Fighter Swarms

[Trotsky]

Trotsky. "...blow up to fighter or warship fire..." Empasis added.

Ah, I was mostly arguing against the fear of an all fighter fleet, at which point there wouldn't be any warships. I wholeheartedly agree that a tight circle is a stupid idea if there are other ships being thrown into the intiative.

 

[Hash]

I think it's pretty easy to comment on what effect new rules will have on the game at first glance but your first impression might not actually come out in play. Why not try it instead of pointing out *potential* problems that might or might not be true? If you think a fighter swarm is both viable and unbalancing then field one against an opponent trying to break it - hell why not switch sides too and take pictures so we can all have a look see. I'll be sure to read that post...(hmm this gives me an idea for a mythbust...)

Our group tried the fighter rule out on our last game (ISA vs Narn) and it didn't change the game too much for us at all, it gave fighters noticeably more bite sure, instead of making them irrelevant, but we certainly didn't feel this a game changing broken rule...not saying that might not eventually be our conclusion but I'm willing to give it a try.

If you end up really hating the rule then no-one is forcing you to play it either - do what you want...honestly if I had a way to stop people moaning I'd.....probably use it on myself first

P.S. Chin up Greg - we appreciate you playtesters really!

 

[Silvereye]

I can see this rule as unbalancing the game in favor of the higher lvl fighter fleets. i.e Earth, Minbari, ISA, Narn. Fleets with weaker fighters will be affected, but in not as much of a way. League fleets, and the Centauri whose fighters suck, will get screwed by this, as they won't be able to make as much use of it. Earth fleets will probably be composed of nothing but T-Bolts. Minbari fleets won't see any flyers or Tishats, not that I've seen any anyways. ISA already have Nials in every WS, but will load the VCD with T-Bolts. Narn have the Frazi with 4 AD. Even if the fighters don't kill ships, or don't crit them out, they'll still be effective for killing Interceptors for the larger ships to fire at later. Once the fighters have fired, it becomes irrelevant to fire at them, as they've already done what they are supposed to do.

Sentri's are great interceptors and dogfighters, they are there to stop enemy fighters from getting to your ships rather than trying to destroy enemy capital ships. Use them to beat the enemy fighters while you use your heavies to cut your enemies ships to pieces with all those Beams/Matter Cannon/Arrays/Plasma Accelerators that Centauri like.

Earth fleets will probably still load out with some 'furies as they need to escort T-bolts in through the intercepting fighters.

I'd rather use a Morshin with a mix of 5 Tishats and 4 Flyers than its standard loadout, but that is not allowed. If I am wanting fighters for anti-ship work I'd rather have the higher Stealth of the Flyers as their firepower is the same as Nials. Tishats I'd reserve for escorts as the Flyers are mince in comparison in a dogfight. As I can't do this, I'll settle for the all round versatility of Nials.

Narns are likely to gut your fighters with E-mines before swarming you with Frazi's, but that's what they have always done. At least they will not be firing ship breakers at you quite as much any more.

Vree/Shadows/Vorlons they might suffer a bit, so bring some of thier fighters for your own defence. They have a good initiative so your opponent may be forced to move their fighters first.

As to the interceptors, you will need a lot of hits, or some good luck to fully deplete the interceptor. While 18 flights will likely do that, the chances of getting 18 flights in position to do so are very small.

Ok there will be an increase in dog fights, big deal, this isn't a world war 1 fighetr game. dog fights are an irrelevance. Under Armageddon dogfights will decide who has the fighter advantage and whomever gets that takes a huge advantage into the game.

But the dogfight is the way to neutralise 'this crushing fighter advantage' you have predicted. I guarentee that every fighter you bring will not escape unscathed through a picket screen of dogfighting fighters sent up to protect your opponents capital ships.

The biggest fighter action I played was pre-SFoS. A 5 point War-level Carrier Clash game Minbari Vs EA. As Minbari my carrier choice was 2 Morshins. I also had 2 Sharlins and a bunch of raid escorts. I lfielded over 25 flights of fighters. The EA brought a Poseidon, 4 Omega's and a bunch of Nova's and fielded over 40 flights. Most fighters spent the game locked up in dog-fights because we knew that we could not afford to let them fire on our capital ships en-mass and un-opposed so we used our fighters to prevent their fighters from doing so. While both sides could have brought a lot more fighters, there were no guarentees that the enemy ships would not shoot them down quickly, before they could fire. Or while they were left stranded after a dogfight. Very few fighters from each side actually survived to attack the capital ships, and certainly not as a huge swarm.

The Carrier Clash was always smaller when they happened under SFoS. Fighters just weren't quite as scary as they were in the old days. Though we still found them very useful.

But this is all "What if?" I'd like to play a few games with all the new rules before making any cast-iron statements about how the rules changes WILL affect the game because the playtesters "were inept because they didn't play though all the possibly permutations of the game and the games abuses".

 

[CZuschlag]

Submitted for Consideration, Potential counter tactic (to everyone but Narn): Area Denial.

If facing the stack of fighters, you may be in a position of being forced (because you do not want to all stop, or some such thing) to cruise into the fighterstack's range. You've also lost initiative, and your fighters aren't in dogfight range yet. He's gonna ask you to move your fighters first, and then go the other way, getting that boomstick shot.

Consider staying very very close together against Range 2 fighters.

Hunh?

Yeah, here's the idea. The nightmare is a 12+ fighter strike to start the turn. Above that is worse. If so, place 4 fighter hex stands, one each
3/4" from the edge of your base, in a "X" shape. Against this, if my math is correct, you should be able to only get 4 fighter stands .... 1 in range of the target ship at each antipode within (if that's the right word?) of the "X" pattern. Then, you continue this grid idefinitely.

The idea is using your fighters base size to deny your opponents flights places to ... well , place themselves, and still fire on the same ship. At least we can force the blighters to spread out so we can use the entire fleet's Anti-Fighter capabilities. It's even nastier when you leave one last fighter as CAP cover, so it can successively dogfight the few that get to fight back.

If he doesn't contact you with fighters, great. If he does, also great. Dogfight, probably lose(!) and then, with the dogfights done, gun down as many fighters as Humanly or Minbarily or Brakirily possible.

Tactic probably best done with Raziks or Kothas due to general availability on board the Milani.

Maybe this idea stinks. Tell me why I'm wrong ... just trying to come up with something of a defense.

 

[prelude_to_war]

Area denial - I love it! Good thinking CZuschlag. I look forward to testing this and other ideas with regards to the new fighter rule. It sounds like fun - which afterall is the point, right?

 

[Ripple]

Area denial will work as for some fairly well.

Sadly not the Kotha as it will slow the fleet even farther. Kotha are an odd fighter in that it is a slow fighter in a fleet that must move relatively fast if it wishes to get in firing range. If the Kotha had afterburners this would work better, but most abbai fleets need to APtE to achieve range.

Strangely I think this may work best for whitestars and other small base ships.

Good to see a tactic brought to the thread.

Bah - I said I'd stay out of this but please, do not assume that many of us have not playtested for other companies. We know exactly what is involved, and what the compensation for out time is. (ie mostly the satisfaction of seeing a better game.)

Ripple

 

[Geekybiker]

Well said. I fully believe that mongoose hasnt had the right type of person playtesting for them. Or at least they are completely ignoring them if they do. I always here the whole "spirit of the rules" thing from people who claim to be playtesters on this forum. We really need to find the most rules lawyering, abusive players we can to do the playtest. That way we get people who look at every change for advantage to exploit rather than people who run through a few games with typical fleets.

Playtesters didn't spot any of this? Tsk tsk tsk, who ever said that playtesting is about grinding things out and not having a game with your buds on a Friday night was dead right. The playtesters should have spotted this. There is hardly any way they couldn't unless they were playing in the spirit of the game instead of playing as the rules allow. The spirit of the game is the unwritten rule of how the game is meant to be played. As any rules lawyer will tell you, unwritten rules aren't worth the paper they are written on. But that's not playtesting, thats just playing. If this had been properly playtested, Mongoose would be aware that several fleets have been royally ****ed, and that interceptors can now be sidestepped, skirmish and some raid ships destroyed by fighters before doing a single thing. Maybe they were aware and just weren't bothered, after all, I bet the sale of fighters will go up now!

 

[CZuschlag]

I think I've described the horror of the right playtesters here.

Do not expose senior citizens, pregnant women, or children to a good playtesting group. The Surgeon General advises that continued exposure to a playtesting group can cause long-term medical conditions including chronic headaches, head lice, and halitosis. Psychotic homicidal rages are possible while under the effect of a playtesting group. Before joining a playtesting group, contact your doctor.

 

[The Eagle]

Actually the Vree should be able to put up a decent defense even with these rules, but it will take some skill.

All Vree ships have 5" A-F guns. Explosions have a 4" range. therefore you can have your ships in a close enough formation to have every ship covered by two or three others while still being outside danger of fratricide by explosion. Yes a fighter swarm can still take out a ship on their initial attack run, but then they will be hammered by the rest of your fleet and hopefully lose enough fighters to be inefective in the following turns.

I know that this isn't the kind of invulnerability to fighters the Vree would like to have but it should allow you to minimise your losses. (And lets be honest if you're playing Vree you will take losses.)

To get the most out of this tactic consider putting Vaarls and Xaars up into the front of your formation so the attacking fighters have to deal with stealth and dodge in order to get their kills.

In addition put your most valuable ships in the back ranks to force the attacking fighters to chose between wasting time and numbers attacking patrol level vessels, or spend a turn getting fired upon by the front gard before they start the attack runs.

Oh, and consider to by some Tzymms to they aren't too bad dogfighters an every little helps.

 

[katadder]

lol when i read the fighter rules i did say that this would bring up a whole huge debate. wait until you see whitestar fighters too (altho they only have 4+ dodge)

a fix for fighters might be to make them like the e-mine and basically say they cant cause crits, after all their weapons are likely to only damage the hull as they arnt that powerful.
also on e-mines, only the 2 new ships get the advanced ones.

but for my centauri raziks are my fighter of choice, need them to take down enemy fighters.
another anti fighter tactic i have is send a corvan into the middle of an enemy fleet, these tend to explode quite well and take out swarms of fighters.

 

[Iain McGhee]

I tried out the new fighter and stealth rules earlier (early EA Vs Minbari) and I think they work really well. Minbari tactics were the same as I'd normally use (stand off at max range and CAF then close to fusion beam range to kill) but the EA gave a far better account of themselves than before. Much fairer and more enjoyable certainly. The fighter rules 'feel' right to me and I'd say they make their use much closer to what you saw in the show. I don't think that they are overpowered at all (admittedly the Minbari didn't have much to fear from them - no change there). Even with them firing first they won't do that much to hull 5 or 6 ships (anything with hull 4 or less isn't really a frontline warship and should get walloped pretty hard !) and then AF and secondaries will maul the attackers anyway. Disregarding lucky criticals that is, which are no more probable than before. The 'swarm the ship with 18 T-Bolts' tactic might sound good, even if it stinks of Cheddar, but your fighters should be able to get into dogfight range of most of them if he moves first and your other capital ships could probably shred them with secondary fire as well.

Another bonus of the stealth fix is that Minbari players are going to be much warier of using 'AJP Bomb' tactics. You REALLY don't want to get that close to a Nova.

 

[Ripple]

So what we see here is two races most able to take advantage of the rule change, not changing their tactics much, cancel each other out. That would be the expected outcome wouldn't it? This is not the match folks are worried about. Example

As minbari you comment that he gave a much better account of himself than usual. Impling that he usually doesn't do well against you?

You have the Nial. Your fighter move as far as his do with afterburners on, and fighters are not in short supply in your fleet. (could be under the right configuration.)

You have long range secondaries. Long enough to actually get long range shots if he tries to come down you side.

Not saying it not nice to hear that it boosted Earthforce a bit, but it doesn't tell me anything about someone dedicating a significant force to fighters, it doesn't tell me how fighter poor races are affected, it doesn't tell me anything about ships with lower hulls/no passive defenses survival rates. These are the concerns with the new rules.

I'll post about the Vree battle later. Its not good for the Vree. Formations do not in any way protect these ships. Their own fighters can, but without a carrier you are in a losing game firepower wise buying them.

Ripple

 

[katadder]

think the narns have come away best with this, emine the enemy fighters to death then send in the narn ones to take down interceptors etc etc

 

[Iain McGhee]

My post was really only intended to give my impressions of the Armageddon changes, not address other peoples misgivings specifically. The game I played was me against me and included 8 Nial flights and 20 Starfury flights (4-pt Battle, Space Superiority scenario). I'll likely try out a few games with EA against League fleets to see how they fare. I used EA/Minbari fleets as I wanted to see how my usual tactics worked (or not) using the revised stealth rules.

I'd give it a few months of play with the new rules before damning them. They are better than either the original or revised rules sets.