[FT] back to fighters

[quoted original message omitted]

> At 10:44 2002-05-11 +0200, K.H.Ranitzsch wrote:

That is a very good suggestion. Doesn't change anything else than what is
broken. Easy to implement, just group all fighter squadrons in groups of

six when attacking. Perfect!

(Don't know who suggested it first, I can't recall seeing it before.)

____

G'day,

> While I don't like the idea that only a limited number of fighters

Sorry if someone else has already made this comment (haven't had a chance to
really keep up with this thread), but limiting it to waves of 6 isn't really
going to help I would've thought. May be we're just not very good
players/designers down here, but a stack of 6 fighters is usually a
pretty
good way of dispatching/crippling ships down here (especially if you're
aiming at taking out the supporting cruisers first). In addition, even with
multiple waves you're dropping the total number of fighters going in by
between about 1 and 4 fighters per 6 groups coming in (so with morale in play
too you may see an extra group or two pull out, but not exactly a major
deterrence). I wouldn't have thought that was enough of a change to bother
doing it (especially if you have to justify it against all the "space is big,
VERY big" problems people like me are going to see with the argument).

Cheers

[quoted original message omitted]

> G'day,

I KNOW I'm going to regret getting involved in this argument
(er..."heated
discussion") at this stage, but here goes nothing....

As several people have already pointed out, the PSB behind fighters is all
down to what style of fighter attacks you are trying to simulate. For what
it's worth, my intention behind fighter attacks has always leaned towards the
"attack run and fire at close range" type of thing, as you see in most
of the movies/TV series that employ space fighters, where the fighters
swoop towards the target ship, jinking their way through the flak from the
PDS, fire antiship weaponry at fairly short range, then pull out with typical
flyboy flair before regrouping for the next pass..... all very cinematic and
jolly good fun, wizard prang chaps and all that! The idea of a 6 mu" "range"
for fighter attacks was never intended to be a
stand-off range for their weapons, but the distance at which they would
start to make their attack runs against the ship. Now, if you take the
opposite tack and assume that fighter attacks consist
of launching guided stand-off muntions (or firing beam weapons) at 6 mu
range, then the "space is big" argument holds and there is no PSB reason why
you can't have huge numbers of fighters could potentially attack
simultaneously; but if you subscribe to the "attack run" idea then the space
IMMEDIATELY AROUND the target ship actually ISN'T all that big anymore, and is
going to get awfully crowded with lots of fighters zipping past each other,
especially if they're arriving from different directions!! In this case,
making fighters attack in "waves" (or even as individual groups), with PDS
able to fire at each successive attack, becomes eminently reasonable under the
PSB......

I'm not making ANY decisions yet on which rules options to go for (though I
will say that I like Tom's (?) idea of presenting a number of options for
differing genres, with a default option for the "official" background), but
I just thought I'd add to the fun a bit......   ;-)

> From: <Beth.Fulton@csiro.au>

> K.H.Ranitzsch wrote:

True, 6 is probably too much.

I would prefer a fixed number so as to not have to make calculations on the
fly, or even in advance. I'm stupid, so it has to be simple.

One of the things we want to do is balance fighters against the fleetbook
designs, right? So perhaps we should look at how many fighters we'd expect in
such a battle.

Perhaps four - that seems to me like about what an ordinary carrier, uh,

carries? And I suppose that is about what the FB1 designs were balanced
against. Not too large battles with not much more than one carrier on each
side.

Now, I'm not that an experienced FT:er (more of an SG type of guy), but while
six sounds too much, wouldn't four be in the spectrum of
good-but-not-overpowering? I have an inkling that three would be on the
verge of not enough.

____

> I KNOW I'm going to regret getting involved in this argument

Well of course...

> space IMMEDIATELY AROUND the target ship actually ISN'T all that big

Oh really??? This depends on how big an MU is and how much time one turn
is.  The accepted, but un-official, scale is 1 MU = 10,000 km's and 1
turn = 10 minutes. Let's half both of thoes to be on the safe side, 1 MU =
5,000 km's and 1 turn = 5 minutes. Each ship can be attacked from 720 degrees
(the surface area of a sphere). This means that the attack area at 6 MU's is
over 376,991 square km's. That's not big? At 1 km from the target, the attack
area is over 12.5 km's assuming the target is a point. Note that at
this scale, the velocity of the fighters is 60,000 km/h.  You can shove
alot of fighters through that space in 5 minutes at that velocity...

> In this case, making fighters attack in "waves" (or even as individual

In Desert Storm, the U.S. used co-ordinated air attacks to prevent just
this from happening. Why would fighter attacks in the future be more primitive
then they are today?

It think the problem is that there are no good escorts. Player's are taking
un-balanced fleets into battles and getting hosed by fighters because
they haven't built the fleet to deal serriously with fighters. If you look at
early World War 2, capital ships had much the same problem. How did they
deal with it?  They added lots more anti-aircraft guns to existing
capital ships and built real escorts. I don't see this as a game mechanic
problem. I see this as a mistakes being made by players.

Good Escort Example: Victoria BB, remove 1 class 1 beam, 1 class 2 beam,
downgrade 2 class 3 beams with class 2 beams. Add 3 ADFC (assuming 1 mass per)
and 9 PD's. You
now have a ship with the firepower of a Vandenburg/T Heavy cruiser, but
with 3 ADFC and 12 PD's.

I wonder how effective fighter attack would be if you down graded the
anti-ship armament of ALL ships larger then DD's just enough to add one
ADFC??? If anyone tries this, please let the list know how it turns out.

> On 12-May-02 at 09:36, Imre A. Szabo (ias@sprintmail.com) wrote:

That post you replied to so snippily, you might want to compare the author of
the post to the name on the cover of your copy of FB1. Then think about who
has the final say about PSB and the official rules. Unofficialy of course you
can say fighters move 72" and and hit kills a ship.

Imre A. Szabo schrieb:
> The accepted, but un-official, scale is 1 MU =

Wasn't that 1.000 Km, doesn't matter, it's still big.

> You can shove alot of fighters through that space in 5

Under the PSB/romantic image model explained by Jon, the fighter
weapons have a fairly short range (comparable to present-day cannon),
say a few hundred meters, perhaps a kilometer, that's not that big a volume.

The 5 minutes time-span is not really relevant. The wave attack
suggestion allows any number of fighter attacks in one turn, but the
PDS can reload / re-
aim between waves. Any respectable point-defence system should be able
to hit several targets within a 5 minute time-span.

> In Desert Storm, the U.S. used co-ordinated air attacks to prevent

3 squadrons of FT fighters are 18 fighters. I can't remember reading Desert
Storm reports of more than 2 or 3 individual fighters attacking a target
simultaneously, with perhaps their wing men following
split-seconds later.
Does anybody know better?

Greetings

From: Imre A. Szabo <ias@sprintmail.com>

> Oh really??? This depends on how big an MU is and how much time one

1000, not 10,000, when last I looked.

> 1 turn = 10 minutes.

15 minutes is heard fairly often, with a small but loudmouthed minority (ie
me) pointing out the elegance of 7.5 minutes. I haven't heard 10 miutes lately
but it's close enough.

> --- Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.keme.co.uk> wrote:

> I KNOW I'm going to regret getting involved in this
------
I will second that!

...For what
> it's worth, my intention behind fighter attacks has

> --- Roger Books <books@jumpspace.net> wrote:

> That post you replied to so snippily, you might want

> --- KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

> 3 squadrons of FT fighters are 18 fighters. I can't

With the exception of the large convoy leaving Kuwiat(?) city, the targets
were tacitical, a tank, a bunker,
ect..

I just did a bit of research on the destruction of Force Z (Repulse and Prince
of Wales) on Dec 10th, 1941. 1BB, 1 BC and 3 DD were attacked by waves of 36,
36, and 27 torpedo bombers. Up to 18 bombers from a group attacked a capital
ship simultaneously (9 dive and 9 torpedo bombers, so

may be considered seperate attacks).

see http://www.forcez-survivors.org.uk/ on the "Pilot's Eye View" link
(I love frames, when they're done right.).

At Midway, during the Magic Five Minutes, 15-18 planes attacked as
single groups on each of three targets. Similar numbers of torpedo planes had
attacked earlier.

Just to be difficult, the IJN used 9 plane squadrons.

PS The SS Automedon link details a major intelligence coup by the raider

Atlantis. I'd love to see what the Roosevelt conspiracy theorists do with the
coverup at Whitehall.

> John Leary wrote:

> --- KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

> --- Laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

> >1 turn = 10 minutes.

7.5 minute turn (1/2 length of DSII turn)
1000km 1 acceleration is (approx, due to granularity) 1G.

It's too neat not to use.

> --- "Imre A. Szabo" <ias@sprintmail.com> wrote:

> > space IMMEDIATELY AROUND the target ship actually

You know, it comes across as fairly immature and irrational to start lecturing
the author of a game system on his work.

Especially when you do so rudely.

One of the PSB's for the "PDS fires on all groups" idea does not care whether
the fighters come in waves or all at once. It is the interpretation of PDS as
being an "all around the ship" defense that fills the nearspace of the ship
with BB's, AF particle beams, an "energy

drain field" or whatever you want. Any fighter coming in any time could not
avoid this envelope because it is larger than the attack envelope of

the fighter.

RE: Interceptors, I'm not necessarily for making interceptors stronger, but I
don't see why you couldn't split interceptor groups into say half size and
have each half take on an enemy fighter group. True, the interceptors would
likely get wiped out that much quicker, but they
would delay/damage twice as many groups. If delaying action were all
that were needed, split them into pairs of leads/wingmen. Each
interceptor pair gets to engage an entire non-interceptor FG in a
dogfight.

Noam:
> One of the PSB's for the "PDS fires on all groups" idea does not care

drain field" or whatever you want.

Or you could say "the fighters are coming in waves but that's below the
granularity of the system, so we depict them all attacking (and being attacked
by PDS) at once."

> From: KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de (K.H.Ranitzsch)

> A twist on this, mainly to still give ADFC a PSB-sensible role:

Makes sense to me.

3B^2

> Noam wrote:

Laserlight replied:
> Or you could say "the fighters are coming in waves but that's below the

> granularity of the system, so we depict them all attacking (and being

Which more and more sounds like it justifies allowing PDS to fire on multiple
targets.

3B^2

> John Atkinson wrote:

> >>1 turn = 10 minutes.

<chuckle> Well, except of course for the *other* neat scale available:

2.5 minute turn (1/2 of SGII turn)
1 mu = 100 km 1 thrust point = 1G (approx)

;-)

> On Sun, 12 May 2002, John Atkinson wrote:

> --- "Imre A. Szabo" <ias@sprintmail.com> wrote:

You know you've been *really* rude when... Mr.John Atkinson actually has to
tell you off.

I needed a good laugh. Thanks, everyone!

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

Yuck! 100km, ugh.

Too small.

> At 05:37 16/05/02 -0700, John wrote:

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

I don't know, consider the Phalons and their PBL with the 1000km scale it
envelopes small planets (and we were worried about the Kravak):)

But playing at the 100km scale could make it very interesting fighting in a
planet's gravity well.

Cheers

I had been thinking about 1000km, but all of a sudden 100km sounds very

promising. It makes the PSB for fighters an order of magnitude more reasonable
too.

> Derek Fulton wrote:

> I don't know, consider the Phalons and their PBL with the 1000km scale

> it envelopes small planets (and we were worried about the Kravak) :)

> --- Derek Fulton <derekfulton@bigpond.com> wrote:

> I don't know, consider the Phalons and their PBL

IMU there are no Plasma Bolt Launchers, or any other "area effect" weaponry.

The amount of energy required seems to be a bit high
to do that sort of damage to _everything_ in such a
massive globe. If you could generate that much energy, it would seem to me a
better idea to narrow it down and punch holes in planets rather that simply
microwaving them.

G'day,

> The amount of energy required seems to be a bit high

Even at the larger scales I haven't had much of a problem as I've thought of
it as the area covered my small homing bomblets rather than a single massive
wave of plasma (even if that is what is said under the blurb).

Cheers