Carriers

ncrcalamine · Post by **ncrcalamine** » Sat Oct 20, 2012 7:23 am

I hope carriers are never allowed

However if they are eventually allowed their point costs need to be redone.

The published carriers are way under pointed. They are heavy cruisers with a lot more internals for slightly more cost in the case of the fed strike carrier 156 points.

The klinon d7v is a d7 with many more internals for 12 points less than a d7.

Hydran rangers and other carriers are too cheap for the number of internals
But that ship has already left the barn and is too late to rectify.

Nicole

paulgenna · Post by **paulgenna** » Tue Oct 30, 2012 1:03 pm

I agree about the Hydrans and their relative cheap costs. That said, by the time the D7V adds fighters the total cost of the ship is twice as much. The limits they have on the range for firing drones, distruptors and photons restrict how effective they can be.

SYKOJAK · Post by **SYKOJAK** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 4:18 pm

Since my only experience with "Carrier based" based starships is with the F & E Rules. How would Carriers in Fed Com change the way the game is played? I would think that it would enchance the game play, if some what complicate it further.

I don't know how Carrier Launches work in SFB. But in F&E the fighters just add to the Carrier's Combat Battle values. So they should add respective points value in Fed. Com as well. So just off hand a Cruiser based carrier should be worth more points than just a regular cruiser. Assuming of course, that the Carrier-Cruiser has all the weapons of a normal cruiser.

Either way, Carriers in FC will require some extensive Play-testing.

m1a1dat · Post by **m1a1dat** » Wed Nov 21, 2012 6:11 pm

One of the big problems with carriers is that you would now add a dozen fighters and maybe 2 dozen drones onto the board. This would slow things down; moving and keeping track of all the pieces. There are also a whole horde of special rules for carriers and fighters in SFB that are not reflected in the carrier operations of the Hydrans.

BPV wise, in SFB all ships actually have 2 BPV values, a combat and an economic bpv. For the vast majority of ships, these are the same. Tugs and scouts pretty much all have different values and i don't remember but some carriers might. In these cases the combat values are usually lower than the economic values. You use the combat values when picking the ships for the scenario, but you use the higher economic value when figureing out how many victory points you score on it. Of course, the split bpv concept was left out of Fed Com, as there are few ships that it would have an effect with.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Fri Nov 23, 2012 3:16 am

Just to reinforce what the tank noted, the issue with "fighters for everybody" is not the complexity of the rules, but the significant increase in counters and "map clutter". Adding that many counters to run and keep track of really slows the game down badly. That is the big issue with fighters.

Post by **Steve Cole** » Fri Nov 23, 2012 6:26 pm

The plan is to finesse this with one or two things...

operating fighters in packs

replacing fighter-launched seeking weapons with something else or with some other way to trakc fighter-launched seeking weapons.

Film at 11.

Targ · Post by **Targ** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 12:36 am

Flights and direct fire ?

storeylf · Post by **storeylf** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 12:38 am

If you are looking for any playtesting just send us the rules and we will give 'em a whirl.

DKeith2011 · Post by **DKeith2011** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 2:00 am

I've always thought single fighters were vastly overpowered in SFB. The thought of that small a single craft being able to significantly damage a capital ship is just ridiculous.

Yes, I know if you use the modern world for comparison a fighter carrying an anti-ship missle can inflict significant damage on even the largest naval vessel. That comparison should not apply to SFB levels of technology.

I though Babylon 5 Wars got fighters right. Single fighters were a real threat to only the smallest military vessels. When operated in flights however things changed quickly.

Mechanically the better to hit die roll for the flights the greater amount of damage scored.

Using a similar mechanic in FC might not be a bad idea even if it is a major departure from SFB.

Now I need to pull out my old B5W books for a refresher read...

djdood · Post by **djdood** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 4:22 am

SFB (and therefore the SFU) was designed by a military analyst who was steeped in the world geo-political balance and military technologies of the 1980s and early 90s. It very much puts the threat balance of those times into a sci-fi suit of clothes.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 6:24 pm

Hmmm...I didn't think a single fighter could penetrate a forward shield of a cruiser in SFB. One photon and a couple of low level phasers go through a 30 point shield?

storeylf · Post by **storeylf** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 6:38 pm

Mike wrote:Hmmm...I didn't think a single fighter could penetrate a forward shield of a cruiser in SFB. One photon and a couple of low level phasers go through a 30 point shield?

Well that particular point was never claimed.

A single stinger can do 29 damage, that is pretty significant damage. The SFB fighters that I vaguely remember seeing controlling 2 drones and 2 phaser 3s could do 32, which would go through a cruiser shield, also significant damage. Plasma fighers could hit that sort of damage as well.

3 such fighters could cripple a cruiser, 4 or 5 could destroy one.

Post by **Steve Cole** » Sat Nov 24, 2012 10:57 pm

Well, they could do that if the cruiser wasn't trying to do anything about it. If the cruiser tries any defenses at all, it gets icky for the fighters. In SFB, fighters die in droves. Fighters show up mostly in fleet battles and the enemy fleet just takes one salvo of weapons fire and clears the fighters out of the sky. The fighters are a THREAT (that's why you kill them) and to make them work at all, you have to give the enemy more threats than he can ignore.

Sure, 12 fighters can overwhelm a cruiser, but 12 fighters out-BPV a cruiser too.

It really is pretty plausible that one fighter can (given zero defensive effort by the target) damage a cruiser. (Going through a shield doesn't do anything to the insides, so that one Stinger/Gladiator hitting a cruiser doesn't do anything. You need two or three so they can hit the now-down shield.) They're using the same weapons as the ships., that's why they have the same firepower. You could argue that fighter phasers should be less powerful than ship phasers, but you cannot argue that a fighter drone is any less powerful than a ship drone. They're the same drone, and it's obvious tht they should be the same drone. So, to keep things in balance, we scale the other weapons to that balance.

Aircraft have (since 1925 or so) been extremely dangerous to ships. In World War II, the problem was hitting a ship, not killing it. If you could hit it, one fighter/bomber could screw up a battleship and wreck a destroyer. Once that Fritz-X bomb came out, surface warships were in a world of hurt and it's never really gotten that much better. Your best defense is killing the fighter (with your fighter) before he gets into range.

"Bullseye to Maverick. Get that MiG out of here. NOW."

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 7:59 pm

I've always thought single fighters were vastly overpowered in SFB. The thought of that small a single craft being able to significantly damage a capital ship is just ridiculous.

Yes, I know if you use the modern world for comparison a fighter carrying an anti-ship missle can inflict significant damage on even the largest naval vessel. That comparison should not apply to SFB levels of technology.

Storeylf: This quote was from DKeith2011. He was the one who said a single fighter significantly damaging a capital ship is ridiculous.

Just a little shield reinforcement (even the batteries-only kind in FC) would take care of those extra 2 points you referred to.

But, okay, I'll partially cede the point if we want to consider SFB leaky shields or the '10 shields+pop+10 shields+pop+10 shields+pop' nature of FC.

storeylf · Post by **storeylf** » Sun Nov 25, 2012 11:33 pm

Mike wrote:Storeylf: This quote was from DKeith2011. He was the one who said a single fighter significantly damaging a capital ship is ridiculous.

I read what he said, which wasn't whether a single fighter could penetrate shields. 30ish damage is signifcant damage to a cruiser, even if it was just to shields that is still significant to a cruiser.

Whether he meant it or not I don't know, but I didn't read it as a single fighter with nothing else to help it. I read it as a complaint that the fact that a single fighter could do that sort of damage was ridiculous, even if it is in combination with other stuff (fighters or ships). It made a single figher a significant threat, as opposed to other games where they had to be in numbers before they were a threat. In other space combat systems you can afford to leave the last fighter alone whilst engaging the main ships, in SFB that single remaining fighter can do significant damage to a cruiser so remains a high priority target.

Well, they could do that if the cruiser wasn't trying to do anything about it. If the cruiser tries any defenses at all, it gets icky for the fighters. In SFB, fighters die in droves.

Certainly a fighter on its own is going no where against something undamaged shooting back. Though I would say that highlights another disconnect for me and the way SFB fighters worked, the amount of damage they could take. There were very few fighters that the supposedly awesome photon could actually kill without overloading, as I remember there were some fighters that wouldn't even be crippled by a photon. Against a ship the phton could take out a chunk of power and several weapons, against a fighter it just chips the paintwork!

Sure, 12 fighters can overwhelm a cruiser, but 12 fighters out-BPV a cruiser too.

Most cruisers fall somewhere around 150 pts, I don't know about some of the SFB fighters, but 12 stingers don't out BPV a cruiser in Fed Com by any stretch, and they are in the list of really high damage output ones that I remember.

You could argue that fighter phasers should be less powerful than ship phasers, but you cannot argue that a fighter drone is any less powerful than a ship drone. They're the same drone, and it's obvious tht they should be the same drone.

Of course it's not obvious that they should be the same drone. There's no reason that a full size ship could not be shooting larger more poweful anti ship missiles than a fighter could possibly carry.

That's not to say that any of the above is wrong or anything, it was clear back when I played SFB in the 80s that it was trying to be some sort of cold war carrier action in space. Indeed, in some ways it was interesting to see space combat get away from the swarms of fast fighters that are a bit of a stereotype. The balance between weapons etc was nothing to do with why I didn't like fighters, which was because A) Carrier actions were as fiddly/time comsuming as hell and B) Carrier warfare was just not Trek.

That said, I'm always into testing anything, and playing around with the range 8 direct fire drones rules was certainly interesting in highlighting how 'weak' a fighter with range 8 drones is (direct fire or not). Even though many were worried about how overpowering the direct fire part could make them. I'm definately interested in testing any other fighter rules you may come up with (and I'm sure at least one other of my opponents is as well).