Re: PDS and fighters

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I like it.

James!

________________________________
 From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
To: gzg@firedrake.org 
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 5:29 PM
Subject: PDS and fighters
 
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Was noodling around an idea about PDS. Still not happy with my noodling
yet
but....

Concept:

PDS serves two roles: To kill incoming attackers (secondary) and to
disrupt
incoming attacks (primary). In the real world, this might consist of
destroying incoming missiles and putting lead in the area of an incoming
fighter/bomber to convince the pilot he'd best break off the attack
(leading to an ineffective attack).

So, why not treat PDS as a ship-wide system similar to shields that
serves
to disrupt all incoming attacks? (versus as a bunch of seperate systems
that have to be allocated to targets like DF weapons)

Advantages:
You buy PDS levels for ships much like you buy shield levels.
The PDS applies against all attacks, thus removing the 'tipping point'
of
fighters.
If the numbers are right, this system should do two things:
1) reduce fighter attacks as its primary function
2) kill a small number of fighters on each attack as its secondary
function
The concept here is to allow fighters more survivability (so all fighter
sorties do not start with 'don ceremonial rising solar object
headband'....) and so that fighters can continue to play a role
throughout
a scenario without being horribly nasty. Also, to try to kill the
'tipping
point' effect of not-enough/too-many fighters.

Now, my problems so far are:
1) Haven't quite got the right numbers for fighter kills or deflected
attack dice
2) My mechanic at the moment (a PDS role against each incoming group)
means
that fighter attacks can't be easily resolved in a big single roll
(unless
you have a lot of bricks of different dice available to make this
feasible)

The concept at present is:
- Before each fighter group attacks, PDS fires at that group with one
die
(with reroll)
- Some values on die disrupt/defelct one or more fighter attack dice,
some
values will kill a fighter
- After killed fighters are removed and deflected dice are removed from
the
attacking dice pile, then the attack is resolved normally

This isn't too onerous for battles with small numbers of fighters, but
ship
engagements by 6+ fighter groups gets a bit slower.

I can't quite do this 'shield style' for fighter attacks because that
mechanic a) only has 2 levels, b) would have to probably reduce fighter
damage and that helps to limit to 2 levels much like shields are for
pragmatic reasons and c) won't kill fighters (unless you want to make
really bad fighter attack rolls kill them....). So, this sort of
mechanism
does involve a defensive die.

On the plus side, the player defending gets a bit of a hand in his fate.
On
the downside, fighter attacks may be slightly more boggy to resolve.

With varicoloured die bricks available, might be feasible to still
resolve
in single roll for defense and then one for offense. If not, it boils
down
to per group.

Now, how to cost and mass such systems? That's an interesting one. We
admit
that fighter cost/mass is approximately as broken as the tipping point
makes them. Small fighter clusters are worth less than you pay, big ones
waaaay more. But this change might mean changing CPV and NPV of
published
designs.

It could still use the PDS icon to represent the PDS level present on a
vessel.

Complications:
- How does it play with non fighter ordinance? Unclear, not thought out
yet
- How does it play with ADFC? How can ADFC work here?
- How do you put endurance (CEF) into this if at all?
- What's the impact on Torpedo Fighters?
- If you do this, what do you do to alien PDS?

I like the way it feels. It reminds me of the 'all PDS fire at all
fighter
groups' but the problem with that system is if you install 5 or 6 PDS,
you
become fairly invulnerable. This system, having limited levels like
shields, would prevent that. Small fighter clusters could still be
(somewhat) effective, hopefully proportionately to their cost and big
fighter swarms would be less (again, hopefully fixing some of the cost
issues of large swarms).

Anyway, just a thought.

Tom B