Fighters and Hangers

I do not have a copy of the rulebook yet so I need to ask what is probably a
very simple question. In game terms what is the difference between a fighter
bay and XX Capacity hanger?

> Jeff wrote:

> I do not have a copy of the rulebook yet so I need to

Simply put, a fighter bay is for fighters and a hangar bay is for small ships,
like pinances, system boats, drop ships, etc.

> Simply put, a fighter bay is for fighters and a

So if I want multiple fighter groups I need to purchase multiple fighter bays
correct?

> Jeff wrote:

> So if I want multiple fighter groups I need to

Yes, that's correct.

> At 5:09 PM +0000 2/25/04, agoodall@att.net wrote:

Technically, there is little difference. The Fighter bays are just arranged
for fighters in particular. One could argue that the bays are in fact all one
big bay with redundant systems. Overall cost is the same. 1.5 mass for the
hanger for 1 mass of craft.

> Ryan Gill wrote:

> I do not have a copy of the rulebook yet so I need to

...and also crammed full of equipment like rapid refuelling and rearming

gear which is absent in the small craft bays. While a fighter group could land
in a small craft bay it can't be refueled or rearmed nearly as rapidly there
as they could in a proper fighter bay (in game terms: they can't
re-launch); and a small craft doesn't fit inside a fighter bay unless
you jettison all the fighter support equipment first.

> One could argue that the bays are in fact all one big bay with

Except that according to St^3 Jon fighters aren't 1 mass; they're smaller...

Regards,

> At 9:36 PM +0100 2/25/04, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

Men with hoses and ordinance handing gear work the same on an LPH as they do
on a CV as they do on the ground next to trucks and hovercraft. You're
probably pumping the same kind of fuels if you're smart about your fuel
trains.

> small craft bay it can't be refueled or rearmed nearly as rapidly

Some of this seems a matter of design philosophy. I started thinking more
about this when I was designing an LPH for interface craft. What's the overall
difference between a bay for interface craft and fighters? Both are craft that
work in a vacuum. Both types of craft need fuel, ordinance and other kit as
well as methods to load. In the context of an LPH, you could have one large
bay (think of the well deck and landing decks as one internal volume now.

This really points to fighter launch facilities needing separate costs from
their handling and recovery facilities. The only real argument I can see is
the catapults to launch them out for combat ops with extra velocity as opposed
to flying them out of an open bay. Not much difference overall between the
lower deck Cats on some early WWII aircraft carriers and the upper deck
catapults.

> One could argue that the bays are in fact all one big bay with

It's one of those fuzzy sizes that they're effectively 1 mass.

> On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 09:47:42AM -0500, Ryan Gill wrote:

> Men with hoses and ordinance handing gear work the same on an LPH as

Ships don't need to be refuelled/recharged. Fighters do.

> This really points to fighter launch facilities needing separate

Check out "parasite racks" in the WDA:

http://nift.firedrake.org/misc/WDA-Fighters.htm#Parasite

> Except that according to St^3 Jon fighters aren't 1 mass; they're

No, I think this is an important distinction. A normal craft in a hangar
bay is taking up 2/3 of it. The fighter is taking up perhaps half, and
relatively more of the volume is support equipment. That's one clear reason
for incompatibility of bays.

Don't forget also that this isn't just "a bay" - it's the bay plus the
share of the power plant that operates it, and consumables storage,
and...

> Ryan wrote:

Trucks and hover craft use different fuels from aircraft, today. This is due
to the need for higher performance fuel in aircraft and the higher cost of
that fuel. But let's assume that your fuel is the same, or you have no need of
fuel but you do have a need for oxygen in all sizes of small craft.

> What's the overall difference between a bay for interface craft and

The big difference is the size of the fuel/oxygen tanks. The hoses
needed to fill the tanks of a fighter are going to be smaller and have a
slower flow rate than those needed to fill a pinance, or a scout craft, or
even a corvette sitting in a larger ship's hold. You probably won't have
interchangeable nozzles between these classes of vehicles. Even if the nozzle
size is the same, you have problems with flow. Too much flow and you may rip
the nozzle right out of the receptacle with the force of the backwash (yes,
you can build it to handle a higher flow rate, but then you have to stress the
fighter better for higher flow, which adds weight, and weight kills a
fighter's maneuverability). Too little flow and you take forever to fill up
that larger ship, which is why they would probably have larger hoses.

You could make the hoses multi-purpose, tuning the flow rate. You run
the risk of hooking up a hose and not setting the flow rate properly in the
heat of battle. I also think you wouldn't want the same sized hose for
physical reasons (the surface area of a fighter is so much smaller than that
of a scout ship that it stands to reason your hose sizes would be smaller).

In a fighter bay, you have to have the ability to refuel several fighters at
once. This isn't a problem in a regular bay. This means redundant capture,
release, refueling, and rearming equipment in the fighter bay, which means
that a smaller percentage of volume is available for the craft, and could very
well get in the way if you tried to park a bigger craft in the same bay. If it
doesn't get in the way, then you have excess volume when the bay is used for
fighters.

In other words you could make a generic bay, but it would not be optimized for
any craft.

This is all just PSB that I thought of when I saw that ships needed special
fighter bays.

> At 2:57 PM +0000 2/26/04, Roger Burton West wrote:

Small interface craft that move from orbit to earth in similar methods that
fighters do would likely need similar reaction mass or fluids or something.
Especially small craft near to the size of fighters (think Helo's and C130s vs
Harriers and F18s).

> This really points to fighter launch facilities needing separate

That's more like the Escort Cruisers from the Atlantic War that saw aircraft
launched from cats on small ships that had no what to recover the aircraft.
The pilot would ditch after warding off the German Maratime Scout plane (ie
Condor)

> >>Except that according to St^3 Jon fighters aren't 1 mass; they're

Yep, but one could argue that the arragement of such bays could be aggregate
allowing the handling of larger craft in the unused space. The design of the
NAC carriers seems to indicate a larger bay vs multiple smaller bays. Just as
a CVN can accept a Vert Rep from a
CH-53 or land a COD, it can also launch a strike of F18s. More
flexibility in the design system would be nice, but mostly its just window
dressing.

> At 3:50 PM +0000 2/26/04, agoodall@att.net wrote:

HUH? No they don't. They all run on JP4/JP8. MoGas and Diesel is
becoming a thing of the past.

> The big difference is the size of the fuel/oxygen tanks. The hoses

Corvette sized craft are getting beyond the size we're talking about
here. I'm speaking of small craft 1-4 mass that don't have normal
drives (not that we don't have any real system for these). Craft, not ships.

> nozzles between these classes of vehicles. Even if the nozzle size

Ok, you have two pumps and two sets of hoses. I don't think the
Navy/Marine guys have too much trouble fueling their LCAC and AAV7s
along side their CH-53s and Harriers.

> You could make the hoses multi-purpose, tuning the flow rate. You

Train train train. They set the tension on the Recovery cables for
every single aircraft that lands based on type and fuel/ordinance
state.

> In a fighter bay, you have to have the ability to refuel several

Stowage and design considerations is what this sounds like. They aren't
exclusive items.

> In other words you could make a generic bay, but it would not be

But its a question of small multiple bays or One big bay with multiple types
of craft. With a larger bay you do gain some economy of scale.

> At 3:50 PM +0000 2/26/04, agoodall@att.net wrote:

To expand on this, the US Army and Marines (Nato really) have been moving
towards standardizing on 1 common fuel for quite some time. The complexity
of supplying Gasoline, Diesel, JP, AV-Gas,
kerosene and propane to name a few became too heavy of a burden on the
logistics train. The Move to Multi Fuel Trucks and power packs (ie LDT engines
in the M35s and M54 series' of 2.5 and 5 ton cargo trucks) was an interim
step. Utility items like Generators, shelter heaters, and such were disposed
of if they didn't operate off of diesel and replacements were phased in to
replace them. 2003 is the cutoff for mogas as i understand it.

PSB of complexity of weapons loads? By the way, PSB is not trumped by
'nowadays, they...' ;->=

The_Beast

> Ryan wrote:

> HUH? No they don't. They all run on JP4/JP8. MoGas and Diesel is

I was thinking commercial vehicles. My mistake for assuming that it was the
same on the military side. I know that civilian aviation fuel is quite a bit
different from gasoline. *S*

> Corvette sized craft are getting beyond the size we're talking about

A fighter is quite a bit smaller than mass 1 to 4, but you may have a point
with the refueling.

> Stowage and design considerations is what this sounds like. They

Okay, here I still completely disagree with you and I agree with Roger, that
fighters take up a greater percentage of their bay

> But its a question of small multiple bays or One big bay with

Small bays gain economies based on specialization. Suppose you needed three
different sized "cradles", one for fighters, one for mass 1 to 2
craft, and one for mass 3+ craft. Each of those takes up space. Each of
those items is totally useless (worse than useless, as they cost money to
build and mass to move about the universe) if that type of ship is never used
in that bay. What you gain from a large bay isn't an economy of scale. What
you gain is flexibility. What you lose is unnecessary equipment and wasted
space.

Now you could argue that a big cradle is going to work for a fighter as well
as anything smaller. Okay, but then you have a problem of maneuvering around a
big cradle when you have 6 small fighters to pick up. It would take you 6
times as long as having 6 small cradles. This is all assuming some sort of
cradle was needed and that fighters and larger ships didn't just stop dead
when they hit a tractor beam, or something like that. It's all PSB, as it's
all highly hypothetical.

I can see your point. Modern day carriers are essentially big hangars with a
long roof to land on. Fighters need space for refueling and rearming. They
have to be capable of landing on the deck. Bigger aircraft have the same
issue. It must be capable of landing on the deck in order to operate on an
aircraft carrier, and then it needs some empty space for refueling and
rearming. All sizes of aircraft that can land on a carrier use essentially the
same equipment, with little waste. Why can't spacecraft be the same way? I can
see that.

My point is that Jon doesn't seem to want that option, and has fighter bays
separate from hangars. For whatever reason, Jon's universe has a need for
keeping them as separate systems. What I was listing was my PSB for Jon's
rules.

But this argument is really kind of silly as we're arguing conflicting PSB,
heavy on the "B". It's questionable whether starship fighters are "realistic"
in the first place. This is starting to get into the realm of "the Enterprise
could beat up the Death Star any day of the week, Dude". I will agree that I
see your point, and that if you want generic bays in your own universe for
your own ship designs I can certainly agree with that.

> At 1:29 PM -0600 2/26/04, Doug Evans wrote:

Come on, lots of PSB for DS is based on how they do it now. Especially armor
tactics. Fighter ops haven't changed much from WWI to now, things have gotten
bigger and the complexity of ordinance has gone up but they still load it the
old fashioned way. Small lifts and muscle.

The only thing that gets reloaded with big automatic systems is things that
are always aligned (missile launch rails) or are easy to get lined up.

> Ryan Gill wrote:

> The only thing that gets reloaded with big automatic systems is things

> that are always aligned (missile launch rails) or are easy to get

Which brings up the interesting question of just what an FT fighter carries,
and how it carries it. If, say, beamer power packs need to be
recharged/replaced, or missile pods reloaded, there's no reason why it
couldn't be as automated as refuelling - hook fighter to "service
cradle", press buttons. Drop the spent item out and route it to
Ordinance for reloading/charging, shove a new one in.

> At 7:57 PM +0000 2/26/04, Lachlan Atcliffe wrote:

One would think, but it depends on the craft itself having a fully automatic
handling system or something that merely helps it along. Hard points for
particular types of craft could be used, but you have to have a very
standarized fighter form and that limits future growth. Look at the Standard
Series of missiles and limits imposed on that system for the Mk26 launcher
systems, now apply that same set of
limits to fighter craft. If the F-14 were tied to a form factor based
on the initial development of 1950's naval aviation, we'd be nowhere near the
level of performance for the F18 or the F14s.

One thing that strikes me is that if you have some form of automated materials
handling system they could be designed to fold out of the way (look at the
50's truck mounted cranes vs the newest in Microprocesser controlled HIAB
cranes) so as to allow the floor space to be used by Landing craft,
shuttlepods, gigs and fighters. A multi purpose system that is built to handle
several Standard forms of craft could be accommodated to handle a larger craft
as need be.

The hard points aren't necessarily the limiting factor. In a free form
environment (where craft, crew and equipment are all in motion or able to
enter the area at any angle) it's difficult to imagine an automated system.

But then on the other hand you can imagine a cradle that locks the craft down
and where robotic arms load missiles and such onto hard points. This seems
very reasonable if you have a docking cradle, as the craft is fixed into a
known position, so the robotic arms would know precisely where each hard point
is supposed to be and would be able to get the missile quite close, with
perhaps fine adjustmaents being made using a
combination visual/microchip tag for the last 6 inches.

By docking in a cradle, the robotics would know which type of craft was
in it, and have a pre-set idea of where the fueling port, gun
ammo/battery hatch is and where the hard points for missiles were, and
would activate the appropriate number of arms and load up the specified fuel
and ordinance.

The big reason you can't automate a modern carrier that they want the
flexibility to rearm and refuel ANYWHERE on deck. If there's an emergency,
they want to be able to move the aircraft from a damaged section but still be
able to rearm and refuel aircraft for a strike or CAP. If reloading systems
are fully automated, you lose that flexibility (for instance, you could only
refuel and reload at a cradle, and if it were damaged or out of action for
some reason you would lose use of that capability, whereas a human crew can
just move to the next available spot and keep working.

A military case in point for not having automated reloading - Western
vs. Soviet tanks. Admittedly Russian tanks have smaller turrets since they
don't have a human loader. The problem is, when the automated loader goes
wonky, it's up to the tank commander or gunner to try to get the gun working,
which significantly detracts from the tactical operation of the vehicle. In
addition, it has been found to be more useful in having an extra crewman
around to deal with the routine maintenance tasks when you are not in combat.
In a carrier type situation, I can imagine that it's more helpful in an
emergency to have an extra 100 guys who usually just haul heavy objects around
rather than a stationary robotic arm.

--Binhan

> -----Original Message-----

> >Ryan Gill wrote:

> One would think, but it depends on the craft itself having a fully

> But then on the other hand you can imagine a cradle that locks the

Would you tend to see such cradles tend to be of relatively limited
capacity variation? Fighter-sized vs Lander-size?

It's the way I see a 'fighter bay'.

> A military case in point for not having automated reloading - (...)

There you go, assuming from current tech. I have faith! I KNOW that someday,
engineering WILL be capable of banishing Murphy! *snicker*

The_Beast

PS. I'm not kidding, Birhan. I think it's been a least 15, maybe 20, years
since I met you at a Denver con. Do you remember showing off your painfully
crafted start of a Martian Kite one year?

> At 3:27 PM -0600 2/26/04, Doug Evans wrote:

More like Fighter Model. Sorry, the Ark Royal Can't accept the MK III Stike
Hawk because it hasn't received the new Mk17 NoIII cradles for the Strike
Hawks...

> >A military case in point for not having automated reloading - (...)

When you get high tech, murphy get's high tech. Or in the words of Mr Scott,
"the more complicated the plumbing gets, the easier it is to stop up the
works."

Actually no. I would envision a flat landing deck with various rectangles
marked on the deck, the pilot merely aligns with a rectangle. A sensor arm
pops up and reads what kind of craft has entered the zone
and the appropriate arms/tractor/pressor beams lift from the floor and
shove the craft around until it's properly arranged.

For example, a single seat fighter lands in a bay, and the pilot stops
somewhere in a large rectangle. From the front area of the rectangle a sensor
arms pops up and scans the craft's IFF or other ID tag and recognizes that it
is a "Lightning Class, mod 2" fighter, Serial#
2108193 returning from CAP and being refuelled and re-armed for a strike
mission. From the overhead camera, the computer realizes that the
fighter is off-set and off-angle from the optimal position, 2 meters
left and 15 degrees starboard. It then raises the three support pylons on the
right side while a pressor beam activates from below the fighter, lifting it
slightly so that it can be moved. Two arms with pressor beams pop up up on the
left side and slide the craft to the left until the touches the right side
support pylons. Once in location the left support pylons rise and magnetic
clamps secure the craft to the pylons. Since this is a small craft, only the
inside set of reloading arms is used. On! e arm contains a refueling hose
while other arms bring up missiles and
an ECM pod.  After re-arming and re-fueling are complete, the clamps
release, the support pylons withdraw down into the deck, the pressor beam
lifts the craft and the side pressors rotate the craft and away it goes.

A little later a large shuttle lands and needs to be re-equipped for a
strike mission. The pilot lands the shuttle into the large rectangle,
the sensor pops up and detects a "Pelican-Class Assault Shuttle" # 03853
with 1/2 fuel load needs Anti-Fighter missile pod and ECM pod.  With the
larger craft, the computer activates the outer support pylons, aligns
the craft, refuels and reloads using the outer arms, re-orients the
craft to head out, etc.

The down side to having the cradle system is that you are limited by the
largest size craft that you wish to service. So if the hangar could normally
hold 4 large shuttles, you would be limited to only servicing 4 craft at once,
whether shuttles or fighters. You could choose to mix
sizes, with one shuttle sized area and 4-5 fighter sized areas, but then
you will be stuck, if you have to try to re-supply 4 shuttles at once.

I can see another reasoning for a specialized fighter bay as you might not
want ordinance lying around in every bay and perhaps fighter bays are
additionally armored or structured so that a catastrophic explosion in one bay
doesn't take out the ship. (a la classic BSG where the Cylon Raider crashes
into the fighter bays)

--Binhan

> -----Original Message-----

All of the previous looked good but for the concept that if the arms are multi
function, why not extrapolate that they're able to handle variations on a
theme. 40 arms can do 4 birds (10 arms each) or 4 arms can do 10 birds of a
smaller size.

Mind you, I'm more inclined to want to see Ordies and Spotters
anchoring the bird to a platform that folds out of the deck/bulkhead
and the bird is anchored to it with cables and tractor beams by the
spotters in pressure suits. Ordies/Grapes with industrial power armor
then move up with the necessary kit to rearm the bird and turn it around for
the strike. The advantage here is that you're spotting the small birds in a
small space packed in or a bigger set of birds on larger platforms or the deck
itself.

Industrial Power armor is nice in that you only need minor fitting changes for
peculiar tasks and men in light pressure suits (lightly armored) are able to
work on the lighter tasks. A configurable set of bay walls allows you to move
handle the process in compartments that open and close based on need and size
of hanger (much like the multiple hanger doors on modern CVs).

> At 3:16 PM -0700 2/26/04, B Lin wrote:

> I can see another reasoning for a specialized fighter bay as you

This sounds more like ship design/hull structure. Ordinance tends not
to stay laying around. Generally it gets run up an elevator from a
magazine to be drawn over to a bird that's getting re-configured.
Navies that leave ordinance laying around tend to have problems in
battles and get reduced to non-entities when it comes to future wars.

I was thinking more of the fact that you will have ordinance feeding into such
a bay or may have a closer magazine with an armored tunnel or
elevator to bays that re-arm fighters.  If you don't require ordinance
in a particular bay, then you probably don't need the extra armor or elevator
to service it.

In addition I was thinking of the occasional accident, in which case I would
hope that the designers considered armoring the bay to withstand
an anti-ship missile exploding accidentally (or fighter or fuel line...)
and either directing the blast outward or containing it. If your only
consideration is fuel spills and fuel explosions, it's probably a different
design than a bay designed to contain the blast of a fighter's
anti-ship missile.

--Binhan

> -----Original Message-----

> On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 05:28:38PM -0500, Ryan Gill wrote:

> Mind you, I'm more inclined to want to see Ordies and Spotters

This works for me - particularly since (although the rules don't model
this) they're likely to be coming in damaged, and those anchoring hooks the
automated system ties on to may simply not be there any more...

> At 10:47 PM +0000 2/26/04, Roger Burton West wrote:

They could be there but are just a few inches to the left and back...meaning
it won't mate right. I deal with this all the time on Computer rack parts.
You'd be amazed at how standards for something as simple as an IEC rack spec
can vary. Even from the same manufacturer.

Look at container handling. They could do it all by computer (look at a Tape
loader) but so far it's just better to have a person running the crane that
lifts from the top corners, lower corners or the middle at the key points.

> --- Lachlan Atcliffe <u1m87@ugm.keele.ac.uk> wrote:
...> Which brings up the interesting question of just
> what an FT fighter

Most fighters use 'endurance' to fire, so one
may assume that the energy (Fuel/power pack)
is converted to fire the weapon.   The only
fighter to have ordinance is the Torp fighter.
A single energy/recharge point in the bay for
each fighter would suffice.   One additional
'traveling' point could be used to provide energy for small ships and as a
'spare' in case of battle damage.

Bye for now,

> At 9:52 AM -0800 2/27/04, John Leary wrote:

I always saw that as they were assumed to use an endurance point for the High
thrust needs of an attack run and the associated evasive maneuvers.

> fighter to have ordinance is the Torp fighter.

I'm assuming that the Aerospace fighters are the same as those used in DSII.
Thus they have options for DFO and projectile weapons based
on a multi-role design.

[quoted original message omitted]

Please accept my apology in advance for my lengthy post. Our group in St.Louis
has worked out a compromise to this.

Background comment; fighters are real cheap in absolute terms; so if
your're playing more than a quick "head-banger" game then fighters can
easily change the balance from a cost basis real quick. Not rocket science and
I believe that the 'List has gone over the benefits of the relative costs of a
couple or even a dozen fighter groups vs almost any capital ship. Now, our
group, being a little unhappy with the standard FT approach to fighters
decided to come up with a variant to the rules that would at least satisfy (or
disatify everyone in our group the least) the group.

In dealing with fighters, storage, re-supply, duration, and launching
here's our solution.

First, fighters (at least standard ones) come with 6 combat "actions"; these
are used as either combats or can be used as additional boosts for movement.
When our groups fighters have exhausted these 6 then the fighter can do
nothing but move. If they are engaged by other fighters or encounter other
ships......well, too bad, so sad. Pretty simple. Other more exotic fighter
types are worked out as appropriate. Single shot fighters, for example, only
have one combat action. Fighters can move as normal indefinitely.

Second, launch, storage and resupply. Well, we're playing a game that in
space, so we've taken a couple of liberties with this as such. Normally
fighters lauch from the Fighter Bays and we play this way as well with the
following changes and additions. a) Fighters can be launched two ways; one by
the normal means of a Bay with all of the normal considerations; and two, in
the following variant rule. They can be launched from the surface of the ship
if they are
pre-set in position prior to the start combat. Fighters launched in this
way can only move 1 standard movement as per each fighter type; no actions can
be used as additional accellerations or distance. Fighters
that are surface mounted (we use the phrase "mag-locked" to the outer
hull of the carrying ship) can be launched anytime with a notation on your
sheet for that specific turn. Not all fighters need be launched this fashion.
Fighters in Bays can be launched with notation at any time. Additional rule
variant: we've a player who's a real bast**d and his additional rule
suggestion is, well, painfull (but kind of cool). It
is as follows: surface launched fighters fail to release their mag-locks
on a roll of 1 on D6 and spend the turn afixed to their carrier. They may try
up to three more times. After that the fighter is assumed to be defective and
will sit on the hull of the carrier for the remainder of the battle.

Additional comment; The fighter's mass is included when purchasing a standard
fighter bay; in this variant; you also need to purchase both additional
fighters and the cargo space needed for the mass of the additional fighters.

b)R/R/R - Recovery/Re-supply/Relaunch; Fighters can be recovered only at
the rate of 1 fighter group per bay as normal and re-supply and
re-launch are as normal. Unless you are playing with special elite unit
or character rules (this is something we really like) then fighter groups from
the same carrier and of the same type can be consolidated. Fighters must be
recovered and if you are consolidating groups then a
turn per unconsolidated group must pass in order to re-supply before you
re-launch.

c) Damage considerations for surface mounted fighters: fighters
pre-positions for this type of launch are just sitting ducks, if you
will on the surface of the ship. Any attacks upon the ship (excluding targeted
fire such as needle beams) will hit these fighters first.
Our general rule is that these take damage as un-shields beams +1; which
would mean that if a weapon would hit on a 4,5,6 then it would hit on 3,4,5,6
and the fighters would absorb the hits until there were no longer any fighters
then damage would occur as normal.

Comment: we tried to be balanced in this variant rule. Recognizing that
fighters can be very cheap and that the possibility to serious
un-balance the rules existed, we wanted a bit more flexibility but
didn't want to give away everything to the fighters. Any comments would be
appreciated.

Also, one of our group (who shall remain nameless) in a quick and cheap
fashion, pointed out that according to the above rule if you did not
feel the need to re-supply your fighters then a cargo ship would make an
excellent (and cheap) carrier and we did play a game with his "Yugo Box
Carrier". It was very painfull at the outset but after the fighters had made
their initial runs, it was very bad for him. The Yugo Box concept, though
would be very effective as an auxiliary for commerce raiding.

Thanks Pat Connaughton St.Louis,MO

[quoted original message omitted]

First, on the size of fighters:
> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

and

> --- Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org> wrote:

Whatever Mr.Tuffley has written on this list or the test list, or said in
person, what he published is:

Fleet Book 1, pg 8, under "TUGS AND TENDERS"
"...at the same rate as for carrying fighters and other small craft -
ie: every 1.5 MASS used for hanger bay space provides capacity for 1 MASS of
carried ship(s). Note that this allows for support and launching facilities,
and is thus differntfrom plain cargo space."

and

Fleet Book 2, Kra'Vak section, page 10, "HANGER BAYS" "Each Fighter Bay uses 9
MASS and costs 18 points [corrected to 27], to carry up to 6 MASS of fighters,
ie: one group; bays for other small craft use 1.5 x the MASS of craft
carried..."

So this shows an intention, at least up to the publishing of FB2, that
fighters are 1 MASS each. If this has changed, then a two sentence paragraph
in FB3 will take care of the question. Until that time, however...

and also;
> --- Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org> wrote:

Which can be said about any FT ship component or system.

Second, on cradles for small craft handling: This is variable, and depends
upon the tech level of your background.

For example, compare "Babylon 5" with "Andromeda". Both use racks or cradles
for fighters. The lower tech B5 setting has a physical bracket holding the
fighter. The shape of the bracket and the locking clamp limits the types of
fighters that can be operated out of a particular
bay (e.g. the two-seat Badger cannot be loaded into the bays on B5
because of the aft crew position). The higher tech Andromeda setting
uses a sled with pressor/tractors to hold the fighter.  In ths
situation there is a lot more freedom of design for new fighters as they do
not contact the cradle. The only limits would be the power of
the pressor (liiting mass/dwt) and the size of the passages traversed
(limting oa dimensions).

Third, on the GENERIC Full Thrust system:
> --- agoodall@att.net wrote:

I don't play in the GZG-verse.  I don't even like the GZG-verse.  But I
do like the generic origin of the game. As a generic game, I think it s the
best that I have found, but am concerned with the trend towards tailoring FT
to the GZG setting. I prefer a generic set of rules that give me the tools to
customize a setting that my group likes, whether
that is something from TV/movies, books, an adaption of another game
setting (like BFG, Leviathan, or Battletech) or something home grown.

Part of the problem lies in that the GZG-verse uses ships that are
quite small combined with using large fighters. This causes the fighters to
take up quite a lot of space in a ship design, and having
seperate launch/recovery and hanger facilities would make the problem
worse.

I would suggest having two seperate options for dealing with fighters.
The current system for small ship/large fighter settings (like the
Fleet Books) and another for settings where the ships are very large relative
to fighters (like Star Wars, BSG, B5, and Andromeda). In the latter, the
effectiveness of the individual fighter is redued, but it allows for
seperating flight operation facilities from service facilities.

J

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> Whatever Mr. Tuffley has written on this list or the test list, or said

...I suggest that you read this post:

http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200007/msg00034.html

which was posted to this list in July 2000, ie. after FB2 was published,

and therefore supercedes it. Specifically,

"For the record, a fighter is less than 1 mass (probably much less), but

needs 1.5 mass of bay and support stuff."

Jon hasn't said anything more on this subject since then, so this is what we
have to work with.

***
If you want large ships vs small fighters, the two easiest options are to play
with actual large ship designs and to say that each fighter group actually
represents more than 6 fighters even though the group as a whole has 6 "hit
points".

Regards,

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:
It is quite logical to assume that the Sq. is 12 craft and is divided into 6
operational units, thus each model on the base is two fighters.

Bye for now,

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

That message is dated 4 July 2000.

In your own message in that thread, dated 5 July 2000:

http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200007/msg00085.html

> you wrote:
"I suspect this'll become somewhat more common with the explicit rules on
fighter rearming and reorganization in FB2."

Which sounds like FB2 had not been released at the time that you wrote this.
From the messages of yours that I have read, you sound like an accurate
person, so I doubt that you would have phrased your response in the future
tense if FB2 had already been released.

My own view is best summed up by Roger Books' reply to Mr.Tuffley in the same
thread on 4 July 2000:

http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200007/msg00074.html

> where he wrote:
"In terms of game balance how does being able to switch from small craft bay
to hanger bay affect play? Does it give a major advantage? I can't really see
how. If it doesn't give an advantage then you are not improving game play, you
are trying to enforce your one PSB, and your PSB may be different than mine."

J

> On 2 Mar 2004 at 1:44, Jared Hilal wrote:

FB2 was released at Salute 2000 - which means April. By July it would
be unrealistic for all the effects of FB2 to have permeated every corner of
the FT community, hence the future tense.

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

> ***

That only works up to a certain point, and that point is very low on the
scale. Anything above about 3:1 (18 fighters per FT group) and
small ships (like the Corellian Freighter / Millennium Falcon) start
dropping off the bottom of the ship scale because 1 "ship" is
approximately equal to the firepower/damage capacity of X fighters,
where X often equals 3,4, 5, or 6 fighters.

Keep in mind that compared to both modern navy/air and popular sci-fi,
the FT fighters are very,very large (or merely very large if you take 1
fighter = 0.5 FB mass = 50 tons) and the FB ships are quite small.

Most popular SF, like SW, BSG, and B5, have fighters comparable to modern
fighters in size, when comparing the fighter prop to the actor standing next
to it or in the cockpit. Modern light fighters (like the
F-16 or F/A-18) are about 20-25 tons.  Heavy fighters (like the F-15,
F-14, A-6, or A-10) are about 30-35 tons (and only the A-10 would
qualify as a FT "Heavy" IMO).  The largest is the F/B-111, which is
more a light bomber than a fighter, at almost 50 tons max. TOW.
However, at 100 tons, FT/FB fighters are 2-5 times larger than modern
fighters. Even at 50 tons (0.5 MASS), a FB fighter is comparable to a
F/B-111.

Further, the FB ships are small compared to modern naval ships and tiny
compared to SW (films,not books, and excluding Super SDs), BSG, and B5 ships.
Compared to any of David Weber's settings, they are downright miniscule, many
FB capitals comparing to Weber's parasite STL daughter ships.

All of the FB "super-dreadnoughts" are smaller than the real HMS
Dreadnought of 1906 (and comparable in size to the SW Corellian
Corvette/Gunship/Blockade Runner).  The 1922 "Treaty Battleships" would
be around TMF 400-450 in FB terms, the "post-Treaty" ships built in the
late 30s/early 40s would be TMF 600-750, and a modern USN supercarrier
would be well over TMF 900.  All this is with fighters that are 1/2 to
1/5 the size of the FB fighters, depending on which definition of FB
fighters you use.

So if you want your game to resemble, for example, Star Wars, you have to
realize how much larger the SW ships are than the FB ships.

Example: Keeping in mind the cube law of volume (doubling the dimensions of
the object and increase the volume, and presumably mass, by x8); at 400m,
the Nebulon-B is twice the size of a late 1930's BB (like the King
George V), so might be 8x larger (ignoring the significant additional mass
from the extra draught of the bow section of the Nebulon, as it compensates
for the skinny section in the middle), giving 44,000 dwt (KGV) x 8 = 352,000
dwt, or about TMF 3500.

A 1600m ISD is 4x longer than the Nebulon, meaning that an ISD should
be at least 64x larger than the Nebulon-B, ignoring the much larger
hull form which gives more mass per length. 350,000 dwt x 64 = 22,400,000 dwt,
or at least TMF 224,000.

The smaller 1200m VSD is 3x longer than the Nebulon, so a VSD should be
at least 27x larger than the Nebulon-B, ignoring the different hull
forms as with the ISD. 350,000 dwt x 27 = 9,450,000 dwt, or about TMF 95,000.

That is two orders of magnitude larger than FB ships for a light cruising
escort and three orders of magnitude for a ship of the battlefleet. BSG and B5
are both on this scale. Although I have not tried it, I have a gut feeling
that a game of FT involving TMF 3500 escorts is not going to be enjoyable.

Scaled at 10,000t = 1 MASS (100:1 compared to FB), the Nebulon is about MASS
35 (an escort) and the ISD is MASS 2240, still 10 times larger than any FB
capital ship. Seems OK until you apply the 100:1 factor to the small craft.
Then the entire complement of small craft of the ISD (a 72 TIE wing and all
shuttles, transports, etc.) equals a single FT fighter. Not a group, but a
single fighter.

If the fighters are scaled even at only 12:1 rather than 100:1 (each
12-strong TIE squadron = 1 FT fighter), the entire wing of the ISD is
reduced to only 1 FT "fighter group" containing 1 bomber, 1 or 2 interceptors,
and 4 or 3 standard fighters. At this rate (12 TIEs = 1 FT fighter), other
small craft, such as Lambda class shuttles, Assault Shuttles, Assault
Transports, and the M. Falcon can each be defined as equal to X TIEs, so that
perhaps a Lambda = 3 TIEs, an Assault Shuttle = 4 TIEs, etc.. At this scale,
it only changes the rate at which these small craft convert to a FT fighter (4
Lambda and 3 AS in the example). So the ISD also has a FT fighter group made
up of shuttles, assault shuttles, etc.. Maybe they count as Slow, Heavy,
Attack fighters (very poor in a dogfight, but good for hunting down small
ships.

So both the "play with large ships" and "1 FT fighter = X genre fighters"
solutions are useful only to a very limited extent.

The large fighters and small ships of the FBs are quite reasonable for the
setting, given that some PSB had to be found to justify having fighters take
up a large amount of MASS in the design system combined with their power vs.
ships under the FT rules. It is just difficult to translate the system to
other settings.

My point is that, as a generic game (which is where FT can really shine), I
think it would be reasonable to have an optional second set of rules for
fighters covering their effect verses ships and ship design (hanger, launch
and recovery facilities, etc.) for settings where the ships are much larger
than those in the GZG background. This would not affect the FB designs (which
use the standard rules),
fighter-fighter combat, or movement.  Only fighter-ship combat and ship
design would be affected. We have tried several schemes for this for SW, B5
and home grown settings and it works well. Having a single set of such a
variant, which has been vetted by those who have close knowledge of the FT
design process, would be a benefit to the game by increasing its adaptability.

J

> --- Steve Pugh <steve@pugh.net> wrote:

OK. Makes sense to me.

J

> From: Jared Hilal <jlhilal@yahoo.com>

My idea for the size difference comes down to reaction mass. I compair the
amount of fuel a space shuttle carries to what a boing 747 carries.

> Further, the FB ships are small compared to modern naval ships and tiny

You have to make comprimises. After all, a shrike class LAC from HH would mass
in at 200 mass, and be able to pull 400 thrust under stealth (which you
wouldn`t be able to detect it over a certain range. Want to try and catch
one?).

> All of the FB "super-dreadnoughts" are smaller than the real HMS

I tried building wet navy style ships in FT, and found using K-guns in
turrets and PH layered armour makes for some interesting ships.

BIF

> --- david smith <bifsmith207@hotmail.com> wrote:

So you are assuming the use of reaction mass. Is the glow on the
engines of an X-wing a sign of a reaction drive or a side effect of the
grav-drive?  If the reaction mass is comparable to a 747, then why is
the Minbari fighter (grav drive) the same size as the EF Starfury (reaction
drive)? When the Galactica takes on "fuel", is it for a
reaction drive or for the reactor (either fusion or M-AM) driving a
generator for electricity for the grav drive?

> > < snip "FB ships are small compared to...">

I would use 1 MASS = 1000t, 2000t, or 5000t for HH. This gives 80,000t DDs a
MASS of 80, 40, or 16, respectively, and Shrikes 20, 10, or 4, while ships of
the wall wold be in the 8000, 4000, or 1600 range.

This allows assault shuttles and pinnaces (described as the size of a
"pre-space jumbo jet") to use the FT fighter rules.

For thrust, the slowest HH military ships are about 300+ g's, and the
fastest 650+, so remove the 8 thrust limit and give 1 thrust = 50, 60,
or 75 g. So you still have room for variety without having to play at a scale
of 1 MU = 1mm on a 3m x 3m table.

> > <snip wet navy ships>

I tried something similar, but used FB ablative armor for the "torpedo
protection" of bulges, multiple hulls, and water-filled compartments,
and adapted a version of MT integral armor for the belt (originally
developed for a B5 conversion).  Also, the K-guns needed to have range
bands scaled to their class rather than all being equal.

I also used a system for separate main drive and maneuver drive systems (also
for the B5 conversion) so that ships could be given varying speeds but the
same maneuverability, and also for the possibility of maneuver damage without
propulsion damage (ala KMS Bismark).

J

> I tried something similar, but used FB ablative armor for the "torpedo

I always thought that the ranges of navel guns (the large caliber ones anyway)
was roughly equal once you get above about 8". The only thing you
alter are the accuracy and the velocity/shell size (or dammage/armour
peircing) figures. I say this because the HMS coventry`s (morred in london) 8"
guns (or are they 6", have to get reference books out) have a range of about
30 miles. The range of big navel guns was always limited by how far you could
see with the curviture of the ocean more than the
bore/lenth/mussel velocity of the gun.

And I agree that introducing a "lucky strike" or random hit without having to
go through the armour (like the torpedo strike on the bismark) would be needed
if you were playing, for example, a senario. But I would not use the above in
general playing (I wouldn`t see a navy intentionally introducing a week point
into it`s ships designs).

Can`t belive I just said that, having just watched the documentary on the
sinking of the prince of wales and the divers examining the wreak.

BIF

> I say this because the HMS coventry`s (morred in london)

I think you mean MMS Belfast, in which case she has 6" guns, and I believe
their max range to be around 14.2 nautical miles. As an example of their range
all main turretts are currently aimed at a service station on the north part
of the M25.

Regards,

> --- david smith <bifsmith207@hotmail.com> wrote:

With reference work in hand, I can pontificate with confidence:)
"Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1922-1946", Conway Maritime
Press, 1980:

British Naval Guns:
6"/50 cal. Mk XXIII   25,500 yds
8"/50 cal Mk VIII     30,650 yds
14"/45 cal Mk VII     38,550 yds
15"/42 cal Mk I       33,550 yds
16"/45 cal Mk I       39,800 yds
16"/45 cal Mk III     40,600 yds - Lion class, never completed

I couldn't find numbers for the older 12" and 13.5", but they would be in line
with the 15", which is an older gun, whereas the 14" Mk VII and
16" are 20-30 years newer.

We didn't want a 5"/38 DP (K1) to have the same range as a 16"/50 (K8)
or 18"/45 (K9).  What we did was to give K1 4" RB, K2 5" RB, and K3+
RB= class x 2, K5+ were resized to be +4 MASS per class over K4, and
K4+ have a NPV of class x MASS, and K1 and K2 have cost and MASS
reduced. So a K6 has 12" RBs, 16 MASS and 96 pts. We first used this
for B5 rail guns (K1-K3) and mass drivers (K4+).

The only HMS Coventry that I found was a CL (6" guns) built in 1917 and sunk
14 Sept 1942, before which she was turned into an AA cruiser with 10x4" Quick
Firing guns.

You might mean the CL HMS Belfast; built 1938 w/ 6" guns

> And I agree that introducing a "lucky strike" or random hit without

I don't mean a "lucky strike". What I meant was one system (the Main Drive)
provides thrust for *Acceleration Only*, while a separate system (the
Maneuvering Drive) provides maneuvering thrust for course change and
deceleration. As two separate systems, they take Threshold Checks separately,
so that either one can be damaged without affecting the other. Also allows a
ship to have higher thrust without increasing maneuverability (e.g. classic BC
or BBF). Has nothing to do with bypassing armor.

This initially came about as a way to depict ships shown with big engines in
the back, but that moved cinematically. PSB is some sort of grav array on each
side of the bow used to turn the ship. This has worked great for Narn,
Centuari, Galactica, Star Wars, BFG and our
home-grown setting, while leaving the standard, all-in-one drive for
the Minbari and Star Trek.

> But I would not use the above in general playing (I wouldn`t see

Can you say "Jackie Fisher's battleship cruisers"?:)

How about "There seems to be something wrong with our ships today."?
 -Beatty or Jellicoe (I'm not sure which) at Battle of Jutland

J

> Jared wrote:

> I couldn't find numbers for the older 12" and 13.5", but they would be

I've done extensive work on a Russo-Japanese War version of Full Thrust.
I set it aside for a time, but recently I've been opening it back up.

The 12" guns at the turn of the previous century may have had theoretical
ranges close to the 5" you cited (I don't have my Conways or Janes available,
or Warship International), but actual engagement range was far less, with
battles opening up at closer to 18,000 yards. You can chop down your ranges if
you know the ranges that most battles opened at.

Of course the turn of the 20th century saw guns with good range but pretty
pitiful fire control...

> I don't mean a "lucky strike". What I meant was one system (the Main

I did it an entirely different way. Ships in my game have a top speed equal to
the ship's historic top speed. They lose speed automatically each time a hull
row is lost (my ships had 5 hull rows, not 4). This was
stolen from _General Quarters_. I added a number of othe critical hit
systems, one of which was a rudder jam forcing the ship to go straight, turn
right only, or turn left only.

At any rate, I hadn't thought to look at MT for ideas. Instead, I used beams
to represent guns, but broke them down into 6" range bands instead of 12".
Armour was a modifier to the roll, ala shields. I'll have to look at MT again,
though, as I'm not hugely crazy about this idea.

In message <20040302102644.88473.qmail@web12508.mail.yahoo.com>
> Jared Hilal <jlhilal@yahoo.com> wrote:

[snip]

> My point is that, as a generic game (which is where FT can really
This
> would not affect the FB designs (which use the standard rules),

Could you post these 'alternative fighter schemes' on the list please, I'd be
interested in seeing them.

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> >...I suggest that you read this post:

As Steve wrote FB2 was released in April 2000; and I did indeed use the future
tense because there were still many players who hadn't yet read it
at the time of posting - and many of those who had, hadn't yet had time
to comment on it.

> My own view is best summed up by Roger Books' reply to Mr. Tuffley in

The answer to which is unfortunately "yes". Not as long as all the bays
involved are 9 Mass, certainly - but not all small craft bays are 9
Mass, and you *don't* want your local powergamers to start thinking of those
differently-sized bays in relation to fighter group sizes since changing

the number of fighters in a full-strength group affects just about every

aspect of the fighter game balance (such as it is :-/ ).

The end result is that you either come up with PSB explaining why fighters
can't use small craft bays, or you try to invent PSB explaining why
full-strength fighter groups have to consist of exactly 6 fighters (6
"effective" fighters that is, if you scale them down as suggested in previous
posts)... and I strongly suspect that you'll find the former alternative to be
*much* easier than the latter.

> >If you want large ships vs small fighters, the two easiest options

Seems to have worked pretty well for Dean Gundberg's "CrossOver" scenarios
<shrug>

While your listing of mass and volume data for various Star Wars ships is
impressive, it completely ignores what we see on the movie screen -
namely that even though Star Wars capital ships are extremely huge compared to
Star Wars fighters, and even though there aren't very many fighters around (*)
individual fighters can inflict griveous damage on capital ships. And
no, I'm not just thinking of a certain psychic hot-shot :-/

(*) A Victory-class Star Destroyer is over half a mile in length yet
only
carries two 12-fighter TIE squadrons, and even the huge Executor
(claimed to be some eight miles long by the sources I was able to find on a
quick

web search) carries a mere 12 squadrons. The Rebel Mon Calamari cruisers

carry 5-6 12-fighter squadrons each.

In B5 fighters seem to pack less punch relative to the capitals than they
do in Star Wars - in spite of the fact that the size ratio between
capital ships and fighters is generally smaller in B5. B5 fighters are usually
only an annoyance in the larger battles, able to pick off surface systems but

rarely doing more than that; and most of the large ships destroyed in B5

battles seem to be destroyed by other large ships (unlike Star Wars were

the capitals seem to be able to pound each others for ages without anything
much happening - unless of course the "capital" firing happens to be a
Death Star!).

Honor Harrington battles are far worse for the smallest units, of course. A
pinnace or assault shuttle is able to damage a defenceless freighter, but its
only chance to hurt a warship is to bring its wedge up inside a boat

bay or possibly to physically attach limpet mines to the hull of the ship...
and the pinnace is rather slower than the warship too, so would need a fair
amount of luck to catch the warship outside planetary orbit. As
for modelling Shrikes as escort-sized FT ships, well...  the Minotaur
carried 96 Shrikes, and the later LAC carrier classes - particularly the

Havenite ones - had larger strike groups. An average heavy task force in

the latest HH book includes 2-3 of these carriers, occasionally more, so

can be expected to have some 2-300 LACs. Are you really serious about
modelling each of those LACs as an individual TMF 20 ship, or even a TMF 4
one? Sure, modelling the LACs as "fighters" would mean that DDs become very
small too - but since they're pretty much ignored in any HHverse battles

involving capital ships, that seems quite appropriate to me.

All in all, I'd say that if you model the game on what you actually see on the
screen rather than on theoretical mass considerations, the "certain
point" beyond which using large capital ships and 12- or 18-fighter
groups
no longer works is *far* higher up on the scale than you believe :-/

Regards,

With the new UN Grasers, I think they would better represent WWI-WWII
turretted main batteries than K-guns.
Lighter guns (6"-10") would be Graser1 per turret
Heavier guns (12"-16") would be Graser2 per turret.

Brendan 'neath southern skies

> -----Original Message-----

> turrets and PH layered armour makes for some interesting ships.
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> --- david smith <bifsmith207@hotmail.com> wrote:

> --- Charles Taylor <nerik@monkslode.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:

I don't have the file handy, but I'll try to summarize from memmory.

We first used these for B5, but liked them so much that we extended them to
SW, BSG, BFG, and our home builds. Some of the other attempts were horribly
complex (mostly my fault:)), but I think these work really well.

At the most basic, a fighter acts like a small battery that flies around and
shoots. In the regular FT fighter rules, each fighter group has a single 6"
range band and rolls a number of dice equal to the number of fighters
remaining.

For settings with very large ships and relatively small fighters, treat each
fighter group as a single battery with a class equal to the number of fighters
remaining. Like a regular battery, the fighter group rolls that many dice in
the first range band only, reducing the number of dice rolled by one for each
further range band. Use either 2 MU or 1 MU range bands. Note that damaged
groups will have to get much closer to their targets to be effective, as they
have fewer range bands. Use these RBs both for attacks against ships as well
as long range attacks against other fighters.

Point Defense Batteries If you use 2 MU RBs, then you need to extend the
effectiveness of PDS and DP B1s. What we use is PDS is fully effective out to
6 MU. It is
less effective the father away the target group is.  At 6-12 MU,
determine hits as if the target had an additional level of screens,
12-18 as if 2 additional levels of screens, and 18-24 as if 3 levels of
screens. Rerolls are scored the same as the initial rolls, taking into account
the lesser effectiveness. Heavy fighters are one level more difficult to hit.
If you use 1 MU RBs for the fighters, then use 3 MU RBs for PDS.

Dual Purpose Batteries Starting with our B5 and Star Wars conversions and
spreading to the others was an increased effectiveness of DP battery fire.
Based on B5
pulse batteries and SW AF fire from the X-Wing and TIE fighter games;
AF fire from classed pulse batteries/turbo-lasers is effective out to
the full normal range of the battery, rolling the same number of dice as
against a ship target at the given range. However, such batteries are not
optimzed for tracking small targets and so treat fighter targets as if they
had a number of screen levels equal to the class of the battery firing. I.e.
level 1 against B1, level 2 against B2 etc..
Heavy fighters gain no benefit against the fire from anti-ship
batteries, but fast fighters are more dificult to track for these large
batteries, gaining an additional level of protection.

Point Defense Fire and Area Defense Fire Attacking fighters may be targeted by
PDS and DP batteries as normal. ADFC also works as normal, except that DP
batteries may be used for AD fire with a FCS dedicated to AD fire, separate
from a FCS for PD fire.
Non-attacking fighters may be targeted by PDS using one ADFC per target
group or stack.  Non-attacking fighters may be targeted by DP batteries
using one FCS per target group or stack.

Flight Bays Flight bays are facilities for launching, recovering, and
servicing fighters. We use the symbol from EFSB for a flight bay, with a
number in the circle. This is the class of the flight bay. The class
represents the number of fighter groups that can be handled in a single turn.
A flight bay may either launch, service, or recover during a turn, but may not
do more than one at the same time. E.g. a class 3 flight bay may launch up to
3 groups on one tun and then recover up to 3 groups on the next turn and
service them on the third, but may not do all three at once. Fighters may be
stored in flight bays. All bays benefit from economies of scale.
class 1    3 MASS
class 2    5 MASS
class 3    6 MASS
+1 MASS per additional class
Cost is 3 points per MASS (alt: 9 pts per class).

Launch Bays Launch bays are similar to flight bays but can only launch
fighters.
Symbol same as for a flight bay but with an arrow/triangle pointing
away from the circle.
class 1    2 MASS
class 2    3 MASS
class 3    3.5 MASS
class 4    4 MASS
+0.5 MASS per additional class
Cost is 3 points per MASS (alt: 6 pts per class).

Landing/Recovery Bays
Landing bays are similar to flight bays but can only recover fighters.
Symbol same as for a flight bay but with an arrow/triangle pointing
toward the circle.
class 1    2 MASS
class 2    3 MASS
class 3    3.5 MASS
class 4    4 MASS
+0.5 MASS per additional class
Cost is 3 points per MASS (alt: 6 pts per class).

Hanger Bay Hanger Bays are the area where fighters are serviced, fueled, armed
and stored. Symbol is a box like a SML magazine, but containing fighter icons
rather than SM salvos.
class 1    2 MASS
class 2    3 MASS
class 3    3.5 MASS
class 4    4 MASS
+0.5 MASS per additional class
Cost is 3 points per MASS (alt: 6 pts per class).

Taxiways Taxiways are the connections between these facilities. Each Hanger,
Flight, launch, and landing bay includes a single free taxiway. The number of
taxiways connecting any two facilities is the number that can be transfered in
a given turn. Additional taxiways may be installed for 0.5 MASS and 1 point.

Threshhold Checks Flight Bays, Launch Bays, and Landing Bays are all exposed
systems. I.e. they take normal threshold checks and can be damaged by
Needle-type attacks.
Hanger Bays are protected systems in the heart of the ship. They take
threshold checks like Core Systems and are immune to Needle-type
attacks. Optional: when a bay of any type fails a threshold check and contains
fighter groups, roll a standard threshold check for each group in the bay. If
the group fails the check, then some of the fighters might be damaged. Roll a
number of dice equal to the number of fighters in the
group, scoring as per beam dice, including re-rolls, up to the total
number of fighters in the group. For each "hit", one fighter is lost. Roll one
die for each lost fighter, again scoring as beam dice. On a
1-3 the fighter is combat ineffective for the rest of the game, but on
a 4-6, the fighter, fuel, or munitions explode doing damage to the ship
as per beam dice.

This system gives several design choices. For example, do you have a single
bay for economy of scale, or several separate ones in case of damage? Do you
have just flight bays or also hanger bays for second (or more) launches? Do
you have mulipurpose flight bays or seperate launch and recovery bays so that
you can conduct both operations at the same time?

J

> At 11:33 PM -0800 3/2/04, Jared Hilal wrote:

I had always understood fighters to actually move to point blank range from
their 6" stand off to actually engage the ship they targeted. Rather than fire
from 6 MU away.

***
I had always understood fighters to actually move to point blank range from
their 6" stand off to actually engage the ship they targeted. Rather than fire
from 6 MU away.
***

Absolutely right, though I think Jared is trying to speak of range effect.
However, you end up on top of the ship location. If he DIDN'T understand,
he owes you thanks. ;->=

That final attack move is the reason given for PDS's working the way they do,
of course.

The_Beast

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

You mean someone might, *gasp*, deploy groups of 4 or 8 fighters? Those
barbarians! How dare they!:)

> since changing the number of fighters in a full-strength

So isn't a fighter group that has lost 2 fighters to combat just as
"unbalanced" as one that started with 4 fighters? If the problem is that
having 12 fighters in three groups of 4 gives an advantage over 12 fighters in
2 groups of 6, a few simple rules tweaks can go a long way to remedy much of
the problem.

If you wanted to prevent this, then the size of the bay should have been given
in FB1 & 2 as a fixed size, rather than as 1.5 MASS per fighter, and the cost
of fighters should have been in terms of points per group, rather than points
per fighter.

Additionally, you are saying that setting specific variants, such as Minbari
(who love 3's) deploying groups of 3 or 9 would really screw up the game that
much? (although I will admit that 24 Minbari fighters organized as 8x 3 is a
lot scarier than the same 24 as 4x 6, In this case it is *supposed* to be;))

> The end result is that you either come up with PSB explaining why

Or you make the fighter rules as flexible as a set of generic rules should be.

> > >If you want large ships vs small fighters, the two easiest options

As Dean is the only person on this list whom I have actually met, and he
seemed like a nice guy, I don't want to bash what he has done. The crossover
designs that I have seen on his website over the years look like the they
would make for entertaining games, and I like what he has done in adapting the
SW Ion Cannons, but...

Any crossover gets in to the areas of "Enterprise can beat up ISD" or
visa-versa, which becomes a matter of personal opinion / perspective /
taste.

And

The designs that he has are (IMO) to give flavor to a game, rather than to try
to give a relative representation of the various designs, which you would want
to do if playing within a specific setting. Even taking just the designs of a
single setting, they are not scaled to each other within that setting. E.g.
the SD's and MCC's are undersized and the corellian freighter is oversized
when compared to the Nebulon (taking an arbitrary reference from the available
choices).

> While your listing of mass and volume data for various Star Wars

I can think of only two on-screen instances of fighters damaging SW
capitals, both appear to be special cases:
1) needle-type attack destroys ISD shield generator, leaving ship open
to attack and
2) Kamikazi A-wing crashes into bridge of SSD Executor,causing it to
loose helm control and be drawn into Death Star gravity well

> (*) A Victory-class Star Destroyer is over half a mile in length yet

1) I specifically excluded the SSD in my original post as I feel it is beyond
the scale of the game. Anything much larger than a 1600m ISD or 1800m
battlestar is beyond playability. You don't run games with HIMPotL Dahak, do
you?

2) LucasArts' games "X-Wing" and "TIE Fighter" say 8000m, not 8 miles,
same info from West End Games Imperial Sourcebook (SW:ISB). Makes it the same
size as B5 ("Five miles long..."), as well as the EF Explorer class. 2a) 12
squadrons is 144 TIES.
2b)SW:ISB also attributes to the SSD an additional 60+ shuttles,
assault transports and blastboats, as well as a ground corps of 72,000
troops, 6,600 heavy vehicles, 25 AT-ATs, 50 AT-STs, and 3
pre-fabricated ground bases.  At 4 CS per trooper and 50 CS per MASS,
that is 5760 MASS just for the troops, plus 2000 MASS for vehicles exclusive
of walkers, plus interface craft, etc., etc..

3) SW:ISB attributes to the ISD not just 72 TIEs, but an undisclosed number of
other small craft (shuttles, assault transports, etc), a
ground division of 16,000 troops and 1,500 vehicles, 20 AT-ATs, 30
AT-STs, and pre-fab bases.  It is unclear whether the ground division
includes a 40-strong ground support TIE wing or not.

3) WEG's SW:Rebel Alliance SB attributes 36 fighters (3x SW squadrons)
to the Mon Cal cruisers, 12 A-Wing, 12-B-Wing, and 12 X-Wing.  This is
the same as Dean has in the designs on his website.

> In B5 fighters seem to pack less punch relative to the capitals than

I have said before that HH has two scales, one where BCs are the largest
playable ship, with ships of the wall off the top of the scale; and a second
for ships of the wall where escorts are insignificant. Remember the HMS
Bellerophon (medium sized DN) annihilating four BC's, in passing, in a single
volley, without pausing? ("A Short Victorious
War")

There is a big jump in size between DWs BC's (<1,000,000 dwt) and Ships
of the Wall (6,000,000 - 8,500,000 dwt).  There is also a big jump
between BC's and CH's (300,000 - 600,000 dwt)

> the Minotaur carried 96 Shrikes, and the later LAC carrier classes -

The range and power ofthe Shrike's shipkiller missiles puts them out of
the range of FT fighters, IMO.  OTOH, the ship-launched impeller
missiles are also beyond the scope of FT SMLs.

> All in all, I'd say that if you model the game on what you actually

Since what one sees in SW shows that only special cases are effective against
capitals, then infinity:1 is indeed far higher up on the scale.

However, if you want the fighters to have *some* effect without totally
skewing the game, there needs to be a system for settings where fighters are
small and ships are big, or really big, other than "Play with big ship designs
or scale 48 fighters into a FT fighter group".

J

> --- Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:

The FT rulebook quite clearly equates it to a short ranged 'C' battery.

The visuals from many settings, like B5, SW, and BSG, all show long range
fire. Have you ever played an FT game in these settings? How did you PSB it?

Some questions: How do you play your "close pass"? I.e. do you move the
fighter group into contact with the ship or leave it in place?

If it is left in place, this can be interpreted as the fighters returning to
their start point after the attack. In this case, the question arises Why must
they return to the same point? Why can't the move to any point within 6 MU of
the target ship?

How do screens work? Do the fighters get so close that screens are
ineffective? In the Starfleet Wars FT2 conversion that Dean Gundberg used to
have on his website, ship fire at less than 3" range was considered to be
"inside" the screens. Wouldn't your interpretation of fighters mean that ALL
fighter attacks would be "inside" the screens in this setting, making fighters
even more powerful?

How many other people interpret fighter attack range to be the attack run with
only firing as a close pass to the target ship?

J

> --- Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> wrote:

No. I meant exactly what I said. Standoff range.

> However, you end up on top of the ship location. If he DIDN'T

No, I don't. I am interested in finding out the the details of this
interpretation, but I think it has a lot of holes.

> That final attack move is the reason given for PDS's working the way

What final attack move? I see FB says attacks cost an EF, and secondary moves
cost a separate EF, but nowhere does it say that the fighter group is moved
either during, or as a result of, the attack.

J

Jared,
Are you using the FT/FB fighter rules or the FB1&2 fighter rules?

Brendan 'Neath Southern Skies

> -----Original Message-----
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> On 3 Mar 2004 at 20:44, Jared Hilal wrote:

No. The group that has lost fighters needs to pass morale tests, the group
that started with four doesn't.

> If the problem is

Imagine those two forces coming up against each other. The 3 groups of 4 can
engage both of the 2 groups of 6 in dogfights and still have 1 group left over
to attack the opposing carrier. Sure the groups of 6 will probably win the
dogfights but not without casualties (which means they need to pass morale
tests before attacking the carrier) and not without wasting time.

> On 3 Mar 2004 at 22:21, Jared Hilal wrote:

> > That final attack move is the reason given for PDS's working the way

The fighter models aren't moved on the table top, but the fighters are assumed
to move right up to the ship being attacked and back again during their
attack.

This ties in with (a) why PDS can only shoot at fighters actually attacking
the ship and not at any fighter group within 6MU and (b) why an attack uses up
the same EF as 12MU secondary move.

> Jared Hilal wrote:

Let's say you bring 24 fighters in four groups of six. Your opponent, Monterey
"Jack" Limburger, brings 24 fighters in 24 groups of one. Now roll initiative
and start alternately moving fighter groups...

> Let's say you bring 24 fighters in four groups of six. Your opponent,

> roll initiative and start alternately moving fighter groups...
IIRC, fighter groups can split thier dice to multiple groups, correct? Seems
to give the initiative advantage to your group, since you get to fire 6 times
(one die per 1 of Jack's fighters) for every once Jack get's to fire. Jack has
reduced the your group's effectiveness by making

6's no more useful than 4's and 5's, but only get's 4 dice rolled (killing
approximately 3 of 4 fighters shot at) in the time you've
rolled 24 dice (killing 50% (since 6's and re-rolls are no more
effective than normal) or 12 fighters). 12 more dice kill 8 of your fighters,
(roughly), for a total loss of 15 to 12. Let's assume even distrubution,
giving you 2,2,2,3, to his 12 left. You shoot, killing ~5,

with the activation, he kills 3 in those four activations, giving you 6 on 7,
you with 2, 2, 1, and 1. Which is darn close to even. In the end,
he _may_ have 1-2 fighters left.

Take it to another extreme. John uses 24 fighters, in one group of 24. Jack
uses his same 24 in 24 groups. John destroy's 12 fighters before more than 1
fighter of Jack's get's to shoot. Jack then gets to fire, rolling 12 dice,
giving roughly 8 kills. You're down to 16, he's at 12. Next round of combat,
you net 8 kills, he the returns fire with 4 fighters. that's 3 more of your's
destroyed. You're at 13, he's at 4. Next round, 13 destroy 4 with ease.
Nothing left to shoot back.

*shrug* On the flip side, use groups of one vs. a ship is a whole nother

ball of wax. Breaking groups down to 1:1 gives a practical advantage of level
2 screens (6's count as 1, rerolls are worthless), unless you
allow'd a ships PDS to "bleed-over" between groups, in which case
there's no difference between 24 groups of 1, and 1 group of 24.

There is a practical difference, however, between groups of 6 and groups

of 1. Less counters on the board, thus faster gameflow.

Rand.

> Steve wrote:

> Sure the groups of

And don't forget it costing the group of 6 endurance!

As written, one squadron of 1 fighter could intercept one squadron of 6
fighters. Sure it's going to lose the dogfight, but it's held them off and
made them burn an Endurance. Meanwhile the guy with nothing but
1-fighter squadrons has complete flexibility in placing his fighters.
Fighters are moved in alternating order, are they not? The guy with 6 fighters
per squadron is at a distinct disadvantage to the player who is only moving
one fighter at a time when he's moving his fighters.

> On 4 Mar 2004 at 9:49, Randy Joiner wrote:

> > Let's say you bring 24 fighters in four groups of six. Your

Only during dogfights (FB1, p.6) which means only when the fighter
groups are in base-to-base contact (FT, p.17). Jack would have to be
fairly stupid to allow that to happen - i.e. position his fighters so
close together that you can contact more than one of them with one of your
groups.

So you can destroy at most 4 of Jack's fighters per turn (and you most
probably will kill 4). Jack can in theory kill all of yours on the first turn
and on average will kill at least 13 of them (the average for 24 die rolls is
19.2, but taking into account
casualties who don't get to fire and wasted re-rolls towards the end
of the turn the actual figure will be lower than that - but even if
the 20 who can't be engaged don't make any re-rolls they still
average 13 kills).

Round 2 - it's now 4 rather battered groups vs 20 groups of 1. You'll
kill 4 at best (though it's less certain this time) and Jack will on average
kill at least 10.

Round 3 - if you have any survivors they'll be facing Jack's 16.

> Randall wrote:

> IIRC, fighter groups can split thier dice to multiple groups, correct?

> Seems to give the initiative advantage to your group, since you get to

> fire 6 times (one die per 1 of Jack's fighters) for every once Jack

This assumes you want your fighters to take on his.

Here's another example. Let's make it shorter: 12 fighters in 2 squadrons of 6
for Bob, and 12 fighters in 12 squadrons of 1 for Jack. Jack goes first due to
initiative. Jack moves a fighter to Cruiser 1. Bob moves a fighter squadron to
Cruiser 1 to help defend it. Jack moves a fighter to Cruiser 2. Bob moves his
second squadron to defend Cruiser 2. Bob has finished moving. Jack moves the
rest of his fighters, all 10 of them, to Cruiser 3. Bob spends an endurance to
fight off two fighters. Jack, meanwhile, slices into a cruiser. The question
now is: is it worth losing 2 fighters (and potentially doing 2 fighters worth
of damage to the other guy) in exchange for a cruiser?

I'm not parsing this correctly...

A dogfight is only when base to base? Fine... If Jack doesn't place his
fighters in a dogfight, then I can't split fire. If he doesn't dogfight,

then there's no dice to roll. No problems.

Then how is Jack getting 24 rolls (I use 3/4 for quick math, since .78
is close to.75) if his ships aren't in a dogfight?

Second failure to parse... If Jack places 1 group, on each of Bob's
group of 6, then at _best_ Jack will get 2 dice to roll, and lose 4
fighters. Each turn. Bob will lose 2 x.78, or ~1.5 fighters, each turn.

Round 2: 2 completely unbattered groups, 2 possibly battered groups, of 22.5
(22 or 23) fighters, (there's still a good chance that one of the fighters
from Jack's attacking groups will miss) Against 20 fighters. Jack get's 2 dice
to attack with, doing another 1.5 damage, and Bob mangle's another 4.

Round 3: Depending on who won initiative, which fighter groups were picked on,
etc, it will be 4 slightly hurt groups (of 5 fighters each), or better. ~21 to
16. Round 4: Unless Jack has concentrated on killing one group, all groups
still have more than 2 or more fighters. (6,6,6,3). So, another 2 dice from
Jack, and 4 kills for Bob. We're now at 19.5 to 12. Etc.

So long as Jack continues to attack with 1 fighter per group, and so long as
Bob has groups of 2 or more fighters, he will statistically do more damage
than receiving.

(Side note: Why is dogfight range base-to-base, but ship attack range is

6"?)

Rand.

> Only during dogfights (FB1, p.6) which means only when the fighter

Fine...  and a good point.  Some nit-picking, 10 fighter are not likely
to kill a cruiser in one turn. Cruiser's usually have PDS. Bob was foolish for
jumping the fighter's already assigned to attack, he needs to jump ones that
haven't been assigned.

And there's some easy rules to deal with this problem. (Dirtside has solved
this problem, in an elegent way, IMHO)
One-  Balance Initiative, he who has the most figures/counters/etc moves

until a balance has been reached: Ie. Bob has 1, Jack has 4, Jack moves 3,
then Bob move his 1, then Jack finishes. Or, if Bob win's initiative, Jack
moves all of them, then Bob moves his 1.
Two-  Proportional:  Bob has 2, Jack has 6.  Jack moves 3 per 1 of
Bob's.
Three-  If you allow variable group numbers, why enforce grouping in
space? Ie. Bob has 1 group of 6, Jack has 6 groups of 1. Bob splits his group
into 6 groups of 1, and engage's as per normal.

Alpha:  Per PDS can target up to 6 fighters, with 6's and re-rolls
spilling over group's until 6 fighters are destroyed, or the re-rolls
stop. Beta: Fighter's in groups less than 6 no longer get 2 points of damage
per 6, and no re-rolls.

Any of those may work (no playtesting done yet), and one, or a combination of
one, would do the job fine.

Finally, as I read the rules, I see no reason why groups of 1, 2, 10 or 50
aren't allowed. The rules explicitly provide for mass per fighter, of hanger
space, thus giving the ability to hold partial groups of fighters as is.

Rand.

> agoodall@att.net wrote:

> Randall wrote:

> Seems to give the initiative advantage to your group, since you get to

> fire 6 times (one die per 1 of Jack's fighters) for every once Jack
Jack goes first due to initiative. Jack moves a fighter to Cruiser 1. Bob
moves a fighter squadron to Cruiser 1 to help defend it. Jack moves a fighter
to Cruiser 2. Bob moves his second squadron to defend Cruiser 2. Bob has
finished moving. Jack moves the rest of his fighters, all 10 of them, to
Cruiser 3. Bob spends an endurance to fight off two fighters. Jack, meanwhile,
slices into a cruiser. The question now is: is it worth losing 2 fighters (and
potentially doing 2 fighters worth of damage to the other guy) in exchange for
a cruiser?
> --

> On 4 Mar 2004 at 11:20, Randy Joiner wrote:

> I'm not parsing this correctly...

He just shoots at you. Read FT page 17. Fighter groups can shoot at other
fighter groups normally, a dogfight is a special circumstance. Dogfights are
the only circumstance where multiple fighter groups can be engaged at once. So
dogfights are something Jack wants to avoid.

> Second failure to parse... If Jack places 1 group, on each of Bob's

Why only one 'group'? He has 24 of them so if he spilts them evenly that's 6
groups on each of Jack's.

> then at _best_ Jack will get 2 dice to roll,

Where do you get that from? He'll get one die per fighter as per normal.

> and lose 4 fighters.

Yep.

> Each turn. Bob will lose 2 x .78, or ~1.5 fighters, each

No, Bob will receive fire from _all_ of Jack's fighters except those
destroyed before they can fire (max of 4). So he'll receive fire from at least
20 fighters.

> (Side note: Why is dogfight range base-to-base, but ship attack range

Fighter to ship and fighter to fighter is both 6MU. Dogfighting is special.
Read FT page 17.

Randall wrote

> Some nit-picking, 10 fighter are not likely

Okay, say a destroyer. Or add enough fighters to make it possible to kill the
cruiser.

> Bob was

> to jump ones that haven't been assigned.

Won't make much of a difference, as long as Jack wasn't silly enough to have
them clumped together. Jack moves to Destroyer 1. Bob moves against one of
Jack's unassigned fighters. Jack moves a fighter to Destroyer 2. Bob moves
against one of Jack's unassigned fighters. Jack now has 8 fighters to move. He
could have all 8 of them jump on one of the ships already assigned, so he now
has 9 fighters going up against a destroyer (instead of 10 in my first
example).

> And there's some easy rules to deal with this problem. (Dirtside has

I wondered if you were going to bring that up. SG2 has the same thing. It
won't help matters much if splitting squadrons on the fly are allowed, and
will probably make things worse. Say Jack goes first. He moves one fighter
into contact with one of Bob's fighter squadrons, pinning it in place. Bob
elects to wait as he still only has one fighter
squadron left to move. Okay, so Jack moves another fighter to pin _that_
squadron in place. Now Bob can't move and jack has 10 fighters he can move as
a lump.

You have to allow Bob to be pinned, though. If you don't, Bob has too much of
an advantage. If you don't let fighter squadrons pin others in place, Jack
could jump one of Bob's squadrons with all of his fighters, and then Bob could
simply move it out of the way. You could allow some sort of proportional
pinning, but what proportion is fair? If it's at least 2:1 odds, then a
squadron of 2 fighters could never pin down an enemy squadron of 5 or more
fighters. They would never dogfight unless the bigger squadron wanted to,
which isn't fair either.

This is why allowing variable sized fighter squadrons opens up a whole can of
worms.

> If you allow variable group numbers, why enforce grouping in

> his group into 6 groups of 1, and engage's as per normal.

The argument was that one fighter group of 6 was just as effective as six
fighter groups of 1. What Steve and I have been showing is that isn't the
case, and that there are problems when you allow variable sized squadrons. If
you allow splitting, in essence you have changed it so that each fighter
squadron has 1 fighter in it, period. You may have a group of 6 moving on one
stand, but that's essentially just to ease movement. Do you really want to
play FT with each fighter mounted on its own stand?

> Finally, as I read the rules, I see no reason why groups of 1, 2, 10

> of hanger space, thus giving the ability to hold partial groups of

If you have fighter groups of variable size, the guy with the smaller size
always has an advantage, as Steve and I have been showing. Two fighter groups
of 3 are better than 1 fighter group of 6. You want to put your fighters in
groups of 24? Great, I'll play with mine still in groups of 6. Or groups of 1.
I'll have the advantage for the same number of fighters.

Is there a reason for not allowing fighter squadrons of 1 fighter? Not
really... except it has a horrible effect on speed of play. So, a minimum size
needs to be set, as there's always going to be an advantage to having
squadrons of the minimum size, and no advantage to having squadrons bigger
than the minimum size. So, what should we set as a minimum size? How about...
6, which is what Jon has done in the RAW.

Strange, this - I still haven't seen Jared's post which started this
subthread, and can't find it in the list archive either even though Steve's
reply to it suggested that it was sent yesterday... ah well. Hopefully
it'll appear in the archive tomorrow :-/ Not that it really matters,
since Steve, Laserlight and Allan (sorry if I forgot someone!) have already
pointed out the main problems with differently-sized fighter groups.

> Randall Joiner wrote:

> I'm not parsing this correctly...

Not surprising, since the FT fighter-to-fighter rules are currently an
unholy mess :-(

> A dogfight is only when base to base?

A *dogfight* is only when base-to-base. Unfortunately for your parsing,
fighters don't need to be in a dogfight to shoot at one another.

> Fine... If Jack doesn't place his fighters in a dogfight, then I can't

Incorrect. Thanks to the screwed-up nature of the FT fighter rules,
there
are currently three different types of fighter-to-fighter combat in the
game:

1) Ranged combat (FT2 p.17): A fighter group can fire at any *one* fighter
group (no splitting fire) within 6 mu, as long as neither group is involved in
a dogfight or furball. Firing is done in initiative order.

2) Dogfight (FT2 p.17): One *single* fighter group is in base-to-base
contact with one *single* enemy fighter group. Both groups fire simultaneously
at one another, may only fire at one another (so still no

splitting fire, since there's only one enemy group in the dogfight), and

may not be fired at by any units outside the dogfight. If one of the fighter
groups attempt to leave the dogfight, the enemy gets a free shot at it.

3) Multi-group dogfight aka "furball" (FB1 p.6): A fighter group is in
base-to-base contact with *more than one* enemy fighter group. As in the

dogfight none of the fighter groups involved may fire out of the furball

and no outside unit may fire into it and you can get shot in the back if

you try to leave early, BUT unlike the normal dogfight firing is done in

alternating initiative order (just as for ships and ranged fighter combat) and
the firing group may spread its attacks evenly among those of the enemy groups
in the furball it wants to attack. (It may choose to attack only one single
enemy groups.)

> Then how is Jack getting 24 rolls (I use 3/4 for quick math, since .78

Easy: Jack uses ranged fighter combat, not dogfighting...

There's an even nastier scenario for Bob if you resolve dogfights in
initiative order - ie., you resolve the dogfight when either player
activates his dogfighting group in the normal initiative sequence. (The order
in which you resolve dogfights isn't specified in the rules; some groups
resolve dogfights last instead, which avoids this particular nastiness.) Here
goes:

Jack uses four individual fighters to lock each of Bob's four group into

dogfights (not furballs), leaving the remaining 20 of Jack's fighters
unengaged. Regardless of who won the initiative the dogfights are resolved
before any other fighter fire - Jack chooses to activate the dogfighting

groups first, and Bob of course doesn't have a choice since all of his
fighters are tied up in dogfight. The fighters in each of Bob's groups can
only fire at the single fighter they're dogfighting; they'll almost certainly
destroy it, but since this is a dogfight rather than a furball

fire is simultaneous and that single fighter will get to shoot back.

Now comes the fun part: since they have destroyed their dogfight opponents,
Bob's fighters are *no longer involved in dogfights*... which means that

they are now legal ranged-combat targets for Jack's 20 remaining
fighters
and will probably lose at least 15-16 fighters in return for killing 4
of Jack's.

***
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Full Thrust fighter rules

don't need to be *amended* -  they need to be *completely replaced*.

Later,

> Randall Joiner wrote:

> Fine... and a good point. Some nit-picking, 10 fighter are not likely

So scale the scenario back up to 4 groups vs 24 individual fighters <shrug>

> Bob was foolish for jumping the fighter's already assigned to attack,

Since Bob's fighter groups still can't jump more than 1 enemy fighter each, it
makes exactly zero difference if Bob jumps the ones that have already

moved or the ones which haven't moved yet.

> And there's some easy rules to deal with this problem. (Dirtside has

Since allows Jack to move first he moves one of his groups into a dogfight
with Bob's single group, which means that Bob can't move his group without
Jack's group getting a free shot at it. Your other variants all share this
same problem too: they allow Jack to engage most or even all of Bob's fighter
groups in dogfights before Bob can move them.

> Three- If you allow variable group numbers, why enforce grouping in

That's a nice solution. Causes a rather nasty book-keeping mess when the

fighters from a squadron have to move away in different directions, but I
could live with that.

> Alpha: Per PDS can target up to 6 fighters, with 6's and re-rolls

So why can't you do this against salvo missile salvoes that roll less than
a "6"? (Or if you use scatterguns, against strength-1 plasma bolts?)

> Beta: Fighter's in groups less than 6 no longer get 2 points of damage

> per 6, and no re-rolls.

So as soon as any of Bob's groups takes a single casualty, each of its
*surviving* fighters lose three-eights of its firepower? I'm afraid I
don't quite see the PSB logic behind this.

> Finally, as I read the rules, I see no reason why groups of 1, 2, 10 or

Because of the game-mechanics problems that have been described in a
fair
amount of detail in this thread. They are the only reasons for it - but
there are so many of them that you need to re-write the entire fighter
rules from the bottom up to get rid of them all.

Regards,

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> Could you post these 'alternative fighter schemes' on the list
[...]
> For settings with very large ships and relatively small fighters,

IOW, if you use 2mu range bands the fighter group as a whole gets
*longer*-ranged weapons than before at the same time as the individual
fighters grow *smaller* relative to the ships?

Also, why would this be specific to settings with very large ships and
relatively small fighters, as opposed to settings with relatively small ships?
It has exactly the same level of abstraction as the current FT
fighter rules, so is just as suitable for the low-level GZGverse mass
scale.

> Point Defense Batteries

These rules are conceptually similar to the fighter rules playtested at the
ECC (though the exact details differ quite a lot) - but these concepts
have nothing at all to do with the relative mass ratios between fighters and
larger ships. They work just as well in the GZGverse as in the B5 or SW
backgrounds.

The bay design methods are a problem area. We worked on similar systems for
StarFire many years back, but had to drop them because of their inherent

abusability:

> Flight Bays

> Launch Bays

[Recovery and Hangar bays use the same mass and cost ratings as the
Launch bays]

If you recalled the various bay masses and costs correctly, a "classic"
Mass-12 soapbubble carrier can now carry 6 fighter groups instead of 1.
Have you changed the cost of the fighters themselves in any way, or do you
find the increased DP and PDS capabilities to balance extreme numbers of

fighters by themselves?

> This system gives several design choices. For example, do you have a

The problem with systems that have several different ways of achieving very
similar results - eg., "carry X fighter groups and make sure you can
launch
or recover all of them in a single turn" - is that they tend one of
these
different ways over the others - which makes the choice of way very
simple.

Eg., with the bay masses and costs you listed, let's compare two different
carrier designs: one with 3x Class-3 flight bays for a total of 18 Mass
and either 54 or 81 pts depending on which cost system you use, and one with 1
each of Class-6 launch, recovery and hangar bays + 9 extra taxiways for
a total of 19.5 Mass and either 54 or 117 pts.

With identical "extra" equipment (hull integrity, thrust rating, defensive
armament etc.) the flight bay carrier is cheaper overall (even if you use the
3xMass bay cost, since its slightly smaller bay Mass means that the basic hull
structure, engines etc. will be a little cheaper than for the
specialized-bay carrier), runs a smaller risk of getting knocked out
completely due to failed threshold checks (the specialized-bay carrier's

fighter ops are shut down if any *one* of its three bays is damaged; on the
flight bay carrier you have to take out all three bays to shut its fighters
ops completely), and it carries 50% more fighters (which of course have to be
bought separately).

Its drawbacks are that it is somewhat more likely to take damage from fighters
exploding inside its bays if it is hit while reloading the fighters (though it
has fewer fighters in each individual bay than the
specialized-bay carrier can have in its single hangar), and that it
can't recover another carrier's entire brood in the same turn as it launches
its own... but those drawbacks are very rarely sufficient to compensate for
its advantages. The choice between these two designs becomes pretty easy.

With other choices for the bay masses and costs - eg. if you reduce the
mass of the launch/recovery bays enough, or increase the number of free
taxiways - you can easily make the choice trivial in the other direction

instead... but it is very difficult to create a "multi-way" system where

these choices *aren't* trivial :-(

Regards,

Ow. My head hurts.

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> I'm not parsing this correctly...

> unholy mess :-(

No kidding.

> A dogfight is only when base to base?

So what's the difference between dogfighting and ranged combat? No, don't give
me the snappy answer. Yes, thier bases are touching. So? So you've got
different rules, why?

> Fine... If Jack doesn't place his fighters in a dogfight, then I

> in the game:

Why can't they split fire? I roll for each unit in a group on whether it

hit's or not, so they certainly aren't using a mutual targeting system. So why
only one target at range?

> 2) Dogfight (FT2 p.17): One *single* fighter group is in base-to-base

Doesn't work. Contradictory to rule 3?

> 3) Multi-group dogfight aka "furball" (FB1 p.6): A fighter group is in

> base-to-base contact with *more than one* enemy fighter group. As in

If a group is in a dogfight already (one group moves at a time) then according
to rule 2, they can't be fired on by anyone else. OR, rule 3
means that part of rule 2 is over-ruled, and makes other segments of
rule 2 useless/impossible. (Can't fire at anyone else, simultanseous
fire isn't)

So, either rule 2, or 3. Not both...

Argh, head hurts.

> Easy: Jack uses ranged fighter combat, not dogfighting...

Ok, that makes sense. With the above clarifications.

> There's an even nastier scenario for Bob if you resolve dogfights in

> are resolved before any other fighter fire - Jack chooses to activate

Um... no... I'd assume that a dogfight, since it _depends_ on
base-to-base contact, it's declared in movement, not fire, phase. Which
would mean it's effect would last through multiple phases, leading one to
conclude rather easily that it lasts through one more phase (firing) intact.

> ***
Amen.

Rand.

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> So scale the scenario back up to 4 groups vs 24 individual fighters

*shrug* It was made very clear to me, long ago, that the more fighters, the
more unbalanced the rules.

> Since Bob's fighter groups still can't jump more than 1 enemy fighter

> already moved or the ones which haven't moved yet.

Erm... Actually... It does make some difference. By tieing up his not
yet involved fighters, you lessen the number available to gang-up... If
he assigns one to each ship, and then I entangle one for each group I have,
that leaves that many fewer that he can then pile on one ship.

> And there's some easy rules to deal with this problem. (Dirtside has
If he's in a dogfight, he can't be fired apon by any other group. No real
problem (the simultanious fire changes the calculations though) as those 23
other fighters can't fire at the six that are dogfighting. Per rule 2, above.
Oh, and that same rule keeps a furball from happening... If they can't be
fired apon, they're not in a furball, eh?

> That's a nice solution. Causes a rather nasty book-keeping mess when
I didn't say they were elegant, or effiecient solutions.:) (Did I?)

> Alpha: Per PDS can target up to 6 fighters, with 6's and re-rolls

> stop.

You really want to open this can of beans? One problem at a time...:)

> Beta: Fighter's in groups less than 6 no longer get 2 points of

> *surviving* fighters lose three-eights of its firepower? I'm afraid I

PSB? That can be invented, for anything, if you're willing to suspend
disbelief... Honestly, anyone can come up with PSB for any rule, that
makes the game more playable/fun.

I fell into the trap of trying to PSB a rule that hadn't been seen as
necessary once before. This dog won't hunt. The list is to apt to jump
all over PSB cause it doesn't fit thier personal belief/faith in thier
own pocket reality/favorite-show/movie, people are rarely open enough to

suspend disbeleif and work _through_ problems with PSB, and to likely to

argue whether some mythical/mystical already assumed pseudo-science can
be "real."

What's the PSB for groups of 6? Why not 7? 8? 12? (rhetorical question.)

Rand.

> Rand wrote:

> So what's the difference between dogfighting and ranged combat? No,

> you've got different rules, why?

Fighters attack ships out to 6 mu. Someone at some point probably said, "Okay,
so I can attack a ship 6 mu away. If a fighter group ends its movement within
6 mu of me, why can't I fire at it instead of a ship?" Makes sense, otherwise
all sorts of weird things happen, like two enemy fighter groups end their
movement 1 mu apart but can't fire on each
other, meanwhile an enemy ship is 6 mu away and that _can_ be attacked.

I'm almost positive the dogfight concept came later, as a way of pinning
fighters and as a way of representing interceptors engaging the FT equivalent
of fighter bombers. The idea is that the fighters should have to worry about
enemy fighters before they can attack a ship. The dogfight rules were
necessary to have fighters behave as they do in real life: screen friendly
ships from enemy fighters by engaging the enemy fighters with your own
fighters.

It made sense when one fighter group was up against another in a dogfight that
the fighting occur simultaneously. When multiple fighter groups ended up in a
furball, the simultaneous resolution system was seen as a problem. It may have
involved different fighter types. If I have torpedo fighters and heavy
fighters in a furball against your interceptor fighters, and resolution is
simultaneous, who gets to assign casualties? What if different types of
fighters have different defensive capabilities? It's easier and fairer to just
do it in initiative order.

So, out of the noblest of reasons we have three different types of fighter
combat resolution... not including resolution of fighter attacks
against _ships_.

> Why can't they split fire? I roll for each unit in a group on whether

If you allow fighters to split fire among enemy fighter units, it makes sense
that you allow them to split fire against enemy ships, too. However, you have
to declare fire against enemy ships so that PDS fire is resolved when the ship
is activated. Can you imagine the mess you could get into when a player with
multiple types of fighters starts dividing up his fire amongst multiple ship
and fighter targets? "I want two heavies from this squadron firing at the
destroyer, one heavy at the corvette, and the three remaining heavies at the
cruiser. Now, I want two torpedo fighters firing at the corvette, and the
remaining four firing at the cruiser. With this third squadron, I want..." It
becomes very hard to remember what fighter is attacking what.

Since one of the hallmarks of FT is simplicity, not allowing split fire just
makes the game a lot easier to play.

> If a group is in a dogfight already (one group moves at a time) then

> means that part of rule 2 is over-ruled, and makes other segments of

There's no contradiction.

Rule 2 is one fighter squadron engaging another, forming a dogfight. No ships
or fighters may fire into the dogfight from a distance.

However, other fighter squadrons can still move into the dogfight, resulting
in a furball. Rule 2, that says no ships may fire into the dogfight and no
fighters may fire into the dogfight from a distance, is still preserved. A
furball allows fighters to join the dogfight.

Rule 3 is needed. Say I have a squadron down to 1 fighter, a squadron of 6
fighters, and you have a squadron of 5 fighters. If you move first and engage
my single fighter in a dogfight, it doesn't make sense that my squadron of 6
fighters can't engage you in the same dogfight. Realistically my fighters
should be able to jump in and help. That's just one reason for the furball
rules.

Okay, so let's do away with the rule that stops you firing into a dogfight.
Then you get cases of a single fighter pinning a squadron of 6 in place, and
other fighters firing into the dogfight without any chance of retribution. How
do you resolve that? Well, with split fire, allowing the fighter squadron
that's pinned to fire at the guys not involved in the dogfight. Oh, but then
you have the issue of split fire, with fighters firing all over the place at
different targets, including ships. That gets very confusing and difficult to
adjudicate PDS fire. How do you eliminate that confusion? Simple. Activate
fighter squadrons like you would a ship. They fire at whatever they want to,
just like a ship. Oh, but then you have problems remembering when a ship had
already used up its PDS attacking another squadron and with how many PDS.
After all, if you allow split fire by squadrons you have to allow split fire
by PDS. You've also done away with the dogfight rules that were intende! d to
let one squadron grab the attention of another squadron. Ignoring the fact
that we now just broke the dogfight rules for a second, how do you fix the
bookkeeping issue with regard to PDS? You could allow PDS to fire like any
other ship's weapon system. That's no good, as PDS is a defensive system that
should trigger on fighters attacking it. It would mean that PDS couldn't be
used before the ship is activated, so even though fighters are attacking a
ship, the ship couldn't use PDS to fire back until it was activated. This now
becomes an argument in favour of simultaneous fire resolution, but that takes
away one of the key tactical aspects of the game, and still doesn't get around
the "how many fighters were there before they were shot at?" bookkeeping
issue.

Now you might have an idea of the problem areas involving fighters and why the
rules evolved the way they did.

> Um... no... I'd assume that a dogfight, since it _depends_ on
Which
> would mean it's effect would last through multiple phases, leading one

> to conclude rather easily that it lasts through one more phase

Then you have a bookkeeping issue with lots of fighters. "Was that fighter in
a dogfight?" You also get other cheese, like a squadron of 6 engaging a
squadron of 1 at close range to other fighters and ships with
PDS. The ships and the fighters can't fire on the 6-fighter squadron
because it is in a dogfight, even if that single fighter was destroyed early
in the turn.

Your idea makes a certain amount of sense, but it's easier to play the game by
not allowing fire against fighters in a dogfight. You'd also have people
looking at it and saying, "Can you explain the PSB that has 6 fighters destroy
one fighter, but no one else can fire at them for the rest of the turn?" If
two squadrons touch each other throughout from the movement phase until the
end of the game turn, it abstracts the fact that they were engaged in a
dogfight for the whole game turn. If one of the squadrons is destroyed before
that, it abstracts the fact that the dogfight ended early and that there is no
longer a threat of hitting friendly fighters.

None of this touches the _real_ problems with fighters, such as the fact
that large numbers of fighters are disproportionately powerful for their cost.

> Rand wrote:

> *shrug* It was made very clear to me, long ago, that the more

Oerjan was just pointing out that if you increased the number of fighters, my
example would lead to more fighters available to destroy a cruiser. Another
way of looking at it is how I corrected it, just replace "cruiser" with
"destroyer".

> Erm... Actually... It does make some difference. By tieing up his not
If
> he assigns one to each ship, and then I entangle one for each group I

In my example, it meant that I had one fewer fighter to use. Not much of a
change.

> Oh, and that same rule keeps a furball from happening... If they can't

> be fired apon, they're not in a furball, eh?

No. You seem to be confused on this. A dogfight is triggered by moving
fighters. A furball is triggered by moving fighters. Dogfights and furballs
are resolved in the combat segment. The rule that prevents firing into a
dogfight does not prevent the creation of furballs, because furballs are
created in the movement segment.

> I didn't say they were elegant, or effiecient solutions. :) (Did I?)

No, you didn't. Oerjan's point, and mine, is that they don't fix anything in
the current rules, and just make the game harder to play.

> > So why can't you do this against salvo missile salvoes that roll

He's just pointing out that when you go to tinkering with one aspect of the
rules, you end up opening all sorts of metal nematode containers. *S* It's the
reason that a fix to the fighter problem has been so long in coming.

> At 2:07 PM -0500 3/4/04, Randy Joiner wrote:

Splitting fire should be possible in theory. Command and control should be
fairly easy here.

"Red 5 and 6, take the 2 on the right, Red Leader, 2, 3 and 4 will take the 4
on the left. Every one get your weapons locks? Ok? Fox
2-1, Fox 2-2"

> 2) Dogfight (FT2 p.17): One *single* fighter group is in

Not really. Its a modification or exception. You get so many craft in the
fight it just makes sense to do them alternating.

Ah, here it is at last! Only about 24 hours later than expected...

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> >The answer to which is unfortunately "yes". Not as long as all the

Bingo. And given the rather massive advantages they can gain from doing this
while using the rest of the published Full Thrust fighter rules, I don't you'd
find it particularly funny if you were on the recieving end of it.

> >since changing the number of fighters in a full-strength

No, it isn't. The main reasons for this have already been discussed in detail
by others, so I won't go into it further.

> If the problem is that having 12 fighters in three groups of 4 gives an

> advantage over 12

Not without creating a bunch of "interesting" new problems, no. You need a
lot of far-ranging "tweaks" to get something which won't cause the
munchkins out there to cry with delight.

> If you wanted to prevent this, then the size of the bay should have

The size of a fighter bay is given as 9 Mass in FB2, where it twice says:

"...ships may carry hangar bays for fighter groups (or other embarked small
craft) in exactly the same way as human ships, using all the standard rules.
Each Fighter Bay uses 9 MASS..."

The text then goes on to quote an incorrect bay cost of 18 points instead of
the correct 27 pts (which has been corrected in the official FB2 errata) and
to say that these bays can hold up to 6 MASS of fighters (which has been
superceded by Jon's post of July 4th 2000, which I referred to earlier in this
thread), but the "in exactly the same way as human ships" and "Each Fighter
Bay uses 9 MASS" make it quite clear that human fighter bays are

also 9 MASS - and this has *not* been superceded anywhere.

The sizes of *small craft* bays OTOH are variable, and have been since FB1
was published. That is the game-mechanics reason (as opposed to the PSB
reason) why fighters can't use small craft bays.

> Additionally, you are saying that setting specific variants, such as

Yes. I'd say "screw the game up that much FURTHER" though, since the FT
fighter rules are already badly screwed up.

> >The end result is that you either come up with PSB explaining why

Bingo. Which exactly is why I want to replace the entire fucked-up FT
fighter rules complex with something that works... but I can't get any such
new rules into [OFFICIAL] print until FT3 gets published.

> >>>If you want large ships vs small fighters, the two easiest options

Of course they are. I strongly doubt that Dean used the same conversion scales
for the various universes, for example.

> The designs that he has are (IMO) to give flavor to a game, rather than

> would want to do if playing within a specific setting. Even taking just

> the designs of a single setting, they are not scaled to each other

Their *mass ratings* might be over- and undersized; I don't have good
enough sources to check.

But are their relative *performances* over- or undervalued (relative to
the other ships from the same background, that is)? The only measuring stick
we
have for that are the movies and the various computer games - and they
show pretty conclusively that the performance of the various ships does not
scale linearly with their respective masses :-/

> >While your listing of mass and volume data for various Star Wars

Bingo. Both of which are easily represented in Full Thrust as failed threshold
checks. Sure, we never see a fighter attack actually destroy an
SD - but we never actually see an SD destroy an MCC on-screen either, or

even a Nebulon-B. Should we take that to mean that SDs can only inflict
insignificant damage on MCCs other than in special cases?

> >(*) A Victory-class Star Destroyer is over half a mile in length yet

And the *only* reason why you feel this is that you have decided on a mass
scale which is too low to fit it. Dean's Excecutor design is TMF ~1600, ie.
about the maximum you'd consider playable; to escort it he used TMF
300-ish
ISDs and TMF 160-ish Victory-class SDs.

> Anything much larger than a 1600m ISD or 1800m battlestar is beyond

No problem, though the Mass scale would be quite a bit higher than in the
Star Wars case; I'd represent the huge Achuultani battleships as TMF 4-6

strikeboats and Dahak's various sublight battleships as fighters.

> 2) LucasArts' games "X-Wing" and "TIE Fighter" say 8000m, not 8 miles,

OK. As I said, I didn't have time for more than a quick web search <shrug>

> same info from West End Games Imperial Sourcebook (SW:ISB). Makes it

Both of which are HUGE compared to the normal warships in the show, including
even the largest Minbari war cruisers.

> 2a) 12 squadrons is 144 TIES.

Correct. That's what the web sources I found gave the Executor, and for some
reason it also matches the number of fighter bays on Dean's Executor design.

> 2b)SW:ISB also attributes to the SSD an additional 60+ shuttles,

Since we never see the shuttles and transports actually shooting at
anything in space on-screen and the ground troops for obvious reasons
are unable to do so, none of these are relevant for Full Thrust purposes.

> At 4 CS per trooper and 50 CS per MASS,

...you're applying an inappropriate Mass scale from a completely different
background universe for the specific purpose of making the example look
ridiculous so you can ignore them.

If the mass scale changes, the number of CS per mass changes with it -
unless of course you believe that each individual trooper becomes a hundred
times larger when you change the mass scale from 1 Mass = 100 tons to 1
Mass = 10,000 tons :-/

> 3) WEG's SW:Rebel Alliance SB attributes 36 fighters (3x SW squadrons)

Yes, my goof. Even the hazy web sources I found agree with your numbers
:-)

> >Honor Harrington battles are far worse for the smallest units, of

Yep. And if there are more than one or two Shrikes involved their
DN/SDN-sized carrier isn't far away either, which puts you firmly in the

ship-of-the-wall scale. If escorts are insignificant, then Shrikes
(which are even smaller than escorts) pretty much have to be treated as
fighters.

> The range and power ofthe Shrike's shipkiller missiles puts them out of

The range, agreed - but see below. The power, no - FT's torpedo fighter
rules seems to fit quite well both with the hitting power and the limited ammo
available, though of course the Shrikes should still have their spinal graser.

> OTOH, the ship-launched impeller

Yep. Outside the scope of any normal-sized gaming table too, unless you
want energy weapons to have ranges of about 1mu :-/

> However, if you want the fighters to have *some* effect without totally

> skewing the game, there needs to be a system for settings where

Completely wrong. There is no need whatsoever for a special system for
settings where fighters are small and ships are big separate from the "normal"
system for settings where the mass ratio is smaller.

There is however a desperate need for a system where the fighter rules are
balanced - and such a system can handle any fighter:capital mass ratios
you can think of; all you need to do in such a system is to change the number
of fighters represented by each fighter group. Full Thrust's current fighter
rules aren't balanced; they don't work well for *any* fighter:capital mass
ratios.

Regards,

> Randall wrote:

> Since Bob's fighter groups still can't jump more than 1 enemy fighter

> already moved or the ones which haven't moved yet.

Fighters aren't assigned targets until after they have finished moving, so
when Bob moves his fighters he still isn't entirely sure which targets Jack's
fighters will attack.

Since fighters have a 6mu attack range Jack can put his first two individual
fighters 12mu apart and still have them attack the same ship, so unless Bob's
fighter bases are 12mu in diameter (or larger) Bob's fighter groups won't be
able to engage more than 1 of Jack's fighters each even if Jack sends the
first two against the same ship.

> And there's some easy rules to deal with this problem. (Dirtside has

See the other post. However, Jack's purpose here isn't to destroy Bob's
fighters; it is sufficient to make sure 1) that they don't move anywhere, eg.
to attack Jack's ships or interfere with his other fighters (or if they do
move, that get shot in the back first) and 2) that they only kill *1* of
Jack's fighters per turn, instead of the 4-6 fighters they could've
killed
if Jack's fighters had been organized in standard 6-fighter groups.
('Course, if they stay in the dogfight it is entirely possible that they

won't be able to catch up either with Bob's ships or with Jack's other
fighters for several turns!) This leaves Jack's remaining fighters free to
attack Bob's ships instead.

> Oh, and that same rule keeps a furball from happening...

Nope; see my other post.

> If they can't be fired apon, they're not in a furball, eh?

There is no rule which keeps you from putting multiple groups into
base-to-base contact with a single enemy group and thereby create a
furball. All fighters in a furball can fire at any enemy fighters in the

same furball.

> That's a nice solution. Causes a rather nasty book-keeping mess when

For once I wasn't sarcastic <g> - it *is* a nice solution, at least in
that it solves the problem without a large bunch of new rules and without
causing new balance problems - its only major drawback is the
much-increased  book-keeping.

> Alpha: Per PDS can target up to 6 fighters, with 6's and re-rolls

I prefer using a holistic approach. That way I don't spend too much work on
hashing out minor issues before I run into something which crashes the entire
concept...

> Beta: Fighter's in groups less than 6 no longer get 2 points of

> *surviving* fighters lose three-eights of its firepower? I'm afraid I

Yeah, but since no other weapons in the game change characteristics in this
way - they're either operational or not, never half-way-inbetween like
these fighters become after the first casualty - this rule will be much
harder than average to sell to the players. Players often argue about PSB
explanations, but when you deal with munchkins (and let's face it, they're the
main reason why this rule would be needed) believable PSB explanations
are several orders of magnitude easier to sell than the game-balance
argument is. Munchkins aren't interested in balancing the game; their goal is
to exploit the *im*balances as much as possible...

> What's the PSB for groups of 6? Why not 7? 8? 12? (rhetorical

There isn't any PSB for it. It simply follows a surprisingly old tradition
of 6-fighter groups in space combat games (dating at least as far back
as StarFire II in 1980, but I doubt that that's the original source) and is

therefore familiar enough that the munchkins rarely argue against it...
*unless* something makes them start to think about it :-/

Later,

> Randall Joiner wrote:

> A dogfight is only when base to base?

> got different rules, why?

I can't give a definite answer on this one (this part of the rules was written
long before I became a playtester), but my guess is that the
dogfight and furball cases are supposed to represent close-range
manoeuvres-intensive fights where the two sides are too closely
intermixed to allow outsiders easy targetting solutions against one side only;
whereas
the ranged fire is akin to dropping off BVRAAMs in a long-range battle
between combat aircraft.

> Fine... If Jack doesn't place his fighters in a dogfight, then I

Because the rules as currently published say so (FT2 pps16-17). As for
*why* they say this, I have no idea.

> 2) Dogfight (FT2 p.17): One *single* fighter group is in base-to-base

Works. Rule 2 only applies when a fighter group is in base-to-base
contact with ONLY ONE SINGLE enemy fighter group; rule 3 only applies when a
fighter group is in base-to-base contact with MORE THAN ONE enemy
fighter group. Since a group can't simultaneously be in contact with only one
single enemy group and more than one enemy groups, the two cases don't overlap
and therefore don't contradict one another.

They are certainly *inconsistent* wrt one another, but that's not the same
thing as *contradicting* one another...

> 3) Multi-group dogfight aka "furball" (FB1 p.6): A fighter group is in

> base-to-base contact with *more than one* enemy fighter group. As in

You can't FIRE into a dogfight from the outside - but there is no rule
which prevents you to MOVE a fighter group into base-to-base contact
with an existing dogfight and thus turn it into a furball.

> OR, rule 3 means that part of rule 2 is over-ruled,

Nope.

> So, either rule 2, or 3. Not both...

Yes, both. I told you the rules were screwed-up, didn't I...

> There's an even nastier scenario for Bob if you resolve dogfights in
(The
> order in which you resolve dogfights isn't specified in the rules;
some
> groups resolve dogfights last instead, which avoids this particular
which
> means that they are now legal ranged-combat targets for Jack's 20

You don't declare dogfights. The rules (FT2 p.17) define "dogfight" as the
special situation where a fighter group is in base-to-base with an enemy

fighter group; if it ceases to be in base-to-base contact with all enemy

fighter groups for whatever reason, eg. because it has destroyed them, it is
no longer in a dogfight.

Which is why the above trick only works if you resolve the dogfights within
the normal initiative order; if you resolve all dogfights at the end of the
fighter combat phase instead (ie. outside the normal initiative order) Jack's
20 unengaged fighters will be unable to do shoot at Bob's fighters at all. It
still isn't a very good deal for Bob since his fighters are tied up in
dogfights where most of their firepower will be wasted (and where they risk
being left too far behind their ships to catch up), but at least
it is better than the alternative :-/

Later,

Allen said:
> If you have fighter groups of variable size, the guy with the smaller

As long as the cost per fighter is not influenced by the group size. If

you can rig it so that smaller groups cost proportionately more than larger
groups, then this imbalance is at least mitigated.

Sigh, all these problems   __were__  irrelevant to me because I didn't
use/play fighters (because of the messed up rules/asymmetrical power
value of fighters (i.e., 1 group is not 1/10th the power of ten groups
but much, much less...) but I now, thanks to Ebay and groups of blisters being
bought there, have fighters and heavy fighters. What have I done
to myself?!?!?!

Maybe I should paint/mount them and put them on Ebay??

Gracias, Glenn

> On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 20:54:12 +0000 agoodall@att.net writes:
<snip>
> He's just pointing out that when you go to tinkering with one aspect

From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>

> Not surprising, since the FT fighter-to-fighter rules are currently an

> unholy mess :-(

> 1) Ranged combat (FT2 p.17): A fighter group can fire at any *one*

> I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Full Thrust fighter

Then there's the game-balance problems of attack fighters, heavy
fighters, the fact that there are a horde of special rules and systems for
fighters making them more complex than needed...

Let's get back to basics.

What do we *want* the fighter rules to accomplish? Here's my list - and
others will surely have different opinions.

1. To have something logical and reasonable for fighters in the Tuffleyverse.
2. To have a generic set of rules for other genres and settings. 3. Game
balance, for only having a few fighters (as in FB1) 4. Game balance, for
having huge quantities of fighters (the familiar Soap Bubble Carrier fleet) 5.
With as few exceptional rules and special systems as possible.
6. To have Midway-analogs, Battle-of-Britain-analogs and
Hunt-the-Bismark-analogs possible.

My bugbear is section 5. I like re-using game mechanics if at all
possible. We now have a reasonable selection of good mechanisms for getting to
the desired result, *without* making new ones.

What I would like to see:
Fighters are capable of taking any 1-mass weapon (such as a Beam-1) but
with the following restrictions:

a) Range is contact - they have to be in base-to-base contact with the
target to use it. For game purposes, they should be able to "Burn an
endurance" to move 3mu (vector) or 6mu (cinematic) after ship movement to do
so, in initiative order. b) They must "Burn an endurance" to attack, which
means they have a limited number of shots.

Fighters may be bought with screens (simulating ECM etc) or 1 pt of "armour"
(that is, casualties are halved - it takes 2 pts to kill them). As 1 pt
of
weaponry and 1 pt of armour/screens is a lot to put on a less-than-mass
unit, the armour isn't as effective as normal armour, so round fractional
kills up. 5 hits = 3 kills, not 2. And certainly not 5 "half-kills"
leaving all fighters operational!

Then use all existing anti-ship and anti-fighter mechanics.

EXAMPLES: A fighter with a PDS equivalent is capable of doing 1 pt of damage
to a ship
on a 6 (no re-roll), but has the usual 4,5=1, 6=2+re-roll on other
fighters OR MISSILES.

A fighter with a B1 equivalent is capable of doing 1 hit on a fighter or
missile on a 5 or 6, but has the usual 4,5=1, 6=2+re-roll on an
unscreened ship.

Difficulties:
What about Kravak 1-shot scatterguns? What about Submunitions, also a
1-shot?
Fighter "screens" would affect PDS equivalents, but not B1 equivalents: is
this a bad thing? And there seems no place for Torpedo Fighters. Can weapons
fits
be changed - have a PDS load, then after re-loading, a B1 load? What
about Phalons and SV?

Nonetheless... I think we can simplify things a lot if we just have Fighters
having either a PDS equivalent ( anti-fighter/missile with minimal
anti-ship
ability) or B1 equivalent ( anti-ship with some self-defence and
anti-missile
capability).

One possibility that would fit in with a lot of Genres is to have all
weapons being 1-shots, needing re-load before re-use. Fighters
"escorting" their carrier (in base contact with it, moving with it) are deemed
to be
able to periodically pop back in for a top-up, so have unlimited
re-loads.
(This would mean we couldn't have true 1-shot weapons like submunitions
packs) Because they're using their carrier's FC systems, they should be able
to shoot at anything within 6mu range, no need to be in contact.(Question:
although the "unlimited reloads" applies to fighters escorting carriers
(only), what about when they're escorting other ships? I'd say no unlimited
reloads, but can fire within 6", assuming there's at least 1 FC operational
allocated to the target ship. And when fighters are escorting carriers other
than their parent, the number of fighter groups that get "unlimited reloads"
is equal to
the number of hangers / SV Drone Wombs )

This means that when using fighters independently, you need a lot of them,

> At 6:16 PM -0500 3/4/04, Laserlight wrote:

Why not just say that 1 fighter can pin 1 fighter. a 1 fighter group
pinning a 6 fighter group is going to see 4-5 of the fighters going
on their merry way while 1-2 stay behind and deal with the dumb
Bas**** that just tried to jump them with limited numbers. Allowing groups to
form and diverge at will at any time (Victor 5 and 6, take
target alpha-2, we'll take Alpha-1).

> Ryan Gill wrote:

> their merry way while 1-2 stay behind

First, I suspect that you'd be inclined to stay put and keep your
squadron together -- three-to-one is a lot better odds than leaving your

buddies to fend for themselves at one-to-one.

But firster, in fact firstest by quite a ways, is that more fighter groups on
the table seems to mean **much** more time moving fighters around, counting
them, knocking them over, firing them, et cetera.

Warbeads:

> Sigh, all these problems __were__ irrelevant to me because I didn't
...

Or, maybe, swap them to me for small ships... *snicker*

The_Beast

OKay, let me get the exact fighter numbers. Oh, BTW I actually won a
Bologna Carrier with a W-A_A_A-Y low initial bid and some how rended up
with two of them... even though I mentioned to the seller that I had
received two and did he send me a second one - never got an answer to
that.

Anyone care to trade for these Carriers?

Fighter blisters and one carrier blister opened.

I need Minervas. Hurons, and Furious class ships (will accept more
Ticonderogas, a Majestic or Victoria also.)

Gracias, Glenn

On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 20:47:52 -0600 Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu>
writes:
> Warbeads:

> At 9:09 PM -0500 3/4/04, Laserlight wrote:

Depends on their tasking. If 12 torpedo bombers are making a run on a ship and
2 fighters dive in on their 6. Two are going to turn and probably try to hold
off the fighters and the other 10 are going to burn in on their target if at
all possible.

> But firster, in fact firstest by quite a ways,

It takes away the advantage of breaking them up into smaller units for some
kind of artificial advantage. 6 on 2 should be a decided advantage and a
decided defensive disadvantage.

> --- "Robertson, Brendan" <Brendan.Robertson@dva.gov.au> wrote:

As far as I can tell, the FB changes to fighters only affected
movement/endurance and added rules for screening capital ships (adopted
from EFSB) and intercepting missiles (to go with the new SM systems). The
rules for fighter attacks, both against ships and against other fighters (both
long range and dogfights) were unchanged except for the addition of rerolls
and the allowance for split fire in dogfights.

With that understanding, we use either the standard combat rules as per
FT2+FB or the ones I posted for large ship / small fighter settings.
Sometimes we use Endurance, sometimes not. This depends on both the setting
and whether we want a quicker or slower game. We do not use the optional
fighter morale rules.

For movement, we use neither system, instead preferring a system found
on the web in the late 1990's involving fighters having an accel/decel
characteristic rather than a maximum move distance.

J

> --- Steve Pugh <steve@pugh.net> wrote:

If Bob is dogfighting 4 groups (of 1 each), then the other 20x1 cannot
fire at any of the 4x 6-fighter groups.

J

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

FB1 and FB2 both specify that fighter attacks are allocated in step 6 and
dogfights ar resolved in step 7. Seems quite clear that fighters cannot
allocate their attacks to a dogfight that has not been resolved.

J

> On 5 Mar 2004 at 11:19, Jared Hilal wrote:

> --- Steve Pugh <steve@pugh.net> wrote:

Did you need to make this point in two different posts? Anyway that's a big
'if'. Jack has the ability to avoid dogfights. See my reply to your other
post.

> On 5 Mar 2004 at 11:36, Jared Hilal wrote:

> FB1 and FB2 both specify that fighter attacks are allocated in step 6

So they do. Oh well, never mind. Just means that Jack has to do as I suggest
and ensure that he can't be engaged in a dogfight.

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> >There's an even nastier scenario for Bob if you resolve dogfights in

I'm sorry Jared, but you're trying to claim that "allocate attacks" and
"fire" are the same thing - which they obviously can't be, since you do
the
former only in phase 6 and the latter only in phases 7 and 8 :-/

Nothing in the rules prevents you from *allocating* attacks against fighter
groups currently involved in dogfights, any more than they prevent you from
allocating your B2 batteries against a target 40mu away. You just aren't

allowed to *resolve* those attacks - ie., *fire* - until the dogfight
has ended, so if the dogfight hasn't ended by the time you have to activate
the
would-be-attacking fighter group(s) you forfeit those attacks just like
you'd forfeit B2 shots against a target 40mu away since B2s can't reach
further than 24mu. That's why the exact order in which you resolve the
various types of fighter-vs-fighter combat is so important for this
particular sleaziness.

Sounds stupid? Sure. Against the spirit of the rules? Yessirree. Unfortunately
it isn't against the *letter* of the rules... and munchkins invariably look at
the letter of the rules, not their spirit.

(BTW, talking about the letter of the rules: you are aware that the FB1 turn
sequence stated that fighter groups should be moved close to their intended
target when they declared their attacks, yes? <g>)

Regards,

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> As far as I can tell, the FB changes to fighters only affected

> from EFSB) and intercepting missiles (to go with the new SM systems).
The
> rules for fighter attacks, both against ships and against other

You missed some fairly important changes:

Fighter attacks against ships were changed by being moved from the ships' fire
phase (fighters used to attack immediately after their target ship had fired,
or after all ships had fired if their target didn't fire any weapons) to a
separate phase in front of it, and of course they were also affected by the
changes to the point defence fire rules.

Similarly allowing split fire wasn't the only change to the
fighter-vs-fighter combats; furballs also changed from simultaneous fire
to the groups firing in initiative order, and in addition ranged
fighter-vs-fighter fire was moved from after fighter-vs-ship attacks to
before them.

Regards,

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

But at the ranges of the standard rules, only at 0-2 MU does the group
roll the same number of dice. We use the two options for different scenarios:
if the scenario involves "smaller" ships, then we use 2 MU; if the scenario
uses "larger" ships then we use 1 MU.

For example: 2 MU scale: B5: no ships larger than White Star, EA Hyperion, or
Centuari Vorchan
SW: no ship larger than Nebulon-B, Imperial "Strike" Class cruiser, or
Imp. "Dreadnought" class heavy cruiser ST:TOS ST:TME
ST:TNG/DS9: no ship larger than Type 1-c Starships (e.g. Excelsior)

1 MU scale: B5: includes ships like EA Nova or Omega, Narn G'Quan, Centauri
Primus, Minbari Sharlin, etc. SW: includes star destroyers or Mon Cal cruisers
BSG: includes battlestars
ST:TNG/DS9 includes Type I-d, I-e or I-f Starships (e.g. Ambassador,
Galaxy and Nebula, and Sovereign classes, respectively)

In any case, if you don't like the 2 MU option, then ignore it and consider
only the 1 MU option.

> Also, why would this be specific to settings with very large ships

We assumed that the GZG setting was a stable basis, then any scaling f fighter
facilities necessitated a reduction in fighter power.

> >Point Defense Batteries

May be so, but since the implied posting of those test rules after ECC never
occurred, I included what we use for completeness. Otherwise I would have said
something like "we use something similar the beta rules posted last week".

> The bay design methods are a problem area. We worked on similar

> their inherent abusability:

I did: points at same rate as FB1
MASS 3 +2 +1 +1... and MASS 2 +1 +0.5 +0.5...

> a "classic" Mass-12 soapbubble carrier can now carry 6 fighter groups

We use the costs from FB1 per fighter group, and allow common-sense
multi-specialties, such as Heavy, Fast, Intercepter (like F-14, F-15,
A-wing, etc.).

The only change we have s a Light Fighter that is easier to kill (+1)
but costs less. We use these for TIEs and some Centauri fighters. A
Light, Fast, Intrceptor costs the same as a standard multi-role
fighter.

> or do you find the increased DP and PDS capabilities to balance

Our games are friendly, and do not see the competitive extremes I have
seen discussed on this list.  The biggest were based on WW2/modern
fleet carriers, Colonial battlestars and Cylon basestars, BFG based carriers,
and a Centuari Balavarian carrying 16 groups total in 2
hangers with 4 class-1 flight bays.  This last one in games with TMF
300 Primus and 400+ Octurian.

The vast majority (90%) of our games that involve fighters are either B5, SW
or home grown. The way we have ST converted (TOS & TME only), fighters get
shredded, although we have never tried dedicated fighter carriers like the
Archangel from "Starfleet Prototype".

Most of our use of this system as been where most capital ships have
12-36 fighters (2-6 groups) and most escorts have 6-12 (1-2 groups) but
there aren't a lot of dedicated CVs (the ISD is just a capital on steroids).
So a battle squadron of 4 capital ships might easily have 16 groups of
fighters among them, with another 8 from the escort group. The long range DP
fire tends to keep strike fighters dispersed (we use 1 MU square counters
rather than stands of mini's, so stacks are both allowed and possible) until
the turn that they move in for an actual strike and most capital ships
maintain a CAP of 1 or 2 groups of intercptors (if available) or multirole (if
not) for screening.

Fleet design and operational doctrine have a large impact. For example;
consistently equipping a fleet throughout with a low level of ADFC on every
ship and then operating in formation significantly raises the bar for what is
needed to swamp defenses. OTOH, the only area
effect weapons that we use are EFSB-inspired E-Mines.

> > This system gives several design choices. For example, do you have

O.O.'s example:
3 x flight bay-3 (18 MASS)
vs
1 x launch bay-6 +
1 x hanger bay-6 +
1 x landing bay-6 +
taxiways to transfer 6 fighters LdB->HB +
taxiways to transfer 6 fighters HB->LaB
total 19.5 MASS

> With identical "extra" equipment (hull integrity, thrust rating,

you mean "even if you use the 9x class cost" or "especially if you use the 3x
MASS cost", right?

> since its slightly smaller bay Mass means that the basic hull

1) Taking out the Hanger requires a 2nd row threshold check. 2) depends on
where in the launch cycle the ship is, e.g. taking out the launch bay while
the fighters are already out gives at least 2 turns before they are needed
again, during which repairs can be attempted (1 turn to land, 2nd turn
transfer to hanger & rearm while landing 2nd wave, 3rd turn see if launch bay
is repaired.

> and it carries 50% more fighters (which of course have to be bought

Your 3x class-3 flight bay design could exchange 1 flight bay for 2x
class-2 hangers (total 10 groups) or 1x class-8 hanger (total 14
groups) feeding the launch bays.

Looking back I see that I wasn't clear that fighters can be stored in
the Launch tubes/bay and landing/recovery bay, so the
Launch-Hanger-Landing design has a transport capacity of 18 groups vs 9
for the 3x3 flight design.

I also left out that we allow fighters to be readied (loaded/fueled) in
landing and launch facilities but count at double size. I.e. your class 6
launch bay could reload 3 fighters at once, as could the landing bay.

However they cannot be "serviced", so that repairs for "patched up"
fighters on rearming/turnaround must be done in the hanger, same for
service during campaigns.

Conceptually, you could also have a Launch-Recovery Bay (with storage
but no arming/fueling capability) feed by a hanger bay and having
MASS/PV like the Launch/Hanger/Landing bays.  This is what I would do
for B5 Omegas and Novas: the externally-visible "tunnel" is the
Launch-Recovery Bay and an elevator/taxiway takes the craft to the
hanger.  Higher tech PSB could be grav accelerator/curtain barriers
like the Excalibur in Crusade.

Based on WW2 practice, we also allow (for campaigns only) storage in hangers
at 2:1, but require full space for operational prep. I.e. in a campaign your
class 6 hanger could have 8 groups in storage (counts as 4) and 2 groups
readied. When you want to begin operations, you need to clear some space by
transferring the ready groups to the launch bay, then ready two more. When
they are transfered, there are 3 open spots, allowing 3 to be readied, etc.

With a certain number of interceptor remaining on CAP (CSP?), you have enough
space to turn around an entire strike in a few turns.

> Its drawbacks are that it is somewhat more likely to take damage from

> compensate for its advantages. The choice between these two designs

I guess because I wasn't clear in my original post, but your L-H-L
design actually allows playing more complex flight ops, where a group is
launched and waits to form up with successive launches for a single strike.

Additionally, by using hangers, you can get the turnaround limits of real
carriers as a design constraint as well as well as doing away with the need
for arbitrary limits on operations like those in the current system. Instead
the ship designer sets those limits with the capacities chosen for various
facilities.

> With other choices for the bay masses and costs - eg. if you reduce

> system where these choices *aren't* trivial :-(

These were the numbers that we have used without anyone trying to "break" it.
If some serious testing were done, I would not be surprised to find that MASS
values of:
 3 +2 +2... and 2 +1 +1...
or
 4 +3 +2 +2 and 3 +2 +1 +1
or something similar were better. <shrug> Probably also CPV cost based on
class rather than MASS would be best.

J

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

I *have* been on the receiving end of it, but it was in situations where I
expected it to be powerful. Specifically, Minbari in groups of
3's, SW Rebels in groups of 4's, and SW TIE/Advanced and TIE/Defenders
also in groups of 4's.  The last two compared to TIE/F's, TIE/I's, and
TIE/B's in 6's.  However, in all of these cases it was done to
represent the superiority of the special units in question, so any
additional unbalancing got lost in the noise of the butt-kicking they
were doing anyways.

> The sizes of *small craft* bays OTOH are variable, and have been

The game mechanics reason is to prevent the variable size fighter bay
(and hence V-S fighter group) possible by inference if the two types
are multi-use, right?

> Bingo. Which exactly is why I want to replace the entire fucked-up FT

Why not? Why can't there be a section (page or two) of Fleet Book 3 containing
a full replacement for the fighter rules?

RE: crossover games
> >The designs that he has are (IMO) to give flavor to a game, rather

> that is)? The only measuring stick we have for that are the movies

Although I agree with the letter of that statement, I think I am thinking the
exact opposite of what you meant, i.e. I would add "as the larger ships are
significantly more efficient"

> >I can think of only two on-screen instances of fighters damaging SW

Only if you consider only the films. If you expand the references to
consider "X-Wing" and "TIE Fighter", then there are many instances of
escorts and capital ships killing each other, and the two instances that I
mentioned are special cases of a needle attack allowed in a
point-blank strafing attack and a kamikazi run best represented as a
role-playing incident rather than an occurrence common to FT.

> >1) I specifically excluded the SSD in my original post as I feel it

No, I said "Anything much larger than a 1600m ISD or 1800m battlestar", as in
1600m = "1600 meters". When I mean mass of ship in game terms I say "mass",
"MASS", or "TMF".

> to escort it he used TMF 300-ish ISDs and TMF 160-ish Victory-class

Using the TMF 300 ISD as a gage, a TMF 160 VSD seems about right, but
then I would expect a SSD to be TMF 6000-8000.

> >Makes it the same size as B5 ("Five miles long..."), as well

> Both of which are HUGE compared to the normal warships in the show,

In the same way that the SSD is "HUGE" compared to ISDs and MCCs.

If you watch carefully, when Minbari WCs pass *behind* B5 (so perspective is
making them look smaller, not larger), the distance from
top fin to bottom fin is comparable to the top-to-bottom distance of
the photo-electric panels on B5 itself.  And comparing EAS Schwartzkopf
and any number of Omega class, the Cent. Emperor's ship, and the "Narn Star
Cruiser G'Tak" to B5 when they are stationary close by shows them
to be on the order of 1/4 to 1/6 the length of B5.  That puts them in
the 2000 meter range, same as ISDs and battlestars.

> >2b)SW:ISB also attributes to the SSD an additional 60+ shuttles,

> Since we never see the shuttles and transports actually shooting at

We do in the games. They are lousey with Lambda shuttles, assault shuttles,
transports, and assault transports. For FT it is a good way
for adding the boarding rules to have 3-6 assault shuttles go for the
Nebulon when it's shields are down. They are also very good for having games
where the *objective* is to capture a specific enemy ship or personage, rather
than just an option with all your other weapons.

Another option is for transports to serve as tenders to reload your
TIE/B's without having to return to the hanger.

> and the ground troops for obvious reasons are unable to do so,

a) see above for boarding parties. b) More Thrust has an applicable quip in
the boarding rules section about boarding assault ships:)

> >At 4 CS per trooper and 50 CS per MASS, ...

> you're applying an inappropriate Mass scale from a completely

No, I am applying the scale from the "Full Thrust/Dirstside II
Interface".

> If the mass scale changes, the number of CS per mass changes with it

Quite obviously. Simply apply the same factor used for fighters to CS, i.e. if
12 TIEs = 1 FT fighter group, then apply a factor of 2. If the 72 TIE wing = 1
FT group, then apply a factor of 12. If the entire small craft complement of
an ISD = 1 FT fighter, then apply a factor of 100. Not a hard concept. I
thought everyone could do that one on their own.

> unless of course you believe that each individual trooper becomes a

Maybe if they are Zentraedi:)

My point was that adding an 90,000 CS worth of ground forces makes a
significant contribution to the TMF of an ISD, whether you use the 50:1 ratio
of MT or count a further scaling factor to make it 100:1, 600:1, or 5000:1.

> >3) WEG's SW:Rebel Alliance SB attributes 36 fighters (3x SW

> Yes, my goof. Even the hazy web sources I found agree with your

> >The range and power of the Shrike's shipkiller missiles puts them

> The range, agreed - but see below. The power, no - FT's torpedo

For that to work, I would have to insist on the Shrikes having multiple
anti-ship shots, perhaps one for each EF, rather than only one.  Also
would need rules for ship missiles used against fighter groups.

> >OTOH, the ship-launched impeller missiles are also beyond the scope

> Yep. Outside the scope of any normal-sized gaming table too, unless

Well... some people like going really fast and using small MUs, so you could
use 1 MU = 1 mm;D

> >However, if you want the fighters to have *some* effect without

> Completely wrong. There is no need whatsoever for a special system

Taking the word of members of the playtest group that the FB system
breaks down for ships over about TMF 350-400, I think there is a need
for an alternate fighter system for settings where the capitals (like ISDs or
battlestars) are larger than this when compared to the smallest viable ships
that are themselves larger than fighters. Example being in SW, with TIEs et
al. at any conversion rate so that An ISD gets at least 1 FT fighter group and
that for a Corellian
Corvette/Gunship/Blockade Runner to be a minimum usable FTL ship of
MASS 5-6, the ISD is going to be on the order of TMF 1000.  If you
reduce it below this, then the CC becomes a "fighter" or the ISD is
underrated.

> There is however a desperate need for a system where the fighter rules

> are balanced - and such a system can handle any fighter:capital mass

Only if the *ship* rules are also such that ships which are very high on the
FT TMF scale are both playable and balanced, which I have come to understand
from you that they are not.

J

> OO wrote

> Jared Hilal wrote:

Right now we have rules scattered through FT, MT, FB1, FB2. Some people

feel it would be better to have FT3 collect all the rules in one place, and
let the Fleet Books be, well, fleet books rather than rule books.

Jared:
> Only if the *ship* rules are also such that ships which are very high

There are a number of factors which affect ship balance, which makes getting
balance calculations more complicated than might be immediately
obvious -- and would make it quite difficult to design a ship without a
spreadsheet. JonT wants people to be able to design ships with a pencil

and paper, so we do the best we can.

Assuming that you want to have mostly, say, mass 50-150 ships, but you
also want to occasionally bring in that mass 1000 dreadplanet -- have
you considered writing it up as if it were a collection of ships, essentially
as a mobile space station?

> >>fighter rules complex with something that works... but I can't get

We are replaceing the fighter rules locally with the system lifted entirely
from SeaPower II/III.  It's clean, fast, allows for wide variations of
types, and quality. Perfect.

Essentially, it's a matrix of fighters, for each fighter a die is thrown.
Depending on the values in the matrix, hits are scored and the battle ends,
ordinance expended. I'm using the same system for AA and fighter launched
torpedos/bombs.

For example, 12 WildCats engage 8 Zeros (pretend that they are future
fighters. The matrix is consulted and we find the WildCats roll RED's (ones)
and the ZERO's roll Yellows (2 &3). 12 dice are rolled for the Wildcats
counting the red faces (1's) and the ZERO's roll 8 dice looking for
2's and 3's.   The Zero's in this case represent the better fighter, but
in the words of Stalin "Quantity has a quality all of it's own!"

I want to limit antiship attacks to torpedo and bomb carrying "specialist"
craft, as I am assuming that weapons large enough to damage a 25th century
spaceship would render a fighter incapable of dogfighting. Historical
precedence for this.   This also allows the use of real tactics.

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> We assumed that the GZG setting was a stable basis, then any scaling f

Understandable assumption since many other games are written to reflect
specific backgrounds; but the GZG games aren't written to reflect the
GZGverse - on the contrary, the GZG setting was written to give those
players too lazy to make up their own background a setting to play in, but it
doesn't drive the game design in any way.

> > >Point Defense Batteries

You're replying to the wrong part of what I wrote :-/ My point here
wasn't
that your rules concepts are similar to the beta test stuff - that's
more a case of "great minds think alike", or something; the point was that
these
concepts aren't specific for large-scale backgrounds.

> >a "classic" Mass-12 soapbubble carrier can now carry 6 fighter groups

IOW you have in effect cut the cost of each fighter group in half or more,
since the cost of the bay usually provides some 50-70% of the total
fighter cost. Ouch. It is probably fortunate that your group is friendly
rather
than competitive :-/

> >>This system gives several design choices. For example, do you have

No, the other way around, just like I wrote - especially if you use the
9x class cost, but even if you use the 3x MASS one:

3xFlight Bays cost 3x (3*6) = 54 pts with the 3x MASS cost, or 9*9 = 81 pts
with the 9x class cost.

1x [launch+hangar+recovery] + 9 extra taxiways costs 3x (5+5+5) + 9x 1 =
54
pts with the 3x MASS cost, or 6x [6+6+6] + 9x 1 = 117 pts with the "9x
class" costs.

IOW the "3x MASS" cost makes the two combinations cost the same amount of
points (54 pts each), BUT since the launch/hangar/recovery combination
is 1.5 MASS larger the carrier as a whole will cost slightly more than the 3x
flight bay carrier.

The "9x class" cost OTOH makes the 3x flight bay combination cost 36 pts

less than the launch/hangar/recovery combo even before you add in the
effect from that 1.5 MASS difference.

> >since its slightly smaller bay Mass means that the basic hull

The hangar isn't of much use if it can't launch or recover any fighters,

and the risk for losing at least one of the launch and recovery bays on the
first threshold is far greater than the risk of losing all three flight bays
on the flight bay carrier in the first check (31% compared to
0.5%).

> 2) depends on where in the launch cycle the ship is,

Of course. But the flight bay carrier doesn't have to worry about it at all.

> >and it carries 50% more fighters (which of course have to be bought

In which case it couldn't launch or recover all of its fighter groups at

once (and in the latter case would also have to spend 2.5 extra Mass on
taxiways, but that's a very minor point). More on this below.

> Looking back I see that I wasn't clear that fighters can be stored in

OK; that could make a bit of difference - your previous post indicated
that the launch and recovery bays *couldn't* store fighters. Unfortunately it

doesn't change my main point; all it does is to potentially reverse which of
the combinations is favoured and which is redundant.

> >Its drawbacks are that it is somewhat more likely to take damage from

As long as you either launch the fighters before the tactical game starts or
you have several game turns in which to launch or recover your fighters before
the enemy can take advantage of the carrier's total lack of manoeuvring while
launching (unless you've changed the FT fighter launch

rules, of course), that works nicely.

Unfortunately my old 120 x 80 gaming table wasn't large enough to allow the
latter - staying on the same course and speed for three consecutive
turns to launch fighters was pretty much the same as writing the carrier off.

> >With other choices for the bay masses and costs - eg. if you reduce

I suspected as much. The problem is that this kind of design systems give the
munchkins too many variables to play with; it is extremely difficult to
keep them all balanced - and the munchkins will very quickly find the
ones which aren't.

Regards,

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> >Bingo. And given the rather massive advantages they can gain from

IOW you didn't notice that the smaller fighter groups were more powerful

than their points cost warranted. Fair enough.

> >The sizes of *small craft* bays OTOH are variable, and have been

Yep. It is an underhanded way to do it, but it works against most
powergamers and munchkins - and they're the ones it needs to work
against; friendly gamers aren't nearly as likely to abuse the rules anyway (or
as in your case, even notice that there is a problem). The problem comes when
friendly gamers make the munchkins aware of the potential for rules
abuse :-/

> >Bingo. Which exactly is why I want to replace the entire fucked-up FT

Because even with the tiny font used in the Fleet Books I rather doubt that
a page or two would suffice for a full replacement of the current five+
pages of fighter rules (not counting the various redundant and superceded
sections), and FB3 is already cramped for space.

> RE: crossover games

OK, fair enough.

> >>1) I specifically excluded the SSD in my original post as I feel it

Sorry, my bad. Since the metric length of a ship only has a very vague
connection to the ship's TMF when you can choose any mass scale you want, I
still don't quite see why the absolute size of the ship would put any
particular limits to whether or not it is playable though <shrug>

> >to escort it he used TMF 300-ish ISDs and TMF 160-ish Victory-class

...most of which would be taken up by the large ground combat force it
carries, and which therefore can be ignored in space combat situations
:-/
(Unless of course you want to use AT-ATs or other heavy vehicles in
boarding battles, but I must say that that sounds a bit far-fetched to
me.)

> >>Makes it the same size as B5 ("Five miles long..."), as well

Sure. But just like most of B5's internal volume is empty space and most of
the EF Explorer is a gridwork open to deep space, a huge part of the SSD's
volume is taken up by stuff not relevant for space combat which can safely be
ignored.

> >>2b)SW:ISB also attributes to the SSD an additional 60+ shuttles,

Fair enough.

> >and the ground troops for obvious reasons are unable to do so,

According to the FT boarding rules, the basic complement of boarding troops
and their craft are already in the ship's Mass so you don't have to pay
extra for them. As for the rest - exactly how many of the Executor's
72,000 ground combat soldiers, or the ISD's 9,600 for that matter, do you
think

those 3-6 Full Thrust boarding shuttles you mentioned can carry? The
rest of the gropos have no effect on the space combat game unless someone is
dumb enough to board the Star Destroyer openly (as opposed to doing so
covertly, like Luke & co. did in the movies).

> >>At 4 CS per trooper and 50 CS per MASS, ...

Which is obviously an inappropriate scale for Star Wars, since it uses the
same man:mass ratio as the More Thrust boarding rules you've already
referred to. According to those rules a Victory-class ship (crew
strenght about 4800 men IIRC) "should" be TMF ~1200 (ie. 1 Mass per 4 crew
members), yet you didn't seem to have any major problems with representing it
as a

TMF 160 ship.

> >If the mass scale changes, the number of CS per mass changes with it

So why didn't you allow for it in the example?

> My point was that adding an 90,000 CS worth of ground forces makes a

And my point is that those 90,000 CS worth of ground forces make such a small
contribution to the *space combat power* of the ISD that they can be ignored
for Full Thrust purposes.

> >>OTOH, the ship-launched impeller missiles are also beyond the scope

Doesn't really help. HH missiles - the old-style ones described in TSVW
that is, not the new-fangled Ghost Rider stuff - have max ranges on the
order of 50-100 times longer than energy weapon ranges against
sidewalls,
and at least 15-20 times longer than energy ranges against targets
without sidewalls... and that's assuming that the launching ship can't use its
own relative velocity (ie. relative to the target) to boost the missile
engagement range... so unless you have a HUGE table or you're prepared to say
"missiles can reach any point on the table" you still tend to end up

with energy weapon ranges of an on-table inch or less.

> >>However, if you want the fighters to have *some* effect without

If you're going to quote us, please at least quote us correctly...

The *CPV* system currently breaks down above TMF 350-400, but as already

described it is still under development. We may be able to extend it to handle
larger ship sizes; Laserlight mentioned one of the options we're looking at.

The *FB* (ie., *N*PV) system breaks down a lot earlier than TFM 350-400,

which is why we're working on the CPV system in the first place. You already
use the FB system to design large ships, but I suspect that your

gaming environment has shielded you from the worst effects of the current
big-vs-small ship balance problems.

> I think there is a need for an alternate fighter system for settings

> viable ships that are themselves larger than fighters. Example being

In Star Wars the smallest FTL-capable ships are single-person fighters
(eg.
X-wings), not Corellian Corvettes. (OK, 2-person fighters if you count
the
astromech droids :-/ ) By your above logic this means that an *X-wing*
should be represented by a TMF 5-6 FTL-capable ship instead of by the
fighter rules. Since you accept that X-wings are represented by the
fighter
rules in spite of being FTL-capable, there is nothing which prevents you

from representing Corellian Corvettes in the same fashion as well. OK, you
need a house rule allowing fighters to make independent FTL jumps, but you
need that anyway to represent SW battles properly <shrug>

Regards,

RE: SW SD ground forces
> OO wrote:

> can be ignored for Full Thrust purposes.

If you include them in the design, then yes, the *offensive* power of the ship
is unaffected, but the survivability of the ship is quadrupled (if you assume
a constant ratio of hull mass rather than "pick any number with minimum" of
FB2). So the *defensive* capability is significantly increased.

RE: relationship between fighters and ships
> I wrote:

OO responded:
> In Star Wars the smallest FTL-capable ships are single-person fighters

> (eg. X-wings), not Corellian Corvettes. (OK, 2-person fighters if you

They may be the smallest FTL *craft*, but I would not count them as
*ships*.

> By your above logic this means that an *X-wing* should be represented

Since I don't count them as *ships*, then no they shouldn't.

> Since you accept that X-wings are represented by the fighter rules in

My emphasis is on "ships" (as opposed to craft), not "FTL". The CC is
a small *ship*.  A X-Wing, TIE Defender, or Imperial Assault Shuttle
are *craft*. I am undecided whether the CF is a very small ship or very large
craft.

RE: ship size and game design
> Laserlight wrote:

That assumption would be wrong.

For example, we use B5 conversions that run about TMF 300 for Centuari Primus
and Narn G'Quan and over TMF 400 for Octurian and Bin'Tak. For SW, a Nebulon
is about TMF 50, a SDs and MCCs well over 1000. Our home
grown setting capital ships run about TMF 300-400.  TMF 150 would be a
large fleet escort and TMF 50 would be a small feet escort.

> have you considered writing it up as if it were a collection of

We usually do not have superships except as a theoretical exercise. Using Dean
Gundberg's SSD as a reference, sectional ships seem much weaker than the same
systms on a single ship because

1) a much lower amount of damage will cause threshold checks 2) area effect
weapons can e interpreted to affect more than one section 3) a single section
can be critical to the ship, and concentrating on that can eliminate the ship
while bypassing the rest of the ship's strength.

J

> We usually do not have superships except as a theoretical exercise.

Yes, OTOH, you'd also have a much lower CPV for six Size N sections than

for one Size 6N ship.

RE: hanger and launch bays After lots of explanation and critique that I
actually found quite helpful,
> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

Well, as a customer of GZG, here is the bottom line of my input: My group
dislikes the basic FT treatment of fighter bays.

The main complaints are that we would like a treatment where there can
be (minimum options): a large, multi-group, variable-size (# of groups)
"hanger area" in the interior of the ship treated as a protected system and an
exposed "launch and recovery area" of variable size. Setting references would
fit SW, B5 and BSG. This contrasts with the current scheme where each group
has its own exposed bay that serves all functions.

We would be happy with any system, even one like:
Hanger MASS = 9 +8 +7 +6 +6 etc.
Launch & recovery MASS = 3 +2 +1 +1 or 3 +2 +2

J

> > We usually do not have superships except as a theoretical exercise.

Since I was invoked, I'll jump in.  Yes, multi-sectional superships are
weaker than a single monster ship.

> > 1) a much lower amount of damage will cause threshold checks

Yup, but I don't think having each row an extreme length is realistic either.
With sections, some thresholds will be taken, but only for that section so
potential damage will be limited. I see it as similar to damage resoultion
from other space games, specifically like B5 Wars where you could shoot off a
side of a ship and the rest of the ship still functions.

> > 2) area effect weapons can e interpreted to affect more than one

Yup, and since a supership has more area to damage, I think it should
logically take more damage. Finding the size of each section is critial in
this case. An area effect weapon should not destroy all the sections of a
ship, it should damage them all (in my opinion) but the ship as a whole should
still stay viable. I think I had each section of the SSD at mass 250 which by
itself is still a powerful ship and should withstand multiple area effect
weapons before it looses most of its combat efficiancy.

> > 3) a single section can be critical to the ship, and concentrating

On my Super Star Destroyer, the core was critical, but weapon fire from other
ships had to destroy outer sections of the ship first before they could hit
the core. Fighters on the other hand, could target a specific section of the
ship, and in the GenCon battle, that is what they did when the SSD player
landed his fighters to reload (a bad tactical move when they still had half
their endurance left). Maybe that isn't realistic, but for a ship the size of
a SSD, I thought it made sense.

> Yes, OTOH, you'd also have a much lower CPV for six Size N sections

Yup, that would be true too.

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> >>>With other choices for the bay masses and costs - eg. if you reduce

So go on using the house rule design system you like! Your group doesn't

seem to include any munchkins, so the imbalances shouldn't cause you any

major problems.

However, not all gaming groups are that lucky, and we have to write the
official rules such that those less lucky groups can use them as well.
Unless we can work out a flexible yet reasonably munchkin-proof carrier
design system it won't become official; and having spent several years trying
to create such a system for StarFire (which treats fighter and small craft
bays in essentially the same way as Full Thrust does) without
succeeding - none of the systems I and the others in the Starfire Design

Studio came up with lasted more than two days of destruct-testing by the

on-line StarFire community - I'm afraid I don't have any great hopes to
succeed in Full Thrust either.

Regards,

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> RE: SW SD ground forces

If all the ship's surface systems are shot away, it turns into a drifting
hulk rather than a cloud of debris - but it is nevertheless "destroyed"
in FT terms, since it can no longer manoeuvre or fire weapons and has no hopes
of repairing any of the damage within the time frame of the battle.

> RE: relationship between fighters and ships

And why not? Merely because they're called "fighters" in the SW canon, or
because you need a distinction between them and the Corellian ships to have a
reason to claim that mass scale is too low to allow SSDs to be playable, or
for some other reason?

Looking at another of your example SF backgrounds B5 StarFuries and other
single-person fighters are explicitly called "ships" in that background.
If
the B5 StarFuries qualify as "ships", why don't SW X-wings and similar
do so?

I'm sorry, Jared, but I get the impression that you have already decided

that SDDs and similar huge craft are unplayable and that you are now actively
searching for arguments to keep them that way. What I don't understand is
*why* you do this.

> We usually do not have superships except as a theoretical exercise.

You have just listed three of the six main reasons why large ships cost so
much in the CPV system, and thus also why breaking them up into sections

would reduce their total CPVs.

(The remaining main reasons are 4) the individual sections run a much bigger
risk of running out of FCSs, 5) the sectioned ship can't fire all its weapons
the first thing that happens in the Ships Fire phase since each section counts
as a separate ship, and 6) the sections can't combine their DCPs to repair
damage, while a single huge ship could.)

Regards,

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

And if you give it its proper size and hull integrity, then in game terms, it
does have the crew (DCPs) to repair systems and continue the
engagement, barring heavy use of needle-type attacks.

> >RE: relationship between fighters and ships

None of the above. I see the differences as paralleling wet navy distinctions:
small craft boats ships but ignoring colloquialisms, like calling submarines
"boats" and
super-high tech settings were the ship can run itself.

Ships have large crews and are equipped for extended voyages.

Boats have smaller crews and are equipped for shorter voyages.

Craft have minimal crew and are equipped for very brief voyages.

For the space settings, small craft would not have galley or sleeping
accommodations and often only 1-4 crew who are all required for general
(non-combat) operation.  Maximum medical facilities are first aid and
emergency survival-type kits.  Includes fighters/bombers, shuttles,
pinnaces, gigs, etc., often max life support endurance measured in
hours or days.  Yes, pilots might sleep/meditate/torpor in the cockpit.
Once you get to bunks, you are straddling the line between craft and boats. As
technology increases (and crews decrease correspondingly),
the same tasks shift towards craft classification e.g. B-36 -> B-52 ->
B-1B -> B-2.

Boats in this setting would have galley and sleeping accommodations and a
larger crew. Minimal medical facilities, i.e. stowed
equipment/supplies but no dedicated facilities, with 1 or more crew
members cross-trained to the standards of "medic's assistant".  The
crew is large enough that for general ops there are enough crew to stand at
least two watches. Includes system patrol vessels, Honor Harrington LACs, etc.
Max LS is often measured in 10s of days or weeks. Equivalent to wet navy MTBs,
PTs, PCGs, etc.

Ships in a sci-fi space setting have full crew accommodations and
include personnel upkeep facilities missing in boats such as medical
facilities with at least 1 crew member specialist, whether "ship's surgeon",
"corpsman", "sick bay attendant", or whatever. Minimum training equals
paramedic or equivalent, larger ships with qualified
nurse and/or doctor, etc.  Larger ships intended for long deployments
require additional specialists, both officers and enlisted for the care of the
crew which, on a boat, either would not be required (dentist, barber) or are
duties shared by the small crew (cook, security).

This s for military vessels and craft. Civilians and merchants will have
smaller crews.

Thus the Corellian Corvette/Gunship/Blockade Runner is a quite small
"ship", while the Corellian Freighter is a civilian "boat"; 2 to
operate minimally, 4-8 to crew fully in combat.

> Looking at another of your example SF backgrounds B5 StarFuries and

1) I don't remember them being called "ships". Can you refer me to an episode
so I can check?

2) It is common practice for modern pilots, both military and naval, to refer
to fighters, bombers, and helicopters as their "ships". This dates to before
WW2. In no way would anyone believe these machines are in the same category of
endurance and capabilities as a destroyer, cruiser, battleship or fleet
carrier. The context of the dialog would have to be examined.

> I'm sorry, Jared, but I get the impression that you have already

No, I have decided that massive super-vessels cannot be used
*simultaneously with small craft*. There is a big difference between that and
"are unplayable period". If the small craft drop off to insignificance, then
the supership is just fine as long as you don't care about the small craft.
The problem occurs when you want the fighters to matter.

> >We usually do not have superships except as a theoretical exercise.

As I have no experience with CPV, that is a meaningless referent for me.

J

> The main complaints are that we would like a treatment where there can

Two parts to this -- variable size and protected system.

For variable size, you could try Fighter Bay = 3 Mass + 1 Mass per
fighter. The base 3 mass could be construed as separate tracking and control
facilities, combat air traffic controllers, etc. This is
totally un-playtested, but at least it would discourage
1-fighter-per-group cheese.

Not sure what the "protected system" is worth. Normally I'd guess it's worth
about 25% of the points cost, but that's not necessarily
applicable for fighters--ie if 50% of my fighters die, how much is it
worth to have rearm/refuel cpacity for 100% of them instead of, say, 86%

after a threshold?

And you should also have some kind of discount to reflect the chance
that your landing/launching tube works but your hangers are dead, or
vice versa.

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> If all the ship's surface systems are shot away, it turns into a

*In game terms*, yes. In FT game terms, a single DCP can, given enough
time, repair EVERY SINGLE damaged system aboard a ship - even if it is a

large superdreadnought one hull box away from destruction. There is no chance
whatsoever that any system has been so badly damaged that it can no longer be
repaired by the ship's own resources.

Compare that to what we see in the movies and TV shows, where entire weapon
turrets and screen generators get blown to scrap. The only way - in the
movies, and also in reality - to "repair" such damage is to replace the
entire system... so unless the ship has spare turrets lying around in its
cargo holds, it shouldn't be able to repair it. For ships which haven't blown
up, the "no hull boxes left" is a good game representation of the stage where
all surface systems have been so badly damaged that they can no
longer be repaired from ship-board resources.

> RE: relationship between fighters and ships

To me this looks like a very elaborate way of saying "because you need a

distinction between them and the Corellian ships", because:

> Ships have large crews and are equipped for extended voyages.

Ah. Like, say, the very brief voyages from Hoth to Dagobah and Dagobah to
Bespin; or why not the similarly brief voyages from Coruscant to Kamino? Or
Earth to B5, in that other background?

But more importantly, what impact do these differences in endurance have

*in Full Thrust game terms*? None at all, unless your FT battles take
several days (in-game time, not player real-world times) to fight out -
which again is not what we see in the movies; there the battles tend to be
much shorter than that.

> Looking at another of your example SF backgrounds B5 StarFuries and

Just about all of them? OK, they're usually called "warships", not just
"ships" (as in "we'll send some warships to investigate", "jumpgate
activating - it's a warship", etc.).

> I'm sorry, Jared, but I get the impression that you have already

You yourself wrote, and I quote your post verbatim:

"I specifically excluded the SSD in my original post as I feel it is beyond
the scale of the game. Anything much larger than a 1600m ISD or 1800m
battlestar is beyond playability."

That's a pretty definite statement, and I can't find any qualifier about

"simultaneously with small craft" anywhere else in that message
(http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200403/msg00171.html).

> You have just listed three of the six main reasons why large ships

The reasons why large ships cost more in the CPV system are identical to

the reasons why large ships are consistently too powerful for their NPV
cost compared to smaller ships - so unless you also have no experience
with the current NPV system used in the Fleet Books, this reference is quite
meaningful indeed to you.

(Of course, if your group is as scenario-oriented as it seems to be it
is perfectly possible that you actually don't have any experience with the
current NPV system - but in that case I don't quite understand why you'd

worry about the *C*PV system making large ships overpriced, since you wouldn't
be very likely to use it any more than you use the NPV one?)

Regards,

> I wrote:

> >>If all the ship's surface systems are shot away, it turns into a

Unless of course it has been hit by a Needle Beam :-/

Regards,

> (...)There is no

> longer be repaired by the ship's own resources.

On the other hand, most of DCP rolls in my group were SOOOOO poor that we
usually considered those systems, and there were many, that didn't get
repaired actually broken beyond repair, and the repair crew were just too stup
^h bborn to quit.

The_Beast

Jared, thanks for these, I'm working on my own, very simple system for this,
which I've posted on a separate message.

> --- Laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

I meant variable size in terms of the ship designer chooses how many *groups*
can be accommodated by the hanger and how many *groups* can be
handled by the launch/recovery system in one turn.  I did not mean
variable number of fighters per group.

J

Or 1 Mass per fighter plus half of that for the bay and launch
facilities - round up. I'd also require that for normal operations each
group have its own bay.

> Jared Hilal wrote:

> --- Laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote: