Re: Fighters.... Re: Full Thrust vs Starmada

On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 04:19:24PM -0400, Flak Magnet wrote:

>"Can't be done." accompanied with much hand-waving doesn't erase the
>fact that the TMP thread that started this fighter discussion (again,
>*sigh*) includes opinions that Starmada appears to have accomplished a
>favorable approach to fighters than the extant FT rules.

And it does it by allowing main weapons to fire at fighters. :-)

Tom's point about the two basic classes of weapon - "things that hurt
ships" and "things that hurt fighters" - is vitally important. Even
with perfectly "balanced" fighter rules, whatever that might mean and
wherever the balance point may lie, you're still going to have a game
of rock-paper-scissors - do you load up on anti-ship weapons,
anti-fighter weapons, or actual fighters? If the enemy has to choose
first and you know what he has, you can beat him every time. Even if he
doesn't, the game is effectively decided in the force-selection phase
rather than on the table, and that's boring.

(Right now it's more like "rock-paper-tacnuke", because of the fighter
costing problems, but that is _not_ the only thing that needs to be
solved.)

R