Re: [GZG] FT:XD changes, part 1

I generally agree with a number of points in this, except for one or
two.

-----Original Message-----
>From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
>2. I think you underprice your fighter gradations. If you are able to
>avoid dogfights without a roll, then I think +/- 1 NPV is too weak of
>a pricing change.

I've generally experienced that this is a fairly benign advantage.  You
don't get any advantage in the actual contested dogfights, you only get
to pick which ones you have to fight.  If the faster fighters were also
given an advantage in fighter battles (beyond the big one I give them
over slow fighters) then I could see the argument more.  But unless one
side is packing fast bombers and the other side has no fast fighters to
intercept them, it doesn't change a whole lot.

As a quick additional note:  I make an exception in this rule for
fighter screens, it's only effective in open-space dogfights.

>5. Fighter/PDS/Ship fire model
>
>The only model I've seen that seems to not encourage soapies, that
>seems to make fighter endurance matter, and that seems to make FT ship
>designs (with small to moderate sized fighter compliments by mass,
>with 2-4 PDS) make ANY viable sense is the playtest rules that were
>bandied about with fighters burning endurance to avoid PDS fire and to
>attack and where PDSes and ship batteries could engage fighters, the
>PDS any within range and all PDS groups on a sihp attacked *each*
>incoming fighter group. It was more book-keeping intensive, but it
>made the existing SSDs make sense.

Well, this last sentence basically is where we're simply riding on
different rails.  I do not care even a little bit if the existing SSDs
are able to fight soapie basestars.  They're not designed to be a
hyper-optimized fleet line that can stand off against anything and
everything you can dream up under the custom design rules, and IMO
changing the rules to make them so is a very bad idea.	I'm perfectly
willing to accept that a game set in the GZGverse is not going to be the
same as a game set in a universe where a mass 280 soapie basestar is
going to throw 15 heavy missiles and 20 fighter groups at their enemies,
and I don't care a bit that if that basestar appeared in the GZGverse no
fleet book capital ship dueling it would ever get within firing range. 
The amount of change it would take to turn Von Tegethoff v. basestar
into a 50-50 fight is going to make anything that _is_ designed with
significantly better defenses completely invulnerable to fighters
altogether.  I'd r
 ather keep the GZGverse ships in their own world where players can
continue to have fun fighting them against each other, and keep it
understood that if you really want to let the soapie genie out of the
bottle, it's simply going to be a different game and should be set in a
different campaign.

>PDS attack all fighter groups: Makes lower PDS per ship make sense.

Case in point.	This also makes a ship with 10+ PDS practically
invulnerable to any number of fighters.  Do not want.

>Fighters burn endurance to attack and to avoid PDS fire: Limits the
>amount of times fighters can effectively attack new ships without
>being cut apart with PDS.

In my current campaign, we've actually stopped bothering to track
fighter endurance, because the fighters never live long enough for it to
become a factor.  Even in the most crushingly one-sided battle in it
(the AAR was basically, "fighter furball, then plasma bolts and torpedo
bombers by Side A destroy most of Side B's dreadnoughts before they ever
get a shot off in the same turn as Side A's needle escorts destroy the
FTL drives of almost all Side B's fleet carriers to keep them from
escaping the unfolding disaster"), the winning side still lost about 75%
of their fighters.

>Batteries can fire at fighters: Not very effective, but every bit of
>counter-fighter fire helps.

I'm generally all right with this, although I like XD's system (only a 6
hits, to kill one fighter) better.

>Fire at loitering fighters: Encourages fighters to stay further away.
>If they want to make secondary moves, burns their precious endurance.

I'm a little more ambivalent on this one.  I do think fighters shouldn't
be allowed to loiter forever, but I think the fire from ships on them
should be reduced in its effectiveness significantly.  Whether the
playtest rules are the way to go, I don't know.

E
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