I'd like the idea of having a drone launcher and a drone bay (holding any number of drones).  With the idea of different missile/drone loads would work for a lot of different backgrounds.

-Bren

Hello everyone!

     I used to carry up to 40 drones on some of my ships, but now find their needing a 5+ to hit vs a ship with anti-fighter batteries to be Not cost effective.  I have changed all these DDG and CG designs to carry "TomahawkMissiles", that is fighters that will ram a hostile ship.  They hit on 3+ vers a ship with AFB and do 3 dice, instead on just one.  These option is very brutal, hense the name Tomahawk Missiles.  I think of them as an unmanned  combination of battlesats and fighters.  And, if neccessary since they are technicly fighters, they can screen, etc. 
     I have used  a CG with 16 fighterbays launching (b4 the battle) 96 "Tomahawk Missles" with devasting effect on my friend who uses attack-type of ships with mostly expendible weapons and a speed of 20.  These ships of his have no AFBs and are devastated...   
Drones are just Not cost-effective compared to fighter-ramm attacks.
     Am I missing something?  The difference in cost effectiveness between regular Drones and "Tomahawk Missiles" seems tremendous!!

Steven Gilchrist; Jacksonville, Fla, USA.

I agree Dan, but then again, doing 3 die of damage per hit is kind of nasty too.......... If the battles are quick one or two turn battles as described, then it makes perfect sense.......

This was what I was considering when I was looking at the possibility of a more active fighter defense....... After Star Wars 1, I started seeing people taking drone fighters for the sole purpose of ramming at the first opportunity.....

John

I don't understand why a fighter ramming into a ship should do more damage than a drone that is purpose-built to be an explosively damaging weapon system.

JP

Understood.

I don't like ramming.... for that matter, I consider my ships to be actually crewed by beings who want to survive the engagement.... casualties are rarely happy, even when their side wins. And my ships tend to have as good a defense as I can put on them.....

However, kamikaze attacks are still a valid tactic, if only for the terror value. Look at World War 2.......  Our navy personal were terrified of kamikaze attacks on their ships.

The in game consequence is more pronounced because of the fighter rules.

Fighters act within their own phase, before any weapon fire. Fighters can be considered a range 11 (10 movement plus the weapon range of 1) weapon that is  4+ 6/1/1 that gets the abilities; halves shields, and the special ability of first strike. When ramming, they are range 10 expendible weapons with 2+ 6/1/3 and halves shields and first strike. And you get this for the cost of 50 SU points.

When fighters are used as initially conceived, they are not only balanced but work well within the system. However, they are open to abuse, and when abused it is dramatic.  I recently had a game with a friend where I built 3 carriers with 12 wings of fighters each. I didn't worry about launch bays, as we can start the game with all fighters on the board, and outside of the fighter bays, some defensive weaponry, shields, PDS, and armor.... they had no other added equipment. I had a couple of light support ships as well, and that was it.

My fleet had a total of just over 2400 points.
My opponent had a fleet that was about 3500 points, but only had about 6 wings of fighters.....

In the end, I won. I was able to mass attack his capital ships with swarm tactics, and basically do so much damage during the fighter phase that whatever ship I attacked was either dead, or so badly hurt as to be a non-entity.  The first ship I hit was his command battleship that had an 18 hull.
I lost a grand total of 3 fighters out of one wing on the way in (one to a spinal mount hit from that ship), and I had attacked with 9 wings of fighters on that ship (the 3 fighters lost were from these wings, there were other losses against the other ships). Of the remaining 51 fighters, I hit with 38 of them. Two of the fighters rolled ones, and died via flying into each other's line of fire (AFB on the ship), thereby improving the gene pool of my species through elimination of the stupid. Of the 38 that hit, 25 managed to roll a 3 or better and avoid the shield (ship had a shield of 4, and for some reason, he didn't use a PDS which would have stopped a further 9 hits.)

The ship took 17 hull damage, lost all of the weapons in the A bank, and only had one weapon in B that survived. All of the engines, and special equipment that could be hit, was hit... leaving a ship with no movement, and only one weapon that had a range of 6 and was 2/1/1. 

Meanwhile, his 6 wings were engaged in furious dogfights with 6 of my wings, and 2 of his other cruisers had gone up in blazes of glory to massed fighter attacks....... Unfortunately for my opponent, they never got the chance to fire back, and the AFB were slightly less than effective because it relied on my rolling ones.........

Finally, during the capital ship phase, he fired at the threat that he could reach, the fighters, and managed to take down 14 of them.  My two escorts got within range of his battleship, and finished it off.

Stopping the battle, we re-assessed the situation.. I had lost a total of 27 fighters out of 180 (we are ignoring the dogfights at the moment)

He had lost his battleship that cost 1108, and two cruisers that were worth just over 400 each...... At the rate the battle was going, this would have been over in another 2 - 3 turns.

The dogfights were fairly even, and if left alone, would have ended in mutual destruction, or as close to that as didn't matter. However, I was getting ready to re-assign any wings that had lost fighters to the dogfights to support them.

When we ran a second battle, though, we tried something a bit different.
AFB, of course, got to fire, and we decided to use one of the statements from the Starlancer computer game, as well as from the Freespace games.

We decided that fighters could not do hull damage. They could shoot off weapons, damage engines or shield generators, but that they didn't hurt hulls. In addition, drones are explosive guided torpedoes designed to destroy a ships hull... a fighter has only mass and impact, so kamikaze fighters still rolled 3 dice, but only got 1 hull damage total for a ram. The dice were used to determine what mounted equipment that the fighter pilot aimed at and hit. So a kamikaze fighter might hit a shield, a weapon, and something special, but could not score more than 1 hull of damage per fighter.

This battle turned out a lot different.... At the end of 6 turns, 2 of the carriers were destroyed, and my fleet was starting to retreat. The armored gun batteries on my opponents escort ships was my worst nightmare....  During the first battle, I merely destroyed his hull, and could ignore the fact that he had armored gun batteries.. now, I actually had to destroy the equipment.  One of my escorts was taken in one shot from the battleship's spinal mount, and the other was a hurting unit.

All in all, the second battle was very good in that my oponents fleet was half again as big as mine in point cost, and I learned exactly what that meant. However, I did leave him one major repair bill......LOL

I crippled his battleship, and pummeled the daylights out of everything else, but as I couldn't destroy his hull, it allowed his damage control teams a chance to repair enough to keep the battle going. His armored gun batteries meant that his Hull 7 escorts lived through the fighter waves, and were able to return damage and in general, keep me tied up with them.

One of his hull 9 cruisers got up on my escorts, and then got hammered severely....... during the fighter phase, 3 wings of fighters gave him a good work over, and damaged the shield generators down to 1.... and then my escorts were able to open on it.

All in all, I like the fact that although the fighters didn't do hull damage, they still had first strike, and could halve the shields of my opponents.
The only thing I hadn't tried yet was the use of bombers.... those I would leave with the ability to do hull damage.

We even got to use the roll maneuver for the first time in any game.... one of his escorts did it to bring some more weapons to bear and killed my carrier.....

Anyways... probably not the best place to make this post, but it was inter-related with this and several other threads.

John

Not to mention the obvious, but the first sample fight you gave us features some of the most unlikely die-rolling I've ever heard of.  You rolled for 51 fighters, took only 2 losses to AFB (should have been 8.5),  and hit with 38 of the rest (should have been about 16).  Your shield penetrations were the only average thing about the whole affair, and even they were wrong, since the PDS should have been factored in.

Given any situation where one side rolls more than twice as well as average, you're going to have a walkover.

Rich

One of the suggestions I had made when discussing the FT fighter fiasco was that realistically only so many fighters can engage a target safely...ie, they're not at risk of running into each other as they're whizzing about on their esoteric attack runs.   Also, the more fighters there are then it's logical to think that the AFB will be slightly more effective. (similar to firing into a crowd...the more their are, even if you miss your intended target someone behind them will get pegged).

So the option exists then to limit the flight number to say...equal to the target hull size/2.  ie. a Hull 10 ship can only be attacked by 5 fighter flights. 
If more than the 5 flights attack, then the AFB if any gets a hit on 1 or 2...if more than double the 5 (11 flights) attack, then it gets a hit on 1-3.  The fighters still get their pound of flesh...but they pay for it progressively as there are more of them and their evasive options become limited by the sheer number of their fellows.... :wink:

This encourages a diversity of targets and should discourage fighter swarming...or at least limit the damage done by the swarm since they'll pay a progressively higher price in the end.

One thing I'm using in my own rules (Argosy Command) is that a anti-fighter fire attacks the whole squadron...not individual fighters.  While not all the fighters will be knocked out, the squadron organization/combat effectiveness is disrupted, and so they are removed from combat.  The carriers can reconstitute a fighter squadron for every three that are wiped out (putting the survivors together) and relaunch them...

This also would make the AFB statistically more powerful and really do a number on fighter swarming. :twisted:   It also makes carriers a bit more important tactically as well since they are the only ones that can reorganize the squadrons.

Hello everyone,

       The slug-fest my friend and I have when we play Starmada here continues.  In the last battle, we had 4000 pts a side,  My opponent used 21 of his Ghen-ha-dar style (from Deep Space Nine) ships of hull 6, 2, and 1.  Their speed was 20 and each a few non-expendables & had five of these expendable weapons I call  Tornados:
[to hit 3+,  range=12,  3/1/1, &  {Double Ranged Modifiers+Repeating+Range based ROF}].

     For several turns, he stays out of range of 18, and often out of spinal mount range, then doubles engines and charges into short range.  My ship's speed is 4 or 5 and the ships were 2 BBs w/hull 18 & 22 escorted by a 10 hull CG, with the 128 "Tomahawk Missiles", and a few frigates.  All weapons on my ships are range 18, 3+ to hit. His max-attack ships have no AFB or shields, just PDS & overthrusters. With their incredible firepower based on these Tornado expendables,  he can easily destroy each of my ships.  The fighter-ramming "Tomahawk Missiles" are all that work.  I think of them as unmanned, Heavy Drones.  They worked very well! 

     In this last battle, I launched 128 of the Tomahawks and kept them by my  fleet.  My opponant doubled his speed 20 ships' engines and moved 40(!), then  made his attack run, and got to range 2, 3, or 4 from my ships. 
All 128 of these Tomahawk Missiles then attacked and destroyed all but one of his  21 ships.  Then this one damaged 6 hull Max-Attack ship fired at, and destroyed an 18 hull Battleship of mine in one turn.  This BB had level 4 shields+PDS, and Armored hull.  He rolled, and rolled, and rolled and scored 467 hits.  Divide by six and my 18 hull BB took c78 points of damage... 

     He plays his ships as if they were the Ghen-ha-dar ships from Deep Space Nine.   They can destroy a fleet twice their point value.  128 regular-attacking fighters cannot do enough damage in one turn to stop this firestorm, neither can regular drones. only the Tomahawks have so far, worked.  It felt good to win, and not have a draw for a change!
Perhaps I am stopping Kamikaze ships with Kamikaze fighters<LOL>

     The  0nly way I have found to deal with these attack attack ships & their "Tornados" that  end up with both sides completely vaporized,  is these  Tomahawk Missiles.
If anyone else has other suggestions, I am all ears...

     Needless-to-say my star nation, "the United Star Alliance", is involved in a grim fight for survival...But the invaders were stopped with only medium losses.     

     But I am willing to try Fighter-modified regular drones.  If someone could give me the CPV value of a flight of ten modified slow drones  that roll 2 dice to attack when they hit and hit w/+1:  Drones modified as fighters: {Slow+Assault+bomber}
I will try them...

Steven Gilchrist; Jacksonville, Fla, USA.

PS:  someone mentioned the "lives of the pilots".  The fleet I made had c4,500 crew+troops on it according to the ship-maker.  Even if these Tomahawk Missiles were manned fighters, The 128's sacrifice would have prevented the loss of the 3,100 crew who were on the ships that were Not destroyed.
Needless-to-say, the  United Star Alliance  is involved in a grim fight for survival...   (Perhaps they should move<LOL>)

PPS: my opponant is redesigning his ships.. He was astonished at the effectiveness of these Tomahawks on his ships.      

On a final note.... here's a quote I found that seems to fit this.....LOL

You can always tell a really good Idea by the enemies
it makes.

John

Hello everyone,
     
     John wrote
"I love seeing capital ships taking hit after hit, and continuing on.... victory should be something earned. The quick kill attack ships like your friend uses just don't appeal to me. However, they are not wrong, just different....."

     I agree!  The quick-kill; game-over-turn-c3 way we play here is less fun.   When I play down in South Florida, games last much longer; 10+ turns.  Those I play with down there don't use expendables.   Perhaps expendables are almost as destabilizing as fighter-ram attacks(?). 

     My Battleships have lotsa firepower, but can only bring all of it to bear in "C" ot "D" arc:  Its a good thing they have 0verthrusters! Don't leave base without 'em<LOL>.  They are designed to be USA and British Battleships in space.  Much the same as the Starblazers "Argo' is IJN Yamato in space.    The games lasting many turns are actually more fun than the ones I have played up here...  Nearly all of my ships' weapons fire out to 18.  If someone gets into range, they get blasted.  I have merchant ships and am usually convoying several of them.  These Liberty Ships have only 2 weapons, so are able to defend themselves...  The Convoy must get thru!   And usually does. 

     I hope my friend up here in Jacksonville, in N.Fla, [320 miles N of FtLd area], changes his ships to be less extreme.  But in case he dosen't, I plan to try using "Harpoon Drones" now.  These are regular drones modified as fighters with {slow+assult+Bomber}  added on.   They will cost more than regular drones, but will move 8, hit on 3+, and do 2 dice of damage when they hit.
(Not as devastating as the "Tomahawks", but I will try them).

     Grailquest, the local gaming convention, is the July 8th&9th.  I am running 2 Starmada games and hope that I will be able to start a regular gaming group, similar to those I game with, in S. Fla.

Steven Gilchrist; Jacksonville, Fla, USA

PS:  I enjoy very much reading everyone's comments and ideas on this forum.  I open up this link first, b4 checking E Mail. 
It would be great if we all lived closer and could game; that would be Awesome