Re: Full Thrust vs Starmada

Hm.  Grants post leads me to a question.  OO will certainly know if this

has been attempted, or if it would even work, but here goes.

So, part of the problem as I've been reading it is that a large number
of 
fighter groups can overwhelm the PDS and take out even a fairly powerful

ship.  So, what if each fighter group was engaged by EACH PDS on the
ship, 
and each attacked individually?  Yes, this puts some extra strain on 
fighter groups attacking larger vessels, but so what?  I haven't looked
at 
the PDS rules in a while, and my book is at home.  But if the PDS does 
*damage* to the fighter group, as opposed to "score a hit, kill the 
group", then each pass of PDS will reduce the fighter group
(potentially), 
and only on ships with LOTs of PDS, will they have a good chance at 
eliminating each entire group as they come in.	And if you do it 
serially...

fighter group A attacks, PDS attempts to take them out, remaining
fighters 
hit the ship.
...
fighter group B attacks, PDS attempts to take them out, remaining
fighters
hit the ship.
...
repeat until all fighter groups are done...

... then the fighters (survivors) have a shot of doing some damage to
the 
ships, and possibley forcing threshold checks and taking out the PDS, 
leaving the ship a sitting duck.

?

J

John K. Lerchey
Computer and Network Security Coordinator
Computing Services
Carnegie Mellon University

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005, Grant A. Ladue wrote:

>>
>> Tom McCarthy wrote:
>>
>>> There have been suggestions that limit the number of fighters that
can
>>> attack a ship in a turn.  Number crunching suggest they ameliorate
the
>>> problem (even greatly), but some people don't feel they solve it.
>>
>> Show me the number crunching that suggest they ameliorate the problem
>> "greatly", or even at all. The only number crunching of this concept
I've
>> seen very strongly suggested that limiting the number of fighters
attacking
>> a particular ship in a single turn has virtually *no* effect if the
target
>> ship is a FB-style (ie., limited-PDS) BB or smaller...
>>
>    Really?  I find this a bit suprising, but it depends a lot on how
much
>  you limited the fighters, whether you use morale, etc.
>    For instance, I would think that if you limited a cruiser sized
hull to
>  only 4 attacking fighter groups (say out of a 6 group swarm), that
could
>  extend it's lifetime considerably.  The average cruiser has 3 or 4
pds
>  doesn't it?	Dedicate one pds per attacking group and you should get
a couple
>  of fighter kills.  With the morale rules, you've got at least one
fighter
>  group who has to roll before it attacks.  If you can get one or two
fighter
>  groups to break off before their attack, you've probably kept the
cruiser
>  from going through a second threshold on that turn.	That's much
*much*
>  better than what would happen if 6 fighter groups attacked it under
the
>  current system.  It ain't perfect, but it's better.	If you also
allowed the
>  ship to fire it's other weapons at the fighters, then the fighters
could have
>  a fairly hard time of it.  It's just off the top of my head, but it
seems ok
>  to me.  For settings where non-targetable fighters are appropriate
have that
>  be another way to run fighters, with the proviso that fighters would
be
>  *very* common in these universes, and forces not equipped with
fighters are
>  going to be at a real disadvantage.
>
>
>    Just one man's thoughts.
>
>
>  grant
>
>