First off, DarkAngel, Im sorry if my post implied I didn't believe you, your experiences against whitestars have differed greatly from my own playing with them and I was speaking from my experience as Im sure you were speaking from yours. I won't deny that Whitestars are effective against some ships, likewise there are ships that have little issue dealing with Whitestars. I can see how Crusade EA (being a high priority fleet with lots of boresights) would have some issues with these fast little ships.
And Ripple, I can see to where your issues arise, having a sort of blind fleet selection where you don't know who your playing and what they have kind of points to the one area I did mention where it can be hard to fight Whitestars and that is at Tourneys. Your group seems to play more in that style so I can see where your issues come up. My group almost always knows what fleets will be brought to the table to they can plan better and in our campaigns we have everything up on a website so at any given time my opponents can look and see what I have available, pluse when we roll the battles there is usually a one or two day delay before we actually play them to give people time to plan their fleet selections and such.
As to your issues mentioned, true the ISA does have decent carriers at War and above but originally I was referring to how many fighters can be brought to the fight at Raid level since that was the priority level of the ship in question. As far as the Allies rule goes that is true I can bring dedicated carriers from other fleets but on a one to one ratio my opponents can generally bring more, in a 5 point raid I could bring one allied raid level carrier and some Whitestars vs several carriers by my opponents(which happens to be quite an effective tactic to use against whitestars) however that goes back to my oppenents having more knowledge of who they will be facing and can plan for it.
I understand that the TD Precise beam is a nasty piece of work perhaps I just haven't had the best of luck with them, It has been my experience that there are many raid ships that can outdamage a Whitestar and while not having the same level of survivability(mainly because of dodge) can come pretty close.
And I will fully acknowledge the complete set of advantages a Whitestar has I'm just pointing out that it does have some disadvantages as well, in the end I think it is a powerful ship maybe even near the top of its Priority level but I think alot of it ends up being how well you can plan for it. In my case my opponents can plan and neutralize the Whitestar because they can assemble a fleet knowing they will show up. In your case you have to strive for a more balanced fleet because you have no idea what your facing and I think that is where the greatest strength of the Whitestar lies, if you can't plan for it you will have trouble with it (well unless your the Gaim, Turreted Emines FTW).
So in the end I think that is where our differences with the ship lie, perhaps I'll try some pickup games where the fleets are unknown until everyone has selected their ships (normally we don't know the ships in the fight, just the fleet, but if I play ISA its usually assumed there will be a Whitestar or two there).
I agree that a ranking system would help sort some things out at least from a game mechanics perspective, but as you said it may not get the feel of the ships.
All in all I didn't intend to ruffle any feathers I just didn't see your side of things as they never really come up in my group.
But I suppose this will be my last discussion on it, at least here anyway, I've taken this thread off topic far enough. It was a good discussion though as I can atleast understand where others are coming from about the Whitestar even if, for now, my viewpoint is different from theirs.
