shakespear
Mongoose
Why dont B5 fighters have somekind of anti-capital ship weapon?
Something like the exocet missile.
Something like the exocet missile.
Posseidon Carrier
- Thread starter Rynar
- Start date
MustEatBrains
Mongoose
Thats of course correct, but there´s a problem with that: If the Poseidon (or any other ACTA carrier for that matter) were to be used in a realistic context, it ´couldn´t be fielded in a game at all (apart from special scenarios). All you´d need to play carrier support realistically would be a couple of fighters and a command bonus of sorts, since real carriers tend to stay away from the thick of the fight.Tank said:
But as others have mentioned before, the Poseidon is just a cool loking miniature, which people want to field. So, they should get their moneys worth when they do, don´t they?
I know that this is not realistic, but then it´s a game, not a simulation. No chess player would ever complain about moving towers just because towers obviously CAN´T move in the real world!
Read up the description of the "Carrier Clash" scenario and the fluff text of the Poseidon itself to see what a carrier like that should be able to do. At least it should be a valid and worthwhile War level choice in games (compared to other choices of the fleet); not only in campaigns, but also in "one-offs" (many players don´t have the time or the regular gaming group to play a campaign; shouldn´t they get something out of the Poseidin as well?).
Nightmares about Minbari
Mongoose
Some fighters do have missiles, the thunderbolt comes to mind. however even these missiles are tiny compared tothe missiles launched by EA missile cruisers and the likes.
The other weapons on a fighter are on an even smaller scale, they can hurt small ships but do little to large ships.
Rather than see fighters made more directly dangerous, which I don't see myself. Why not introduce other special actions for them that would make them useful in other ways. Things like scanners to full to improve their ships targeting solution on enermy ships. Maybe a fighter screen in front of a ship, providing 'cover' through engine flares and comms traffic to provide some protection to the ships behind.
Hope you can see what I'm driving at, making the fighters useful and interesting without making them unfeasably powerful.
The other weapons on a fighter are on an even smaller scale, they can hurt small ships but do little to large ships.
Rather than see fighters made more directly dangerous, which I don't see myself. Why not introduce other special actions for them that would make them useful in other ways. Things like scanners to full to improve their ships targeting solution on enermy ships. Maybe a fighter screen in front of a ship, providing 'cover' through engine flares and comms traffic to provide some protection to the ships behind.
Hope you can see what I'm driving at, making the fighters useful and interesting without making them unfeasably powerful.
Just because a missle is smaller, it does not mean it is not dangerous. The missles for fighters are smaller because they do not need to travel as far. Don't forget, the type of war head can make a world of difference. Nuclear warheads can be made small and if shaped charged, then it should be able to slice through the armor of capital ships.
Thx for the replies, as I see most people share my line of thoughts and that pleases me. Since Mongoose is a company that sees to the feedback it gets.
Btw; In that ill-fated game thet Narn vessels scored three crits, two were speed 0 (and no special actions) now thats hard on anny vessel.
Next time I'll probably go for an avenger and maybee an extra Omega or apollo...
But for now, I'm affaird that I won't be using the Posseidon annythime soon..
Cya 8)
Btw; In that ill-fated game thet Narn vessels scored three crits, two were speed 0 (and no special actions) now thats hard on anny vessel.
Next time I'll probably go for an avenger and maybee an extra Omega or apollo...
But for now, I'm affaird that I won't be using the Posseidon annythime soon..
Cya 8)
Yeah the idea that a fighter can't really hurt a capitol ship is not exactly realistic. Look at a lot of these ships, exposed antena(sp?), exposed turrets, open landing bays. Relatively small weapons could do a lot of damage focused on all the soft bits a ship exposes. Destroy the ship, eh maybe not, but make it combat ineffective, sure.
Ripple
Ripple
prelude_to_war
Mongoose
In that case maybe give precise back to fighters - but half or even comletely negate additional damage caused by crits? That way cap ships only suffer the effects and not collateral damage caused by fighters...
Nightmares about Minbari
Mongoose
A question for all of you that want more powerful fighters.
Do you want to see a game where fighters dominate and it isn't worth taking, or even building, larger ships? To my mind that isn't what B5 was all about, but maybe it is what you are after.
Look at it from the economic point of view. Fighters are cheap to build and can be mass produced. Ships are stupidly expansive to build, crew and run, and need major production facilities. If fighters were more powerful then the assorted empires would have concentrated on the production of fighters and would never bother to invest in the larger ships?
For example, a fighter probably costs less than 0.1% of the cost of say, an Omega heavy destroyer. Obviously all 1000 fighters cannot attack the Omega at the same time, but if the Omega didn't have a chance of surviving the attack, why build it.
Unlike modern day fighters, B5 fighters can get anywhere without support through the use of jump gates, so there's no limitation on range as modern fighters have. So that balance isn't there.
So is this really the direction you want to see your games go?#
Personally I much prefer to see the ships seen regularly in the series in action on the tabletop, not vaste seas of fighters.
However I have previously suggested other ways to make fighters more interesting without up-gunning them to ridiculous levels. Are these acceptable or even interesting to all you favor jocks?
Do you want to see a game where fighters dominate and it isn't worth taking, or even building, larger ships? To my mind that isn't what B5 was all about, but maybe it is what you are after.
Look at it from the economic point of view. Fighters are cheap to build and can be mass produced. Ships are stupidly expansive to build, crew and run, and need major production facilities. If fighters were more powerful then the assorted empires would have concentrated on the production of fighters and would never bother to invest in the larger ships?
For example, a fighter probably costs less than 0.1% of the cost of say, an Omega heavy destroyer. Obviously all 1000 fighters cannot attack the Omega at the same time, but if the Omega didn't have a chance of surviving the attack, why build it.
Unlike modern day fighters, B5 fighters can get anywhere without support through the use of jump gates, so there's no limitation on range as modern fighters have. So that balance isn't there.
So is this really the direction you want to see your games go?#
Personally I much prefer to see the ships seen regularly in the series in action on the tabletop, not vaste seas of fighters.
However I have previously suggested other ways to make fighters more interesting without up-gunning them to ridiculous levels. Are these acceptable or even interesting to all you favor jocks?
Fighters have limited range and they need the support of capital ships, which is why I don't think you should be able to buy them as a patrol choice. In the fluff, the delta v fighters only have life support for an hour. Honestly, part of the problem is that you can buy fighters as part of your fleet in a battle. In special circustances, you should be able to buy fighters, like fighters based on a home world or colony world.
prelude_to_war
Mongoose
Actually that's not true - if there's an existing jump point then sure fighters can use it. Otherwise they'd need a jump-capable ship to get them to where they want to go.Nightmares about Minbari said:
We're not talking about making fighters dominant, just make them as effective a choice as any other capital ship in a given list. Personally I think the idea of precise hit consequences without the additional damage is a viable option.
Locutus9956
Mongoose
as several people have noted the promlem is not the posseidon but the fighters.
Fighters in ACTA CAN be useful at the moment but currently even a full load from a posseidon (or if you spent the war point on wings) isnt even CLOSE to packing the firepower of a War choice, or two battle etc etc. And given how easy it is to neutralise most fighters (even without antifighter weaponry once they go in to attack they drop very quickly if fired on).
In my experience only the Nial currently come close to the level of deadliness Id expect fighters to have. (a few others like shadow fighters, vorlon fighters and Sky serpents are potentially quite effective against ships but in all three cases (with the possible exception of the shadows) the races in question have virtually no way to clear even a small enemy fighter screen so their fighters will probably never get a chance to do much....
At the moment fighters are fine for supporting, lowering stealth, engaging enemy fighters and picking off nearly dead ships and really small things like patrol choices but they are simply not capable of acting effectively as big offensive weapon which is what you NEED if your going to spend a whole warpoint on them. The posseidon is supposed to have a war ships offensive capabilities in the form of its fighters. It simply doesnt. (Put it this way would you take a posseidon, even with a few escorts, against ANY other War level ship in the game? If you did would you expect the posseidon to make ANY impact on the outcome? Honestly? No, it would go boom very fast or be critted to pieces and the fighters would of course shred any opposing fighters but then be left doing very little in my experience. Sure its possible to win by flukey rolls but can you think of any such fight where you would not have been better off fielding a Warlock for example? Or even a bunch of smaller ships?
All of which is a terrible shame as the Posseidon is a really nice miniature
Fighters in ACTA CAN be useful at the moment but currently even a full load from a posseidon (or if you spent the war point on wings) isnt even CLOSE to packing the firepower of a War choice, or two battle etc etc. And given how easy it is to neutralise most fighters (even without antifighter weaponry once they go in to attack they drop very quickly if fired on).
In my experience only the Nial currently come close to the level of deadliness Id expect fighters to have. (a few others like shadow fighters, vorlon fighters and Sky serpents are potentially quite effective against ships but in all three cases (with the possible exception of the shadows) the races in question have virtually no way to clear even a small enemy fighter screen so their fighters will probably never get a chance to do much....
At the moment fighters are fine for supporting, lowering stealth, engaging enemy fighters and picking off nearly dead ships and really small things like patrol choices but they are simply not capable of acting effectively as big offensive weapon which is what you NEED if your going to spend a whole warpoint on them. The posseidon is supposed to have a war ships offensive capabilities in the form of its fighters. It simply doesnt. (Put it this way would you take a posseidon, even with a few escorts, against ANY other War level ship in the game? If you did would you expect the posseidon to make ANY impact on the outcome? Honestly? No, it would go boom very fast or be critted to pieces and the fighters would of course shred any opposing fighters but then be left doing very little in my experience. Sure its possible to win by flukey rolls but can you think of any such fight where you would not have been better off fielding a Warlock for example? Or even a bunch of smaller ships?
All of which is a terrible shame as the Posseidon is a really nice miniature
Nightmares about Minbari
Mongoose
Had another thought guys, if the point of all this is to make the Poseidon and other serious carriers more effective ships, maybe fleet carrier rules themselves should be better?
How about this, because of all the control rooms and scanning equipment on a fleet carrier aiding the fighters from it with targetting, why not give the fighters from a carrier AP to represent targetting weak spots under direction from the carrier. Alternatively give them rerolls similar to those a scout can give a warship.
This makes the use of fleet carriers more appealing without making fighters so powerful that other ships become redundant.
Whaddaya think?
How about this, because of all the control rooms and scanning equipment on a fleet carrier aiding the fighters from it with targetting, why not give the fighters from a carrier AP to represent targetting weak spots under direction from the carrier. Alternatively give them rerolls similar to those a scout can give a warship.
This makes the use of fleet carriers more appealing without making fighters so powerful that other ships become redundant.
Whaddaya think?
shakespear
Mongoose
What about dropping it from War to Raid?
Where does the Dilgar carrier rank?
Where does the Dilgar carrier rank?
Commador Q
Mongoose
this sugestion is based more on battlestar Galactica Physics than B-5 physics, but what if fighters that were supporting a capitle ship granted it extera interceptor dice?
i may be totaly wrong in my opinion of what that would do to gameplay, but my guess is that it would make ships that are supported by fighters a lot more powerfull, while at the same time encouraging the use of fighters to clear a target's CAP, without making lone fighter wings any more desierable than they are now.
anyway i'm definately a fan of fighters and by extencion carriers, so i'm all for anything that makes fighters "cooler", even if it doesn't make them any more deadly.
i may be totaly wrong in my opinion of what that would do to gameplay, but my guess is that it would make ships that are supported by fighters a lot more powerfull, while at the same time encouraging the use of fighters to clear a target's CAP, without making lone fighter wings any more desierable than they are now.
anyway i'm definately a fan of fighters and by extencion carriers, so i'm all for anything that makes fighters "cooler", even if it doesn't make them any more deadly.
Problem with the interceptor idea is it doesn't make them any more useful against ships of the level a Posiedon is expected to fight. The issue here is not just that fighters don't fill a role, they do, it's that for a war level carrier to be an effective choice the ship needs to be able to threaten a war level opponent. Increasing the survivability of the carrier is a nice idea but with hull 4 the extra interceptors won't really help as the interceptor mechanic means every die over three gets you very little in additional stopping power. Be very helpful to those races that doen't have interceptors though and perhaps worth making your fleet more survivable.
Still think fighter need something to make them attractive. There are too few fleet carriers in the game to really use that trait to make them effective by changing that trait. But I did like the idea of a redirect.
Hate to say wait for the A book but as both Earth force and fighters are getting tweaked I'd hold off on the Posiedon fixes until we see what they did. The big P may have been changed, and until the fighter tweak is told to us we don't know how much more effective they have gotten. Since we know A has gone to printer there shouldn't be too many more delays/changes/whatnot.
Ripple
Still think fighter need something to make them attractive. There are too few fleet carriers in the game to really use that trait to make them effective by changing that trait. But I did like the idea of a redirect.
Hate to say wait for the A book but as both Earth force and fighters are getting tweaked I'd hold off on the Posiedon fixes until we see what they did. The big P may have been changed, and until the fighter tweak is told to us we don't know how much more effective they have gotten. Since we know A has gone to printer there shouldn't be too many more delays/changes/whatnot.
Ripple
CZuschlag
Mongoose
Shakespear,
The Dilgar Carrier is barf; the Garasoch, while it carries 10 Thoruns, is only a Carrier 2 and not a Fleet Carrier. At Battle Level, it's almost never worth it. It's also one of the Dilgar "special" ships ... Speed 4. Woohoo! It is a brick to kill, however. If it was Fleet Carrier, I'd consider it in very big fights, as Dilgar have almost no other fighter support whatsoever, and the Fighter Pentacon would allow for limited engage-to-kill missions against some superiority fighters, even ISA Nials.
Fighters' problem, IMHO, is survivability. Those that can live, can be nasty. Nials' Stealth and Thunderbolt's Hull, each combined with Dodge 2+ keep these things alive forever. Unfortunately, any generic fighter boost we introduce will bring on the return of the overpowered fighter for these two. We need to be careful here.
On the other hand, we have things like the Kotha. Possibly the most pointless stand out there. Does anyone out there even bother to paint one of these things?
The problems we have is that fighters have such a huge range of Totally Suck to Possibly Bearable along with the issue that, in general, they aren't any good anyways. A generic rule will lift all boats, but some things don't need tons of lifting. They'll get it anyways, and the Nials and Thunderbolts will feel busted. Again. So any fix needs two parts -- a generic fighter fix, call it what you will, and a retune on the low-end (Kotha! Sentri! Falkosi! Delta-V!) and the high end (Thunderbolt, Nial, Tishat, ISA +1 CQ fighters, possibly Rutarian, depending on rule changes, Tzymm)
And, of course, this only begins to address the Battle structure issues. You still have the greivous economic campaign imbalance problems. You have to pay boatloads of points to replace them in campaigns, which --- if based off Carriers or Fleet Carriers -- makes zero sense. If you empty a Garasoch, you're off better buying a new stocked Carrier (20 economic points --- Battle Level), than buying the 10 Thorun flights (10 * 5 economic points -- 50!!!!). Absolutely. Insane.
All the Poseidon does it take these issues and magnify them to War Level to make it totally obvious how failed the current fighter fleet doctrine is. Ripple's right here, we need to see what Armageddon does to fix this. It would be a nice change to see a EA player have to look, bakc and forth, between his Warlock and his Poseidon, to determine just which one he wants for today's battle. And, of course, not base the choice solely on the fact that the Poseidon looks mad cool when painted well.
The Dilgar Carrier is barf; the Garasoch, while it carries 10 Thoruns, is only a Carrier 2 and not a Fleet Carrier. At Battle Level, it's almost never worth it. It's also one of the Dilgar "special" ships ... Speed 4. Woohoo! It is a brick to kill, however. If it was Fleet Carrier, I'd consider it in very big fights, as Dilgar have almost no other fighter support whatsoever, and the Fighter Pentacon would allow for limited engage-to-kill missions against some superiority fighters, even ISA Nials.
Fighters' problem, IMHO, is survivability. Those that can live, can be nasty. Nials' Stealth and Thunderbolt's Hull, each combined with Dodge 2+ keep these things alive forever. Unfortunately, any generic fighter boost we introduce will bring on the return of the overpowered fighter for these two. We need to be careful here.
On the other hand, we have things like the Kotha. Possibly the most pointless stand out there. Does anyone out there even bother to paint one of these things?
The problems we have is that fighters have such a huge range of Totally Suck to Possibly Bearable along with the issue that, in general, they aren't any good anyways. A generic rule will lift all boats, but some things don't need tons of lifting. They'll get it anyways, and the Nials and Thunderbolts will feel busted. Again. So any fix needs two parts -- a generic fighter fix, call it what you will, and a retune on the low-end (Kotha! Sentri! Falkosi! Delta-V!) and the high end (Thunderbolt, Nial, Tishat, ISA +1 CQ fighters, possibly Rutarian, depending on rule changes, Tzymm)
And, of course, this only begins to address the Battle structure issues. You still have the greivous economic campaign imbalance problems. You have to pay boatloads of points to replace them in campaigns, which --- if based off Carriers or Fleet Carriers -- makes zero sense. If you empty a Garasoch, you're off better buying a new stocked Carrier (20 economic points --- Battle Level), than buying the 10 Thorun flights (10 * 5 economic points -- 50!!!!). Absolutely. Insane.
All the Poseidon does it take these issues and magnify them to War Level to make it totally obvious how failed the current fighter fleet doctrine is. Ripple's right here, we need to see what Armageddon does to fix this. It would be a nice change to see a EA player have to look, bakc and forth, between his Warlock and his Poseidon, to determine just which one he wants for today's battle. And, of course, not base the choice solely on the fact that the Poseidon looks mad cool when painted well.
blackphoenix
Mongoose
Well pending possible fighter rule changes in the Armageddon book carriers might become more useful again...
Lord David the Denied
Mongoose
I'm hoping for a reason to field a Balvarix with its bays crammed full of Rutarians...
Tzarevitch
Mongoose
shakespear said:
Several fighters carry anti-ship missiles, but there is only so large a missile that a fighter can carry.
Tzarevitch