Apologies for the long delay in replying to this. First I got swamped by

Apologies for the long delay in replying to this. First I got swamped by RL
issues, and when those dried up the list server went down instead...

> John Tailby wrote:

> Salvo missiles, plasma bolts and AMTs automatically gain

The official Full Thrust rules themselves aren't consistent in this respect:
Fleet Book 1 specifies that screens do *not* apply to rerolls, but
in various Q&As GZG has stated that the +1 DRM for Interceptors and
Attack Fighters *do* apply to rerolls. The UFR makes these inconsistencies
obvious
by collecting all the beam-die rules and official clarifications in once

place, but it didn't introduce them :-/

> AMTs must declare an attack against all ships within 3 mu.

Your objection (quoted above) was that the AMT couldn't declare attacks
against all targets within 3mu because it "can't physically move into contact
with all ships within 3mu". What I am saying is that this objection is
invalid, because AMTs *never* physically move into contact with *any*

targets. They're area-effect weapons, just like Plasma Bolts are.

> But the missile has to attack the nearest ship within range. So

No, the AMT doesn't "have to attack the nearest ship within range".

It uses its secondary move to *move* towards the nearest "target" (which is
supposed to mean "enemy ship or orbital base"). Once it has made that move, it
*attacks* EVERYTHING within 3 mu.

The game effect of an AMT declaring attacks against all ships (friendly as
well as enemy) within 3mu, is that all those ships become able to use their PD
weapons against the AMT without having to use an ADFC or FCS to guide

the point defences.

> Kra'Vak scatterguns and Sa'Vasku interceptor pods may not

Not exactly "ADFC capability" in the FB1 sense, but somewhat similar. The FB1
ADFC allows your PD weapons to shoot at *all*
fighters/missiles/bolts
that attack one other ship within 6mu of the ADFC. In the UFR, an FCS
allows your PD weapons to shoot at *one* fighter group/missile
(salvo)/bolt
within the PD weapons' normal range (6mu for PDS and Scatterguns, 12mu for
Interceptor Pods) regardless of whether or not that fighter group (etc.) is
attacking anything. Note that the normal restrictions on (A) arc fire apply
whenever you use an FCS to target anything.

But yes, the overall effect is that you ADFCs drop from "absolutely essential
for survival" to merely "nice to have ".

> Scattergun 6mu 1d3 1

No, it brings the scatterguns' capabilities into line with their cost against
all types of small targets, instead of making them slightly overpowered
against missiles and massively overpowered against fighters.

Against *fighters*, scatterguns with ADFC capability are really worth
somewhere around 12 pts apiece - but since that cost would make KV and
similar scattergun-users unable to defend themselves against any
*missiles* they couldn't dodge, the FB scatterguns were instead priced
according to

their anti-missile capabilities. Unfortunately I failed to factor in the

value of their ADFC capability during the FB2 playtesting, so that capability
was effectively free of charge in FB2... Bringing the scatterguns down to 1D3
hits and removing their inherent ADFC capability

brings their anti-fighter capabilities down into line with their cost,
ie. 5 pts apiece.

Against *missiles*, the scatterguns usually waste much of their firepower
anyway. You don't need 1D6 hits to kill a Heavy Missile (even 1D3 is on
average a 100% overkill); and against an SM salvo a single D6-rolling
scattergun is too unpredictable so most players I've listened to use 2
scatterguns against each SM salvo... with the result that the salvo will be
stopped completely four times out of five, but on average half the
scatterguns' hits are wasted. Because of this, cutting the scatterguns back
from 1D6 hits to 1D3 hits has a surprisingly small impact on their
anti-missile capabilities - the D3's smaller range of possible results
allows the players to use their scattergun more effectively, wasting fewer
hits.

Finally, against *plasma bolts* the scattergun goes from "1 beam die
without rerolls" (average 0.67 hits) to 1D3-1 (average 1 hit), which is
a
50% *increase* in firepower :-/

> You do not list stinger nodes as anti ship able to attack

Pod Launchers still only fire one shot per turn, but under the playtest SV
rules spicules fire one PDS die per Power Point (with the same burn-out
restrictions as stingers). Each spicule can still only engage one single

Small Target per turn, but with a potentially very large number of PDS dice.

> These fighter rules heavily favour one shot fighters like

fleet >are likely to spend one turn in front of the enmy fleet before they can
move >behind them to get out of the fleets arc of fire.

If your fighters launch at long range and then rush straight towards the

enemy, then they're likely to end up in the enemy's (F) arcs at relatively
short ranges. That's distinctly unhealty, certainly.

If OTOH the fighters end the turn before their attack outside range 36mu of
the enemy and then use the combination of their own primary+secondary
move distances and the enemy's closing velocity to get from range >36mu to
attack range in a single turn, they're unlikely to take much damage from

long-range anti-ship fire. (Unless, of course, your group follows the
"optimized Vector"-style design strategy "let's load up on (F)-arc only
Class-4 and larger beam batteries", but in that case your ships won't
have very strong broadside armaments which drastically reduces the fighters'
need for evasive manoeuvres when they close the range on the next turn.)

(This is the very same tactic as you are already using with heavy missiles
- with the differences that 1) the fighters can stay an extra beam range

band away from the enemy fleet, thus reducing the amount of long-range
anti-ship fire they have to weather to half or less of what the missiles

face, and 2) the fighters have far more CEF available for evasive
manoeuvres than the heavy missiles do... in the absence of a fixed -2
DRM, that is.)

> Nothing like massed topedo bombers to ruin a capital ships

Nothing like massed torpedo bombers to *make* an interceptor squadron's
day, either :-)

[On defending against Heavy Missiles]

> Having used a similar version of these rules it doesn't make

The fixed -2 DRM your group applies would make a pretty big difference
here
- to borrow your description, it "nerfs" the long-range defensive fires
quite thoroughly. Under the UFR, a heavy missile that needs 2 turns to reach
its target has a total of 1 CEF to spend on either evasive manoeuvers or a
final secondary move to pick a target (so if it doesn't make that
secondary move, it can get a -1 DRM on *one* of its two turns of flight
but
not on both). IOW, by applying that fixed -2 DRM you are in effect
giving
the heavy missiles an extra 3-4 CEF points to burn on evasive
manoeuvres.

And yes, those "free" CEF points do matter. With the -2 DRM each beam
dice
only hits a heavy missile on a '6' - so at long range, a capital ship
with
3-4 Class-3s will be rather lucky to kill more than 1 missile while a
heavy cruiser probably won't kill even a single one. Using the UFR rules OTOH
even heavy cruisers bag on average one heavy missile each with long range
fire, while capitals will probably pick off multiple missiles each. In the
missile-swarm games I've played, those extra missiles destroyed at long
range reduce the load on the defenders' FCSs quite a bit when the surviving
missiles reach attack range on the next turn.

> Also, if I understood your variant correctly you gave the Heavy

In my experience, if the targets are mobile the only difference between
launching heavy missiles from range 48mu and launching them from range 54mu
is that the 54mu-range launch gives the enemy an extra game turn in
which
to either shoot the missiles down or out-manoeuvre them. (Against
*immobile* targets those extra 6mu can be an advantage, though they still
give the target's defences - including PDSs - one extra turn to shoot at

the missiles.)

Regards,