While the iron is hot....
My big beef, from a recent game, is with the
inability of ships to engage non-attacking
fighters. Here's the situation: Landing assault on a planet. Assaulting player
is losing transports. But his fighters (having wiped out the defenders) are
utterly safe because the defender can't fire at them if they don't attack. He
says to me "Why don't I put my marines aboard fighters since they're
invulnerable?". He was being facetious, but the point was valid. Since ADFC is
uncommon in FB designs, and the defending fleet had none (mostly small ships
like CVs, FFs and DDs), they were utterly unable to swat the pesky fighters
flying around. They could kill any OTHER object on the board....
I wonder if there is a good way to address this.
> On 14-Jun-01 at 10:05, Thomas Barclay (kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca) wrote:
We have a house rule that ADFC allows you to fire
at _any_ fighters within 6 inches. Doesn't seem
to have any negative impact that we have seen and makes ADFC escorts go out
and hunt down fighters.
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> On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, Roger Books wrote:
> We have a house rule that ADFC allows you to fire
Actually, that does seem to be the negative impact. Big ships 'hunting down
fighters' strikes me as silly, as fighters SHOULD easily be able to stay out
of reach if they want to. Therefore, fighters only being targetable during an
attack actually makes some sense. I didn't think it did make sense, before,
but your 'going hunting' comment suddenly made me aware that it actually does.
Cheers,
> --- Derk Groeneveld <derk@cistron.nl> wrote:
...
> Actually, that does seem to be the negative impact.
True. I do find it very annoying sometimes for the enemy fighters to be right
there flying in formation with my fleet waiting for a good moment to attack
and here I am with loads of PDS's and ADFC's and I can't even touch them till
they attack.
> On 14-Jun-01 at 10:32, Derk Groeneveld (derk@cistron.nl) wrote:
Even with this fighters can easily stay out of the way of big ships, they just
can't sit with impunity. If the fighter pilots are too stupid to avoid where
the ships can be they deserve to lose that combat endurance moving out of the
way.
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> On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, Damond Walker wrote:
> > I wonder if there is a good way to address this.
A PDS
> should be able to shoot at anything within its range band regardless
Mmm. Just a comment from the POV from modern naval warfare. Close in Weapon
Systems, when in automatic mode, continuously make a selection of all targets,
to pick out those that are a threat to their ship, and then concentrate on
those targets, deciding when to open fire and when to switch targets etc. They
need to be in auto mode to operate effectively, since a surface skimming
missile allows for only very short reaction times.
Therefore, modern close in weapon systems are NOT generally useful in
defending other ships, unless the attacking missile/fighter is coming
directly across the own ship.
So, if PDS is upposed to fill the same role as CIWS, then their not being able
to engage targets not attacking the own ship, does make some kind of sense.
Now, one could argue that some of the criteria that ARE applicable for naval
warfare are NOT applicable in space warfare... But that's another discussion:)
Cheers,
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> On Thu, 14 Jun 2001, Roger Books wrote:
> On 14-Jun-01 at 10:32, Derk Groeneveld (derk@cistron.nl) wrote:
Good point.
Cheers,
> I wonder if there is a good way to address this.
I never liked the distinction between a standard PDS and ADFC. A PDS should be
able to shoot at anything within its range band regardless of where that
target is jetting off to at the moment.
At the next game I'm introducing a change which basically does away with ADFC
and allows a PDS to shoot at anything, anytime. Well, fighters, missles,
etc....
Derk Groeneveld Says...
> [quoted text omitted]
[snip modern (yawn :) CIWS stuff]
> So, if PDS is upposed to fill the same role as CIWS, then their not
True, true...
But, it's quite easy to limit the PDS to shooting at the nearest target of
opportunity be it targetted at the mother ship or another near by. As well as
providing a modifier to the die roll for shooting at incoming targets which
arn't really gunning for the mothership.
Having said that...we need to project technology several hundred years into
the future. We have beam systems that are capable of hitting a target
anywhere from 12k to 36k+ kilometers distant yet we can't intelligently
target an incoming swarm of missles or fighters?
> At 1:14 PM -0700 6/14/01, Damond Walker wrote:
Its not simple when those missiles and fighters are stealthy, doing everything
they can to evade and are putting out decoys and false emissions to help you
miss. ICBMs play this game already. Thats why
the Anti-ICBM folks much prefer hitting the thing on Boost Phase
(much more vulnerable there...).
It seems to me that as the fighters/ordinace approaches the ship, the
ship's systems can see it better, track it better, hit it better.
What I understand about modern warfare...That modern ship/weapon/sensor
tech has
something like 95%+ (somewhere up there) chance to hit anything on the
ship's sensors. What matters really: is who fired first, and are your defences
fast enough...
In the future setting of a space combat game, their ship/weapon/sensor
tech would make modern tech look primative. Faster reaction time, harder
hitting, can handle greater amount of incoming targets, ect.
The real problem here is the attacker has to "overload" the defending PDS's in
order to hit the target with fighters/ordinance. I assume that
fighters/ordinance
would be carrying defensive ecm, ect....the ships would just carry far more.
As tech advances, fighters would slowly lose out to the ship. It would
eventually reach a point where noone would ever consider sending out manned
fighters. (Read: Suicide missions.)
Classic StarTrek is at this point. Fighters in startrek are only used by the
truly desperate...a single ship could knock out an entire fighter squadron or
two, long before the squadron could get in range.
Most of the space combat shows/films are much lower than this. Fighters
are an effective weapon platform.
In FT/ect. we just have to deside where the ship/weapon/sensor tech
falls. The more advanced the tech, the less use fighters are.
Of course we could come up with various mods/"rulings" to the game to
give it the proper tech feel. ("Rulings" being something like "...ok noone has
anything besides the basic fighter...", ect.)
Donald Hosford
> Ryan M Gill wrote:
> At 1:14 PM -0700 6/14/01, Damond Walker wrote: