Archive through April 21, 2022
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Federation Commander: FC: Fighters Attack:
Archive through April 21, 2022
To be specific, the latest Fighter rules are in Communique-128, including the Swarm and Flight rules.
Older carriers (particularly the first Fed CVS and Klingon D7V) include alternative fighters. Please restrict fighters to those defined in the rules in Communique-128.
This is an odd place to put this, but, whatever.
My point on the ship cards is this:
- Cruiser sized carrier. That seems to be the standard, and I can't see it happen without that.
- Destroyer sized carrier. There needs to be something smaller than the strike cruiser in order to drive the costs of using fighters down. If only a cruiser carrier is provided, then the whole module has even less opportunities for use.
- Destroyer escort. The cruiser escort is published elsewhere. We don't need them here. We do need the destroyer escort, as both carriers require them.
Now, given that, we note that when using a destroyer carrier, it requires a destroyer escort. This is not optional; the escort must be taken, and the escort cannot be a cruiser escort.
When a cruiser carrier is used, it requires two escorts. One must be a destroyer escort, and the other may be a cruiser or destroyer escort. Again, this is non-optional. Both escorts must be present.
Given what has been just said, the module set needs two destroyer escorts for two separate reasons:
1) Without having two destroyer escorts in the product, it is not possible to deploy a cruiser carrier without breaking the rules. Yes, the intention is to use this with the cruiser escort in one of the other two products, but you cannot assume that everyone will have those other two products. You have to be able to deploy the cruiser carrier with the ships provided by this module set, and that is only possible if each included empire has two destroyer escorts.
2) Assuming that the customer does have the cruiser escorts, you must have two destroyer escorts in order to be able to deploy both the cruiser carrier and the destroyer carrier together in the same force. If only one destroyer escort is provided, then it is just not possible to deploy the two carriers together with the ship cards provided. And that option should be available.
To only include a single destroyer escort in the module set would require addressing both of these issues.
Okay what about the Adhoc rules. The requiment is they must be Escorted. Dedicated Escorts are preferable but not necessarily required here right?
I am simply going by the SFB rules. Those rules can always be changed or modified when being translated into Federation Commander. As such, it is entirely possible that it is decided that cruiser carriers don't need two escorts, that a group including two carriers doesn't need all of the combined escorts, or that any ship can fulfill the escort requirements. There lots of ways to address those two issues without requiring two destroyer escorts.
I am not saying my position is the only correct approach. I am just saying that is the most obvious way to address it, and that is why I looked at it that way. There are, of course, many other ways to deal with that issue. It all depends on how close to SFB the rules need to be, and how many ships and empires need to be included.
So, I took a quick look at the revised fighter rules in Captain's Log #51 Supplemental File.
One quick question for now:
From what I can tell, there is no reference in these rules to the concept of obliging fighters to be flown in flights, or for said flights' seeking weapons to be grouped into swarms (as had been discussed earlier in this thread).
Do the fighters accounted for in CL51SF act as individual units (the way that Hydran Stingers presently do in "vanilla" FC), or am I missing a detail which requires the flight/swarm setup to be used instead?
I am gonna be completely honest here: I completely forgot about flights.
The idea was to present the different fighters in as seamless of a manner as possible, but base them completely on the existing Stinger 2 rules. When doing that, I didn't even think of doing flights. It wasn't an intentional omission, if that's the concern. Flights will be easy enough to add on top of this rule, as it is just a set of restrictions on how they otherwise operate. Where to put them is a question, but that is just a label that can be decided later (there is plenty of room).
Also missing, BTW, are any range restrictions for drones or other weapons. So, that'll likely need to be included at some point, too.
Mike, do an updated version with swarms for Communique. Preferably by 7 June but by 5 July if you can't do 7 June.
I'm on it!
This came up over in the CL52 battle group discussion, but I didn't wish to overly derail that topic with something that might be better suited for this thread.
Even with the recently-posted fighter rules in CL51SF (those set to be updated in an upcoming Communiqué, as note above) in mind, I had been under the impression that these rules - and the sample Ship Cards offered in recent Communiqué issues to make use of them - were still to be considered as "Borders of Madness" items, rather than being "promoted" into "vanilla" FC.
Is this the case, or is the plan now to incorporate fighters and carriers into the "core" game system?
And either way, would Hydran "true" carriers be treated under whichever category other Alpha Octant empires' carriers would be set to go under? (For example, were the Hydran Vampire Hunter DWV to be worked up as a Ship Card, would it count as a BoM ship?)
Borders of Madness, definitely.
In case anyone here hasn't seen them yet, the revised playtest fighter rules (which now include rules for flights and swarms) have been posted in Communiqué #128.
On a side note, is there a list anywhere of items from SFB which would still be candidates for Borders of Madness-dom?
This thread has been discussing fighters and carriers; there's a separate thread regarding gunboats and/or PFTs (though it is as yet unclear exactly how the "vanilla"/BoM split may go in that case); plus there's the potential for maulers (which have a few sample Ship Cards lying around here and there).
There are items from the earliest posts in this thread which have since been integrated into "vanilla" FC: scouts, Aegis escorts, tugs, commando ships, and so forth.
Beyond those, I'm drawing a blank as to whether or not there are other unit types out there which would be appropriate for consideration in a BoM context, at this stage in FC's development.
And speaking of maulers, would it be appropriate to talk about them here; or, since this is effectively the Fighters Attack thread at this point, is there somewhere else where they, or other BoM candidate items, ought to be posted about instead?
Personally, I do not like the "direct fire fighters for everyone" idea. Either they end up being versions of the crappy direct fire SFB fighters (e.g. Z-D, DAS), in which case they will suck in FC, too; or you use good direct fire fighters in FC, which will beg the question of why they aren't in SFB.
Besides, doing the "direct fire fighters for everyone" doesn't really model the SFU, anyway. It is just a kludge to say you got fighters into FC. Yes, FC is a different game than SFB. But they are supposed to model the same SFU. I don't see how direct-fire fighters for everyone does that.
If drone (and Pl-D) fighters can't be made to work in FC, I would rather just move directly to gunboats and work from there.
A note for future consideration:
Over in Star Fleet Battles, players have the option to replace drones or plasma-Ds with various pod types, under (J11.11).
For the purposes of Federation Commander, might it be an option to enable players wary of deploying seeking weapon fighter squadrons with "pre-baked" fighters with such pods installed? As in, while an SFB player could use the pod rules to construct such a fighter, an FC player would simply be presented with an "off-the-shelf" fighter which assumes the presence of whichever pod combination would be most appropriate.
For example, a Federation carrier might be given the option to replace its squadron of drone-armed fighters with fighters armed with a one-shot FA phaser-3, which may be re-armed for 1/2 of an Energy Point by the carrier itself (to represent a phaser pod) and a +1 die roll modifier to hit (from a jammer pod). Or a one-shot FA phaser-3 and a limited amount of cargo space (from a cargo pod). Or a one-shot FA phaser-3 and some sort of bonus when strafing targets on a planetary surface (from a ground attack pod). Or whichever pair of options works best.
The point would not be to replace drone- or plasma-D-armed fighters entirely; those would still be on the table for players wishing to use them. Rather, it would enable players who wish to use fighters but which prefer to avoid adding more seeking weapons to the tabletop to do so in a manner which remains faithful to what can be done over in SFB.
I think part of the point of FC is to try to simplify things, which adding pods would be the opposite of.
Again, the point would not be to make the FC player to think about pods, but rather to offer a "drone-less" fighter which the FC player may use as-is while still following an SFB precedent.
Think of how modular ship designs, such as heavy war destroyers or Romulan SparrowHawks, are presented in FC - with each variant offered as its own Ship Card. In both cases, one can "show their homework" to see how one may construct such a variant over in SFB, without having to actually go through the motions here in FC.
I could actually see that, to a point. The problem is that "phaser pods" aren't THAT great and the rules for using them are not as flexible as players would like them to be. None of them are going to be as good as the Gatling armed Stinger-2.
The long standing plan is to have the fighters on separate cards from the carriers just so that we could provide alternative fighters at some future point.
The result of such "phaser pod fighters" would be to give FC a totally different set of tactics and style of play from SFB, which isn't actually a good thing.
OtOH, FC already has a fairly different style of tactics and play than SFB.
Oh, no, surely not. Say it isn't so.
Here's my thoughts on this: If players are using fighters at all in Federation Commander, then I have to assume they have moved past the whole "overwhelmed with counters" thing, at least somewhat.
Remember that, assuming the Flight and Swarm rules, we are only adding in a potential of two counters for every six fighters (one for the fighters and one for the drones). Maybe a third for the second drone launch. For the carriers that will be included, that's two counters for fighter flights and up to four counters for drone swarms. That's on par for a drone-heavy ship. And everyone seems to be able to manage with a C8.
So, before worrying about designing a work-around or replacement to drone fighters, let's make sure it is actually a problem in the first place.
FWIW I think these are really good rules. Since you are doing individual SSDs for fighters I think you could probably add more diversity. Maybe not the various refits but allowing different base types wouldn't be that difficult.
FedCom is designed to be a simpler game and limiting it to one type (two for a couple of empires in special cases) is just part of the design. Adding plasma sabots, wild weasels, and scatter packs wouldn't be that difficult, but there is a slippery slope into madness here.
If the rules presented in Communique 128 are still the current rules, here are my thoughts based on them. I like the idea of using flights to make it easier to manage large groups of fighters. I would only suggest changing the rules so that the minimum number of flights a carrier can launch is 2, and go up from there, keeping everything else the same. My thoughts are quite simply, "why not allow a carrier with 6 fighters launch 2 flights?"
As to variations of fighters, I really don't see much reason to include more than 2, possibly 3, different versions of fighters for each faction, and only one to start off with seems good enough.
Maybe it's just me, but if I'm going to include fighters in a space combat game at all it's because I *want* the board to be filled with chaotic death-dealing swarms of fighter craft chucking missiles everywhere, so counter clutter is definitely not an issue for me 
Having said that, the swarm/flight rules look great; I'm just not the target audience.
In playing around with fighters in FC I've gone ahead and adopted the updated cloaking device rules that have seeking weapons drop tracking on cloaked ships (from here: http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=68088).
I've also adapted the Plasma Shotgun/Scattergun/Buck&Ball rules into FC, with nice FC-style tables and everything (https://ibb.co/qJGXgRs), to give fighter countermeasures to the plasma-chuckers, and am in the process of adapting multi-warhead drones for the drone-chuckers. I enjoy these additions, as they offer cool fighter countermeasures that have significant associated costs (+1x third-turn arming energy cost for the plasma multi-shots, +5% BPV for adding scatterguns and B&Bs, high BPV costs and limited availability for the MW drones). I like rules that add interesting decisions at both the strategic and tactical levels, and these rules do that for me.
I'm far beyond the Borders of Madness but having lots of fun with it I do hope Fighters Attack gets released someday.
For the record, the Flight and Swarm rules are intended to be the standard approach with fighters when Fighters Attack is eventually done. (To the point that it is intended for the Hydrans to use those rules at that point.) That said, the rules for using them as individual fighters launching individual drones/Pl-D is still right there in the rules. There is nothing preventing, or even discouraging, players from using fighters individually.
Well, as you can probably tell from my previous post, I'm not always playing FC the 'standard' way ;)
I think the flight/swarm rules are good and I'm sure many players will like them. I just have more fun with individual fighters and chaotic furballs all over the board, but that's just me.
As a long-time Hydran fan, is there any chance of getting Stinger-H fighters in Fighters Attack? I love those little guys.