Re: [GZG] Hugh's New Fighter/Point Defence rules

-----Original Message-----
>From: Hugh Fisher <laranzu@ozemail.com.au>

>>The main issue I have with this is that torpedo bombers are not 
>>going to get very many chances to strike in a battle compared to 
>>regular attack fighters.  They need to be able to make the most of 
>>it when they get them.

>Torpedo fighters could roll to hit as if they were heavy
>missiles (one band lower if possible, like attack fighters)
>and use the to-hit roll as the damage as well. They'll do
>slightly better again undefended targets because a 2 is
>becomes a hit, and against well defended targets hits will
>be rare but dangerous. And this would remove an extra die
>roll.

It could work.	My main concerns with the system as a whole are that (a)
it requires us to constantly consult relatively arbitrary-seeming tables
to handle all of our point defense chores, which adds complexity to the
game, and (b) it vastly changes how a number of existing systems work in
the game while largely leaving salvo missiles alone.  If salvo missiles
are fine, the other systems aren't _that_ much worse than them aside
from maybe fighters themselves, and the system leaves enough options to
leave them still effective that I'm not sure I mind that part as much. 
I've got a vague thought that plasma bolts _could_ theoretically be
reduced to a 5+ to shoot down a level's worth... BUT I'm sitting here
thinking of 150 PDS area defense formations in 5000 NPV fleets in the
latter phases of my old campaign that could've shot down an entire
similar cost fleet of Voths' plasma with that rule on just an average
PDS roll, and the Phalons wouldn't have the additional room for lots 
 of fighters to give them a reason not to do it like the Teracrons did
in the actual campaign.

>>Well, given that 20+ scatterguns and/or 25-30 PDS have been 
>>considered a balanced quantity for capital ship and/or escort ship 
>>equipment in my campaigns, I think it becomes pretty academic as to 
>>what would happen.  Inpenetrable PD levels would be a matter of 
>>rote, and both plasma and heavy missiles would be completely 
>>useless.  I'd suggest at the very least that they should hit on a 6 
>>regardless of what defense was up, and I'm not sure whether or not 
>>even that level shouldn't be pretty high up.

>5-10% of capital mass and 20%+ for escort cruisers being
>spent on PDS  isn't balanced to me, but then I did
>say I wanted to find out what other people do :-)

Well, I was describing about where we found the balance where you could
reasonably protect yourself from fighters without giving up much of your
ship-to-ship armament.	I might add that the GZGverse's conventions
about fighters being deployed only from rarely-encountered capital ships
aren't the only ones we scrapped when we went our own way.  The main
other one that got abandoned is the one where GZGverse ships typically
devote around 65-70% of their ship mass to non-weapon systems (i.e.
hull, drives, armor, and screens).  Even our front line grinders and
flankers rarely went above 55%, and the support vessels and escorts
rarely topped 40%.  It's been my observation that the more of a
warship's mass that isn't in weapons, the less effective that warship
usually is.

Just as an illustration, let's take the one FB1 ship that actually drops
below 60% on this count -- the Maria Von Burgund NSL BB -- and say we
wanted to build a capital ship in its image.  By simply doubling the
mass with all systems and only getting a little tweaking I can get this:

Mass 240
Hull 72
Thrust 2, FTL
Armor 14
4 Fire controls

6 pulse torpedoes (3 arc)
6 B3s (3 arc)
4 B2s (3 arc)
4 B1s (3 arc)
18 PDS

NPV: 830

All I did from the double-sized MVB was take 6 of the extra armor boxes
and the four extra fire controls and put them into additional PDS, while
turning four of the extra B3s into pulse torpedoes for extra
screen-penetrating punch.  It's left with still being what would be one
of the four toughest ships for combined hull/armor in FB1, outgunning
every FB1 vessel by almost two-to-one in ship-to-ship armament, and
still having a stiff enough PDS suite to stave off almost any reasonable
fighter or missile strike the GZGverse human powers would throw at it. 
It would take almost no additional tweaking (say, adding an extra four
mass) to throw on an ADFC and a couple more PDS to get to an even 20 and
allow it to formation-fly with others of its own class to anchor what
could be a pretty scary area defense formation in most any game with a
few special-purpose escorts.  It could be broken, but it'd take a lot
more fighters or other ordnance than the GZGverse human powers are
prepare
 d to throw.  For fighting Kra'Vak it would want more all-arc weaponry,
for fighting Phalons or soapies it would want to swap the PDS for
scatterguns if it were allowed.  A fleet of Phalon capital ships would
probably just fry them straight-up if they couldn't use scatterguns;
there's not much you can do against Phalons at that scale unless you can
get at least a 2 point turn.

Still... I find myself thinking that heavy missiles probably shouldn't
get more than just an upgrade to allow PDS to spill over overkill, while
plasma bolts probably shouldn't get much change in general.  _Maybe_ the
5+ to kill one for PDS, but even that's iffy.

E
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