I may have found one reason why you found fighters to be underpowered -- you were moving them at the same time as ships. Fighters are meant to move AFTER all ships have completed their movement.

This happened in A Call to Arms too.  You just end up with loads of errata for exceptions.  I always think there should be a collective term for ships/fighters so you are not always referencing both, but can also keep them separate if possible.  "Craft" or "Vessels" sound a bit rubbish, but you get the idea?

I continue to think that, if fighters are left untouched, they should be much more cheaper, otherwise, there will be no more of them on the table. Sad, too sad.

Marc

I've read on this forum that Daniel said fighters were a bit more powerful. In fact, they have llost at least 33% of their power, just because ships have now 33% more hull. Add to that they fire no more before ships, that maybe you prefer fire ships than fighters and they have llost much more than that.

Marc

I played with a few fighters in my recent game and I found another issue.  Their weapon display is so short that ships with ECM and stealth mean they suddenly become useless.  Everything else in the game can scale.  If in my universe I want high ECM and use EPM and scouts then I can also increase weapons to compensate for the column shifts.  With fighters they are fixed and so get left behind.

We are house ruling that fighters always have 1 dice to represent the fact that in the end there's someone looking out of the cockpit firing on manual.  This works for B5 and how stealth works.

With the "long shots" rule, fighters still get at least one attack die out to -7.

However, you could allow two full strength or two damaged flights to combine fire with a +2 bonus. One full-strength and one damaged flight would combine at +1.

Ok, but as ships are 33% more resilient, as fighters fire during the same phase as ships (and are not necessarily chosen first) and thus can be damaged before firing, as their firepower can be reduced by ECM and stealth, I'm still not convinced with the ratio efficiency/cost for fighters.
I may need some more playing with them, though.

BTW, what is the rationale behind the ability of ECM and stealth to reduce fighter firepower?
Up till now, fighters weren't affected by such, especially as they need to come at point blank to fire and thus in a zone where ECM and stealth shouldn't operate.

Marc

Also incorrect. Ships do have 50% more hull boxes than in Admiralty edition; however, every hit goes to the hull (or armor) rather than a 50/50 split between hull damage and systems-only damage. Thus, ships in Nova are actually 25% LESS resilient than in Admiralty.

The primary rationale is retaining the balance between the different forms of defense.

In any event, I am open to playtest reports. If someone wants to try giving fighters an additional +1 attack modifier across the board to see how they fare, I'm happy to listen. However, be advised that I'm relatively confident fighters are costed appropriately for their current capabilities -- even though they may be underpowered compared to their Admiralty edition counterparts.

Sjips with ECM and/or stealth would create the same problem, unless creating an ECCM trait.

BTW, I've thought over what Daniel said, that SNE fighters are more powerful than SAE ones, and that ships are less resilient.
Suppose a hull-6 SAE ship (no shield or other defense for simplicity sake. As one fighter  inflicts two hits one average (one of which is a hull), you need 6 fighters to kill it. If not killed, it will be badly damaged (twice those hull hits on engine, etc.).
With SNE, the ship has now 9 hulls, and you will need 9 SNE fighters (thus 4.5 SAE fighters). Of course, with ECM and stealth, the need of fighters is vastly increased in Nova.
Funny, because I still have the impression (but it could be just that) that you need much more fighters in Nova than in Admiralty to do the same job.

On a side note, the cost of ships is more or less the same when comparing SAE and SNE.

Marc

Sorry, I will try to make myself clearer.
It was about a comparison between SAE and SNE. In SAE, fighters attacks are unaffected by both countermeasures and stealth.
In SNE, countermeasures becomes ECM and stealth remains stealth, but both affect now fighters attacks (that's was one of the reasons I didn't understand why fighters are now affected by those).

Of course, SAE shield can also be converted in SNE ECM (by the way, in the Nova conversion rules, you should say that SAE shields could be converted either as SNE shield, armor, ECM or a mix), but those shield are already acting as a defense in SAE games.
What I meant is that SNE fighters suffer now from ECLM and stealth, and thus you need more fighters in SNE than what you needed in SAE when attacks ships with ECM and/or stealth.

I didn't imply otherwise. I agree that defenses reduce the effectivness of fighter attacks, that's normal, but maybe not, IMHO, for ECM and stealth (or at least, they should/could have an integrated ECCM, ie, they always have the ability to cancel one point of ECM/stealth).

Marc

Have I missed a new rule book?
Conversions state SAE shields = Nova Shields, where did the rest come from?
House rules, wishful thinking or I Want?
Just add, "Take any ship from any previous Starmada and re-invent it".

"Never in the field of game rules have so few said so much about so little"

Sorry, really bad headache, trying to process it all is making it worse.

Paul

This is going to be the one thing that is going to be hard to wrap my brain around.  Especially since I have a bunch of tiny fighters on bases for the old edition.  Any chance that the fighter options are going to make their way back in the nova edition.  I need fighters to behave differently!

-B