With the publication of non-Gatling armed Federation fighters (see captains log#39), and the additional information that up to 90% of F-16 fighter production included F-16p fighters, it appears to me that there might be a need for a fighter phaser decoy pod.

a FPDP is nothing more than a standard fighter phaser pod without the fire control interfaces.

the purpose of FPDP is to allow non gatling armed fighters the abillity to seemingly fire up to 4 phaser 3 shots in a single turn. This presumes that D17.0 Tactical Intelligence rule is in use, and that such fighters have also mounted a normal phaser 3 fighter pod on the fighter.

Intended for SFBs games where players do not know exactly "what the other player has brought to the table"(since the F-16p fighter cost several points less than conventional phaser gatling armed F-16s) those would allow a player to "skimp" on points for the F-16s while having (upwards of) 36 BPVs that could have been used elsewhere (assumes that F-16p fighers are 3 BPVs less than Gatling armed F-16s).

Pros:

Allows for the "fog of war" in that if an opposing player "sees" his opponent "Fire" 4 phaser 3s form each F-16, then he may well assume that the F-16 squadron he is facing has phaser Gatlings.

Cons:

Need to make some provision for the die roll conventions... such a fighter squadron would "nominally" have up to 48 phaser 3 shots, but 12 of those shots would be "decoy" shots that are indistinguishable from normal phaser 3 shots (asside from the small detail that they will always miss).

single space fighters are normally limited to but one phaser 3 pod. There would need to be a specific exception to the rule that would allow the use of a FPDP.

Not sure what a BPV would be on such a pod, almost certainly less than what a normal phaser 3 pod would be (in terms of combat) though the economic value of such a pod would almost be the same as the Phaser 3 pod would be.

More of a Public Relations ploy than a serious combat system, I could see such an alternative needed for Fiction writers and GURPS PD scenarios than I do for most SFBs scenarios... I know that I would rather have a 3 phaser 3 fighter (a F-16p with an added Phaser 3 pod) and make it look like the squadron has phaser gatlings than to let it become common knowledge that the planets defense fighters only have half the direct fire phaser powere that "everybody knows" that the Federation PDU fighters ought to have.

By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 05:36 pm: Edit

JEFFRY

Did you remember to take your Meds this morning, or did your keeper forget to put the 10,000,000 peice puzzle in your cell.

You obviously are having too much time on your hands.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 - 05:58 pm: Edit

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, July 30, 2009 - 09:49 am: Edit

Very funny.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, July 30, 2009 - 11:18 am: Edit

The BPV of a non-phaser-G fighter was in Captain's Log #39 and is only one (1) point less than the phaser-G armed version (i.e., 6 BPV compared to 7 BPV). Assuming no EWF a squadron of 12 two phaser-3-armed F-16s would only save you 12 BPV points compared to a squadron of 12 phaser-G armed F-16s (again assuming no EWF), not 36 BPV points.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, July 30, 2009 - 05:01 pm: Edit

I will note an error in the previous.

I was assuming the cost of the decoy pod would be one point and adding it to the cost of the fighter.

The Fighter Stockpile only has one free "combat pod per fighter", and I was assuming that the free pod was the phaser-3 pod, so adding the decoy pod increased the cost of the fighter by one point effectively, which meant that there was only a savings of one point per F-16p with phaser and phaser decoy pods over an F-16.

Since the difference in price between the two fighter types normally is two points, Jeff could not achieve the 36 points in savings he was assuming, but only 24 points, and that only if the decoy pods were not purchased because they are "extra", or the phaser pods are "extra" because there is only one free combat pod in the fighter stockpile (J11.131). That means the cost of the added pods has to come from somewhere, and by definition that somewhere is the presumed savings for using the extra combat pod, which for a whole squadron it going to take twelve points, leaving only twelve points in savings over just taking a squadron of F-16s.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, July 30, 2009 - 05:16 pm: Edit

And so, another proposal crashes into the hard rock of reality and the game rules!

since 12 BPV is only a fraction of the total BPV of a F-16C squadron of 12 fighters, its not a very effective option... and it has very little combat utility, there seems to be no point in pursuing this.

Proposal withdrawn.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, July 30, 2009 - 06:04 pm: Edit

Be it noted, I was not trying to shut this topic down. Is it not my obligation to point out the rules to allow decisions to be made? SVC might have wanted this discussion to continue, something might have come out of it.