From: Self To: john coleman Subject: battle summary, idea churning.. Date sent: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 22:08:02 -0500 Well, once again I am left disatisfied with the fighter escort performance. We did the G'Quan + 12 Frazi vs Primus + 12 Sentri. The G'Quan won this time - the Primus had all weapon systems stripped, though most everything else was intact. *grin* We went with: Fighter drop-out on D20 < damage. BLECH. Totally against what you see in the show. It was marginally better than no drop-out at all. I had three heavily damaged Sentri, none of which dropped out, and Daryl had 6 heavily damaged Frazi, one of which dropped out. Daryl likes rolling instead of the 2/3, though, and I'm inclined to agree with him. With 2/3, all you're doing is not using the last couple boxes. We want to try the D10 > remaining structure next. Then you have the random factor in there, but it's also increasingly more likely a fighter will drop out. Heck, maybe D20 > remaining structure - that would simulate what we see in the show better. I think D10 would be sufficient. At the 2/3 structure mark with D10, you're looking at 60-70% of the fighters dropping out. Another thought that came up is any fighters which are damaged are prevented from making their attack that round - a 1-turn drop-out effect. More food for thought. Second, the Sentri were next to useless as escort. And it wasn't because of their low damage - it was because they were having trouble hitting!! What is the reason to have defending fighters? My thought is to, at the very least, prevent attacking fighters from getting a good shot. I'm not seeing that here. Daryl was doing jinking with his fighters, and he said he wouldn't have been doing that if my fighters hadn't been there. But my Twin Arrays were a LOT more effective than my fighters. If the table had been turned and it was the Frazi shooting at the Sentri - they've got 3 less offensive bonus (+4 instead of +7), so on the average 2 fewer fighters would hit. But if they hit, it's almost a guaranteed kill. I think it'd be a wash. Brings us back to the +2 bonus. Daryl and I talked about it, maybe go with +4? What is use of sending a flight of fighters along with your attacking flights as escort? It's better to just have them attack the cap ship - there's really no reason to escort your attacking fighters. But that's a real tactic, plus it's one we've seen in the show (Ivanova, Severed Dreams, "Delta squadron, punch a hole through to the Agrippa for us!") So there's got to be a reason for escorting fighters. Right now, if I sent a flight of Sentri along with a flight of heavy strike fighters to attack a cap ship, my Sentri would attack the cap ship instead of protecting the strike fighters. Heck, I think my Sentri were more effective on the G'Quan than my Primus was... not true, but they got luck and took out the heavy lasers. Just as Daryl's Frazi stripped the Primus of its Battle lasers. Is that why you send figthers in? To disable the heavy weapons? We did fire sequencing as posted for the tournament. Thought about this a bit. (common sequence) 1) C->C, C->F 2) F->F 3) F->C (our sequence) 4) C->F, F->F 5) C->C, F->C The only real difference is that with the common sequencing, a cap ship can take out fighters before those fighters can take out other fighters. We didn't have anything like that come into effect, but it's something to think about. Since my gripe is F->F is not as much of a factor as I feel it should be, I'm less inclined towards that. Why have escorting fighters? I wish I'd sent my Sentri after his G'Quan right away rather than having them try to protect the Primus. Another thought on fighters. Different drop out will help, but I look at tonight though, and think about the comparison between flight vs. lone-wolf fighters. I would have typically had 1 more fighter hitting if I was rolling to-hit individually. Maybe Flight hit chart needs to change? If you changed it to: 0...............6 or more above (was 5+ above) 1/6............4-5 above (was 3-4 above) 1/3............2-3 above (was 1-2 above) 1/2............0-1 above (was 0-2 below) 2/3............1-2 below (was 3-4 below) 5/6............3-4 below (was 4-5 below) all..............5 below (was 6+ below) Then the odds average out identical to individual fighters except at the extremes where it skews slightly (it holds for to-hits of 5-15, and from there it skews slightly so at low ranges favors the flight, high ranges favors the lone-wolves). This will mean more fighters hit cap ships, too, though. So maybe now you do a -4 penalty for a flight if it is under significant fire. Maybe -4 if fired upon at even strength, less if not? That will help balance out the fighter wave effect, too. If neither my Primus nor Sentris had been firing at Daryl's Frazi on their last run and they weren't doing any jinking, they still would have had a to-hit of 14 from one hex out. How about a -1 per fighter or gun shooting at the flight, max of -3? We were discussing that even with the depowering, you're seeing LOTS of damage done by the fighters. Which I could see if the fighters were going in on something lightly defended. Another thing: Damage done by fighters. two guns hit a location. The order the damage is applied in DOES matter. I had one case where if I applie it one way, I'd get 5 structure points, if the other way only 3. We started rolling two different colored D6, one always to be applied first. This was after just totalling the damage and subtracting double armor, but that doesn't work out, either. Maybe. Argument for bonus/penalty: Escorting fighters. If Flight A is escorting Flight B, and B is attacking Ship C, which in turn is escorted by Flight D. Flight D wants to prevent Flight B from shooting at ship C. Flight A wants to prevent Flight D from doing this. B just wants to shoot C, and C wants to be somewhere else. Since all F vs F combat is simultaneous, Flight A is shooting at Flight D, but doing nothing to prevent or minimize damage to flight B. Question there comes up is declaration order of fire. How does Flight D know which flight to shoot at? If they're different kinds of fighters (strike & medium fighter) then clearly you'd go after the bigger threat to ship C.