Shadow Fighter's shields: totally useless, after all!

Tzarevitch said:
P.S. I forgot one more thing for my suggested fighter shield rule clarification in my earlier post. If the fighter is used as an interceptor, a failed intercept roll counts as 1 hit on the shield. Hits from failed interceptor rolls are always applied to fighters with down shields first (i.e the shadow player cannot spread the damage to fighters with fresh shields first to keep them all alive longer). For example, a shadow ship is holding 2 fighters back to act as interceptors. The first failed intercept roll takes down the shield of fighter A. The second failed roll destroys A completely. The third failed roll then is applied to B knocking its shields down.

The logic of this is, if the shadow fighter can take a heavy plasma cannon on its shield and not be destroyed, it should not be automatically lost when taking the same hit as an interceptor although a further clarification is needed to prevent shadow players from abusing shielded fighters and getting near-limitless interceptors. Effectively each shadow fighter counts in some ways as 2 fighters which is in keeping with their cost over say Goriths acting in the same role.

Yes, this would fall into making sense for the shields, but also pushes the shadow fighter into a different role than it was intended. Further, it makes a bit (although minor) more book-keeping or failed-interceptor-hit-shields tokens on the table. If adding shield effects to fighters as interceptors, we should also incorporate the shields into dogfighting like Anti-fighter is involved in dogfighting. The small change of allowing shields to work against AF and AAF is simple, makes sense, and allows the shadow fighter to fulfill its intended role. These other additions add unneeded exceptions IMO.
 
For people worried that having to track shields between AF phase and firing phase would be too much bookkeeping, it would be no more bookkeeping that keeping track of shields during the shooting phase anyway. Especially when you keep in mind that AF fire is likely to be concentrated on one or two shadow fighters in order to try and kill them instead of just taking down the shields on a larger number of fighters.
 
darklord4 said:
Tzarevitch said:
P.S. I forgot one more thing for my suggested fighter shield rule clarification in my earlier post. If the fighter is used as an interceptor, a failed intercept roll counts as 1 hit on the shield. Hits from failed interceptor rolls are always applied to fighters with down shields first (i.e the shadow player cannot spread the damage to fighters with fresh shields first to keep them all alive longer). For example, a shadow ship is holding 2 fighters back to act as interceptors. The first failed intercept roll takes down the shield of fighter A. The second failed roll destroys A completely. The third failed roll then is applied to B knocking its shields down.

The logic of this is, if the shadow fighter can take a heavy plasma cannon on its shield and not be destroyed, it should not be automatically lost when taking the same hit as an interceptor although a further clarification is needed to prevent shadow players from abusing shielded fighters and getting near-limitless interceptors. Effectively each shadow fighter counts in some ways as 2 fighters which is in keeping with their cost over say Goriths acting in the same role.

Yes, this would fall into making sense for the shields, but also pushes the shadow fighter into a different role than it was intended. Further, it makes a bit (although minor) more book-keeping or failed-interceptor-hit-shields tokens on the table. If adding shield effects to fighters as interceptors, we should also incorporate the shields into dogfighting like Anti-fighter is involved in dogfighting. The small change of allowing shields to work against AF and AAF is simple, makes sense, and allows the shadow fighter to fulfill its intended role. These other additions add unneeded exceptions IMO.

It isn't really intended as a role change on my part, but rather to make sure that all fighter roles and possible interactions with a changed shield rule are taken into account.

Tzarevitch
 
Tzarevitch said:
2) Stealth: Minbari, Centauri rutarians and maybe a couple of others - Close range means that stealth does not apply to AF or dogfighting.
I would add: doesn't apply if the fighter is in base contact with the ship shooting at it (just as a fighter in that position would ignore the ship's stealth).
 
I think this was the preferred 'solution' to the shadow fighters.

They should be dangerous, and this is - they've always been hard to take down with a ship's main guns, so it's as people have said it's bit daft that anti-fighter gets though.

If a spitfire will survive a Sunhawk's plasma torpedo - and on average it will - then a couple of flak turrets swatting it like a mosquito on a windscreen doesn't make sense.

Their firepower is fine and I've always liked that. Jump a vorchan and watch the Centauri cry as a couple of wings blow it apart in one pass.

They're immune to anti-fighter and anti-fighter 1 (although the latter might knock down the shields for the ships main weapons to finish it off).

But they're still vulnerable to fighters - having no dogfight bonus (the only (2) fighter type without at least +2!) and so few flights means that they'll get ripped from the sky by defensive fighters.
Unlike most they've no superiority fighters to protect them.


We've used this as a house rule for a while. I think it works fine.
And before saying 'too powerful' I draw attention to the fact that despite being as vulnerable to fighters as a Delta-V, a shadow fighter flight should in theory be as threatening as a Tethys-class Laser Boat....




And above all, to people
 
Perhaps I am jumping the gun on when to expect this implementation, but will it be in a FAQ update, a S&P, or in the Annual book that is supposed to come out.
 
I don't know, but as far as I'm concerned, El Sprange posting 'this is how I intended the rules to work' qualifies as giving our house rules official sanction.

Unless you are going to a particularly rules-lawyer-ey event then it shouldn't be a problem. Print out this thread if you think it'll help.
 
locarno24 said:
I don't know, but as far as I'm concerned, El Sprange posting 'this is how I intended the rules to work' qualifies as giving our house rules official sanction.
But are you referring to shields helping against anti-fighter, or against main weapons? If the former then he didn't say that is how it is supposed to work, just that he wasn't against that interpretation. Meaning in my eyes, "it's not my interpretation but you can do that if you like".

Although hopefully a change will come :)
 
I've just been reading the exact wording on AF and the only difference in wording to make shields work would be to make them cause hits. So you wouldn't have to write an exception in to the rules it would just be implied.

They would still not be weapons so stealth wouldn't work, and dodge is specifically ignored. However is there anything that this wording would screw up?
 
mollari_uk said:
They would still not be weapons so stealth wouldn't work, and dodge is specifically ignored. However is there anything that this wording would screw up?
Interceptors (given by a Centauri escort)
 
whats the point of giving them shields when they can take veruarly all the narn fighters in the 1st ep of season 2 or was it the 2nd .... the shadow fighters are suposed to be 1,000,000 + years ahead of any other race (apart from the vorlons)
 
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