More like a Spad chasing a B52...

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 12:10 pm: Edit

I can see using a gunboat or a starship a terrain feature as the fighters dogfight around them.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 12:21 pm: Edit

NT.

By Eddie Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 12:48 pm: Edit

It is difficult to deal with because the ships are moving as fast as the fighters, so you don't have the traditional, as in present day, relationship between fighters and the objects they may be attacking.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 05:02 pm: Edit

Eddie,
Understood. But I pictured what the game could be is simulating the Dogfight impulse segment of SFB. So it would be short and the ship/gunboat would not move for the short duration of the dogfight.

By Jack Bohn (Jackbohn) on Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 08:43 pm: Edit

Looking at J7.0, it's simpler than at first thought. Single-hex combat, so range will not have to be calculated, only weapon arc - there has to be a simple, analog or graphical way to convert rectangular coordinates (hexagonal?) to spherical coords for each fighter.

I'm picturing each fighter having its own Condition Card, a playing-card-sized representation with the SSD portion, counter #, pilot status, and along one side the factors for the J7.6 Advantage sum. (Actually, is that a useful play aid for anyone using the current Dogfighting rules?) Cards are laid out in order of Advantage, with ties resolved, and maneuver and combat can be resolved in that order.

By Dennis Surdu (Aegis) on Sunday, July 28, 2013 - 10:00 pm: Edit

Paul...yes that is exactly the scale I was talking about. Within the dogfight impulse I think you could work out a scale whereby the fighters might traverse a hex several times over where a ship would only move one hex. It could be explained by the fighters gaining increased agility and speed for a dogfight at the expense of situational awareness outside the hex.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 12:33 pm: Edit

There would be two questions I'd have for any would-be game engine in this scale.


First off, how easy should the conversion be from pre-existing game stats?

Even if new weapons would need to be added, some of the "under the hood" mechanics for things like frame boxes, firing arcs, DFRs, and so forth would be handy if they had a common template (not counting some of the faction-specific quirks needed for units like Hiver Barbs or Souldra Shards).

The easier the base game makes it to plug in new empires and new technologies further down the line, the better for those (few) of us who might wish to look somewhat further down the line.


Secondly, should the onus be more "SFB" or "Borders of Madness", in terms of what unit options to support?

The same BoM Ship Cards on the Commander's Circle (as shown here and here) distill the various superiority/assault options to a single type of fighter per role for each operating empire. So, rather than a host of variants for the Klingon disruptor-armed single-space fighter class, you'd simply get the Z-D.

Would this kind of game be as well to try and offer a similar set of representative samples per fighter type to start off with, and worry about adding in some of the myriad of other fighter options later on?

(Or, when it comes to adding in new empires, would the same kind of self-imposed restrictions be in play there? While future empires might have a larger or smaller array of historical fighters to choose from in SFB, perhaps they would only need one fighter per mission type to start off with when their time comes.)

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 03:01 pm: Edit

I'd figure you'd want the room to grow that having the option of variants would give, wouldn't you?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 05:04 pm: Edit

Allow me to re-phrase that last question into three sub-questions.

One - how many variants of each role are needed to playtest the rule system?

Two - how many need to be in the first book (of whatever form it may end up taking) to properly showcase the game yet not run the risk of overwhelming new players?

Three - in the longer run, where is the point at which a certain empire's array of fighter types is "enough"? (Or to put it another way, does every empire absolutely have to have every last variant seen in SFB, or is there a point at which enough is enough for the purposes of this particular game system?)


If there is room to show the technological evolution of a given navy's aerospace arm, that is one thing. But throwing in the full list of options from SFB might not be the best way to go about things, depending on exactly where this game is to set itself at.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 05:09 pm: Edit

Whoa whoa whoa, you're getting way ahead of things Gary.

I think we'd need a game system before worrying about all that stuff. You're putting the cart before the horse man.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 05:25 pm: Edit

I'm not so sure about that.

When the time comes to actually hammer out a game engine, the choice would then be worth making as to how much granularity the game system will expect to work with at its level of play.

If it's the kind of fast-play system which is designed to handle a fighter squadron or few in a relatively short time period, that might call for a lower amount of variety in terms of how many incarnations of each fighter type one might expect to fly.

If, on the other hand, the focus will be more "zoomed-in", and cover a more intricate encounter between a handful of attrition units on each side, the issue of how many options one might expect to see offered in one go could be more of a factor.


To stick with the Klingon example, will it be enough to start playtesting any would-be ruleset by seeing how the Z-Y and Z-D work (based perhaps on the BoM stats for each), or would there need to be a broader array of superiority and/or attack fighters that would need to be entered into the system before deciding if it works the way it's supposed to?

By Dal Downing (Rambler) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 06:00 pm: Edit

Gary I have to agree with Richard here. Let's see if a fun workable ruleset could be made before we worry about what class of fighters we want go limit this system too.

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 06:12 pm: Edit

I'd love to see some probably published or at least commonly known algorithm for getting from a SFB fighter to a SFWF fighter. That way if the system didn't have the Stinger-0f yet, you could mark it up youself if you absolutely needed it to play out some battle.

For example, something like ...
Take the SFB box count and quadruple it.

Of that, a number of boxes equal to the non-WBP speed are "engine" boxes.

Use some number of boxes for "wing" boxes based off of the DF rating (say DF +5) that somehow work into the movement system.

Allocate one per weapon system.

The rest become hull.

You'd have to tweak out the weapons to account, but I'd imagine that the weapons in SFWF would probably have the same weapons as their SFB counterparts, maybe doing different things, but would probably have the same count of the same types of weapons (keeping in mind how those weapons work in a dogfight).

By Dennis Surdu (Aegis) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 10:49 pm: Edit

Some fighter sub-systems might be:
1) pilot/cockpit
2) nav computer
3) engine/s
4) sensors/guidance
5) life support
6) weapons/hard points
7) frame integrity/hull

Since it is in space and subspace movement is assumed, 3D movement could be simplified by assuming one hex lateral movement takes same effort as Z axis movement. I would ignore banking and roll restrictions to further simplify and make playable. You would need to prehaps figure turn modes along more than one axis or plane but it is science fiction and can easily be rationalized since we are not bound by real-world physics :-)

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 11:14 pm: Edit

Would a SFU fighter be using its impulse drives to fly at "dogfight" speeds?

It might be that using its warp drives (for those empires which have tactical warp-powered fighters) is either too fast to allow ships to engage in this manner; or perhaps that it doesn't allow for the kind of close-in maneuver that is required in a dogfight.

(That's if one is assuming this game is representing same-hex dogfights, I guess.)

By Dennis Surdu (Aegis) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 11:26 pm: Edit

Gary, I think that would be logical since fighter turn modes on a ship scale map preclude the turn rates a small scale fighter dogfigjt game would use. You could assume a fighter, if undamaged, would engage warp to exit the dogfight perhaps.

By Dennis Surdu (Aegis) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 11:30 pm: Edit

Come to think of it, a fighter with the initiative might be able to exit the dogfight at warp and re-emerge into the battle on another map edge :-) Rules would have to allow this only rarely under conditions which a fighter might be highly advantaged.

SVC SAYS "NO" TO EXITING THE DOGFIGHT AND ENTERING ANOTHER MAP EDGE. IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. IF YOU DON'T SEE IT IN SFB, YOU WON'T SEE IT HERE. I typed that in caps so you'd see it was not Denis's post, but my endorsement.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Monday, July 29, 2013 - 11:35 pm: Edit

Fighter speed matters for dogfights, it gives you modifiers. So probably warp is used.

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - 12:20 pm: Edit

I'd suggest NOT having the pilot be damagable. That's a single hittable entity that would effectively take out the ship as 11/12s of all fighters are single piloted. A single lucky "internal" would knock out the whole fighter.

SVC AGREES

By Jack Bohn (Jackbohn) on Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - 05:13 pm: Edit

Thinking about Gary's question of how many fighters to have or to present to the new player, it occurs that if one assumes a FA or RA weapon is set in the fighter such that that angle is a cone in 3-space, combined with fighter's lack of shield arcs, you've taken roll out of the game. Except for straight up or straight down, you can imagine each fighter pilot remains "upright" with respect to the Galactic Horizon. This might help beginner play, but of course rules for roll would have to be developed for LS/RS weapons, and even the humble admin shuttle's 360 degree phaser-3 is probably a Top Side/Bottom Side arc.

Thinking further, though, roll should not add that much complexity; the ships are turning with a great mode, probably pitching up or down with as great facility, it would be easy to say at the end of its movement a fighter could snap roll to bring the enemy of choice within his sights (if rolling would bring the enemy in his sights).

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - 07:15 pm: Edit

The main reason why I was wondering about which engines are being used is due to the presence of fighters in SFB which have no tactical warp drives but which retain at least some sort of DFR.

(The Romulan sublight fighters are all DFR 0, but some of the Rynish fighters have ratings of 1 or 2. Those latter units use quantum transporters to beam thesmelves across the board tactically, but those devices are of no real use in a dogfight. If it turns out they are all using their impulse engines to engage in dogfights, well and good.)


One thought that occurred to me is how, even if larger units took a while to add to the setup (and I'm not saying they would, but still), there is still scope for using various assault or missile fighters as the "targets" which allied superiority fighters need to protect, and which enemy fighters will attempt to shoot down.

Say, if one was commanding a squadron of 8 superiority and 4 assault fighters, the rules of a given scenario could require the player to not fire any of their assault fighters' heavy weapons until they make it off the board (so they can be used to target a ship or base). This would put a premium on their escorting superiority fighters to try and keep their squadron mates alive; and force the defender to decide whether to try and peel off the escorting fighters first, or to run the gauntlet and try to take down the assault fighters as their top priority.


Well, depending on exactly how many fighters one might expect to be fielding in whatever game engine this system ends up using.

Should this game, whatever it ends up as, be aimed at flying individual fighters or commanding entire squadrons, or ought it lie somewhere in between?

(Or should it have more than one scale, akin to how one has both Squadron and Fleet Scales in FC?)

By Mike Bennett (Mike) on Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - 08:41 pm: Edit

Even the Squadron and Fleet scales in FC are for individual ships. Each still takes about the same amount of tactics and time.

So, are you referring to having a simpler game featuring "flights" of fighters as opposed to individual fighters?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - 09:34 pm: Edit

Personally, I would still want there to be separate entries for each fighter, regardless of which scale one were to go for.


To look beyond the Star Fleet Universe for a moment, Catalyst Game Labs released the Alpha Strike rulebook PDF yesterday. (The print edition should surface in September, but may get a premiere at this year's GenCon.)

In "classic" BattleTech, an AeroSpace Fighter is represented using a Record Sheet, which looks sort of like an SFB SSD. However, in Alpha Strike, each ASF uses a more abstract Unit Card. The AS game engine is designed to play more quickly than BT, at the expense of losing some of the granularity you'd see in the older game. (AeroSpace operations are somewhat abstracted in the core AS rulebook, but may or may not be expanded upon more fully later on.)

Notably, the Strategic Operations rulebook includes the conversion formula needed to turn a given element from one scale to another, since AS uses the same scale of play as BattleForce (which itself is included as a part of StratOps, a volume which includes more thorough AeroSpace rules for both levels of play).


The question here would be this: should the goal be to scale up each fighter so that it would show an SSD/Ship Card-esque level of detail, or is it better to make each fighter work as a more abstract element of play?

The former would mean that the resulting game might work best in duels, or perhaps for two-on-two dogfights. The latter would instead make it easier to zoom things out and more readily facilitate squadron-vs-squadron engagements.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, July 30, 2013 - 11:38 pm: Edit

I would just ignore the outlying fighters like sunlight.