Ben2 said:
Yeah, but 19 dice launches off dreadnoughts are very very nasty, and 12 dice per flight of fighters might start getting incredibly nasty. Both plasma and drones are multihit D6, so a squadron throwing out 24 dice of either will toast a heavy cruiser/battlecruiser and possibly cripple a dreadnought.
What is the Battlecruiser doing. If fighters are moving slower than ships (as I think they should do so), and there is nothing else bearing down on the BC to keep pressure then those fighters are going be dead before they launch 24 dice.
FC had an auto hitting drone for fighters in the playtest rules in order to prevent drone clutter ('direct fire drones') that could only be launched from range 8 but always hit. Plus, the fighters only move speed 16 as well (speed 8 ACTA equivalent). A lot of people said they wouild be too over powered (a possible 144 auto hit damage drone volley, thats a dead big ship). In fact over the course of all our games I've yet to take damage from them, they are so
potentially powerful that I make damn sure they are dead before they get to launch drones/plasma. That can give me headaches, I have take out the fighters whilst also facing the other enemy ships or scenario objectives. They feel somewhat balanced, even though they seldom achieve much, they are more binary in nature than standard ships - they either die early or clobber you hard, not surprisingly most opponents should be shooting for the die early part. They make a poor long range strike platform, but a decent support platform, especially where static targets are involved or you are defending against someone who has to come to you.
Now this is a different game system to be sure, but so long as the ships are faster and the fighters have less range, then fighters on their own are always fighting an uphill battle on thier own, so no matter how potent that big strike looks on paper, it won't work out like that. That 24 dice plasma attack will be a lot smaller when it actually launches (if it isn't the enemy deserved it).
If you are bringing a big carrier with 24 fighters, how many points do think you would spend? the fighters alone are possibly a heavy battlecruiser? a carrier another? On its own that isn't going to win (hopefully), but in a large game having 24 fighters backing up another 1000pts or should make things interesting. Alternatively against a static target (e.g Battle station) which can't run then it could be pretty potent.
Strike carriers are probably good, cruiser firepower plus 12 fighters. The carrier can attack along with the rest of the fleet and drop fighters once close.
I note your fighters are not very speed restricted, you have a number of speed 12 fighters, i.e same as ships. I do think that will cause issues, remember you are also allowing them to move after all ships, so it is not going to be possible to pull off intiative tricks during movement to catch them just where you want. Move last with a threat range of 18-24" is huge. As it is you have a system where ships are forced to enter the threat radius to shoot them, that is going to make them far to easy to use, they will be a 'must have'. Given the noticeable advantage they get from moving last they really need to be restricted to max speed 8 IMO, that still leaves a very large threat radius to be honest for something always moving last. I'd also be tempted to put a max range of 6" on all weapons (their fire control systems are not good enough to track warp speed targets at range!) that drops the threat radius to 14", still darn good.
To start with I'd personally make fighters speed 8, move last like shuttles, and like shuttles have no real facing, they just face, move and shoot in any direction. I really don't want to be fiddling with movement and turn rates for a squadron of 24 fighters.
