Oracle Priority Level.

[lastbesthope]

. As yet we have no rule that says you can detach flights of fighters from their mothership, to be deployed as seperate wings for other engagements.
LBH

I don't have the rulebook to hand but I am positive there is a line in the campaign section about all fighters in a campaign fleet being a pool.

I suspect you may be thinking of this from the advanced dogfighting rules secition, which first appeared in the seperate download:

Campaigns
It may not be obvious but replacement flights in a campaign are bought from the fleet list as Wings. For example, if an Earth Alliance fleet lost 3 Starfury flights in a recent battle, it could spend 5 RR points and purchase a complete Wing of 4 Starfuries (a Patrol level choice). These Starfuries are then split between the ships that suffered losses to their auxiliary craft.

Any ‘spare’ flights (there is one spare flight of Starfuries in the example above) are noted on the fleet roster as a ‘short’ Wing. A short Wing can be fielded in its reduced state if necessity demands, but most are simply kept in reserve and the spare flights used as replacements for ships or other Wings that lose flights in the future.

Campaigns
It may not be obvious but replacement flights in a campaign are bought from the fleet list as Wings. For example, if an Earth Alliance fleet lost 3 Starfury flights in a recent battle, it could spend 5 RR points and purchase a complete Wing of 4 Starfuries (a Patrol level choice). These Starfuries are then split between the ships that suffered losses to their auxiliary craft.

Any ‘spare’ flights (there is one spare flight of Starfuries in the example above)are noted on the fleet roster to be used as replacements for ships or wings that lose flights in the future.

Flights never gain experience and use the same Crew Quality as their parent ship

I am quoting the SFOS equivalent section, I have italicised a short part of the text as I believe it is a copy and paste error from the original download /RS1. (No doubt Emperor Penguin would be interested in the fact that I assume it is a typo, but I have got corroborating evidence, the flights per wing changed between original and SFOS rules.)

Campaigns
It may not be obvious but replacement flights in a campaign are bought from the fleet list. For example, if an Earth Alliance fleet lost 3 Starfury flights in a recent battle, it could spend 5 RR points and purchase a complete Wing of three Starfuries (a Patrol level choice). These Starfuries are then split between the ships that suffered losses to their auxiliary craft.

Any ‘spare’ flights (there is one spare flight of Starfuries in the example above) are noted on the fleet roster to be used as replacements for ships or wings that lose flights in the future.

Flights never gain experience and use the same Crew Quality as their parent ship or that generated for them when first purchased.

While this does treat reinforcement fighters bought as a 'pool' it still does not clarify whether fighters can be sent on 'detached duty' seperate from the mother ship they belong to. as I have said before I would have no problem with such a house ruling as it makes sense to me from show canon. The B5 station itself often sent it's fighters off on ong range missions.

So was that what you were thinking of? :lol:

LBH

 

[lastbesthope]

By chance I found something related in SFOS, P.190, Reinforcements para 3

Fighters can be transferred between mother ships during the repair and reinforcements phase.

Still nothing for deploying seperately.

So you could buy a Morshin and then distribute it's fighters about the fleet, and still have a Morshin to play with, even if it is empty.

LBH

 

[Nomad]

Frankly this all seems badly broken.

That Mongoose reduced Nials to one flight per wing as part of the overall fighter tone-down I can understand.

That had the effect of making replacement wings cripplingly expensive. I don't know whether that consequence was anticipated, although I suppose it fitted with the general plan.

But buying a whole carrier to get her fighters cheap is just silly, as is the prospect of Minbari fleets saddled with lots of empty CV's.

How about retaining the '5 RR' to buy independent wings (representing mostly the infrastructure needed to supply and maintain them) and replacing lost fighter flights from ships at 0.5 RR* each?

This would serve as a further disincentive to flooding the table with independent wings of fighters, assuming anyone would want to do such a thing post SFoS.

It also make carriers more cost-effective, as it would be cheaper to replace their fighter losses than independent wings'.

(*1 RR per ship flight would make it more effective for raiders to buy wings wholesale)

Sorry if this retreads old ground.

 

[Cailet]

Having looked at the Oracle here's my take.

It'd be a strong gunboat if it were tougher, even upping the armour to 5 would make it an attractive prospect, as it stands though, one round of fire from a good set of guns, a Primus, if it passed the Stealth test would annihilate it in a single burst of fire, now a Primus is Battle level true but it'll kill plenty more later too.

(I use the Primus as an example but an Omega, G'Quan or Tinashi can all do the same quite happily before the Oracle can enter range with it's own beam).

It's got the weapons of a ship-killer but it lacks the endurance to survive an encounter with it's target. OK so 1/3 of the time it won't even be scratched but personally I wouldn't play those odds.

 

[Silvereye]

This would serve as a further disincentive to flooding the table with independent wings of fighters, assuming anyone would want to do such a thing post SFoS.

In most cases with the fighter pool approach the flooding could not happen as each fighter would need to come from a hanger within your fleet structure, which rapidly becomes impossible at the higher priority levels for those races with more than 1 fighter to a wing (and lets face it 1 fighter to a wing really is not that scary to face). For example, EA to mumchkinise its fighter pool takes 5 Poseidon as its 10 Battle points. That gives it (5x16) 80 fighters which are 26 Wings (78 fighters). A five point War PL made solely of EA fighters requires (3x6x5) 90 fighters, or 30 Wings. Although replacing this level of fighter attrition for 10 RR might be a little cheap.

As to anyone being mad enought o field a Big Wing fleet in SFOS, they must be loopier then Howarth

 

[Chernobyl]

munchkinize the fighter pool...5 poseidons...or 20 novas...hmm....

 

[B5freak]

I like the way you think Chern. :twisted: