Fighters are a powerful single strike weapon (both historically and in
sci-fi tv and novels) but usually suffer from a lack of ordinance to
follow up the attacks effectively. Sure, in one turn 20 fighter squadrons can
totally destroy an SDN, but that isn't the whole story regarding balance. Part
of the current problem is that those 20 squadrons can do the same thing for 6
turns, but usually more like 4 turns after burning endurance due to a bad
movement guess or failed morale checks.
Simply changing the endurance (as has been suggested by someone else) would
probably go a long way towards fixing most of the problem. Reduce the standard
fighter endurance to 3 (6 for Long Range) reduces fighters effectiveness over
a game by at least a third, but still allows a devastating first strike.
Burning Endurance: Extra movement: 1 point Declaring an against a starship
attack: 1 point Dogfighting: 1 point
Dogfighting with no endurance left: resolve defensive fire AFTER the attacker
(not simultaneous).
Note that just declaring an attack burns endurance, if you fail the morale
check, you have simply expended resources ineffectually.
This still results in a dead SDN after 1-2 turns, but your enemy now has
several turns to pound your eggshell carriers flat, as you have to recover,
rearm and relaunch before your offensive weapon can attack again. And
recovering and relaunching makes your course very predictable as the enemy can
move faster than your fighters to catch you.
Someone mentioned allowing Class-2s and above to engage fighters at
their full range; I did this for my HH rules, but I had increased the power of
fighters threefold over "normal" FT fighters. If you decided to do this, it
would probably need to be limited to one FC
per weapon per squadron, otherwise fighters could be wiped out at 24"+
before they even get into range with the heavy beam armament of some designs.
> Brendan Robertson wrote:
> Fighters are a powerful single strike weapon (both historically and in
How about this for a fix everyone might agree on:
Leave fighter endurance as it is. Leave PDS and ADFC as is, leave fighter
costs as is. Instead, allow only 1 attack vs. ships by fighter squadrons
before they are required to return to their carriers, land, and launch again
before they can attack ships again. Allow as many dogfights between fighters
as endurance permits.
3B^2
> How about this for a fix everyone might agree on:
Even better yet...how about leaving *everything* alone?
The best defense against a group of fighters is, well, another group of
fighters.
> -----Original Message-----
It does raise the question of why were the fighter endurance rules changed in
the first place? In MT the rules were;
Fighter Endurance Fighters are assumed to only have a limited combat
endurance, due to restrictions on the life support and munitions that they can
carry. To simulate this dependency on a carrier, they are considered to have a
combat endurance of three turns of combat. Fighters may Âloiter for as long
as they like, but if firing, or fired upon, they use one turn of combat
endurance.
I agree with the removal on the time limit to return to carrier after CEF is
used up, but there must have been some reason why CEF was increased from 3 to
6 in the first place?
> SNIP<
Rgds,
In message <LPBBKBCFNDINFCDLIANGMEDHCPAA.alfie.finch@btinternet.com>
> "Alfie Finch" <alfie.finch@btinternet.com> wrote:
[snip]
> It does raise the question of why were the fighter endurance
I _think_ fighters were given extra endurance to enable them to make use
of the secondary movement rule introduced in Fleet Book 1.
> -----Original Message-----
Sorry, I was a bit obtuse there, wasn't I:)
What I was trying to bring up for consideration was if we're talking about
proposed changes to the CEF rules then I think we need to consider why CEF was
increased in the first place and
> Charles Taylor wrote:
> I _think_ fighters were given extra endurance to enable them to make
Could the Secondary MovementRule be part of why fighters are overpowered?
Could making it optional be a way of moderating fighter power?
3B^2