Re: Beta Fighter game report

Thanks for the comments :-)

Jared Hilal wrote:

>Conclusions:
>1)  The new rules may work OK for small numbers of fighters, but they
>slowed the game down a LOT for the numbers of fighters that we use.
>This is were I think the rules broke.	The primary problem here is that
>the player has to decide on level of evasion for each fighter group,
>plus this has to be remembered or recorded to be used latter in the
>turn.	Just one player who devotes a lot to such descisions really hold
>up the game.  More than one such player would bring the game to a halt.
>  You also have to remember to refer to the records for each group
>attacked.

At least in my group, deciding on evasion levels and remembering to
refer 
to the records for the various groups was something that speeded up very

considerably after the first couple of games - ie., as soon as people
got 
used to it and learned what the trade-offs were. Granted, our biggest 
battle to date with this system only had 52 fighter groups total
compared 
to the 72 you had in your battle, and most of our playtests have
averaged 
around 40 groups, but those are nevertheless fairly high number of 
fighters... and we play such battles faster with the beta-test rules
than 
we used to do using the Fleet Book fighter rules.

We also find record-keeping pretty simple. Due to far too many accidents

where record-keeping dice on the fighter base have been overturned by 
accident, we already used fighter group SSDs with two rows of check
boxes: 
one for the number of fighters, and the other for the group's CEF. With
the 
Fleet Book rules we crossed out the CEF boxes as the CEF is spent; with
the 
beta-test rules we put letters in them instead - E for Evasion, A for 
Attack, S for Secondary move. If necessary we draw a vertical line after

the last CEF box used up this turn - though we've found that that's
rarely 
needed, since any "S" or "A" boxes usually make it pretty obvious which 
boxes belong to what turn anyway.

>2)  The new rules make heavy fighters much more resiliant.

Much more resilient to *point defence fire*, correct; and if that were
the 
only change their points value would indeed have been increased.

However, that *isn't* the only change to them. Their *other* change is
that 
they can now be hit by a lot of anti-ship weapons which previously
couldn't 
hit fighters at all, and against *that* fire the "heavy" modification 
doesn't give any protection whatsoever - thus diluting their overall 
protection level, and bringing their value back closer to that of
non-heavy 
fighters. That's one cost increase and one cost reduction; so far in the

playtests these two changes seem to cancel each other out fairly well - 
which is why the heavy fighter points cost doesn't seem to have changed.

>2b) We like the "Heavy = defense-1" because it allowed us to add
>"Extra-heavy = defense-2" for things like TIE Defenders or Imperial
>Assault Shuttles.  If we now give TIE/Ds a DRM of -2, that will make
>them tougher than we want.

I'm sorry, but rules revisions can't afford to consider keeping
individual 
groups' house rules intact. No matter how the rules are revised, there's

always *some* group whose house rules get violated by the changes.

>3) The new rules do not address the problem of fixed movement values
>for fighters.

And if we don't come up with a fool-proof PSB for defending against 
extreme-range hyper-velocity missile strikes against planets and other 
fixed locations, I don't think that any official Full Thrust rules ever 
will. If fighters can build up velocity from turn to turn, so can
missiles 
- and if hypervelocity attacks on fixed locations are possible in the
game, 
it pretty much turns any space war into mutually-assured destruction... 
resulting either in extinction or in a cold war, but either way removing

the need for fighting ship-to-ship battles. Game rules whose logical 
extensions remove the reason for playing the game at all are seriously
bad 
for the game.

However, since the fighter movement rules are effectively independent of

the fighter *combat* rules, you shouldn't have any problems importing 
whatever fighter-movement house rules you're currently using into the 
beta-test rules. Just pray that no-one in your group catches on to the 
hypervelocity strike concept :-/

>4)  The new rules require the use of CEF in the combat resolution.

Yes. In that respect they're no different from the More Thrust or Fleet 
Book fighter rules; they too required the use of CEF in the combat 
resolution. (OK, More Thrust "strongly recommended" it and FB1 calls it
a 
"recommended standard rule", but that's as close to "require" as
*anything* 
gets in a game where the first rule is "If you don't like it, change
it!" :-/ )

>It is no longer possible to disentangle the CEF rules from the fighter
>rules if your group does not want to use them.

On the contrary, it is very simple: just go to a fixed DRM for the 
fighters. Sure, doing so will upset the fighter points costs, but so
does 
removing the CEF rules from the More Thrust or Fleet Book rules <shrug>

>Any "fixed" fighter rules should function perfectly well without the
CEF 
>rules,

They should, and in an ideal world they probably would too.
Unfortunately 
our world isn't particularly ideal :-/

More seriously though, the fighters' tactical choice of sacrificing 
something - either movement range (as in StarFire) or combat endurance
(as 
in the Full Thrust beta-test rules) - to make themselves harder targets
for 
the enemy's defensive fire is something all of the fighter-heavy 
backgrounds you listed show on-screen (and IIRC BSG:TOS and B5
occasionally 
comment on it in the dialogue as well). Paying for it with CEF means
that 
we already have a simple way to track it in Full Thrust; trading
movement 
for evasion (like StarFire does) would increase the record-keeping quite
a 
bit more (just like it does in StarFire :-/ ).

>I would suggest also seperating "Ordnance Factors" (e.g. torpedoes, 
>missiles, etc.)

Hm? Fighter-carried ordnance (currently only Torpedoes) is separate from

the CEF in all of the More Thrust, Fleet Book and beta-test rules.

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry