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).