Hmm... I don't think so. If anything, carriers should cost LESS.

Consider:

The Victory from the rulebook has an ORAT of 1208.7 and a DRAT of 40. In X, adding two flights of fighters would have added 100 to each value, for a final point cost of 428. In the Admiralty edition, you add 500 to the ORAT and 20 to the DRAT, for a cost of 320 (or exactly 100 more than the ship's Combat Rating without the fighters).

Likewise the Orion (at the back of the book), without its fighters, has an ORAT of 264 and DRAT of 24. In X, adding 300 points of fighters would result in a combat rating of 427; in Admiralty, it is 385 (or 305 more than without the fighters).

I just noticed that the divisor in cell C45 is 10 instead of B10.  This is causing too many Z hits on large ships.

Well, there's your first problem -- what are you doing with 32 flights of fighters?

So, trying to follow:

Your ORAT (without fighters) is 180, your DRAT is 534.4? This is a final combat rating of 310. With the 32 flights, you're adding 9600 and 320, respectively, causing a new combat rating of 2891 -- an increase of 2581, or about 80 per flight. This is 47% more than the flights would be on their own: (9600 x 320)^.5 = 1753.

There are two things going on here, and I will address them separately:

1) The final values are coming out differently in Admiralty than they did in X. This is intentional; note that in Admiralty you multiply capacity by 5 for the ORAT addition and divide by 5 for the DRAT addition. In X, you added the "capacity" as-is to both ORAT and DRAT. This change was made because it gives more accurate results (see my previous reply regarding Victory and Orion) -- but see (2) below.

2) The "cost" of adding fighters to a design is highly variable, depending upon what the carrier can do (or not do). This is because in order to get points for the fighters, you have to kill the carrier. If you've got a carrier that has a low ORAT but high DRAT, you're doing little but increase the survivability of your fighter flights (in terms of getting the VPs) -- and the relative cost of the fighter addition goes up. But on a ship that has a high ORAT relative to DRAT, more of the point value remains with the ship itself (since it has weapons of its own) and the relative cost of the fighter addition goes back towards 50 per flight.

Finally, remember that your launch tubes are increasing the cost of ALL your fighters -- not just adding +5 to each of the ORAT and DRAT.

All of this is combining to affect the final cost of your dedicated carrier.

The only way to have a set point cost for fighters that is not going to be affected by all these variables would be to separate their cost back out, as in the Compendium. Thus, your carrier (for example), would have a combat rating of 310 [+1600].

Tell me about it. On some levels I think our collective universe is way too over powered for a fun game. This ship is supposed to be one of the "big" carriers in the game. The trick will be to convince my fellow designers that miniaturizing the universe is a good idea. I might start that process.

Also there are two fighter types for this fleet. One is an escort fighter that comes out to 50 SU and the other is a gunship that comes out to 100 SU so more likely there will be about 24 actual on table flights. Still quite a lot. :?

From your play what do you consider a "big" ship. Size 10? Our "big boys" are set to 20 which was the max of the old excel file. I am thinking that if we shrink down our ships to be in line with your examples it might be a more fun and playable universe. Do you have any thoughts or advice on this issue?

As to the explanation, all very interesting and informative. Thanks.

That is similar to the scale we are using, but the TL is also kind of high (the race I am planning is one of the lower tech races and its total TL is 9 on the 5 point scale). We are using extended range so some weapons have range 30 and thus are longer ranged than the size of the standard board.

Update:  I just "micronized" the ship down to a size 8 with 600 SU (effectively 16 gunships and 16 fighers forming 8 Flights) pretty easily. It seems to work nicely. Will try it with some of my normal gun armed ships too.

I just created a 1.2 version of this file with all the corrections noted in this thread since Dan's last post EXCEPT the extra batteries for adding the extra batteries. I see if I can decode that this evening. Any suggestions on battery names. I think V and W are to visually similar and may cause confusion so was considering using S and T for "Spinal" and "Turrets" respectively.  Thoughts?

Wait a minute...
We're not all of the MJ-12 religion?

Kevin Clause

I never say "Xmas"....

If I have to recognize 'Kwanzaa' and 'Ramadan' and 'Saturnalia' and 'Hannukah', the least everyone else can do is pronounce (and spell) it right...

sheesh...

MERRY CHRISTMAS everyone!

I was celebrating the "Futurama" Holiday.

"Fry learns how Christmas has changed and remained the same over the last 1000 years when a Robot Santa terrorizes New New York"

I just updated the file. I had some errors on the T battery data card.

That's similar to the system I use, but instead of escort, I use the term corvette.

I tried the "Triangle" method for a while, but found that I tended to prefer a lot more of the frigate and destroyer class ships.

My frigates are used as light fast pickets and to support other ships in close... my destroyers are tailored for specific missions......

My fleets would rarely have anything larger than hull 15 or so....
Not sure until I get a few games under me for the Admiralty Edition, but I suspect that my fleet styles won't change dramatically.

John

I think it refers to this