Re: New Full Thrust point defence rules

On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:51:29 +1100, Douglas Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> 

wrote:

> Thanks so much for the effort, Hugh!
>
> I will say, I think the direction is wrong, though. I still think the 

> problem is not the archie rules, but rather the fighter rules.
>
> SML have never seemed to be the issue that fighters have, though I  
> remember thinking they were until I got the whole 'speed is life' rule
 
> going. Heavies are closer to fighters, save for the whole 'one shot
and  
> you're gone' concept.
>
> I've never hid my distaste of fighters in the game. There are a few  
> convenience aspects of fighters that handwavium them to great heights.
 
> They not only have magic movement, they have clairvoyance. Just a BIT 

> much.

I'm sometimes tempted to shorten the fighter chapter of Cross Dimensions
 
to: Ken Burnside is right. There aren't any fighters in space.

Alas, cinematic science fiction demands we have MIGs and F-16s in space.

>
> However, going with them as they are, has anyone played with my "What 

> the hell kind of traffic control is this?" idea that only a limited  
> number of craft could make a coordinated attack? I know in Star Wars, 

> they could only get a few fighters in on the trench attack at a time.
>
> Pretty sure I've seen similar examples.

Yes, a few years ago I proposed that a ship could only be attacked by  
fighters from the same carrier as a way to at least spread out the  
attacks. No-one seemed to like it.

The Colonial Battlefleet rules claimed to be unbreakable, so I bought a 

copy as part of research. What they've done is impose a limit on the  
number of fighter groups that can attack a ship in one turn, six. (It's 

not written as such, but since a ship or group occupies one hex, you
can't  
stack in the same hex, and fighters can only attack an adjacent hex,  
that's the effect.) The construction system also has a lot more  
restrictions, which in turn limits the number of point defence/flak  
batteries a ship can have; and fighters can't operate too far away from 

their carrier.

One of the great attractions of Full Thrust has always been the very
loose  
"hey do what you want" nature of the rules. So I'd prefer to expand the 

range of designs for which the rules that can be made to work rather
than  
limit what players can design and use. Imposing a limit on the number of
 
fighters that can attack would work, but there would also have to be a	
limit on the number of PDS/ADFC or a fleet can make itself invulnerable
to  
fighters.

On traffic flow ... The Star Wars trench was a very special case, the  
battle at the end of Return of the Jedi being much more likely. I do
agree  
with you that fighters aren't going to attack in a gigantic mass, which 

would make an easy target. But this in turns highlights why the current 

system of assigning each PDS to a single fighter group doesn't really  
work. In my new rules, the point defence are assumed to shoot at  
everything they can, which in larger actions will include successive
waves  
of fighters attacking one after the other. I'm treating point defence
more  
as a screen or deterrent rather than individual shots.

-- 
	 cheers,
	 Hugh Fisher