work the couriers need to be moving fast enough to close 
with their targets without getting shot up, and at the same time to 
place themselves close enough for the fighters to attack once they're 
'dropped off' by the escorted courier. That requires a fair amount of 
tactical skill to pull off.

>  Still, the worst thing for me is the thought of large numbers of
>  fighters  screening a courier or scout ship.  These things are barely
larger
>  than the fighters themselves.  A limit to the numbers of fighters
>  able to screen a ship seem to make sense.  At least to me....  :-)

Well ultimately the whole escorting mechanic is a work around for the 
fact that fighters and ships suffer different laws of physics under 
the FT rules. If you have a believability problem rather than game 
balance one then use whatever genre-specific house rules work best 
for your group. I don't think any of us can say how many fighters can 
be "dragged along by the ion-wake of a passing starship".

I'm not sure your proposal would make much difference - the more the 
fighters bunch up the easier they are to avoid (or blanket with a 
nasty number of Plasma Bolts). Going to the other extreme just means 
putting one courier with every fighter group and eats up points.

I think this needs to be actually gamed. See if the problem actually 
exists in real games and only then see if any particular solution 
works. Don't forget to test with a range of playing areas and ship 
speeds as the effectiveness of this tactic looks like it will vary 
greatly on those factors.

	Steve
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Steve Pugh   <steve@pugh.net>	<http://steve.pugh.net/>