Here is a question, what is more efficient: PDAs or 1-bats (formerly
C-Bats)?
In answering this I can think of what the variables are: ratio of ships to
fighters, effectiveness of 1-bat vs. ship armor, effectiveness of 1-bat
vs. fighers.
PDA's are single purpose anti-fighter weapons, while the 1-bat can be
used
in two roles (anti-ship, anti-fighter). How many fighters can a PDA
defend against before being overwhelmed? I think the answer is 2.5 or 3. So
you
need at least 2 PDA's per-expected flight of fighters. Of course this
can be acheived more cheaply by having escorts with lots of PDA's and
area-fire
control, however that gets into fleet design and I am thinking of ship design
right now (for those times when you don't have an entire fleet behind
you...)
1-bats are somewhat useful against fighters and somewhat useful against
small ships. A ship armed with a dozen 1-bats is as offensivly powerful
as
2 flights of fighters, would the 1-bats be effective enough to stop 2
flights of fighters? Also considering the price and mass, the fighters are
obviously cheaper. So perhaps some mix of PDA and 1-bat is the best
bet.
Anyone have any ideas on this?
> Here is a question, what is more efficient: PDAs or 1-bats (formerly
Actually, the average PDS will kill 0.8 fighters; the average Class 1 weighs
in at a "paltry" 0.4. So (statistically) in order to cope with a flight of
fighters at full strength, you'd need 8 PDS or 30 Class 1.
> 1-bats are somewhat useful against fighters and somewhat useful
See above. The best defence against fighters is actually other fighters (in
both MASS and POINT COST). One group of interceptors can tie up two fighter
groups in employed skillfully, but will always get at least one. In short, if
you anticipate going up against a large number of fighters, then bring a light
carrier loaded with fast interceptors!!
> PDA's are single purpose anti-fighter weapons, while the 1-bat can be
This is simply too low. What you're saying here is that if your opponent
has 30 fighter groups, all you need is 60-72 PDS in order to defend
against them. This is simply too little; you'll do quite a bit of damage to
their fighters but they'll do far more damage to your ships.
I think the actual number is somewhere around 1.5, tops. If your opponent
is toting about 35-45 fighter groups, you're going to want somewhere in
the
range of 120-150 PDS to defend against it unless you've got very strong
maneuverability to evade them, and even then I wouldn't depend on it a whole
lot.
A dreadnought or carrier sized capital ship in my games will often have
somewhere between 15 and 30 PDS equipped. Yes, that means it's dedicating a
lot of munitions to fighter defense; the slim margin of gunnery you give up to
more dedicated battleships is nothing compared to the risk that you'll get
annihilated by carriers if you don't.
Yes, this does depend on fighter morale to some extent; I don't use it myself
and tend to just glom all fighter losses together across fighter group
boundaries, i.e. if you have 30 groups of fighters and 100 PDS, just roll 100
dice and count off how many you kill and take off a marker for every six. This
is just my playing style, to a fair degree, though... I hate having to keep
track of how many fighters are left in gazillions of different groups,
and in my games, yes, there _will_ frequently be gazillions of fighters
flying around.
> Of course this can
> design right now (for those times when you don't have an entire fleet
Yeah... I'm not enamored of PDS escort philosophy, myself, because then all
your PDS power is bottled up in smaller ships that are more easily picked off,
leaving the larger ones more vulnerable without their PDS backup. Better to
bring escort carriers and trade your fighters (or interceptors) for theirs.
> From: Sean Bayan Schoonmaker <s_schoon@pacbell.net>
Now comes the interesting bit! There are tradeoffs between the fighters and
the defense systems - and among the fighters themselves. That is what I
like about Jon's design of FT as a whole. There isn't one right way to do it.
There are styles and approaches. I think that real navies and air forces do
much the same and also face trade offs.
> > PDA's are single purpose anti-fighter weapons, while the 1-bat can
So you
> > need at least 2 PDA's per-expected flight of fighters.
Stilt said
> This is simply too low. What you're saying here is that if your
Using Stilt's assumptions (all fighters are lumped together, no fighter
morale) and assuming your opponent forgot to add heavy fighters to the mix,
for 30 fighter groups (180 fighters) you'd need 225 PDS available to defend
whatever ship(s) the fighters decide to swarm. Hm. Assume that your opponents
fly from Arks Royal, that's
five of them for 3450 points + 30 standard fighter groups at 18 points
is 540, so that's 3990 points.
Divided by 30 = 133 ash Shaulahs - 10% for non-FTL = 120 SMR ...
Just enter the map at high enough speed, recognize that some of your crews
will be enjoying the houris later that afternoon, and launch. Perhaps you lose
30 boats on the way in to one round of fighters, then you launch 90 missile
salvos of which let's allow the fighters to kill 30. So your problem is, can
you arrange to lay out 60 SMR so that each of the 5 Arks Royal eats 5 salvos?
Or you could put some juicy target (say, an arsenal ship) in front and a
destroyer 30mu behind. When the fighters swarm the bait, the destroyer fires a
Wave Gun. Your ship takes 7 damage (assuming you haven't lost it to fighter
strikes already) but the wave gun wipes up all the fighters in the area.
Assuming you allow mixed species tech, you could also just drop 1 point Plasma
Bursts where you plan to end your movement.
So there's more than one way to skin a cat--but all of them are messy.
Laserlight said:
> Stilt said
> Using Stilt's assumptions (all fighters are lumped together, no
225 PDS would be a bit excessive. If you had 180 fighters against
120-150
PDS, the rate of attrition for the fighters would be prohibitive to their
effectiveness.
> Divided by 30 = 133 ash Shaulahs - 10% for non-FTL = 120 SMR ...
Assuming that none of the carriers bring decoys, anti-missile plasma, or
cloaking devices.
> Or you could put some juicy target (say, an arsenal ship) in front and
The fighters will probably watch their scanners a little closer to this and
take the destroyer down first, or at the very least make sure they use
secondary movement to stay out of wave gun arc.
> Assuming you allow mixed species tech, you could also just drop 1
Will only work if none of the fighters decide to shoot down the plasma while
they're also shooting you. Works better on missiles than it does on fighters.
> So there's more than one way to skin a cat--but all of them are messy.
Agreed. Fighters aren't the end-all of the game. I'm rather (in)famous
for my fighter swarms, but it's been quite some time since I last really
depended on fighters for my main weapon.