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

>-----Original Message----- 
>From: Indy 

>Eric, it was wholly unclear that the fighters were relanding and
reloading from your AAR. I
>was sharing Noam's confusion on how you were using the torp fighters.

Sorry. :P

>That said, torp fighters as written are one-shot weapons, not
reloadable in a scenario. There
>is an optional rule for rearming fighters. But that rule also has one
roll 1d6 per group
>rearming to see if or when they will be refurbished.

Yes, I know about this one.  My games have always simply allowed
fighters to land and reload, and relaunch at some point afterwards.  We
used to require 3 turns in 2nd edition, but we've always used next-turn
in 2.5.  The amount of point defense we play with is high enough that
we've never seen it as a problem.

>How fast were the ships all going? What speeds of fighters were you
using? At 120 mu apart at
>the start, the Phalons should have easily been able evade multiple
fighter attacks.

The Phalons were coming in starting at 8, accelerated to 12 to approach,
and then started decelerating as they got closer to plasma range so as
not to overshoot with such unmaneuverable ships.  The Kasparovs started
at 6, and decelerated to 2 in order to extend the amount of time they
held the range advantage in turn.

>>The Phalons were in a tight formation and their smallest plasma bolt
was a class 3. 

>Fair point. 
 
>>Thus, any unblocked plasma would have hit most or all of their own
fleet.	They judged that
>>the fighters would have simply used secondary movement to evade the
plasma and find a safe
>>place to strike.  While some ships could have fired while the rest
shrouded to minimize the
>>damage, the shrouded ships would have been even worse off if the
fighters could find safe
>>places to hit them from, and the shrouds would've been worse against
torpedo bombers than
>>simply using pulsers to try to wear the fighters down so that future
strikes would be less
>>powerful.  As such, while it was considered, it was judged that it
would accomplish no
>>better than a delay that would damage most of their own fleet, so they
did not attempt it.

>What sort of loadout were the Phalons carrying for their pulsers? 

The Voths were in 3 far, 3 medium, 5 close.  The smaller ships were in
similar proportions.

>It seems as if this was a small recreation of the Can-Am battle at GZG
ECC lo so many years
>ago, where the American force fielded a fighter-*heavy* fleet and the
Canadians had a mixed >arms force (I don't remember if or how many
fighters the Canadians might have had; if they >had any, it was a
negligible amount, as was their anti-fighter capability). The Canadians
>had their heads handed to them, the Americans took little or no damage.

>Anyway, it seems as if the Phalon fleet in question was woefully
inadequate to and incapable
>of handling fighters in any realistic manner.

Well, I did have a suspicion as to how the battle was going to turn out
before I ran it.  Part of my observation going in was that, unlike my
Teracron designs, the Phalons are not able to throw enough plasma to be
a serious threat to a well-screened capital ship at the same time as
they throw enough fighters to punish them for scattering in order to
keep more than one ship from getting hit -- or, for that matter, to keep
themselves from getting hit by fighters either.  However, the Phalons
_did_ have more plasma in this force than my designs have ever thrown
for similar cost, and while it's possible that evading more fighter
strikes or starting closer together might have helped them, I'm
unconvinced that it would have been decisive against ships with level 2
screens and 100 hull.  If the Phalons had brought enough fighters to
properly protect themselves, they wouldn't have had nearly as much
plasma as they did.  I can try running the fight again with a light
carrier or two on
  the Phalon side to keep the Kasparovs more honest, but if they'd
brought enough fighters to shut down as many as 14 from the Kasparovs,
they probably would be giving up around a third to half of their plasma
firepower.

The general results were dismaying enough though that it's led me to
rethink the plasma-and-fighters the Teracrons use.  Nova cannons to
clear away banzai jammers and ER salvo missiles might be a better plan.
:P

E
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l