Giving Fighters Teeth

If you give all fighters precise would it give them back some of the fangs they lost in SFOS without

  • Yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Not Sure

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Well...Here is what I'd do (Please Explain)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No Way!

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • SFOS is really about ships. Fighters are just ther for the flavor.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0

Morpheus1975

Mongoose
If you give all fighters precise would it give them back some of the fangs they lost in SFOS without making them overpowering?
 
Well, As Vree you could give them all precise and it won't help...I have so much anti fighter that I would kill them off before they could shoot!

Now before people say "what if you get over whelmed! Then what?" Well, (unless I'm playing against Narn-damm e-mines) my big ships are usually within 6 inches of eachother...overlaping AF weapons ranges! This Xaak will shoot at these 4 fighters...this Xaak will shoot at these other 4 fighters. Bam! 8 dead fighters in one round. Good for me! Even better if you get the campaign refit "Superior Antiproton Guns" then you have AF, Twin L, AP!!
 
That would be insane, I mean a big part of the problem with the old fighters was that they could crit. out bigger ships. Precise would make it that much easier to destroy them. As they are, some races have fighters that can hurt big ships (Narn, Minbari, EA) and some don't (everyone else)...Just the way they were made.
 
Perhaps it would be better to make fighters harder to destroy. A single hit to destroy an entire flight is to hard I think.
 
I would restore Precise to FIGHTER MISSILES ONLY. Most already have it, some don't. Fighters operate exactly as they should now, except they are a little easy to kill. I suggest some variant of the ideas on making flights more survivable would be quite useable, although regretably the majority of them require bookeeping.

Wulf
 
I think it would be better to let them shot in between. Why not counting all (not dogfighting) fighters as a Ini-Unit. Then they would have at least 1 shoot.
 
Phoenixx said:
I think it would be better to let them shot in between. Why not counting all (not dogfighting) fighters as a Ini-Unit. Then they would have at least 1 shoot.
If I understand you correctly, you suggest having fighters activated by Wing or ship's complement? This could work, given that you should be tracking flights by their CQ anyway (so it's no greater problem in bookkeeping tracking which flights are in which Wing). It does, to a certain extent, revive the problem of fighters ignoring anti-fighter arcs by acting first, but it's better than activating all fighters as a single choice! I wouldn't be against this one, but the bookkeeping might be awkward.

Wulf
 
It is just a suggestion, I did not think deeply about it. It is a idea based on a thread I read some times ago. Anyone remember the five houserules? Some ideas made there were aimed at making fighters more fearsome. Some ideas were about precise (or twin-linked) weapons for fighters. Others involved modified Ini-Rules. For example: All fighters attacking one ship are 1 Ini unit.
Other rules involved fighters ignoring stealth (because of the "barn door effect").

I strongly suggest reading this thread, because many ideas about fighters were discussed there.

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=15
 
I definitely feel they need something to make them more effective. I'm not quite sue what.

I've been viewing a lot of B5 episodes to add to my list of battles and other ship notes. I'm seeing that what ACTA would consider a single base of fighters is enough to be a threat. A minor threat, but definitely a threat.

A flight of Starfuries is often used for escorting a vessel. Now, one thing to keep in mind is that often the consequence of attacking a guard flight is political, not military... Attacking Babylon 5's fighters on an escort or patrol mission would be a definite act of war many are unwilling to consider.

Also, in the later fights, they do seem important, although not overpowering. They're definitely not a serious threat to the big warships, but seem to be useful for swarming vessels with numbers.

I get the idea that they're important enough that no sane commander would not want to have fighters available.

As is, in my limited experience, there's no reason to even launch them against many opponents.
 
Morpheus1975 said:
How about changing anti-fighter to give a -1 or a -2 to all dodge rolls?

That seems like a definite possibility.


I wonder if the other items that deny saves should allow them (but at a penalty) as well.

Explosions are reasonable. It's a bit cinematic, but the idea of a flight of Starfuries dodging the debris of an exploding vessel makes a lot of sense to me. While the 'safe' area for a starship explosion is quite a ways away, the explosions in B5 seem to be chaotic debris flung in random directions, not spherical annihilations.

E-Mines, while a bigger threat to fighters,a re a bit less plausible, as they seem to be a sphere of devastation that's not really dodgable.

Of course, some might argue that this is too cinematic, but I think it fits... A Star Wars variant of ACTA would need to be much more 'cinematic' to feel right but Babylon 5 is definitely cinematic when it comes to the battle scenes.
 
Balance said:
I definitely feel they need something to make them more effective. I'm not quite sue what.
Personally, I'm not sure fighters need any better offensive capability. In the show, they are frequently a threat, but rarely a decisive factor. When they are, it's in swarms of dozens. A Starfury flight has 2AD, that's potentially 2 hits, and potentially 2 crits. That is indeed a threat. What about Precise? Do fighters really do that many crits? I do not think so, in fact, quite the opposite, fighter hits usually seem like surface effects.

So, how about this. Double all fighter AD, but give them all the ANTI-Precise trait (like emines). Or just don't allow crits, if the extra bulkhead hits annoy you. Exclude missiles from this restriction.

How about fighter survivability? Well, certainly, this is annoying. We could do something like giving each flight two hits, but that would be a horror in bookkeeping. We could say every hit not verified with a 4+ on a second roll, or hits by a margin of success of 2-, only mean the flight has aborted and reappears in it's carrier hangar (free Wing fighters are lost, oops, serves them right - increase the size of Wings again).

Alternatively, we could have Wings and ship complements activated as units like ships, rather than all at once after all ships. You do have to keep track of the 'membership' of each flight, but then again you should have to do that for every flight anyway to track CQ (although many people will probably only track the ones that aren't CQ 4).

All of these would help without actually increasing the power of individual flights.

Wulf
 
I agree that something needs to be done...The question is what? Would it be possible for someone to make a formal list of suggestions so that people could test different combinations and see what works? Some of the suggestions seem to me to be a risky backslide to the swarm mentality...Some don't seem like enough, but we could test 'em and possibly find a compromise...
 
Just giving them precise would be wrong. I favour allowing them a new special action which lets them target engines/weapons on ships, surface targets basically.
I'd also favour making them twin-linked and ignoring stealth and dodge.

However I feel the real problem is that they die too easily. Making them 2 hits each or even treated in some way as a 6 hit small ship might be the way to go.
However it does need to be low bookkeeping
 
the main problem with fighters initially was that they were too good - they critted easily, you got tons of them for your points cost and they all counted as a single initiative choice, but by reducing all their advangates in SFOS, they became too weak.

Personally, I quite like the idea of fighters having precise - it represents them raking fire over sensitive areas of a ship's hull and gives them decent teeth. Even if you don't give it to the interceptors and standard fighters, I do agree the heavy fighters should definately have it on their missile/other heavy weapons system

In terms of initiave, I agree that having every fighter fire at once does lead to potential abuses of the system. but firing last leaves fighters as sitting ducks so their eventual fire is almost an afterthought. Option 1 would be to have the fighters attached to a ship fire with the ship (and have independant wings fire as an initiative choice), but it leads to complicated bookkeeping, which nobody really wants. Maybe allow up to 4 fighters to fire/contribute to a dogfight as a single initiative choice would be a good compromose
 
Me being a narn player most of the time who is normally up against Vree and Minbari I can safely say that my fighters are basically a waste of time as they get shot to pieces and the Nial's easily win in dogfights, even if I take Goriths, but heh I am resigned to that fact so I am going to start taking breaching pods instead, at least I should get use out of my hangar then!!
 
Yeah, our group has been considering the Precise fix. While I voted for it because it makes every hit from fighters a real threat I have to agree with emperorpenguin that the real problem is their survivability.

Precise allows for the few flights that survive to inflict some damage but they still go down very fast. This means any fleet that relies on them that doesn't get some lucky crits when that wave hits is boned. If they were harder to kill they might be more effective.

What if they also gained a final 4+ roll to see if you got a couple of fighters or the whole flight. If the attacker passes the roll the flight is destroyed. If the attacker fails the roll put a marker on the flight. It losses 1 AD on all weapons. If it only has 1 AD it gains the weak trait. Next time it is hit the 4+ roll is not required after the damage roll. The flight is just destroyed.

The final part is that a reduced flight may attempt to be recovered and returned to full strength as per the fleet carrier rule. However if the recovery roll is failed the flight is lost.

P.S. I just checked and none of the fighters already have 1AD Weak. The only flight already with Precise is the Vorlon fighters and I would suggest giving them Super AP, since they are already AP, as a replacement.
 
Achiles said:
What if they also gained a final 4+ roll to see if you got a couple of fighters or the whole flight. If the attacker passes the roll the flight is destroyed. If the attacker fails the roll put a marker on the flight. It losses 1 AD on all weapons. If it only has 1 AD it gains the weak trait. Next time it is hit the 4+ roll is not required after the damage roll. The flight is just destroyed.
I'd prefer if the flight had to just abort, rather than add clutter and bookkeeping. It goes back to it's carrier hangar, like the Fleet Carrier rules, except that it can only go back to it's own ship (and if it's an indie Wing, tough luck - a built-in limitation for indie Wings). Oh, and what about Abbai Kotha? They start off with 1 AD Weak...
The final part is that a reduced flight may attempt to be recovered and returned to full strength as per the fleet carrier rule. However if the recovery roll is failed the flight is lost.
I don't like this as it makes the Fleet carrier rules somewhat redundant (although, granted, they do other things as well).

Wulf
 
Back
Top