Space Superiority Fighter
- Thread starter SSWarlock
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The high thrust burner drones I have designed in the Artemis Frigate thread below would be a cost effective solution. The particle beam Strike drone would make life difficult simply by pilot attrition in full campaign, not just one battle.
But there is a basic hole in the rules here. Mongoose attempted to make the fighter more viable as a fleet unit, with specifically assisting the lighter laser fighter with the straffing rule, which made the heavy fighter over powered in high tech levels, with high armor scenarios using barrage rules. They are an end in themselves, bring enough to the battle and you will win, which should not be the tactical balance.
But there is a basic hole in the rules here. Mongoose attempted to make the fighter more viable as a fleet unit, with specifically assisting the lighter laser fighter with the straffing rule, which made the heavy fighter over powered in high tech levels, with high armor scenarios using barrage rules. They are an end in themselves, bring enough to the battle and you will win, which should not be the tactical balance.
Chas said:
This is very true, and something that's concerned me reading this thread. It's great that small craft and fighters have got plenty of love from Mongoose. To be honest if it turns out the truly monstrous warships are white elephants I'll not mourn their passing as I prefer small-ish ship universes, but there is a risk of this going a bit far.
One factor that has only been touched on though is that apart from in planetary defence, these ships need to be carted around and the carrier can't just be some rickety indefensible bit of space scaffolding.
Simon Hibbs
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
Then again, it has never happened in history that a ship type was "state of the art" and the terror of the sea, only to be replaced by something else a few centuries later.
So at lower TL, the big ships rule but as TL increases, fighters become more and more important and big ships become targets. I can live with that. Makes variations based on TL possible; which I happen to like.
Just like the Meson Gun makes armoured ships obsolete (ish).
So at lower TL, the big ships rule but as TL increases, fighters become more and more important and big ships become targets. I can live with that. Makes variations based on TL possible; which I happen to like.
Just like the Meson Gun makes armoured ships obsolete (ish).
Simonh, the carting around issue is acknowledged, the problem is, the thing you are most likely to use to go and get carriers past a screen of fighters are other high speed fighters, there's nothing there that changes the dynamics of fighters are best.
Rikki, I think most people would agree to a point, but in this case it does seem to have swung too much the other way.
Rikki, I think most people would agree to a point, but in this case it does seem to have swung too much the other way.
Chas said:
The simple fix to all this seems to be not to make fighters mechanically weaker, but to allow orders to screen/dogfight at longer ranges. This would allow a smaller number of fighters to tie up a larger number for fighters.
Since this "tying up" would result in fighters doing little damage to each-other for several rounds, it would immediately result in larger ships being of significantly more impact since they would be doing significant damage to preoccupied enemy fighters.
I have tested this by adding an order that allows fighters to "intercept" up to 3x their number within 1 range band. If the fighters ignore the interception, I grant the defending fighter a +8 DM on the barrage roll (this is what I've tested so far) to simulate trying to run the gauntlet. I abstract the exchange of fire at short/medium range between the defending and offensive squadrons.
Obviously this is just a very early test with my play-group (as we usually play Adventure Ship style campaigns and not massive military battles) but this minor addition so far seems to be very effective in avoiding the scenario chas has mentioned.
That's interesting Nerhesi because it's similar to what I have been bouncing around, though I was thinking of expanding the current evade rule rather than using the intercept but the concept is the same. I would add a modifier, that for every two levels difference in thrust the DM is reduced by 1. Thus if you have a super fast craft at thrust 16 they can get around thrust 8 fighters. This needs play testing, I suspect simple speed and short attack window for a range band might work. The intercept rule might need to be applied also for +/- one range band.
The other modification I was considering was to allow fighters attacking other fighters that are on a straffing run a bonus. That is, a fighter attacking another fighter on a straffing run gets +4 DM and ignores the positive DM the straffing fighter gets against the target vessel. I.e. you are going to get 'bounced' if you don't clear enemy fighters out of the way first before targeting capital ships. You could make an intercept rule apply in this case as well, or instead of this rule. It would be simpler to simply state in the original intercept rule that straffing fighters get no defensive bonus when attacked by other fighters.
Also the statement in HG barrage rules pg 74 "Armour contributes directly to defense for all kinds of attack." needs to be erratted to exclude meson weapons. This is so blatantly non-sensible as to be ignorable but nevertheless causes immediate problems when addressing the fighter balance issue between players because it is so definitely stated.
The other modification I was considering was to allow fighters attacking other fighters that are on a straffing run a bonus. That is, a fighter attacking another fighter on a straffing run gets +4 DM and ignores the positive DM the straffing fighter gets against the target vessel. I.e. you are going to get 'bounced' if you don't clear enemy fighters out of the way first before targeting capital ships. You could make an intercept rule apply in this case as well, or instead of this rule. It would be simpler to simply state in the original intercept rule that straffing fighters get no defensive bonus when attacked by other fighters.
Also the statement in HG barrage rules pg 74 "Armour contributes directly to defense for all kinds of attack." needs to be erratted to exclude meson weapons. This is so blatantly non-sensible as to be ignorable but nevertheless causes immediate problems when addressing the fighter balance issue between players because it is so definitely stated.
Yeah, and it's all good. The big cruiser doesn't get to die a death of a thousand cuts by a handful of sub 100 ton ships - you've got to bring a lot to the party and you've got to deal with attrition. It also forces capital ship designers not to ignore the expense of meson's even if they think they're being marginalized in fleet combat at TL15. Again all good. It's just a shame that high Armour does marginalize so many other weapons. One other idea I was considering was to allow gauss weapons to ignore the straffing bonus. It might be logical given gauss weapons can take more of a shotgun route with a spray of slugs. And if one does that then there's a few other tactical options on the table for the ship design. Including making truly effective escort vessels. The escort vessel's a nice concept, but rather worthless as implemented within the existing rule set....locarno24 said:
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