Fighters....

> "Can't be done." accompanied with much hand-waving

objection your honor:) I admit I awkwadly raised the subject of fighters out
of the grave since someone said i should be clean in FT3, I just wanted to
know what the pb was and not compare FT with starmada: I never played starmada
and never encountered this fighter pb since in my group we're playing with
logically build forces and litterally eradicate (physically if needed:) every
munchkin attempt! (ie we play by the spirit not by the rule)

Anyway if changes are to be done here is my humble opinion based on my humble
experience. Fighters could be a bit more "specialised". You'll have bombers
and torpedo bombers which are big ships killers but very vulnerable to enemy
fighters (ie bomber hunters). If you want to build up a biiiig bomber force
you should pay for some escorts that are useless against bigs ships but
necessary to keep your bombers alive against enemy fighters. The point is we
may reach a degree where space superiority should be acheived before launching
your bombers "safely". That doesn't solve at all the pb of swarming bombers
but a few squadrons of defending fighters should delay enough the attack to
allow ship to enter beam rang and attack the carriers. This is tactic now, not
paper-scissor :)
In game terms make real fighters and interceptors
effectve against enemy fighters/bombers and lot less
effective against capital ships, the opposite for
bomber and forget the multirole-good-at-everything
fighter-bomber.
A defensive squadrons should shoot and distribute its hits at will among the
attacking bombers. Escorting fighters beeing allowed to shoot simultaneouly
the enemy only during escort, not during the attack of the bomber on the big
ship. (it's getting complex may be
...)

Anyway if you're outnumbered and bombers still comes to your ships like flies
to a pot of honey how can you survive? Here comes the considerations: * if you
see entire waves of bombers, the flak could be more effective with the
increasing number of enemy
... when does the flak/DCA/PDS becomes more efficient,
I don't have the optimal figures to propose! But it would allow small bomber
groups to be still usefull and bigger groups to be more usefull but at a
higher cost in losses terms so such attack should be meant tactically. In game
term a simple ratio of group vs PDS could give the result ( up to 2 to 1, have
the same hit numbers for PDS, above increase this capacity via hits more often
of more reroll or both, it's just math and stats afterwards) * your bombers
can then take the choice to attack at long range, less effective but less
risky in terms of losses, a bit like in WWII tactics...

I give no exemple explicite limit numbers nor dicing to reached these results
since I don't know the expectation of the test group, dicing can always be
forged to match your mathematical expectations, well at least I can try to
make it myself (see my own FT pages:D)

/morp