Flights
Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2016 6:29 pm
As I continue working on the rules in the background, one thing that I've started contemplating is whether or not we want to slot flights into the rules in a slightly different way.
Up to this point, I've been maintaining the split of increased construction costs for flights from light to superheavy (1-4 EP, right now). However, something that I wanted to throw out there is the possibility of maybe keeping the flights standardized at a cost of 1 EP a piece and instead rely on maintenance costs as the long-term balancing factor?
I really don't want to go back to fractional costs for obvious reasons, but at the same time I'm not sure I want a flight of superheavy fighters to cost as much as a destroyer. Maybe it's not really a problem? Have any of you had a lot of experience with that yet?
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The other thing I've been contemplating is whether or not the Light Fighter needs increased to 5-6 CP from 4 CP. That would make it easier to design an interesting low tech Light Fighter design, which is admittedly a problem right now. Bumping them up to even 5 CP, and increasing everyone else by a CP along the way possibly, would seem to be fairly interesting.
On that track, if all flights were 1 EP with variable maintenance costs, we could have 5 CP for a light fighter and just +1 CP per step above that. So an Era I heavy fighter would have 7 CP, but be more expensive to maintain. That would be similar to have 2E handled fighter advancement.
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Finally, the question of whether or not flights should cripple. If we wanted to, we could keep the 1E/2E "flights don't cripple" rule, and then just increase flight CP values by 25-50% to compensate. That way their firepower would effectively stay the same as if they were crippled, you're just adding that to their base combat values.
This works mathematically if you consider that a 1 EP ship would have 4 CP of stats. 150% of 4 CP is 6 CP, which would be enough points to design a decent light fighter. At that point, we'd be seeing a +2 CP bonus per fighter level, so 8 CP for medium, 10 CP for heavy, and 12 CP for superheavy.
The downside to that is that flights would become extremely effective combat platforms, with an immense amount of firepower. It may also mean that it would be better to keep the higher unit costs because a Heavy Fighter could be DV 4, AS 3, AF 3 which is a significant amount of combat strength.
Up to this point, I've been maintaining the split of increased construction costs for flights from light to superheavy (1-4 EP, right now). However, something that I wanted to throw out there is the possibility of maybe keeping the flights standardized at a cost of 1 EP a piece and instead rely on maintenance costs as the long-term balancing factor?
I really don't want to go back to fractional costs for obvious reasons, but at the same time I'm not sure I want a flight of superheavy fighters to cost as much as a destroyer. Maybe it's not really a problem? Have any of you had a lot of experience with that yet?
# # #
The other thing I've been contemplating is whether or not the Light Fighter needs increased to 5-6 CP from 4 CP. That would make it easier to design an interesting low tech Light Fighter design, which is admittedly a problem right now. Bumping them up to even 5 CP, and increasing everyone else by a CP along the way possibly, would seem to be fairly interesting.
On that track, if all flights were 1 EP with variable maintenance costs, we could have 5 CP for a light fighter and just +1 CP per step above that. So an Era I heavy fighter would have 7 CP, but be more expensive to maintain. That would be similar to have 2E handled fighter advancement.
# # #
Finally, the question of whether or not flights should cripple. If we wanted to, we could keep the 1E/2E "flights don't cripple" rule, and then just increase flight CP values by 25-50% to compensate. That way their firepower would effectively stay the same as if they were crippled, you're just adding that to their base combat values.
This works mathematically if you consider that a 1 EP ship would have 4 CP of stats. 150% of 4 CP is 6 CP, which would be enough points to design a decent light fighter. At that point, we'd be seeing a +2 CP bonus per fighter level, so 8 CP for medium, 10 CP for heavy, and 12 CP for superheavy.
The downside to that is that flights would become extremely effective combat platforms, with an immense amount of firepower. It may also mean that it would be better to keep the higher unit costs because a Heavy Fighter could be DV 4, AS 3, AF 3 which is a significant amount of combat strength.