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

In my old games, we didn't use CEF in the early going in FT2, but by the

time we got to FBs we had started using it.

When I was playing with my ex-wife's brother, we typically played 5000
point 
battles where pretty much anything goes.  Mixed tech, nova cannons/wave
guns 
(and we also allowed them to scale up similar to plasma bolts), cloaking

fields, reflex fields, anything your heart desired, it was fair game. 
We 
had a few house rules to settle a few questions of mixed tech, and
generally 
it went fairly well.

Maybe it was a matter of the humiliation of one-sided defeats whenever 
someone guessed wrong if they over-loaded on dealing with fighters or
with 
ship-to-ship armaments, and maybe it was that we didn't play often
enough 
that we could afford not to care if we lost that badly by doing so.  But
we 
never really fell into the paper-rock-scissors game that Oerjan
describes. 
My ex-brother-in-law was a little more given to overspecializing in this
way 
than I was, and when he guessed right it usually was not that great (if
at 
all) of a victory, while if he guessed wrong he suffered some of his
most 
crushing defeats ever.	Our most one-sided battle ever came when he
tried 
flying a slow mega-dreadstar with no fighters, no escorts, a ton of PDS,
all 
figuring he'd just slog through the expected fighter swarm and pick off
the 
carriers with the modest ship-to-ship armament he had.	Then I didn't
bring 
fighters; I brought warships armed with nova cannons in the main element

with a flanking detachment of fast-flying cruisers with stiff
screens/armor 
and needle beams.  He wasn't able to destroy the cruisers as they swung
out 
wide and behind him, he was at a severe maneuvering disadvantage, and
the 
cruisers took out his drives in about three turns, as well as his FTL. 
The 
ship struck its colors almost immediately rather than be annihilated.

This was embarassing enough that trying to over-load against fighters at
the 
expense of offensive firepower just didn't happen again, on either side.

They were something to be accounted for, but we never got to 
paper-rock-scissors.  This incident was probably the closest we came,
and 
the example of what happens when one guessed wrong was bad enough that
we 
played more balanced fleets.  However, by the end of our time playing
the 
game, I tended to pack about a hundred scatterguns, give or take
depending 
on whether I had fighters or not, just on the off chance that the idea
of 
soap bubble carriers occurred to him.  He didn't try it by the time I 
divorced his sister, and after that we didn't play again.

Eric/Stilt

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Indy" <kochte@stsci.edu>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 3:28 PM
Subject: Re: Fighters....Re: Full Thrust vs Starmada

> Grant A. Ladue wrote:
>>>>One can PSB anything. :->
>>>
>>>As long as one wants to tie oneself into a particular background, 
>>>certainly...
>>>
>>
>>     Now now, the basic premise of not limiting the number of fighters

>> that can
>>   attack based on range is itself tied to particular backgrounds. 
Star 
>> Wars,
>>   Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Babylon 5, heck *most* televised sf

>> have fighters that need to get right up close and personal to attack 
>> ships.  Not
>>   limiting the numbers of fighters that can attack in these
backgrounds 
>> would
>>   seem to require a handwaving psb it would seem to me.
>>     Bottom line, if limiting the number of fighters that can attack
each 
>> size
>>   of ship (perhaps based on mass) makes for a better game, then the
rule 
>> is
>>   far more important than the "reason" for it.  I know that some
people 
>> don't buy the PSB behind rolling for the number of missiles that
attack 
>> from a SM attack.  Thing is, it makes for a good game, so they let it
go. 
>> Now if you want to argue that limiting the number of fighters that
can 
>> attack doesn't make for a good game, I'll listen.  Still I'd rather
that 
>> the reason
>>   it was rejected was that it doesn't work, not that we can't find a 
>> reason
>>   for it.
>
> With all these suggestions about putting limitations on fighters, I've
> got a random question for the general populace: how many people do or
do
> not use the CEF rule with fighters? I can see where if one opted to
not
> keep track of this fighters are essentially an infinite-use weapon
(hence
> why it was adopted). Maybe limitations or other caps can or should be
put
> on CEFs?
>
> All the wondering (having not played with fighters in over a year
now),
> Mk
>
>