I don't think there was anything broken about fighter exclusive - just its big brother starship ex.  My suggestion is to have one trait that lumps anti-fighter and fighter ex. together.  Seems logical that they would go hand in hand.  Any larger weapon that people want to be good at shooting sown fighters they can simulate with accurate, fire control or diffuse.

I agree that starship ex will just lead to it being selected for the discount.  So instead of that why not offer a very small discount on damage 2 and 3?  Right now there is little incentive to take those traits as you get the same net effect by just buying more BAS dice.  Certainly dmg 2&3 weapons are not as good against fighters than just having more dice due to the overkill factor.  How about 1.95 and 2.85 respectively?  That would be attractive enough to take for the min-waxers and would effectively limit the weapon to anti-ship duty.

-Tim

Dan,

I thought the model in AE for dmg being cheaper and the "special traits" being the flat cost was perfect.  Only problem was the starship ex which was just too good a deal - and frankly always appeared on weapons that you would never have used on fighters anyways.  You want the smaller dmg boost ones to be the mainstay and the super traits to be for rare and exceptional weapons. 

Currently there is a slight disadvantage to taking DMG 2 or 3 over just taking more dice and unlike "catastrophic" don't really add any significant "cool factor/fluff" to the weapon.

-Tim

Fair enough.  It is the simplest and its not unbalancing.

One last thought - if you don't want to sully those other traits you could add a new one:

"Starship Killer" - This weapon gets +1 column shift against ships (i.e. not fighters or drones or future things smaller than full ships).  Cost 1.4

-Less efficient vs. Fighters (so not likely to use it against them unless in a pinch)
-Very slight discount (root 2 being full price)

This is identical to the same weapon with a BAS increased by 40%.

@Underling - I agree with you - its just people will want to model weapons that are super huge and are not used agaisnt fighters - problem with starship exclusive is that it was too good a deal and for the most part you would never have used that type of weapon against a fighter in the first place - so the restriction was meaningless - in essense this is the same, but the discount is far less and justified by not totally ruling out attacking fighters with it.  You could also call this "Bad against fighters" and say its -1 to hit fighters (on top of the current -1) and price it at 0.95 or something - but I though having a +1 columns shift might be nice - makes a positive spin on the weapon.

@Cricket - I guess with rounding it is the same.  It could be 1.3, 1.35, 1.38 or whatever is appropriate to give a tiny little benefit.  You'd have to be careful with the discount though as people latch onto any savings they can.

Anyway I'm not advocating that this is an awesome trait or a must have.  Its just a suggestion if you want to re-implement "Starship Exclusive".  Instead of giving just a flat out discount and the caveat that you cannot attack fighters - a bonus to attack ships and a very minor discount on the price to reflect that they are not as good against fighters (or gunboats - should they ever exist).

-Tim

I understand BAS to be roughly equivalent to (#attacks) x (#relative power) of a single weapon.  Traits can be used in lieu of "relative power".  You then specify the arc of each bank and how many weapons are in it.  Ta dah!

-Tim

Okay then...

Traits may be used to supplement "relative power".

-Tim

Gotcha.

I'll just say that the way BAS works in designing ships is the single most difficult thing for me to digest in the new rules. I don't think I am the only one who has difficulty with "visualizing" a given weapon with the new system. Maybe it's just the limitation of my frequently overloaded brain, but it is far far easier for me to visualize a ship-killing laser cannon with beam-like qualities that slices up targets with the SAE statistic "string" and possible traits, than it is to do the same with SNE BAS and traits. I would compare it to someone that can speak a foreign language, but cannot think in that language and therefore has to do a mental translation in his head before speaking, and then translate anything spoken to him before he can comprehend it. It gets laborious, and often frustrating. I feel the same when trying to muddle out a weapon's BAS. I think, "ok, the laser is a single shot a turn, but rakes across a target it hits, so it would have say an IMP of three, ok so, is a BAS of 3.25 each good? Too much?" Maybe as I play around with the system more I will get a better "feel" for how it works, but as it is right now I must admit it is a lot easier for me to do the base weapon in SAE terms and convert it. At least I feel like I have some consistency that way. Maybe I just need someone to explain it to me r-e-a-l  s-l-o-w, with visual aids.
Cheers,
Erik

What, no visual aides? 
I do get what you are saying, and I think it is just something that I have to play around with to get to know it better. I guess I'm stuck in old conceptions and that's holding me back. It is particularly difficult to narrow my brain down to a BAS 1 "base" after doing a ton of conversions of existing designs and the BAS varies madly all over the spectrum from weapon to weapon, with not one in dozens landing on 1. Thanks.
Erik

Exactly how I have been doing it. I ran through 5 college ruled pages of weapon conversions over the last few days. Just started doing some "new" designs. Thanks,
Erik