Fighter Ideas

Playtesting & Rules Development
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MarkG88
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Re: Playing devil's Advocate

Post by MarkG88 »

Bandit wrote:Didn't Rainer's playtest game have a similar mechanic for limiting bomber heavier ordenances to a number of uses?

While I sort of like the idea of making fighters have to return to thier carriers to rearm, the idea loses its glitter when you consider high tech units that primarily utilze energy based weaponry or have engines with fuel to operate for years.

The other thing to consider is we would need to define how long a turn in combat really is for conversions. Is it a day? an hour? A minute? 10 minutes? 12 Centons?

On the other hand, this would add in some additional consideration about how or when fighters/bombers are deployed. Currently there is no reason to not have them running full steam all the time. Also the units are highly over powered in the current system, but I will not rant about that tonight.

I think this idea would work with a number of universes quite well, such as BSG and Macross. Though the Veritechs were said to operate years on a single power cell ... it was ammo they would run out of. Hmm, I may go try some ideas out with my Robotech conversions now.

I personally don't think this would fit the later Trek universe where your fighters were rather independant. Andromeda also seemed to have really high tech fighters as well.

Just me playing devil's advocate while I work on other projects.

Yes this potential rule is "situational" based on the universes being played, but if by Star Trek you mean SFB, they all were drone dependent for firepower (or Plasma F or photons which had to be generated on carrier) so they definitely have an endurance rating based on ordinance.

As for what is a turn length, again it's abstract and not an issue, combat tends to burn ammo and fuel at an obscenely high rate compared to "routine" non-combat sorties (for our contemporary earth-bond ships and planes) so scenarios with high number of turns could simply be a more intense battle regardless of the actual "time" involved (my two cents on this topic).
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

The only potential problem I can see with limiting fighter endurance in this way is that it is very setting dependent, and depends heavily on what the timeframe of a space combat scenario is supposed to represent. If it is a single battle, then it can make sense; if it is four weeks of constant fighting, it doesn't feel as right to me.

My thoughts on limiting fighter usage is to allow a fleet to allocate a number of flights offensively equal to the Command Rating of the Task Force flagship, +1 per point of Carrier rating in the task force. In this manner a better command and control platform will be better at directing fighter warfare, as will the use of dedicated carriers (rather than casual carriers). The limitation will prevent a player from throwing all of their fighters against an enemy in a single turn, holding them instead to protect friendly squadrons.
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Post by MarkG88 »

Tyrel Lohr wrote:The only potential problem I can see with limiting fighter endurance in this way is that it is very setting dependent, and depends heavily on what the timeframe of a space combat scenario is supposed to represent. If it is a single battle, then it can make sense; if it is four weeks of constant fighting, it doesn't feel as right to me.

My thoughts on limiting fighter usage is to allow a fleet to allocate a number of flights offensively equal to the Command Rating of the Task Force flagship, +1 per point of Carrier rating in the task force. In this manner a better command and control platform will be better at directing fighter warfare, as will the use of dedicated carriers (rather than casual carriers). The limitation will prevent a player from throwing all of their fighters against an enemy in a single turn, holding them instead to protect friendly squadrons.

Nice idea Tyrel. Mine was setting dependent as I noted but for a nice general-purpose rule your use of CR and carrier rating really nails it. I'm always looking for a way to "reward" players for having dedicated carriers vs. casual carriers and this definitely fills the bill in that criteria as well.

-Mark
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

MarkG88 wrote:Nice idea Tyrel. Mine was setting dependent as I noted but for a nice general-purpose rule your use of CR and carrier rating really nails it. I'm always looking for a way to "reward" players for having dedicated carriers vs. casual carriers and this definitely fills the bill in that criteria as well.
I came to that conclusion, too. Dedicated carrier units really needed some sort of a tangible bonus other than "oh, look, they carry more fighters". That is why I got to thinking about changing Carrier so that it is a rated ability.

In addition to a potential influence above, I also have a rules change cribbed in so that each point of Carrier rating allows you to provide one flight with a +1 DV, AS or AF bonus (not all three, just one) that is applied during the Assignments Phase. The improved coordination of flights based from a dedicated carrier provide this bonus, and gives players a risen to field Carrier units in their fleets. Originally this ability was applied to the "Wing Commander" officer trait in Those Who Serve, but I felt it worked better as a perk of the Carrier unit ability instead.
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Post by MarkG88 »

Hey that really works too (the bonus traits based on Carrier rating) shows the extra ordinance and tactics etc a dedicated Carrier flight wing would be able to produce. Good stuff sir!
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

A large part of my "silent running" the past three months has been banging my head against the wall trying to address some of these side issues that no one even thought about during the initial design process of the game (myself included). Hopefully a lot of the changes will survive to see inclusion in one of the books :)
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Post by Gareth_Perkins »

Tyrel Lohr wrote:In addition to a potential influence above, I also have a rules change cribbed in so that each point of Carrier rating allows you to provide one flight with a +1 DV, AS or AF bonus (not all three, just one) that is applied during the Assignments Phase.
That's a neat idea that plays to the fact that what carriers should be for is coordinating and command & control (that is, as well as the ability to carry the fighters and supporting equipment),

In that vein perhaps a carrier could use its carrier trait to "reassign" fighters - which might make defensive use of fighters more useful (perhaps a carrier could maintain a CAP of rating*2 fighters which can be reassigned for defensive purposes after seeing the targets of incoming raids?)
how about making them "agile" or whatever you want to call it (interceptor works good too lol) and able to be assigned to squadron CAP after enemy fighter flights on AS missions are designated
As much as this fulfils the criteria, all it really does is polarise the choice into two categories, "agile fighters" and "non-agile fighters", and the best in each category will simply be the biggest fighter that fulfils the criteria for the category.

As an alternative how about this as a unit template:

Light Fighter DV1 AS1 AF3
Medium Fighter DV1 AS2 AF2
Heavy Fighter DV2 AS3 AF1

Light fighters (or interceptors) may have a lesser armament, which will seriously hinder their ability to damage ships. But fighters are delicate - getting the shot in is more important when engaging fighters as any hit will be serious, and so the lighter fighters will get to use their armament in an anti-fighter role where a heavier fighter will struggle to bring its more powerful armament to bear - hence lighter units get a better AF rating.

Now light fighters are useful escorts for heavy fighters, and hopefully medium fighters are a useful middle-ground. Ships carrying few fighters will probably find light fighters (as purely defensive assets) or medium fighters (as befits their multi-role nature, as they can be used for fighter defence or anti-ship raids) more useful ,

Carriers and units which carry plenty of fighters will be better equipped with light and heavy fighters so that they can make use of the dedicated missions rules to make their raids really count. Heavy fighters for their punch, and light fighters to either defend other friendly vessels, or to escort the heavy fighters to their targets (again, using dedicated missions),
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Gareth_Perkins wrote:In that vein perhaps a carrier could use its carrier trait to "reassign" fighters - which might make defensive use of fighters more useful (perhaps a carrier could maintain a CAP of rating*2 fighters which can be reassigned for defensive purposes after seeing the targets of incoming raids?)
That actually would work pretty slick with what I would want to do with the CSCR 2.0 flight combat, because it would eliminate one extra step in the assignment process.

In effect, you would end up deciding to assign flights either offensively against an enemy squadron (like you do right now), or assigning them defensively to your own squadrons. By using Carrier ratings to allow a player to shift defensive flights from their squadron to another at the end of the Assignment Phase you no longer have to worry about having a separate "Defensive CAP" category for each side. The flights just add their AF values to those of ships in their squadron when scoring AF fire.

This creates a rough combat sequence that looks like this:

Assignment Phase
=> Assign Formation Level Bonuses
=> Assign Dedicated Missions
=> Flights are Assigned to Friendly or Enemy Squadrons
=> Assign Scout Functions
=> Reassign Defensive Flights using Carrier Ratings
=> Resolve Scout Jamming

Fire Phase One
=> Resolve non-flight based Anti-Ship fire

Fire Phase Two
=> Resolve Anti-Fighter fire

Fire Phase Three
=> Resolve flight based Anti-Ship fire

Boarding Phase
=> Boarding actions are resolved

End of Round Phase
=> Retreating units receive their scenario length bonuses
=> Units, squadrons, task force adjusted for damage received this turn

In essence, the combat turn sequence remains largely the same, but it actually flows more smoothly than normal. Combining all AF fire has, in playtests, helped to make small groups of defensive fighters actually useful, since you just add their AF to their squadron's AF and make one roll.

Gareth, your carrier recommendation there just helped me through a quandary I have had for about six months :) I had resigned myself to having to have a CAP position on each side and two more firing phases, but allowing Carriers to use rating to shift defensive flights is just golden. I might be just too euphoric to see it, but I am not seeing a downside to that solution.
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Post by Gareth_Perkins »

Tyrel Lohr wrote: Gareth, your carrier recommendation there just helped me through a quandary I have had for about six months :)
Cool - glad to hear it,

Thinking further, this sort of mechanic will reinforce my earlier comments about light/heavy fighters - because your CAP is of limited numbers you will want to maximise your AF score per fighter for the CAP, and that (hopefully) means using light fighters or interceptors,
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Post by Tyrel Lohr »

Gareth_Perkins wrote:Thinking further, this sort of mechanic will reinforce my earlier comments about light/heavy fighters - because your CAP is of limited numbers you will want to maximise your AF score per fighter for the CAP, and that (hopefully) means using light fighters or interceptors,
With how I envision the firing phases working, it would also provide a more tangible reason to send a mix of light, medium and heavy fighters against any one target. The added AF fire of light dedicated interceptor fighters would help remove enemy fighters, and would also provide a damage sponge for losses that their own fleet receives while on the attack run.

When it comes to fighter classification, one thing to point out is that the fighter "sizes" seem to be largely DV dependent, but the size/class of a fighter is really independent of its role. So you can have light, medium and heavy fighters, but then you have roles like interceptor, bomber or multipurpose.

My baseline for the fighter units are:

Light Fighter: Cost 1/4, Maint 1/16, DV 1, AS 1, AF 1
Medium Fighter: Cost 1/3, Maint 1/12, DV 2, AS 2, AF 2
Heavy Fighter: Cost 1/2, Maint 1/8, DV 3, AS 3, AF 3

Depending on the tech level of the power or the fighters role, the stats might be shifted up or down by a certain margin. Extreme low-tech powers might have heavy fighters with stats worse than the light fighter archetype above :)
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Post by Gareth_Perkins »

Will that not create a situation where bigger is almost always better (in all situations unless background materiel strongly emphasizes the lighter craft)?

Using your baseline state I could field one heavy fighter for every two light fighters, and while dedicated missions balances things somewhat, where carrier space is limited I'm always going to want to pick the heavier option?

Using a classic space opera example (star wars) the effective dogfighters where always the light nippy craft (tie interceptor, tie-fighter, A-Wing - light fighters), while the bigger craft where pretty defenceless against fighter assault, but could seriously punch starships (tie bomber, Y-wing, B-wing - heavy fighters) and sitting in the middle are the multi-purpose craft (X-wing - medium fighters),

Obviously different backgrounds will have slightly different takes on this sort of thing, YMMV,
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Post by mriddle »

Gareth_Perkins wrote:Will that not create a situation where bigger is almost always better (in all situations unless background materiel strongly emphasizes the lighter craft)?

Using your baseline state I could field one heavy fighter for every two light fighters, and while dedicated missions balances things somewhat, where carrier space is limited I'm always going to want to pick the heavier option?

Using a classic space opera example (star wars) the effective dogfighters where always the light nippy craft (tie interceptor, tie-fighter, A-Wing - light fighters), while the bigger craft where pretty defenceless against fighter assault, but could seriously punch starships (tie bomber, Y-wing, B-wing - heavy fighters) and sitting in the middle are the multi-purpose craft (X-wing - medium fighters),

Obviously different backgrounds will have slightly different takes on this sort of thing, YMMV,
The problem I see is the assumption that fighter DV should scale like Ship DV.. We assume in most backgrounds that bigger ships are harder to kill than smaller ships.. ie size is positive to survivability, I am guessing that assumption is that while smaller ships MAY be harder to HIT than larger ships, the smaller size makes it easier to KILL the smaller ship.

I question that assumption applied to flights.. ie "HEAVY" fighters would be harder to kill that "LIGHT" (I am ASSUMING HEAVY and LIGHT apply to size/mass)

My assumptions are
1) flights are much smaller than ships (and hence proportionally (or more) easier to damage)
2) AF weapons are much smaller that AS weapons (because of number 1)
3) therefor not getting HIT is more important that surviving getting hit for flights.

So it seems to me that that higher AS would mean a MUCH LOWER DV (all other things equal) because the extra mass required to carry weapons large enough to damage ships would decrease the mass available for equipment that helps avoid getting hit.

So I think of templates like these (DV/AS/AF)
Interceptor 3/*/2
MultiRole 2/1/1
Bomber 1/2/0

I realize that much of this is background/source dependent but there are inherit conclusions from the terms LIGHT and HEAVY..

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Post by Gareth_Perkins »

That's a good point - and would reinforce the need for escorts and turret-suppression units,

I like it,
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Post by echoco »

Hi I haven't played any VBAM campaign yet but thought I throw in my ideas for you guys to shoot at, not sure if its been thought of before.

Have a fighter class based turn around time,
a carrier can ready per turn
1/2 capacity worth of light fighters - lots of tiny jabs
1/3 capacity worth of medium fighters
1/4 capacity worth of heavy fighters - one big punch

if light fighters have shorter endurance then
full capacity worth of light fighters
1/2 capacity worth of medium fighters
1/4 capacity worth of heavy fighters

my logic is light fighters carry less weapons, easier to move around so need less time to turn around while heavy fighters need more time to load all the weapons and refuel/repair.

The fraction could be cumulative for carriers with less than 4 flights, needing to wait 2 turns to relaunch 1 flight of heavy fighters from a capacity 2 carrier. I think this would give more incentive to using light/medium fighters but I'm not sure about how many turn a game usually play, heavy fighters might become unplayable.

Operation tempo and planning
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Post by Gareth_Perkins »

Gareth_Perkins wrote:Obviously different backgrounds will have slightly different takes on this sort of thing, YMMV,
I should probably add some examples to this end of the argument,

In Star Trek and Honor Harrington bigger is usually better (because their weapons tend to always hit unless the target throws their aim out, and bigger vessels are better able to do that,
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