ACTA: Fleet Carrier

[katadder]

It's *can* normally carry. A Balvarin full of Rutarians can normally carry Sentris and Raziks, too - it just chooses not to. But a Balvarin without the upgrade can't normally carry Rutarians. I guess Sentri and Raziks use common, standard parts whereas Rutarians need specialist supplies (spare stealth systems, ion bolts, specialized crew etc) to get flights operational again.

if its not got rutarians on boardit can still normally carry them. we only have to pay the patrol point in the sense of game balance. so if it is full of rutarians I dont see why it would have spare parts for older fighters. why would a carrier that carries harriers have spare parts for a seafire?
admittedly matts ruling says that you are right but its all very strange as its kind of contradictory.

 

[Ripple]

Maybe, somewhat depends still on what exactly you think it means to be able to recover flights, and what you think 'normally' means in the fleet carrier rules.

If you think recovery is about repair, re-arm and reform... then yeah, the new rule would seem to imply that on some level that its what you start a battle carrying, if logic was guiding. A good argument could be made for the number of flights not mattering, just did you have any of that type.

If you think of recovery as more about command and control, pairing up fighters that have lost wingmen and what have you, then you would want it to be any fighter, parts irrelevant. Of course then it shouldn't be restricted to your race either, any allied command should do.

If you go by the rule as stated (at least to my eyes) then it's not about either, its about what is paid for and normally carried. Neko is not quite right about the balavarin not being upgraded, the flights it carries are part of its cost, when you upgrade four of them, you are altering the equipment that is part of the ship.

I said in the discussion forum that either (any?) 'could' be read as correct, but we have an answer. In some ways I like it, but no so good for my psi corp fleets.

Ripple

 

[nekomata fuyu]

The intent (heh!) is for Fleet Carrier to work with any fighter the carrier could conceivably carry. It is to stop you servicing the fighters in an allied fleet (if you team your EA up with, say, Minbari), not to create problems in handling the fighters of your own fleet.

The 'upgrade' fighters represent a leap in technology for your fleet, and so it seems reasonable that a Fleet Carrier be carrying them in order to service them but, aside from that, there should not be anything to constrain you from turning around your own fleet's fighters.

This sounds like it's saying that fleet carriers can fighters even if it wasn't carrying any itself at the start of the battle, just as long as the faction has developed them (which they will have done if you have those fighters in your fleet in the first place).

As for counting upgrading fighters as upgrading the ship that carries them, when you have a Balvarin which was carrying 8 Rutarians, would you count it as a Raid ship, or a Raid And 2 Patrol ship for the purpose of victory points?

 

[MongooseMatt]

This sounds like it's saying that fleet carriers can fighters even if it wasn't carrying any itself at the start of the battle, just as long as the faction has developed them (which they will have done if you have those fighters in your fleet in the first place).

After thinking about this for a couple of days, what you say above _does_ sound like the fairest and, just as importantly, _easiest_ solution to this.

Anyone spot any potential downsides or imbalances before we make this an official ruling?

 

[katadder]

so which fighters can be recovered now then?
can a balvarin recover rutarians if it didnt have them to start as long as they are in the fleet?
can a posiedon recover firebolts if it didnt have them to start as long as they are in the fleet?

after all the fleet has the tech to run these fighters so repairing them is probably easy enough.

if they can recover them I see no problem (its how we have been running it anyway) as these fighters are fairly expensive as it is anyway so a 1/3 chance of recovery (generally 1/6 when on attack runs) is no bad thing.

 

[Da Boss]

Well this is getting confusing - as It does somewhat effect my choice of ships for the Jan tournament can we have a breakdown of what ship recovers what fighter -

thanks :?

 

[B_Steele]

Locally, we rule that a Fleet Carrier can save any fighter it could (under Fleet building circumstances) carry in its hangars.

So:
A Balvarin could pick up Sentris, Raziks AND Rutarians, so long as it has room in its hangars currently.
An Avenger could pick up any of the EA fighters; but not Psi-Corps specific fighters (Black Omegas and Shadowfuries).

That's how we run it.

-Bry

 

[Ripple]

Not sure if it is a balance issue, but how do you score victory points for upgraded fighters.

I was under the impression that you had to track the four upgraded flights and each was worth one vp like a flight bought independently, acquired when the flight was permanently removed from the table. If this is not the case and this upgrades add no VPs to the table there is some potential for problems. If the rutarians or other upgrade fighters are truly worth their FAP then you are getting more bang for your buck, without increasing your risk.

Slightly separate issue from fighter recovery, but it can make a difference. Right now I believe the vp's of the ships take into account only 'free swaps' not purchased upgrades. Centauri could upgrade fighters to offset the purchase of havens, maintaining a good mix of sinks and good fighter strength, while not increasing their vp vulnerability, the supposed offset of being able to two for one the sink.

Neko's answer (all fighters as long as the faction has developed them) would allow the whitestar carrier to recover nials and starfurys btw... I think he ment to say any fighter that the carrier in question could carry under the rules and can be bought from within it's own fleet list. League not being a fleet list and I believe covered in their own rules. Even that leaves open the issue of ISA allied avengers recovering ISA bought starfuries. I really preferred normally carried (ignores fleet lists for duplicate entries in different fleets, isa and psi corp only now?) and the purchased flights being rare tech... the exceptions were clearer to me.

As far as I can tell that is about the only balance issue. Downsides is a correction is needed to the rule either way in the FAQ at some point and we still don't quite know what to envision when a flight is 'recovered'... repaired, reformed or just game mechanic.

Ripple

 

[Burger]

This sounds like it's saying that fleet carriers can fighters even if it wasn't carrying any itself at the start of the battle, just as long as the faction has developed them (which they will have done if you have those fighters in your fleet in the first place).

After thinking about this for a couple of days, what you say above _does_ sound like the fairest and, just as importantly, _easiest_ solution to this.

Anyone spot any potential downsides or imbalances before we make this an official ruling?

Yes: sense. The fleet carrier recovery of fighters, means getting a mostly destroyed flight of fightes back into fighting condition, and being able to re-launch them. What this means is that when a flight of Rutarians is "destroyed", maybe 3 are blown up, 1 has a damaged stealth device, and 2 have damaged ion bolts. So how is a Balvarin that did not pay for the upgrade, going to fix that? Replace the 3 lost Rutarians with cardboard cut-outs? If it had Rutarians on board in to replace lost ones, then why didn't it launch them originally... and why would it have had to pay for them if it wanted to launch them at the start of the battle? It just doesn't make sense.

And in terms of balance, Ripple hit the nail on the head. WS Carriers recovering Nials and t-bolts, Brokados recovering Riva, etc.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

The more I think about it, the more I see Fleet Carrier as mainly being the reorganisation of surviving fighters rather than the pulling apart and repairing of damaged fighters. If any given damage is enough to take a fighter out of action, it's very unlikely to be repairable before the battle is over.
On the other hand, it's easy to think that when a flight of fighters is removed, 1 or 2 of them survive and make it back to base, and can be reorganised into the new flights which the carrier can then launch. In that respect, it becomes more of a question of whether or not the fleet carrier can land and launch the fighter in queston, rather than whether or not is has all the parts necessary to replace major components.

 

[Burger]

The more I think about it, the more I see Fleet Carrier as mainly being the reorganisation of surviving fighters rather than the pulling apart and repairing of damaged fighters. If any given damage is enough to take a fighter out of action, it's very unlikely to be repairable before the battle is over.
On the other hand, it's easy to think that when a flight of fighters is removed, 1 or 2 of them survive and make it back to base, and can be reorganised into the new flights which the carrier can then launch. In that respect, it becomes more of a question of whether or not the fleet carrier can land and launch the fighter in queston, rather than whether or not is has all the parts necessary to replace major components.

So if there's only 1 flight of Rutarians on the battlefield... it gets blown up, maybe 1 or 2 make it back to the carrier. Yet somehow 6 come flying out of the docking bay? What, they have Replicators on board or something?

"Oh, there were 5 spare Rutarians we keep in the back room just in case"

 

[nekomata fuyu]

If you'd prefer the bookkeeping of keeping track of how many Rutarians have been recovered, go for it
For the rest of us though, the dice roll is something to approximate on average a third to a sixth of fighters surviving the neutralisation of their flight. If you really want an explanation of the less likely occurance of a flight being spawn when only one flight has been neutralised in the first place, maybe the entire flight got lucky and managed to return home after they were dispersed by enemy fire.

 

[Burger]

So why not regroup in space. Why do they need a Fleet Carrier to regroup after being dispersed?

 

[nekomata fuyu]

If you mean why do we need a fleet carrier on the table, I'd imagine that it's part of the ability of fleet carriers to better coordinate fighters.
If you mean why do the fighters need to return to the fleet carrier, I'd say that it's to pull the affected fighters out of enemy fire whilst they regroup. Seeing as they've returned to the carrier anyway, they may as well land and refuel/reload.

 

[Da Boss]

Ok but what is the official line on what recovers what - ie what will be played at the tournament at the end of the month ?

 

[Burger]

Ok but what is the official line on what recovers what - ie what will be played at the tournament at the end of the month ?

The current ruling is that the carrie can only recover fighters it normally carries, which means a Balvarin can only recover Rutarians if it paid for the upgrade. It can always recover Sentri and Raziks no matter what. But Matt is considering changing it - watch this space.

 

[katadder]

which also applies to posiedons.
yes a posiedon doesnt have to pay to upgrade to t-bolts, but why should it be able to recover them if it wasnt carrying any to start with? just happened to be carrying a stack of t-bolt missiles?

 

[Greg Smith]

That was my thought, the Balvarin doesn't normally carry Raziks and the Poseidon doesn't normally carry Thunderbolts. Just because the upgrade is free, doesn't make it 'normal'. In particular, Raziks are described as the forerunner of the Sentri that rarely sees frontline action.

What if a flight is bought independantly of the carrier or carried by another ship, will the carrier still have spares? Will a Balvarin have spares and equipment to repair a Rutarian carried by a Dargan in the same fleet? I would have thought so. But then we get in to the question of why a WS carrier can't repair Nials.

Personally, I think the 'normally' in the Fleet Carrier rule should be clarified to 'able to carry'.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

I would expect a degree of commonality between ammo that is used on different fighters, so even if a carrier wasn't carrying Thunderbolts itself I expect that the missiles that it was carrying for use on the Auroras (and yes, we have seen that Auroras can carry missiles) would be loaded instead.
The issue of repairing fighters is an insignificant point, because the time it takes to repair most damage significant enough to take a fighter out of a fight would take longer than the battle anyway. One reason I don't like Fleet Carrier being limited to the flights it was carrying for reasons of replacing fighters is because this basically means that the carrier had "spare" advanced fighters on board all along.

 

[Ripple]

That was why I kept asking what does recovery mean. I personally like the idea of a command and control function, with flights regrouping at the carrier. They are not so much launched as that is the first time enough individual fighters have regrouped to make an effective flight.

Like repair, re-arming would likely take too long as well. B5 battles were not long drawn out affairs with lots of lag time as flights moved back and forth over many miles like carrier duels. They were close in fights with catastrophic effects accumulating very quickly, just no time to even land and re-launch, never mind re-arm.

As a game mechanic, I'm not sure what I would like most. I don't like flights I have to pay for getting the extra boost in a lot of ways... but fluff wise is a big part of it. However, if we go with a return and reorganize fluff to fleet carrier, there is no reason why the league could not call any race back to regroup on the carrier, which would change who has access to fleet carrier trait. I'm not sure that would be a negative. It would also mean the ISA could get fleet carrier for all of its fighters in one ship, right now it takes three. Psi corp would also be able to get shadowfuries back, which I'm not sure is a bad thing.

Real balance questions...
Should certain fighters not be able to recovered, whether by lack of fleet carrier in a factions list or lack of a carrier capable of carrying them.

Should a race have to field multiple carriers to cover all fighter types they can deploy.

Are swapped fighters giving up vps, or are they essentially free?

Top question is the one reason the Kotha is so much worse than the Delta V... center question covers lots of folks... third is the balance question, as everything in the game is paid for twice in some way, once through FAP, once through VP.

Ripple