Re: [FT] Fighter thoughts (LONG)

Grant A. Ladue wrote:

> >>Unless I'm misremembering, fighters have a primary move of 24 mu,
and a
> >>secondary move of 6 mu, right?
> >
> >You are misremembering, though it doesn't matter for the discussion.
> >Fighters have primary moves of 24 or 36 mu depending on whether or
not
> >they're Fast, and a secondary move of 12 mu no matter what type they
are.
>
>Thanks.  I looked about in old discussions, but couldn't find it before
I 
>posted.

Looking it up in the rules would probably be faster... provided that you

have the rules, of course.

> >>Now, the only way for a ship to outrun a fighter right beside it is
to be
> >>accelerate past a move of 30 mu.
> >
> >Past 36 or 48 mu/turn. That's seven or nine turns of acceleration
from zero
> >by an NAC or FSE heavy cruiser straight out of FB1; less if the ship
is
> >already moving... usually about one turn's worth of accelleration if
I'm
> >flying it :-/
>
> From a dead stop (admittedly rare) the fighter is going to run out of
cef
>several turns before the ship it's attacking or screening accelerates
away
>from it.

Only if you make the fighter spend CEF for its normal primary move as
well 
as for "longer" ones, or it has to spend CEFs on other things than
moving. 
If the accelerating ship is thrust-6, your proposal only makes the
fighters 
spend CEFs to keep up with it for the last three turns.

>It seems like the fighters in the game are designed to be combat
>effective (ie burn through their cef) for only about 3 turns with the
beta
>rules.

3 turns sounds overly optimistic to me; 1 or 2 turns is rather more
likely 
in my experience unless you're using Long-Range fighters. More on this 
elsewhere in this post.

>I would consider that 3 turn "combat effectiveness" to be the measure
>of how long a fighter should be able to keep up with a ship. Why should
a
>fighter be able to stay with a ship for much longer than it could
actually
>fight the ship?

Coupling this to your concept of using defensive fighters instead of
PDS, 
why should a fighter be able to stay with a ship for much longer than
the 
number of combat turns in which it could actually *protect* the ship? 
Answer: because otherwise the nasty enemy will delay his attack until
your 
fighters have to withdraw :-/ (Remember, the movement rules have to work

both when your fighters interact with  *enemy* ships and when they
interact 
with *friendly* ones.)

> >>That means it's got one big honkin' engine or else it it was hauling
extra
> >>fast to begin with.
> >
> >Extra fast? Personally I consider 30-35 mu/turn to be a pretty normal
> >cruising speed for thrust-6 ships, but that's me :-/
>
>Now, from the AAR's I've seen on the web, I don't think people are
flying 
>that fast.

Not all of us are, but enough. If no-one flew this fast, then your
worries 
about fighters getting an effectively "infinite" range by "hitching a
ride" 
on fast ships - which was  what started this entire thread - would be 
completely unfounded :-)

I haven't put many AARs on publicly accessible parts of the web, I'm
afraid 
(most of them are playtest battles posted to restricted mailing lists). 
These two battles

http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/199912/msg00491.html
http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/199912/msg00784.html

are pretty typical for my tactics (I flew the FSE in both of them); both

feature relatively fast attacks - IIRC I didn't give any exact
velocities 
in these AARs, but the FSE light units' ability to go from outside B3
range 
to point-blank in a single turn against stationary NSL ships in the
second 
(msg00784) battle gives you an idea of their speeds. The FSE heavies
moved 
at a more stately pace in both battles though (at times flying as slowly
as 
20 mu/turn), since the Roma-class BBs are only thrust-4.

(FWIW the second of those battles also saw me using my FSE interceptors
in 
a PDS role, but keep in mind that this was under the FB1 rules - ie.,
the 
enemy didn't have *any* weapons capable of shooting at my interceptors 
since he had no fighters of his own and his PDSs could only shoot at 
fighters attacking their ships... which my interceptors for obvious
reasons 
never did!)

This Australian tournament report
http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200104/msg00904.html
features some more extreme velocities, though admittedly that unnamed 
Phalon player seem to have had somewhat unusual ideas of what would be 
effective fleets and tactics :-/

>At 1 mu = 1", you're going to flying off the edge of the average gaming

>table in 2 turns at that speed.

If you're flying in a straight line, sure - so you need to remember to 
change course occasionally! However, it gets much easier to fly fast if
you 
use 1 mu = 1cm <g>

>Perhaps the best idea is to set your fighter's primary move nearer to
the 
>normal starting speed of a ship.  Then they can't leave each others 
>envelopes quite so fast.

The ships' starting speeds are pretty irrelevant for this, unless you 
forbid both sides' ships from accellerating above their respective
starting 
speeds. Average ship speeds are more relevant, but they don't help much 
either since 1) players adust their tactics, and thus their average
speeds, 
rather quickly whenever the rules are changed, and 2) in Cinematic it
still 
only takes one misjudged fighter primary move to leave the fighters 
hopelessly unable to catch up with the ships. (In Vector it is very 
difficult to misjudge your fighte primary moves in this way :-/)

> >>In the first case, shouldn't a giant engine *be* able to outrun a
small 
> fighter?
> >
> >Outrun a fighter which itself consists mostly of engine, and has far
less
> >mass for said engine to push? Very doubtful IMO, unless you're
talking
> >about much longer distances and time scales than you get in a
tactical FT
> >battle.
>
>If they both worked with the same physics set, I would agree, but they 
>don't seem to.

The only reason why they don't seem to use the same physics set to you
is 
that you are trying to derive the physics from the game mechanics
instead 
of going the other way around.

To use a similar example from a completely different era: rifles vs. 
artillery in WW2 wargames. These two types of weapons operate under the 
same set of physical laws both during the actual firing of the weapon
and 
during the projectile's flight towards its target (the terminal effects
of 
a small solid bullet obviously differ from the terminal effects of a
large 
HE shell, of course), yet in spite of that every WW2 wargame I've seen
to 
date uses different rules for firing and hitting with rifles than they
do 
for firing and hitting with artillery (even when you ignore the
different 
rules needed to account for the different terminal effects, that is).

In this WW2 example, slightly different aspects of the same set of
physical 
laws - mainly muzzle velocity, size-related differences in drag 
coefficients between bullets and shells, and elevation - lead to
completely 
different game mechanics being used to represent the ballistics of these

two types of weapons on the gaming table. (In this particular case the 
physical laws in question are also quite well known, so if you tried to 
explain the differences in game mechanics between these weapon types by 
claiming that they don't follow the same physical laws your opponents
would 
most likely laugh you out of the room! There's a lot more room for PSB
in 
SF games, but that doesn't mean that it is always necessary - or even a 
good idea - to actually use all of the PSB room available <g>)

The principal differences between the Full Thrust fighter and ship
movement 
game mechanics are similar to the above rifle-vs-artillery ones. The 
fighter movement game mechanics are essentially the result of a
compromise 
between on one hand the desire to represent the "zippyness" fighters 
demonstrate in the various SF universes that feature fighters at all,
and 
on the other the game-play requirements of not having to write movement 
orders for fighters, not making fast-moving ships able to easily outrun 
friendly and enemy fighters during tactical battles, and enabling you to

keep your fighters close to your fleet without letting the enemy know
where 
to launch his missiles and plasma bolts until you actually move the
ships. 
IOW, unless you absolutely *want* the fighters to follow different
physical 
laws than the ships, slightly different aspects of the same physics - in

this case high vs low manoeuvrability - are quite sufficient to explain
why 
they use different game mechanics.

>In any case, I would also argue that the fighter has much less reaction

>mass to push *with* as well.

In absolute terms, the fighter certainly has less reaction mass. But
does 
it have less reaction mass *in proportion to its payload mass* than the 
ship has? :-)

>A ship can be 99% engine much more easily than a fighter.

Not if said ship is simultaneously expected to carry any useful amounts
of 
weapons and defences, a crew larger than the fighter's single pilot, and

enough life support to keep said larger crew alive for weeks or months. 
('Course, if you're determined to derive PSB from the existing game 
mechanics, your "ships can be 99% engine" theory is also flatly 
contradicted by the Fleet Book ship design rules - ships can never use
more 
than 93% of their mass for engines, and even 93% is only possible if the

ship is completely unarmed...)

>Heck, how many actual games take much more than seven turns?

Quite a few if you use Cinematic movement; not so many if you use
Vector.

You seem to be equating "combat effective duration" with "turns of
firing", 
BTW - but tactical battles often feature a number of turns during which 
there is no firing at all (only movement) because none of the units 
involved are in range of the enemy. Your proposals - particularly the 
second one - can easily result in fighters getting only one or even zero

turns of firing (ie., what you call "combat effective duration") simply 
because they can't catch up with the enemy without expending a lot of
CEF 
and need to spend some of the CEF not used for moving on other things
than 
firing.

> >>I mean the rule as it is now means that a large ship can *never*
outrun a
> >>small fighter,
> >
> >Correct; and your original proposal also means essentially this same
thing
> >- a large ship may be able to outrun SOME of the fighters, but your
concept
> >means that it can never ever outrun ALL of them no matter how fast it
flies.
>
>I concede the point.  I guess my main problem there is the idea of a 5
man
>scout ship towing along 36 one man fighters at no cost to fighter nor
ship.

Would the 5-man scoutship "towing along" a mere 12 one-man fighters be
any 
more palatable? Or, for that matter, a 61-man escort cruiser towing 96 
one-man fighters (16 groups, ie. 2-3 fleet carriers' worth of fighters),
or 
if the battle is 5000+ pts a 220-man superdreadnought towing along 330 
one-man fighters (55 squadrons)?

> >Your second concept - burn CEF whenever the fighter is moving faster
than X
> >mu/turn - avoids this feature, but has an interesting feature of its
own:
> >it explicitly forces the fighters to burn fuel to *maintain* an
achieved
> >"higher-than-normal" velocity even if they're moving in a straight
line.
> >Air resistance in deep space, or something? :-)
>
>Well, that's built into the rules already.

Only for secondary moves. Screening movement currently doesn't require
any 
explicit burning of fuel at all...

> >The 4 PDSs fire 4 dice at the missiles; the PDS/fighter combo fires 8
dice
> >- ie. exactly twice as much. If you only look at the number of
missiles
> >shot down, it should be pretty trivial to determine which of the two
is
> >more effective.
> >
> >However, the total *cost* (ie., including the cost of the basic hull
> >structure, engines etc. supporting the systems) of those 4 PDSs is
only
> >20-25 pts whereas the total cost of 2 PDSs + 1 fighter group is 70-80
pts
> >(or even more, for some designs). In other words, the PDS/fighter
combo
> >shoot down *twice* as many incoming missiles as the 4 PDSs, but it
costs at
> >least *three times* as many points to buy. Suddenly the choice isn't
quite
> >as clear-cut any more, particularly if you have a limited amount of
points
> >to buy your ships with.
>
>Quite true, although you can probably buy one less fire control that
>would normally be dedicated to the PDS as well.

One less FCS on the PDS/fighter side makes the comparison 20-25 pts for
the 
4 PDSs vs 65-75 pts for the PDS/fighter combo, so the PDS/fighter combo 
still costs at least three times as much to buy as the 4 PDSs.

Of course, by reducing the number of FCSs you also increase the risk of 
having your ship end up with too few FCSs to use its surviving
*offensive* 
weapons effectively after a threshold check or two :-/

> >If you add some FCSs and/or ADFCs to the 4 PDSs, their total cost
goes up
> >quite fast - which pushes the balance further towards the PDS/fighter
> >combo. If you add in anything that could shoot your fighters down
before
> >your fighters can attack the incoming missiles, the PDS/fighter combo
no
> >longer gets its original 2:1 firepower advantage over the 4 PDSs,
which
> >pushes the balance the other way instead.
>
>I wonder.  What can attack fighters when you're 12 mu from the enemy
ship?

Every single direct-fire anti-ship weapon covering the correct fire
arc(s) 
aboard the enemy ship.

>How much damage potential do they lose by not shooting at the ship
itself?

Depending on exactly what types of weapons they are, how much CEF your 
fighters spend on evasive manoeuvres, and what screen level your ship
has, 
those weapons could lose anything from 90+% of their damage potential
all 
the way down to negative amounts - ie., in some situations they'll
actually 
*gain* damage potential by shooting at your fighters (usually if your
ship 
is heavily screened and your fighters don't spend enough CEFs on
evasion). 
In addition any direct-fire damage potential lost by shooting at your 
fighters also has to be weighed against the damage potential *gained* by

the incoming enemy *missiles* through the destruction of some or all of
the 
fighters you hoped would stop said missiles from harming your ship.

>Still, I'm wondering how many rounds of really effective anti-missile
or 
>fighter fire is needed in the average combat.	Do most missile users
run 
>out of their large volleys after 3 turns?

Most do; a few run out sooner.

However... you're assuming that you'll actually get 3 turns of shooting
out 
of the 6 CEFs your fighters have each. As mentioned in passing above,
that 
looks like a pretty optimistic assumption to me even under the beta-test

rules as written: fighters in a defensive posture will most likely have
to 
spend CEFs on evasive manoeuvres even on turns when there aren't any 
missiles or similar to defend against (otherwise they become attractive 
targets for enemy long-range fire, particularly if the enemy plans to
hit 
you with missiles later on), they may very well need to spend more than
1 
CEF on evasion in a single turn (particularly if the enemy gets close),
and 
in fleet actions they may even have to make secondary moves in order to
get 
into position to engage the incoming missiles.

> >>The positive is [snip a number of true positives] no vulnerability
to
> >>threshold checks, and fire directed at your defenses is fire *not*
> >>directed at your ship.
> >
> >"No vulnerability to threshold checks" is a pure red herring: fire
directed
> >at your defending fighters *destroys* (cannot be restored by damage
control
> >parties) one "PDS equivalent" (ie., fighter) per beam hit inflicted,
> >instead of *damaging* (can be restored by damage control) on average
1-2
> >PDSs in the first threshold check after some 20-30 beam hits (for the
FB1
> >BDNs and SDNs that is; for custom designs these numbers will of
course vary
> >quite a bit).
> >
> >Similarly the fact that fire directed at your defending fighters
isn't
> >directed at your ship is also a bit of a red herring: while your
*ship*
> >doesn't risk losing any weapons to threshold checks as long as the
enemy
> >concentrates on the fighters, your *fleet as a whole* loses one beam
die's
> >worth of offensive firepower for each beam hit on the fighters.
>
>Yeah, but if he/she is spending firepower on what you're using for
defensive
>firepower, I would think you are automatically getting more firepower
against
>his ships than he is against yours.

If you really do think that, you have completely forgotten about the
part 
of the enemy's firepower which caused you to put your fighters onto PDS 
duties in the first place - namely the enemy missile salvoes homing in
on 
your ship. You need your fighters alive to shoot those missiles down; if

your fighters are shot down by the enemy ship, the missiles are likely
to 
rip your ship a new set of engine exhausts.

>In effect, he's spending fire on shooting at your PDS (the fighters)
with 
>no chance of hitting hull.

But he isn't just "shooting at your PDS with no chance of hitting hull".

Quite aside from the fact that each defending fighter destroyed makes it

easier for his missiles to inflict some very real hull damage on your
ship, 
those fighters are more than "just PDS" - they're also part of your
entire 
*fleet's* hull integrity and offensive firepower. In order to win the 
battle the enemy needs to defeat your *fleet*, which usually isn't the
same 
as defeating the one specific *ship* you are analysing... but since
you're 
looking at this one single ship only, you're effectively ignoring what 
happens to the rest of your fleet. This skews your analysis.

In addition, when you bought your fighters you spent points on their 
non-PDS aspects as well as on their PDS capabilities - and these points
are 
points you *didn't* use to improve the hull integrity or offensive 
firepower of the one ship you're analysing. Because of this, if the
enemy 
brought fewer fighters to the battle than you did he almost certainly 
starts the battle with more of both offensive firepower and hull
integrity 
than your *ship* did - so even if he "wastes" some of his firepower
against 
your fighters (and doesn't manage to recoup it by improving his
missiles' 
chances to damage your ship), you're the one playing catch-up since you
are 
in effect keeping the part of your fleet's offensive firepower and hull 
integrity made up by your fighters out of the fight. In this situation
your 
ship *has* to inflict more damage on him than he inflicts on your ship
just 
to get a draw... and that's assuming that any fighter losses you take
are 
irrelevant for the victory conditions :-/

(FWIW each of your fighter groups has about the same combat power and 
points cost as a frigate, though of course the fighters' options for 
applying their combat power are different than the options available to
the 
frigate.)

>On top of that, he's just lost any extra damage each hit would do
beyond 
>the first point.

If he's using K-guns of size 2 or larger, P-torps or Grasers to shoot at

your fighters with, then he loses any extra damage per hit. Beams,
Pulsers 
and SMPs OTOH inflict one damage point per hit (and conversely each
damage 
point they inflict is a separate hit), so they only waste damage against

fighters if they overkill an entire fighter *group*; and K1s very rarely

inflict more than 1 pt of damage per hit anyway so the risk of them
wasting 
damage isn't very big either :-/

>Would you shoot at a PDS when all you could damage was the PDS itself?

If you need that PDS to defend against my missiles, of course I'd shoot
at 
the PDS. This is of course exactly the situation your ship is in in the 
example forming the basis for this current discussion: according to your

specification it has three enemy salvo missile salvoes homing in on it,
no 
nearby friendly ships to help it out, and the friendly fighter group 
screening it form the majority of its anti-missile defences...

If OTOH there *aren't* any missiles threatening your ship, then I'd 
probably ignore your fighters if you kept them in a defensive posture -
but 
in this case keeping your fighters in a defensive posture would be a
waste 
of points (ie., poor tactics) on your part, since doing so would prevent

your fighters from contributing anything to your fleet's performance!

> >(Generally speaking, you seem to be thinking in terms of one single
ship at
> >a time. Unless your entire fleet actually consists of only one single
ship,
> >this approach has a rather large numbers of pitfalls - you need to
look at
> >the entire fleet as a whole to avoid them.)
>
>Well, it's primarily because an entire fleet is just too complicated to

>analyze.

Maybe it is too complicated for inexperienced players (though I've seen 
some quite good fleet-level analyses by newbies, so it can't be too 
complicated for *all* of you), but not for veteran players. This may
sound 
arrogant, but you'll probably find it a lot easier to make fleet-level 
analyses when you have gained more on-table FT gaming experience.

>If you don't simplify it somewhat, it's too hard.

The trick is to simplify away the right details. Unfortunately some of
the 
details you're leaving out are very important indeed for fleet-level
battles.

>What works for a single ship versus an equal point count of ships
should 
>scale roughly to entire fleets.

It "should"? Too bad, because it doesn't. Full Thrust's fleet dynamics
are 
quite different from single-ship dynamics even when all ships in the
battle 
are identical - and if the ships are *not* identical, the differences in

ship- and fleet-level game dynamics quickly become profound.

>It's not exact, but it's a lot more manageable.

It may be more managable, but it's not just "not exact" - it is directly

misleading outside single-ship duels. In effect your single-ship
approach 
makes you think that you're victorious because the one ship you're
looking 
at is untouched, while in reality you're losing badly because the *rest*
of 
your fleet has been destroyed... which is a mistake you'd never make in
an 
actual on-table game where you can see the status of your entire fleet
at 
the same time.

> >>>PDS and fighters definetly, but just fighters...eeek.
> >>
> >>Don't they typically exceed the number of available of PDS as well?
> >
> >On a single ship, yes.

Sorry, I was unclear here. This should have read "On a single 
*fighter-carrying* ship, yes." - a pretty important difference, as
you'll 
see below:

> >In an entire fleet, usually not (though of course it
> >depends on the exact fleets used).
>
>I would think that if points were equal on both sides, it wouldn't make
too
>much of a difference between a ship vs ship battle and a fleet versus
fleet
>battle.

Only if all ships in the battle carry similar proportions of PDS to 
fighters. However, unless your fleet consists of dreadnoughts only
you'll 
most likely have a number of smaller ships as well which don't carry any

fighters at all, but which do carry one or more PDSs each... and under
the 
beta-test fighter rules they're a lot more able to use those PDSs than
they 
used to be, too :-/

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