Space Superiority Fighter

[locarno24]

IMO, designs using High Guard and Trillion Credit Squadron had better be able to perform adequately under the combat rules for those publications as well, which suddenly makes this effort much more challenging.

It will. And I'd have no hesitation using these designs in a 'proper' fleet engagement.
Barrage combat is a simplification with a few twists but the things you've done are just as useful as for the core rules;
~ reinforced hull is still the best thing since sliced bread on attack craft
~ military ships of any size should take their full armour allowance almost by default
~ there are very few problems that cannot be solved with a sodding huge plasma cannon

 

[SSWarlock]

Still working through my redesign via combat but I agree with what you've discovered regarding the plasma gun, locarno24. If it's going to take on a serious combat opponent which is using a particle beam, the plasma gun had better be a barbette upgraded to Accurate and Long Range. Same thing with adding Hull; without added Hull, small craft are just too brittle.

One thing that's come out of my test skirmishes is the fact that the auto crew hit from a particle beam's radiation becomes non-automatic when the target is extremely armored. Armor counts as a negative DM when the crew rad damage is rolled. Roll 4 or less on 2D6 and there's no damage. In other words, Armor 8 (or Armor 2 plus the Radiation Shielding armor option) limits any particle beam hit to only its non-radiation rolled damage. And if a fighter has its Armor 15 hammered by a particle beam down to a value where the attack gets a crew rad hit , the pilot has a heck of a lot more to worry about than radiation sickness.

Regarding the use of screens on small craft..can't be done. High Guard states explicitly on page 49, "Small craft can not carry screens."

This isn't such a loss because a black globe really requires additional capacitors to make a vessel survivable in heavy combat, small craft don't have the space for them, and having no capacitors from a Jump Drive means any hit on a small craft with a BG instantly results in a catastrophic failure of the screen. The good news is the Rad Shielding option with armor protects a crew from Radiation damage as well as a Nuclear Damper and a fighter is very difficult to hit with a meson gun. Additionally, a meson screen, even one with the Very High Yield upgrade, won't stop bay mounted meson guns from having an excellent chance of killing a fighter with a single shot. Besides, most warship commanders would love to have meson guns fire at fighters rather than at their own warship.

I noted the potential inclusion of an armored bulkhead around the barbette in your "Spectre" design. I didn't include them myself but I can see real value in putting an armored bulkhead around the maneuver drive and cockpit. The loss of either of those in combat kills the fighter whereas getting a fighter home with a dead barbette means the gun can be repaired/replaced and sent back into combat. Something any designer should seriously consider if the design has the space for them. Putting a armored bulkhead around a power plant comes down to a matter of opinion and available space. My opinion is the space and cost is better put to maximizing armor since armoring the power plant would take a large percentage of the craft while not protecting the entire craft. But combat experience has a way of changing one's opinions. :wink:

When all is said and done, your general design philosophy hits the bullseye...

~ reinforced hull is still the best thing since sliced bread on attack craft
~ military ships of any size should take their full armour allowance almost by default
~ there are very few problems that cannot be solved with a sodding huge plasma cannon

Can I get an "Amen and Hallelujah!" from the crowd? :lol:

One more thing..it appears I may be calculating the cost of armor incorrectly. Could someone walk me through how they do the calculation so I can compare it to my method? Say, a TL 15 40-ton small craft with 15 armor. (What a surprise, huh?)

 

[Chas]

One more thing..it appears I may be calculating the cost of armor incorrectly. Could someone walk me through how they do the calculation so I can compare it to my method? Say, a TL 15 40-ton small craft with 15 armor. (What a surprise, huh?)

Let's see:
15 armor is 2.5 time the base 6 protection.
Base 6 protection is 50% of the hull cost.
So your cost for a 40 ton small craft is
2.5 x 1.4MCrx50%
=
1.75MCr

P.S. I'm only working through this now myself SSWarlock so this may well be liable to later correction by the more experienced. :mrgreen:

 

[Nerhesi]

Yup - working on some designs myself and Ive realised I overpaid for armor cost (in credits).

Oh and Amen Hallelujah! Yup - Reinforced Hull is absolutely amazing on small craft; especially when considering high-guard/barrage/trillion credit/capital rules.

-7 to barrage small craft all the time, not including range modifiers, and if they make it to adjacent, that becomes a -10 to -12 modifier depending on the orders.

 

[Chas]

Hmmm... need to check what happens when you have two fleet wings of space superiority fighters slugging it out against each other using barrage rules :lol:

 

[SSWarlock]

Hmmm... need to check what happens when you have two fleet wings of space superiority fighters slugging it out against each other using barrage rules :lol:

Funny you should mention it..this morning walking the dog I spotted a group of bees attacking a couple of wasps. After a moment of fascination watching the dogfight, I realized I may have been about to find my dog and myself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We left the area very, very quickly.

 

[SSWarlock]

Let's see:
15 armor is 2.5 time the base 6 protection.
Base 6 protection is 50% of the hull cost.
So your cost for a 40 ton small craft is
2.5 x 1.4MCrx50%
=
1.75MCr

Ok, good. I kinda did it bass-ackwards by dividing the tonnage required and cost by 6 in order to get the "per point of armor" tonnage and cost (resulting in 0.0083 ton and 0.083 of base hull cost per armor point with the 3's being repeating) but it comes out close to your number (i.e. 1.743MCr). The delta is due to rounding the repeating 3 down. Silly me. As the design contractor, I should know better than to round in the buyer's favor. :wink:

Thank you for the confirmation.

 

[Nerhesi]

Hmmm... need to check what happens when you have two fleet wings of space superiority fighters slugging it out against each other using barrage rules :lol:

I dont think we have the barrage values for Plasma but they would probably be identical to Particle.

Particle Turrets are 3+crew hit.
Particle Barbettes are 4+crew hit.

So we can assume Plasma is the same for barrage purposes.

Lets pick a 10 Billion credit squardon (Actually called squadron) pitting Legendary pilots in both squadrons. The mass-production (85.5 mcr) version, you'll get 116 of them. The super expensive ones (169 mcr), you'll get 59 of them. I assumed legendary pilots (+4 crew skill total) because that is the only proper thing to do for such a legendary battle!

Unleash hell! (Plasma)

Now to figure out the negative modifiers:
Individual weapon damage is 4 - 15 for armor, resulting in a -9 DM.
Target is a fighter squadron, -4 DM.
Target is dodging, -2 DM.
Evade software, -1 DM.
Total negative DM: -16 This applies to both craft - they have the same defensive modifiers.

Positive modifiers:
Crew: +4 DM
Fire Control: +3 or +5 (Mass production vs Expensive Version)
Total Positive DM: +7 vs +9advantage for the Expensive version obviously.
----------------

Total barrage to-hit modifiers:
Mass production version: -9 DM to hit
Expensive version: -7 DM to hit

To do ANY damage with a barrage, the roll needs to exceed a value of 3. Which means, the mass production fighter requires a roll of 12. Mean while the expensive version requires a roll of 10.

Ok before I go any further, it seems obvious now that even with LEGENDARY pilots, the expensive one wins out. But I need someone to ensure my barrage modifiers are correct. I have based them directly on the example in Trillion Credit Squadron book which shows armor value being subtracted first from the Individual Weapon Damage. The example given also shows the Individual Weapon Damage of a Torpedo is 4.

If the above holds as true, we've learned that you dont barrage high armor fighters except with high-damage bays. Your best is heavy particle and meson bays - because they will never let you come to short to be chewed up by Rail Gun Bays. Although, should fightes get into close-range and excute fast-strafing run; arrivederci! You're looking at another -3 to -5 to the barrage roll.

EDIT: I just noticed technicall crew skill is mentioned as possibly reaching a +5 bonus, but even then you'd still be looking at rolling a 9+ vs 11+ to hit.

Conclusion: Fighters shouldn't barrage each-other, they should just pewpew-normally Granted that is a bit crazy given the time required - but it is .. pretty accurate? That advanced fighters would tie eachother up for a pretty damn long time.

 

[Nerhesi]

Just a quick comparisson here vs a TL15 battle ship.

You get 815 expensive space superiority fighters for the cost of Sylea.

Assuming 8 flights of 100. You're looking at the following with "legendary crews" on both sides (sylea and fighters). Assuming both targets at long range (so no disadvantage to sylea - although to be mean, we could laugh at a Sylea being taunted from very long range by Accurate, Longe Range Particle Barbette fighters... but we wont).

The Sylea can only hope to hit with the accurate meson heavy bays. DM to hit is:
Armor DM: 8 weapon damage -15 armor = -7 DM
Fire Control: +5
Crew: +4
Accurate Weapon upgrade: +1
Fighter Evade software: -1
Fighters dodging: -2
Barraging a group of fighter flight: -4
Total DM: -4. So Sylea needs an 7+ to connect.

2d6, roll 6-: 41.7% chance to miss.
2d6, roll 7: 16.7% chance, (50 bays, 8 damage a bay, x3 for non-capital target = 1200 damage), 10% damage on a roll of 7 means 120 damage. 120 damage, divided by 6 (hull + structure) = 20 fighters gone.
2d6, roll 8: 13.9% chance, 25% damage = 300 damage, 50 fighters gone
2d6, roll 9,10,11, or 12: 16.7% chance - damage is limited by number of bays. 50 Fighters gone regardless

To keep it simple - I'm going to assume when the sylea does connect it rolls a 8+ not an 7, therefore it obliterates 50 fighters. Half a squadron. This ofcourse, only happens 58.7% of the time; as the rest of the time the barrage roll is 2 or under doing no damage.

If you want a rough estimate, the Sylea eliminate half of ONE fighter squadron every TWO turns.

----------------------------------------------------
Now for the fighters.

The Flights will fire 8 barrages of plasma/particle barbettes, considered 4 damage.
Armor DM: 4 weapon damage -15 armor = -11 DM
Fire Control: +5
Crew: +4
Accurate Weapon upgrade: +1
Sylea Evade software: -1
Sylea dodging: -2
Total DM: -4.
Hey look at that - exactly the same.

EACH squadron, on a 7+, will do anywhere from 40 to 500 damage. It may be near impossible to do system damage due to the net barrage roll beeding to be an 8+.

On average, assuming a 7+ to hit is in 1 in 2 (like we did for Sylea to be fair), and using the barrage table % damage. We can assume the following MEAN damage per squadron that connects with the Sylea:

16.7% of 40 damage = 6.68
13.9% of 100 damage = 13.9
11.1% of 200 damage = 22.2
8.3% of 300 damage = 24.9
5.6% of 400 damage = 22.4
2.8% of 500 damage = 14
Mean damage per squadron (not counting for attrition) = 104.1.

So - the play by play:

Round 1: Sylea miss, 4 squadrons hit. 416.4 hull damage to sylea.
Round 2: Sylea kills 50 fighters, 3.5 squadrons hit. 364.35 damage to sylea. (780.75 total).
Round 3: Sylea miss, 3.5 squadrons hit. 364.35 damage to sylea. (1145.1 total).
Round 4: Sylea kills 50 fighters, 3 squadrons hit. 312.3 damage---

Oh wait - we have to assume these Legendary pilots arent idiots. With 1 thrust spent on dodging, they have 9 thrust left to chase the Sylea. The sylea is not moving, because it is spending thrust dodging every attack (dont even ask how it has the magical 8 thrust). That means you're looking at Turn 3, youre in ADJACENT range running Fast-Strafing runs against the Sylea. (resulting in the Sylea getting a -5 (adjacent range AND order) while the fighters gain a +1 (-1 for range, +2 for fast strafing run)

Poor poor battleship. Lesson learned: Use fighter screens even if you are not an empire (Imperium. Solomani) that likes fighters.

 

[Chas]

Hi Nerhesi, that's a good analysis and a good reference except the issue with meson guns here
Armor DM: 8 weapon damage -15 armor = -7 DM
You don't subtract the armor value from meson weapons.
Pg 149 of the Core Rulebook "Messon guns ignore armor".

Not that most ships carry a large number of meson bays and the example is still good for the bulk of most capital ships weapons.

Difficult to get this balancing act right for the rules. You want fighters to be a problem... but not that much of a problem, heh. And the two fighter squadrons should cancel each other out per your previous example, not scratch away at each other.

Costs for space fleets obviously need to include the ship carrier, but system assaults going up against a high population world with pilots to burn definitely looks nasty.

 

[F33D]

Hi Nerhesi, that's a good analysis and a good reference except the issue with meson guns here
Armor DM: 8 weapon damage -15 armor = -7 DM
You don't subtract the armor value from meson weapons.
Pg 149 of the Core Rulebook "Messon guns ignore armor".

Not that most ships carry a large number of meson bays and the example is still good for the bulk of most capital ships weapons.

If your erstwhile enemy is known to have a significant portion of its fighting power as fighters, you will supply your ships with Meson weapons to counter that threat...

 

[Nerhesi]

Hi Nerhesi, that's a good analysis and a good reference except the issue with meson guns here
Armor DM: 8 weapon damage -15 armor = -7 DM
You don't subtract the armor value from meson weapons.
Pg 149 of the Core Rulebook "Messon guns ignore armor".

Not that most ships carry a large number of meson bays and the example is still good for the bulk of most capital ships weapons.

Difficult to get this balancing act right for the rules. You want fighters to be a problem... but not that much of a problem, heh. And the two fighter squadrons should cancel each other out per your previous example, not scratch away at each other.

Costs for space fleets obviously need to include the ship carrier, but system assaults going up against a high population world with pilots to burn definitely looks nasty.

Oh shitz - I knew it.

Although this is a big deal in most cases, funny enough, in this case - 50 meson weapons still taking out only 50 fighters. I guess what it would mean however is that you would be connecting a lot more often as you would not be subtracting a -7, resulting in almost guaranteed hits? So the sylea would be taking out 50 fighters per turn rather than 50 fighters every other turn.

I did heavily weigh things in the favour of the Sylea however;
-I used the most ridiculously expensive fighters TL 15 (armor, grav drive, fusion drive) fighter.
-I totally forgot the Sylea can only dodge X times (it was dodging 8 squadrons - heh).

However, to be realistic, lets take into account the realistic scenario only; which would be fighters rushing in to shoot the sylea from adjacent range, especially with the fast strafing run order:

Sylea DMs:
Ignores armor DM from mesons
+5 Fire Control
+4 crew
+1 accurate
-2 dodging fighters
-4 barrage vs flight
-1 evade software
-3 adjacent range
-2 fast strafing run order:
total DM: -2 DM

Fighter DMs:
(4 dmg - 15 armor) = -11 DM
+5 fire control
+4 crew
+1 accurate
-2 dodging (sometimes?)
-1 evade software
-1 adjacent range (for small craft range band)
+2 fast strafing run
total DM: -3 DM

Easily a dead Sylea pound for pound due to the amount damage being dealt - not counting the fact that any 11 or 12 roll results in critical damage.

Anyways, I think the conclusion is that balanced forces do much better then imbalanced ones (all caps or all fighters)

 

[Nerhesi]

If your erstwhile enemy is known to have a significant portion of its fighting power as fighters, you will supply your ships with Meson weapons to counter that threat...

Large Meson Bay is 100 Mcr Each... hence why you're losing that fight overral, that anywhere between 1.5 to 2 fighters per meson bay you add.

 

[Sigtrygg]

If your erstwhile enemy is known to have a significant portion of its fighting power as fighters, you will supply your ships with Meson weapons to counter that threat...

Large Meson Bay is 100 Mcr Each... hence why you're losing that fight overral, that anywhere between 1.5 to 2 fighters per meson bay you add.

And how does the fighter get to the fight?

For a true comparison you have to include the carrier.

Speaking of the comparison, what happens if you use regular crews for the BB and the fighters?

 

[Chas]

A key issue here is pilot resource as well. Just like in the Battle of Britian which was almost lost because they were simply running out of trained fighters, and the Japanese training problems as their experienced pilots fell to attrition there's only so many times you can send your legendary fighter pilots against a significant target before you simply don't have any legendary pilots left.

For all their cost more should be made of meson bay corvettes/destroyers in the current rules set, particularly around TL12-13 when even capital ship meson screens are no great shakes.

 

[Nerhesi]

If your erstwhile enemy is known to have a significant portion of its fighting power as fighters, you will supply your ships with Meson weapons to counter that threat...

Large Meson Bay is 100 Mcr Each... hence why you're losing that fight overral, that anywhere between 1.5 to 2 fighters per meson bay you add.

And how does the fighter get to the fight?

For a true comparison you have to include the carrier.

Speaking of the comparison, what happens if you use regular crews for the BB and the fighters?

I thought we could assume that pure tenders are nothing to worry about - I didn't explore it much because you could make a Thrust 1 Jump 1 Rating 1 power plant - massive cavernous hangar bay with tubes for dirt cheap. These things would jump in, Very Distant or Distant range and just launch the armada.

As for the comparison using regular crews, I believe crew quality hurts capital ships over-all because ultimately, you want to kill as much as possible before it becomes x-hundred fighters buzzing around you at adjacent range - where it becomes much, much harder to hit them.

You did pose an interesting question, I'm going to have to look at designing massive jump-capable dispersed or planetoid hulls then Jesus I keep finding more and more interesting stuff to waste my time on! Thank Sig! :twisted: :evil:

 

[Nerhesi]

A key issue here is pilot resource as well. Just like in the Battle of Britian which was almost lost because they were simply running out of trained fighters, and the Japanese training problems as their experienced pilots fell to attrition there's only so many times you can send your legendary fighter pilots against a significant target before you simply don't have any legendary pilots left.

For all their cost more should be made of meson bay corvettes/destroyers in the current rules set, particularly around TL12-13 when even capital ship meson screens are no great shakes.

Correct - with some exceptions.

Dont forget, when your legendary fighter pilots die or lose lets say 50% (400) in attacking that legendary Sylea, your enemy destroyed sylea just went down with nearly FOUR THOUSAND legendary crew. Granted - not pilots - but piloting isnt any more difficult to replace vs those gunners or engineers or what have you.

Although, if you dont care about legendary pilots - you can drone all your fighters to be pilot 3, gunnery 2 (so crew skill like +2?). Again - that introduces the further complexity of getting your flight jammed!

As for what happens if we make Meson bay corvettes or destroyers? Well that depends - are they space-craft or small craft? And doesnt that make it more expensive to mount many meson bays on many ships?

Lol - I just had a formula of d(Meson)/d(fighter kill rate) pop into my mind; but we have to consider the hard-cap that each bay can only every kill 1 fighter when it fires. Even if the damage dealt per bay is between 2.4 and 32, you can only kill 1 single fighter with that bay.

If you want to be super to an all fighter fleet, with an all-capital or an all space-craft fleet; your ratio of fighter killing/hitting barrages vs fighters has to be low enough to out-number the fighters. I dont think that is possible.

 

[Chas]

Yep, you'll definitely want to return to tenders. That's a huge discussion in itself, and interesting. But my original comment on system defenses having massed fighters without the tender problem is still definitely a typical scenario.

Regards a ship vs. fighter balance evaluation with the barrage rules you'd want to be using very high yield characteristics with +2DM, a given for the current rules for +2 rather than accurate at +1 DM.

I haven't looked at using 50t meson bays yet for the balance on minimum number of craft destroyed/turn in a mass barrage but that'll need evaluation given the armor is not deducting from the lower to hit DM.

In a fleet action you'd almost certainly get the benefits from a fire control network in Trillion Credit squadron, but that can left out for the moment.

 

[SSWarlock]

If you want your flight of 40-ton fighters with the Accurate, Long Range plasma barbette to add insult to injury during barrages, use each fighter's second anti-ship weapon slot to hold a High Yield, Resilient nuclear torpedo. It weighs 2.5 tons, is in an external mount, costs 36k CR (upgrades costs included) and does 6D6 + auto rad crew hit. The Resilient upgrade allows the torp to ignore the first point defense hit on it.

Launch every fighter's torpedo at medium range and time it so that the torpedoes detonate just before the fighters begin their strafing runs. Since each attack occurs on a separate turn, the fighters get to use their full Fire Control bonus on each attack. I'm thinking the attack profile could be as follows:

Range To Target......Attack Type
Long Range............ Plasma gun
Medium Range.........Torpedo launch
Short range.............Plasma gun attack + Torpedo attack
Future attacks.........Strafe attack or Plasma gun attack at range.

Another thought: replace the nuke torp on some of the fighters with an ortillery one (same upgrades) and launch these from Close range for 8D6 High Yield damage. You'll definitely want to max out the Fire Control bonus for this attack since the torp has a negative modifier to its anti-ship attack and the target's point defense has a bonus. Launch the orty torps so they become intermixed with the nuke torps while the nuke-launching fighters re-engage the target with their plasma guns during the post-nuke-launch turn.

Addendum: A potential reason to not mount a torpedo on a small craft in an external mount is Trillion Credit Squadron's introduction of the EMP torpedo. Given the odds of an EMP torp actually getting a damage roll that ends up hitting the target's external torpedo weapon slot is about 11% (a roll of 9 on 2D6), this may not be that much of a threat.

Addendum Secundus: But the real reason to not mount a torpedo in addition to a plasma gun barbette is you can't. A barbette takes up two weapons slots, using up all the slots on a 40-ton fighter. *sigh*
These aren't the droids you're looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.

 

[F33D]

Anyways, I think the conclusion is that balanced forces do much better then imbalanced ones (all caps or all fighters)

An all Cap fleet would be more likely to wipe out a mixed fleet as fighters don't bring as much to the table for the cost. Every small bay meson (MCr 50) hit destroys a fighter.