[GZG] FT Fighter/Advanced Screen balance (Cross Dimensions)

Okay, me again.  I've had a few plays just to sort of tinker around with
the Cross Dimensions systems, and a few other thoughts on general game
balance.

I completely rescind all comments I had previously on advanced screens
about their not being worth it.  They're pretty much completely worth
it, and while they're expensive a ship that has them usually seems to
have a significant advantage over ships that don't.  This ultimately has
led me into a pondering of some of the other major balance things that
come up in the games.

One big one is the hull integrities.  Over time, I've found myself
thinking more and more that there really isn't a whole lot of reason for
a ship to put a whole lot of its mass into hull integrity in this game
system.  It's been known for years that carriers are pretty much more
effective the less they bother with hull strength in favor of amassed
fighters, and even for ship-to-ship styles the scale of weapons goes up
a lot faster than the scale of resilience.  As a test fight just to
sanity check my theory last week I threw what I took as something like
an optimal high-tech "Defense Star" design I've been toying with that
employed pulse torpedoes, advanced screen 2s, advanced drive 3s, two
layer armor, pulse torpedoes, pulsers, and scatterguns with a pretty
weak hull underneath all the defenses up against a pair of Von Tegethoff
class SDNs from the book.  The Defense Star had three swing
interceptor/attack fighters, the SDNs got to have heavy fighters.  The
battle wasn't ev
 en close; the Defense Star pretty much completely controlled the
spacing and angle of attack on the SDNs, and while it did have fighter
superiority (which was significant), it was decided far more by the fact
that it could completely control all phases of the maneuvering and
fight, while the SDNs pretty much were all brute force slug-it-out
designs.  While it's possible that if one took a strong hull with
advanced screens the result might be different, such a ship strikes me
as likely being so under-weaponed that it wouldn't be that effective.  I
don't know, I may tinker with this as a future test.

The other big one is the old elephant in the room:  fighters.  I've
found myself thinking that fighter balance has taken a big backward step
from the old FT 2.0 to the two fleet books.  The only remotely effective
point defenses are scatterguns and ADFC-equipped phalanxes, and both of
these systems basically force fighters into an all-or-nothing approach. 
(The Defense Star in the previous paragraph broke my old cardinal rule
of not bothering with fighters except in overwhelming numbers because it
was built for a scenario-driven storyline; in a custom game I'd probably
have to either give it more fighters, give it carrier support from other
vessels, or just get rid of the fighters altogether.)  This is at a huge
contrast to the FT 2.0, where there were both far weaker point defense
as well as a lot more limits on what ships were allowed to carry
fighters in the first place.  The "soap bubble carrier" in the fleet
book system isn't possible under 2.0 for a couple of reasons:  
 only capital ships were allowed to carry fighters, and every warship
had the same amount of mass devoted to weapons, so min-maxing the hull
integrity out for extra fighter capacity wasn't an option.

I find myself thinking that both sides of this equation kind of got out
of whack in the Fleet Books, and probably needs fixing.  I think that
Cross Dimensions' rule of "only fighters from the same carrier can
attack a single opposing ship" is kind of a well-intentioned start, but
it needs a little more, I think.  The evil Sopi need only get around it
by gathering their fighter strength into giant basestars and doing away
with all the tiny bubble podships, and doesn't really resolve the
situation where against amassed fighter defenses you either need amassed
fighters or needn't bother with them at all.

The flip side of this was, I thought that the pre-FB area defense, where
you only got one dice of area defense fire for a more massive system,
was somewhat useless and thus made ships fend for themselves.  I think
that a modern Full Thrust system should include a concept like this --
i.e. you either have a devoted area defense suite or point defense only
-- but it should be more powerful than what preceded the area defense
fire control.  So here's my thought:  an area defense system (ADS)
should be around mass 5 or 6, but it's as powerful as a scattergun, and
with an ammunition limit of three shots before it either has to spend
some significant time reloading or be out of service altogether. 
However, the flip side is, the current area defense fire control and
scattergun go away completely, and the rule where fighters can only
mass-attack a ship alongside other fighters from their own carrier
either becomes non-optional or evolves into a rule where multi-carrier
attacks incur
  some kind of penalty. (e.g. each additional carrier's fighters that
try to attack the same target after the first takes a -1 to all their
shots, cumulative.)

I like enough of what I'm suggesting here that I may test it a bit here;
I'd like to hear the list's thoughts on it all though.

E/Stilt Man
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