For some time now I've been working on a rewrite of the Full Thrust point
defence rules to better handle very large numbers of fighters and/or the
dreaded "soap bubble" carriers. (I've posted about an earlier version before.)
I've finally managed to figure out how to handle salvo missiles
in the new rules, and with various other tweaks and adjustments I think
they're ready for wider use.
You can read them online at
> On Saturday 21 Mar 2015 23:59:50 Hugh Fisher wrote:
<http://members.ozemail.com.au/~laranzu/fullthrust/rules/ftnewpds.html>
> or download the PDF
My first reaction is that it's introduced a whole load of tables into a game
that hasn't needed them. So regardless of whether the mechanics have the
desired effect, I'm not sure I'm sold on the implementation.
If you wanted to make the configuration of ships in the FT universe fleet
books make sense, you could simply allow PDS to attack each incoming ordnance
attack. Maybe without the exploding dice mechanic.
Otherwise the fleet book ships don't make much sense unless the use of
missiles and fighters is very limited.
--------------------------------------------
> On Sun, 22/3/15, Samuel Penn <sam@glendale.org.uk> wrote:
Subject: Re: New Full Thrust point defence rules
To: gzg@firedrake.org
Received: Sunday, 22 March, 2015, 11:54 AM
On Saturday 21 Mar 2015
> 23:59:50 Hugh Fisher wrote:
(I've posted about an earlier version
> before.) I've finally managed to
in the new rules, and with various other tweaks and adjustments I think
> they're ready
You can read them online at
> [quoted text omitted]
<http://members.ozemail.com.au/~laranzu/fullthrust/rules/ftnewpds.html>
> or download the
<http://members.ozemail.com.au/~laranzu/fullthrust/rules/ftnewpds.pdf>
> All feedback
My first
reaction is that it's introduced a whole load of
tables
into a game that hasn't needed them. So regardless of whether the
mechanics
have the desired effect, I'm not sure I'm sold on
the
implementation.
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2015 10:25:11 +1100, <john.tailby@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
> If you wanted to make the configuration of ships in the FT universe
> missiles and fighters is very limited.
Any solution that only makes point defence more effective (other suggestions
such as cheaper ADFCs) on the one hand encourage even more extreme numbers of
fighters and on the other hand make a small number of
fighters - for example the fighters carried by most Fleet Book
dreadnoughts - completely useless. My rewrite aims to reduce the
problems at both ends, so not only will soap bubble carriers be denied an
automatic victory, but a small number of fighters or missiles can still be
useful.
I did most of my analysis and scenario testing using Fleet Book designs,
because I wanted to ensure that those remained viable.
I am not sure that having a single squadron of fighters on a dreadnought is
intended to be a heavy attack weapon. they are more likely to be scouting or
for projecting some power to a place the dreadnought does not want to be in
combat they are likely to be defensive.
If soap bubble carriers are the problem then the design rules for carriers
might need to be looked at. increasing the minimum hull percentage to 20% or
30%. this wouldn't affect most other ships.
You might also want to look at the fighter launch rules.
Launching your aircraft into a battle before the enemy have been located and
confirmed isn't something most captains would do. So unless you have other
intelligence about an enemy fleet location you need to get to within detection
range of the enemy before launching your strike.
Having the detection range be the whole table gives a massive advantage to
such fragile carriers. Especially if they don't need to provide logistical or
sensor support to their fighters and can simply flee the battlefield.
So changing the rules about long range ordnance might be another way of
addressing the problem.
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One simple solution that works well: A PDF can either attack *all* targets in
a 60 degree sector. No more than 1 PDF per sector in this barrage mode. Or
*one* target in any sector.
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2015 15:55:57 +1100, <john.tailby@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
> I am not sure that having a single squadron of fighters on a
> not want to be in combat they are likely to be defensive.
Agreed. But under the current rules the single squadrons of fighters, or
the few squadrons on the smaller carriers, become totally useless very
quickly. I don't just want to fix the problem with soap bubble carriers; I
want to make sure that small numbers of fighters or missiles still have
some effect.
> If soap bubble carriers are the problem then the design rules for
The problem isn't really that you can build soap bubble carriers, it's that a
large number of fighters works too well. The increase in
effectiveness is non-linear. Soap bubbles are just the extreme case: you
can get the same effect at say 3,000 points with more "reasonable" carriers.
> You might also want to look at the fighter launch rules.
> battlefield.
But it's also common to launch aircraft into battle before you've located the
enemy because you don't want to get caught by surprise. And even before we get
into the whole "no stealth in space" discussion, your fleet does know the
enemy is out there, otherwise why the heck is it deployed?
A big part of the problem is how much ship redesigning you want to do. These
new rules are a bit more complex than I really like, but they work
with all the existing ship designs from the past twenty years.
I've also thought about completely redesigning point defence systems to be
more like screens, and completely redesigning fighters as a sort of long
range missile. And then I look at my own collection of SSDs and think how much
work it would be to redo them all...
On Sun, 22 Mar 2015 16:50:27 +1100, Zoe Brain <aebrain@webone.com.au>
wrote:
> textfilter: chose text/plain from a multipart/alternative
Solutions which make individual PDS more effective, like this and John
Tailby's earlier, just increase the number of fighters / missiles needed
to swamp the defence. I call this the "N + 1" problem: the attacker
should
not succeed only by bringing more fighters/missiles. The end point is
that if the "average" PDS on a ship can inflict enough casualties to stop a
soap bubble carrier, any lesser number of fighters will be useless.
The rewrite is intended both to stop a large number of fighters/missiles
from automatically succeeding AND ensure that a small number of
fighters/missiles can still inflict damage. Both ends of the problem
need to be addressed, not just moving the midpoint.
> On 22/03/2015 9:20 PM, Hugh Fisher wrote:
Not quite - after 6 PDS, there's a point of diminishing returns.
Vs 1 PDS, 1 fighter group will get X casualties. 120 will get 120X if coming
in at the same sector. A ship with 3PDS and with 120 attackers coming in over
6 sectors will kill 60X (assuming 20 per sector). A ship with 3PDS and 120
attackers coming in over 1 sector will do 122X. A ship with 6PDS and 1
attacker will only do 6X.
With 2 attackers over 2 sectors - 6X
With 3 attackers over 3 sectors - 6X
...
with 6 attackers over 6 sectors - 6X
With 7 attackers over 6 sectors - 7X
So small numbers of fighters are useful. Large numbers will swamp defences but
take too many casualties to do it more than a few times.
Only in extreme fighter-rich environments will even the largest ships
have more than 4PDS plus escorts. Yet just 1 fighter group can be very handy
even against the largest ships.
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What I have found is few people want to use weapons that have ammo counts.
This is the reason I like missles myself.With few people liking fighters or
missles taking so much space and cost, I find the use of PDS being limited. My
advantage due to the fact I was a missle tracker in the military
On Sunday, March 22, 2015 12:20 AM, Hugh Fisher
> <laranzu@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Mar 2015 10:25:11 +1100, <john.tailby@xtra.co.nz> wrote:
> If you wanted to make the configuration of ships in the FT universe
> missiles and fighters is very limited.
Any solution that only makes point defence more effective (other suggestions
such as cheaper ADFCs) on the one hand encourage even more extreme numbers of
fighters and on the other hand make a small number of
fighters - for example the fighters carried by most Fleet Book
dreadnoughts - completely useless. My rewrite aims to reduce the
problems at both ends, so not only will soap bubble carriers be denied an
automatic victory, but a small number of fighters or missiles can still be
useful.
I did most of my analysis and scenario testing using Fleet Book designs,
because I wanted to ensure that those remained viable.
Thanks so much for the effort, Hugh!
I will say, I think the direction is wrong, though. I still think the problem
is not the archie rules, but rather the fighter rules.
SML have never seemed to be the issue that fighters have, though I remember
thinking they were until I got the whole 'speed is life' rule going. Heavies
are closer to fighters, save for the whole 'one shot and you're gone' concept.
I've never hid my distaste of fighters in the game. There are a few
convenience aspects of fighters that handwavium them to great heights. They
not only have magic movement, they have clairvoyance. Just a BIT much.
However, going with them as they are, has anyone played with my "What the hell
kind of traffic control is this?" idea that only a limited number of craft
could make a coordinated attack? I know in Star Wars, they could only get a
few fighters in on the trench attack at a time.
Pretty sure I've seen similar examples.
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For what it's worth...(and it isn't worth all that much)...I'd like to add the
following:
1) I love these conversations. Reading them over the last 10+ years has
shown me that the GZG Gaming Audience is an eclectic bunch. For every voice in
the wilderness who says "I think I have a fix for X" you get a few "I'll have
to try that." (which is high praise indeed) and then many more "I don't like
this." People keep trying.
2) Having only ever played FB games I never really had to deal with a
soap-bubble. It always seemed very odd to me to spend so much time
going back and forth over an edge case.
On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 9:51 AM, Douglas Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> wrote:
> Thanks so much for the effort, Hugh!
They
> not only have magic movement, they have clairvoyance. Just a BIT much.
FullThrust is like many games that it needs an greenest between the players
about what makes a fun game. If you agree to restrict yourselves to Fleet book
ships or designs that follow that philosophy then you won't encounter soap
bubbles. Also if you are running a campaign where people need to return to a
planetary base to replenish expended ordnance and fighters then the number of
carriers verses low maintenance cruisers might be different.
If you allow players to select any designs they like without agreement you
risk getting some non who wants to play a different style of game from
another. The I take all fighters and missiles and you take all beams can
result in a very one sided game.
Because FT says only anti ordnance weapons can attack ordnance and only anti
ship weapons can attack ships. You need to balance both in your ship designs
and the game can be won during the fleet design if someone picks an edge case.
I am not really a fan of fighters I would like to not have the fighter design
and make people chose between interceptors and bombers.
Sent from my iPad
> On 24/03/2015, at 10:21, Damond Walker <damosan@gmail.com> wrote:
wrote:
> Thanks so much for the effort, Hugh!
rule
> going. Heavies are closer to fighters, save for the whole 'one shot
On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:51:29 +1100, Douglas Evans <devans@nebraska.edu>
wrote:
> Thanks so much for the effort, Hugh!
> problem is not the archie rules, but rather the fighter rules.
> going. Heavies are closer to fighters, save for the whole 'one shot
> They not only have magic movement, they have clairvoyance. Just a BIT
> much.
I'm sometimes tempted to shorten the fighter chapter of Cross Dimensions
to: Ken Burnside is right. There aren't any fighters in space.
Alas, cinematic science fiction demands we have MIGs and F-16s in space.
> However, going with them as they are, has anyone played with my "What
> the hell kind of traffic control is this?" idea that only a limited
> they could only get a few fighters in on the trench attack at a time.
Yes, a few years ago I proposed that a ship could only be attacked by fighters
from the same carrier as a way to at least spread out the
attacks. No-one seemed to like it.
The Colonial Battlefleet rules claimed to be unbreakable, so I bought a
copy as part of research. What they've done is impose a limit on the number of
fighter groups that can attack a ship in one turn, six. (It's
not written as such, but since a ship or group occupies one hex, you can't
stack in the same hex, and fighters can only attack an adjacent hex, that's
the effect.) The construction system also has a lot more
restrictions, which in turn limits the number of point defence/flak
batteries a ship can have; and fighters can't operate too far away from
their carrier.
One of the great attractions of Full Thrust has always been the very loose
"hey do what you want" nature of the rules. So I'd prefer to expand the
range of designs for which the rules that can be made to work rather than
limit what players can design and use. Imposing a limit on the number of
fighters that can attack would work, but there would also have to be a
limit on the number of PDS/ADFC or a fleet can make itself invulnerable
to fighters.
On traffic flow... The Star Wars trench was a very special case, the battle at
the end of Return of the Jedi being much more likely. I do agree with you that
fighters aren't going to attack in a gigantic mass, which
would make an easy target. But this in turns highlights why the current
system of assigning each PDS to a single fighter group doesn't really work. In
my new rules, the point defence are assumed to shoot at everything they can,
which in larger actions will include successive waves of fighters attacking
one after the other. I'm treating point defence more as a screen or deterrent
rather than individual shots.
On Tue, 24 Mar 2015 08:21:35 +1100, Damond Walker <damosan@gmail.com>
wrote:
> 2) Having only ever played FB games I never really had to deal with a
Two reasons why I'm spending so much time on the problem.
Philosophically, Full Thrust is a game system with a LOT of flexibility
that tries not to limit what players can design and do. So if players can
design soap bubble carriers, I'd like to try and make them work within the
rules. (Although I would also strongly support any gaming group that says "No!
Those are silly, you can't have them." as a response.) As I noted elsewhere,
in both Babylon 5 and new Battlestar Galactica merchant ships
were used as improvised soap bubble carriers, so there are "historical"
examples.
More importantly, IMHO soap bubble carriers are a symptom of a more general
problem, that FT games involving fighters are often decided by fleet
composition rather than player tactics. If you bring a fleet with
not much point defence and your opponent has loaded up on fighters, you're
going to lose. At the other end of the spectrum, if your opponent has loaded
up on point defence, then the one or two squadrons of fighters carried by
Fleet Book 1 dreadnoughts and superdreads will be useless.
Soap bubbles are the most extreme case than many (but not all, as I've been
reminded!) FT players know about, so proposing my new rules as a solution gets
people interested. But I should have put more stress on their general use, not
so specific.
" At the other end of the spectrum, if your opponent has loaded up on point
defence, then the one or two squadrons of fighters carried by Fleet Book 1
dreadnoughts and superdreads will be useless."
Please note, I've not played a lot of special-built ships, so this is
mostly impressions, but...
If there is enough point defense 'bought' to make this so, it's probably a
good thing, as that amount will not be spent on other weapons. This seems to
be one of those good decision items of FT. No one good amount.
I think a major point is there's a fairly sharp tipping point for masses of
fighters; a few extra squadrons, bringing in a certain mass, can go
from scary to absolute doom. I've not seen/heard the same for point
defense.
Behold, I'm hushing up, now.
Oh, no you're not!
*ahem* I should like to add that there's a major difference between PDS,
even if you give them limited ship-offensive capabilities, and fighters.
Fighters project power.
And, in BSG:TOS, all-winning fighter squadrons can make sense. *sigh*
Bit less so in SW and B5. I never watched enough BSG-reimagined to be
sure.