Questions.

1) Is it odd that it is frequent practice these days to feed forward fighters into battleforces with no carriers? Probably not, but...

2) There is a tendancy for the coalition to not bother building E4As because they are so poor, instead not bothering with escorts at all during the early war. Is this really what should happen? It certainly does not seem to happen in SFB R-section descriptions.

3) Independent fighter squadrons are as strong as fighter squadrons which are with their carriers (and can thus reload weapons). Is this realistic?

4) In SFB generally, carriers pretty much invariably have proper escorts (as opposed to ad-hocs or no escorts), yet the F&E reality is very different - weak carriers are often left without escorts and used as de facto FCRs. Should the divergence be allowed?

I have thought of several things that could be done to align F&E with SFB here, but imagine that they won't go far. Still...

a) Carriers (and their fighters) without the minimum number of proper escorts cannot be used for pinning calculations. (the valuable carrier would not be risked in this manner in situations where contact - with a lot of drones/plasma - may be sudden).

b) Independent fighter squadrons have some compot (not defence) penalty.

Note that these tactics have become part of the game due to the flexible carrier groups rule, and could be considered abuses of that rule.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 09:05 am: Edit

option a definantly makes sense, and wouldn't even be that disruptive. however IIRC carrier groups aren't formed until battle starts, technicly it's just a bunch of stray ships at the time of pinning calculations.

option b is more disruptive, it makes sense, but how will it change things?

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 09:23 am: Edit

I suspect that if option (a) was in play, people would simply make sure that they had enough escorts for their carriers if they could (it's a pretty stiff penalty for not having them). In situations where it is known that there are inadequate escorts, one could simply put a "insufficient escorts" or some such chit on selected carriers during non-combat phases. An exisiting chit could probably be subbed in.

In any case, I tend to leave my carrier groups formed up in the fleet boxes, meaning that it is usually very obvious when there are not enough escorts to go round.

(b) will tend to force people to put carriers in the battleforce - simply feeding forward fighters would be at best a poor alternative.

I am well aware that this may annoy coalition players more. However, as far as I recall, the flexible carrier group rule was always considered pretty neutral as a whole. If anything, it was seen as pro-alliance as the alliance has more carriers.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 10:11 am: Edit

Counter to a) is Ad-Hocs, just count the number of E4s/F5s/D5s in a fleet and you have enough escorts for anything.

This is a 6 month turn, trying to force a 6 month turn to match a 10 minute scenario is going to cause so many problems, they are too many to list. Besides, they have all been told before.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 10:25 am: Edit

Ad-hocs don't protect your carrier nearly so well against a huge drone wave. The very nature of pinning implies that all your ships are taking some form of risk to stalemate the enemy. The most likely way your carrier gets in trouble quickly is for a sudden seeking weapon attack to occur when you are going slow. However, it does not matter what form the (SFB) combat may take, a carrier is taking risks without proper escorts as per pretty much all SFU doctrine .We do not need to question why here, in the same way we do not know how F&E combat pans out.
Carriers are also intended to to operate with escorts, anyway, as per pretty much every single SFB R-section description.

And how will IFS fighters ever be as good as ones with your carrier and escorts? I really don't see how your argument, which is basically the old "this is F&E combat not SFB combat" one applies here.

Finally, Ad-hocs can still be used in combat under (a). All this is doing is applying a *pinning* penalty for Ad-hocs as well as a combat penalty.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 10:53 am: Edit

The argument applies becuase you are comparing apples to oranges again.

A fighter strike in SFB is a long trip,or sometimes not so long trip, followed by 10 or 15 minutes of excitment.

Fighters forward in F&E might be 10 or 20 of the above strikes, and remember the carrier in that case might be only 5 or 10 maps away, or might be on the next map over as far as SFB is concerned.

As for pinning, it makes no sense to make either side see what ships have what escorts just to see if they can pin another ship. A carrier with its fighters can still force 2 FFs or 2 DDs or 2 whatever to slow down and engage.

Its trying to shoehorn tactical considerations into a strategic game, and it just does not work when you get down to those minute details.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 11:38 am: Edit

But you are imagining situations which do not have a single SFB scenario involved. While I can just envisage drone fighters coming back ~5 times (emptying the carrier drone bay, if they have ammunition to throw away), there is no way any other fighter will survive more than 2-3 engagements with the enemy, given it needs to go within 10 hexes or so to do anything at all, unless the enemy simply does not shoot at it, having better targets. If the enemy has better targets, we are getting into an SFB-type close exchange situation (i.e. the better target is a ship also within 10 hexes).

Fighters without carriers also have no recognised EW support, which is relevant again whatever the SFB situation is. There are also bound to be situations where having the carrier on hand will help. While these may not make a difference in one particular case, they will make a general difference that will affect combat in a generic manner.

Tactical situations do have a strategic effect.

Oh yeah? A lone D5V carrier should pin 2CMs? If those CMs surprise the D5V in any SFB situation, at the very least it's fighters are toast. The converse is not true, simply because fighters are so darn slow, or if they are brought into battle by the carrier, have to wait a while after launch (which takes a while) before they can shoot. And that's what's happening in pinning. On that particular bit of the front, the D5V is playing a fencing game, pinning out the 2CM and preventing them from going further. With assigned escorts, the escorts hang out at distance (earlier detection) and protect the carrier from surprises, giving it time to launch fighters. If Ad-hocs could do that as well as escorts, then nobody would bother building escorts in the first place, ever.

Again, the general tactical effect is that the D5V is disadvantaged without proper escorts. That may not makle the difference all or even half of the time, but the averaged effect is that the D5V should have a strategic penalty reflecting the average tactical situation.

Your argument is:-
"factor X does not matter in situation A, therefore X is insignificant"

My argument is:-

"Over the full set of possible sitautions A-R, factor X on average is significnatly impacted if (e.g) a carrier has no escorts"

By Jimi LaForm (Laform) on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 11:54 am: Edit

Cfant is right.

This is a strategic game, not a tactical.

3 SE's pin 3 SE's. It shouldn't matter what those 3 SE's are in either case. Remember when the enemy has X # of ships in hex xxxx they aren't sitting still, they are patrolling that hex in bands of 1, 2, 3 whatever. So that D5V group just pinned 3 or 4 whatevers.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 02:23 pm: Edit

David,

Fighters close to range 35, pop drones, stay out there until they are empty and return to their carrier. THey come back.

This is a really big SFB scenario.

Fighters engage in sector 112, skirmish with the enemy and return to carrier, perhaps launch again with spare fighters broken out of storage a few days later. Replacements arrive after a few weeks from resupply ships in the area and stores are replenished. During this time the squadron has lost 75% of its fighting streangth and 40% of its pilots. During this time the squadron has flown 3 or 4 missions a week for the last month and are exhausted. The carrier then pulls out of the combat zone to refill ships stores, take on more replacement fighters/pilots and repair any major combat damage.

SFB is a single engagement that takes place over a 15 to 30 minute period of a 6 month patrol. F&E is that 6 month patrol.

By James Lowry (Rindis) on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 - 03:10 pm: Edit

It should also be kept in mind that all movement in F&E is at various types of 'high warp' speeds where a single hit can destroy a ship. I would imagine that the pinning rules are reflecting 'screening' forces set out to keep the enemy from doing an ambush against units moving through at high-warp. They spend time maneuvering around, keeping them from leaving the hex, but also keep the enemy worried about traveling at high-warp to get into range of the units leaving the hex. Since the threat of suddenly being in engagement range is the main point, an unescorted carrier can do the job (it technically, just needs one popgun to force the other ship to slow down to combat speed, then the carrier leaves).

The original dicotomy between SFB and F&E that prompted this is probably the most glaring one there is. The 'feeding fighters forward' concept only appears in SFB in the resupply ships, not in the smaller carriers. SFB more-or-less assumes that in a war any ship will probably see combat at some point in it's life. In F&E you can guarantee that a certain percent of your fleet will never see combat.

However, SFB only shows the combat situations, so maybe the perceptions granted there are a bit skewed. Certainly, if you *do* put a CVE on the line, it'll likely have escorts. E4A production is a case of gamers not doing the same things as 'historical' leaders. ;)

(Kinda sad, really. My first reaction was 'what a neat idea'.)

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 01:41 am: Edit

David Slatter,

As an alternative on the pinning issue...

A couple years back I was discussing pinning with a friend of mine, and some of the oddities I didn't like (including the one you pointed out, with carriers acting as FCR's, yet still fully able to pin).

He suggested a simple fix: Any ship that pins an enemy ship must actually be used in at least one round of battle.

This would mean that a CVE that pins an enemy would actually have to be in the battleline at some point in the battle. Some ships would be classified as too valuable to ever be used to pin. And those tiny little frigates built only for pin factor - you have to actually use them in combat now.

This would redefine pinning from an automatic calculation to a step where you chose which ships would pin enemy ships, and there would have to be a clear definition of which side actually pins the other. There would be alot more questions to ponder.

Plus, as a side effect, there would be higher casualties, as a 100 ship pinning a 100 ship force would be forced to fight quite a few rounds of battle before every single ship appeared in the battleline for at least one round of combat.

Personally, I tossed the idea after some consideration, having found enough other ways in my game to increase casualties and therefore not have that many carriers acting only as pin factors. But if you can fiddle with this idea and make it work, you're more than welcome to steal it and flesh it out.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 04:39 am: Edit

Kevin

Your idea has merit, I'm just wondering how one would improve it: doing much more would probably make it unworkably complex.

How did you increase casualties in your games?

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 10:23 am: Edit

Yeah, but then a pinning battle with 100 ships will take a long time to play, as all 100 ships on both sides would now have to take part.

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 10:26 am: Edit

David,

How did I increase casualties?

I have a dozen little (and some big) things I do differently - unfortunately, not all of them are appliable to modern F&E.

For example, I hate carriers.

It's good to get that out in the open. I'm racist against carriers. If I admit it openly, then I'm on the path to healing. Of course, carriers in my game are not on the path to healing, they are on the path to dying. Oh well.

I use my own version of "direct damage upon carriers directly" system... it's posted in one of these threads around here somewhere. I also dumped alot of the additional rules and units that have added to carriers as the years have gone by. FCR's. Auxilliary CV's. Annualized fighter factors. Heavy Fighters. All of those are gone. I could give details on why for each, but it's all mainly to take away the huge supply of backup fighters, so that it's just the carriers themselves.

And of course... if you risk losing those carriers in battle, do you really want to pay 2ep per factor for extra CV's? Carrier production tends to go down in my game.

And of course... if you have less fighters, you logically will take more damage on ships in the usual course of warfare. More damage on ships means more ship kills, more cripples, less money to build replacements.

And of course... if you have less ships, do you really want to keep your entire carrier fleet off the line (presumably to protect them, sending in independent squadrons) - keeping the CV's out of combat means a number of hulls that can't fight when the battle gets critical. To make sure they can fight in an emergency, you escort them. That means more hulls staying out of combat, so better send them in.

And of course... if you are then sending those carriers into battle, we are back to point #1, where I allow directed damage upon the carrier, meaning more carrier kills.

And that's just from one major set of changes to carriers. Then I use my minimum number of combat rounds, based on the size of the fleet, and I'm still experimenting with the multiple pursuit battles, which has the secondary effect of convincing both sides to try to fight to the bitter end in order to get the other guy to retreat instead. Then add in probably a number of other small rules that I can't think of at the moment.

Then add in the fact that I'm a bloodthirsty freak who doesn't bat an eye at risking my dreadnoughts, carriers, and other important assets, in order to win a battle. I never got around to sending it in, but I've got a mostly written tac note called "sacrificing assets". And when I get bloody, my oppenent can only get bloody as well, or run.

Net result, we don't find a problem with pinning anymore, because we don't have huge fleets that only ever pin each other and run. We have the surviving ships from years of unrestricted warfare duking it out for one more victory. E4's fight on the line because that's all we have left at the end of a battle. CVE's fight on the line, with escorts but without fighters, because I ran out of other ships. Heck, I allow CV's on the line without escorts, though that's really dangerous - but if it wins me the battle, what's a few CV's lost here or there?

CVA's get converted to SCS's, without any special rule to convert fighter factors to PF's, because we need every dollar we have left - converting the existing CVA is cheaper than building a new SCS from scratch.

As each effect of each rule is added upon itself, the problems of "Too Many Ships" goes away, and fleets fight logically, to their fullest potential, without the problems you listed (CV's never having escorts, only feeding fighters forward).

And as theorized before in the "Too Many Ships" thread, if you score enough kills in the mid war, then the loss rate is lessened in the late war, so we don't ever *run out* of ships or anything. My games are still **HUGE** games; they're just huge with half as many ships as normal.

But unless you are willing to go in the opposite direction of the last 12 years of F&E development, I don't know if you could create the same results.

Did you want more details?

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 10:33 am: Edit

Chris,

"Yeah, but then a pinning battle with 100 ships will take a long time to play, as all 100 ships on both sides would now have to take part."

Yeah, that was the point. The problem was that you had to track each ship, did this particular E4 fight yet, how about that FCR? Oh, it didn't count for pinning, so it doesn't have to fight? I don't remember that, did you tell me at the time? It became a nightmare just imagining it, long before we every bothered to try it out.

So I came up with the minimum number of combat rounds idea instead. 100 ships vs 100 ships would take a minimum of 10 combat rounds, thus making the pinning battle more painful. More pain meant slowly reducing fleets. Smaller fleets meant slowly but surely, those E4's had to fight on the line simply because nothing else was available, and FCR's became a questionable investment. (Then I eliminated FCR's anyway, so I guess it's no longer a question...)

Fleet sizes are still huge, but more like half as huge as usual, and you have to make sure most of them are combat capable, as they will be seeing combat sooner or later...

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 10:48 am: Edit

David,

"Your idea has merit, I'm just wondering how one would improve it: doing much more would probably make it unworkably complex."

But you have to improve it. There were too many questions that came up with only a brief overview.

Consider:

You send 20 ships, pin 20 enemy ships. Simple enough, both sides have to fight until each of their 20 ships have fought. But what if side A does this in two rounds, but side B hasn't? Does side A have to stay around until Side B has brought out their last ship? I'd say no, meaning that if you know you are going to win, you can keep your vulnerable asset off the line indefinately, even though it pinned the enemy. Simply fight with the 19 ships until the enemy gives up and retreats.

So the enemy sends 20 ships, you pin them with 22. That means he has to fight with all 20, but you get to pick two ships that didn't participate in the pinning. 20 of your ships pinned the enemy, the last two ships, say a couple of FCR's, can contribute their replacement fighters to the main line carriers without ever having to go into battle.

But of course, if you can designate that, then why can't the enemy do the same? He has 20 ships, he says "I want to keep my FCR out of the main fight, only using 19 to pin." Then you have 3 of your 22 not needing to fight, each of you having to bring up 19 each before you could leave.

But wait... You counter by saying "Well, I don't want to use any of my ships to pin. After all, you were pinning me, not the other way around." So now he has to fight until all 19 of his ships have each seen combat, but you only had to fight one round and run.

Then you get the fun of trying to track all that. Which side pinned which? Which ships were part of the pinning force, which were just there to assist? What if neither side stated they were pinning the other? What happens? They both fly past each other through the same hex?

So you go back to the original thinking - pinning is automatic. Oops, major coalition victory. After all, they got a huge fleet, filled with tons of riskable ships, large and small. You got CVE's and FCR's and Hydran Cruisers and Kzinti carriers temporarily short of escorts. And he pinned you, over your starbase, so you have to put your CV minus escorts on the line. It will get in one good lick, but it'll die for sure.


As I said, if you can solve these problems, then go ahead and run with it. But you may instead choose to use this idea like I did, as an inspirational stepping stone to your next great idea.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 11:16 am: Edit

Kevin

Thanks - those muses are helpful. I'll look into it.

Chris

Whichever way you look at it, the carrier contributes to the fighter squadron's effectivness when it in the battle. That is an inviolate fact. Also, an inviolate fact is that independent fighter squadrons in F&E are not in immediate contact with their carrier. You can juggle the combat situation how you like, but you can't get around those facts. What you are describing in your possible scenarios is a number of distant (i.e. IFS) strikes using fighters. All of those strikes would be helped, in terms of damaging the enemy or exploiting a situation, if the fighters could reload faster and have EW support by having the carrier come along with them (i.e. in the battleforce). Ergo, fighters with their carrier fight better than IFS.

Of course, if the carrier is in the battleforce, it is at risk, but that risk is already reflected in F&E in that it is easier to kill a carrier in the battleforce.


The pinning thing is more complex, but it is strange that despite 100v100 ship pins occuring, both sides can pick exactly which ships fight the battle and only a small proportion of the fleet fight for one round in a situation where one would intuitively imagine up to dozens of skirmishes involving most of the two fleets. While a single F&E round may actually, as you say, be dozens of skirmishes, it never involves the whole 100ship fleet: to imagine that the other 85 ships do no damage at all to each other is very artificial.

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 11:24 am: Edit

Getting back to your original post...


"1) Is it odd that it is frequent practice these days to feed forward fighters into battleforces with no carriers? Probably not, but..."

Actually, no. I thought that the original description text for many Federation carriers implied that they were designed to launch long range strikes, and only rarely enter combat directly. It was only later that the Federation was forced into putting the carriers directly into battle (a logical effect of being invaded by a force twice their size.) On a related note, the Kzinti carrier designs always implied to me that they could do long range strikes, or on-the-line traditional combat, and after the fighters were gone, they were intended to act as cruisers. I modified the rules to reflect that, allowing carriers to be on the line without their escorts, though with a command penalty if they still had their fighters (the fighters take a command slot).

"2) There is a tendancy for the coalition to not bother building E4As because they are so poor, instead not bothering with escorts at all during the early war. Is this really what should happen? It certainly does not seem to happen in SFB R-section descriptions."

I agree, this is not at all what SFB tells us about how the carriers operated. Right now, I don't allow ad-hoc escorts at all. I'm considering re-allowing them, but with more penalties, thus making the carrier with only ad-hoc escorts much more of a sitting duck. I haven't figured out the details as of yet.

"3) Independent fighter squadrons are as strong as fighter squadrons which are with their carriers (and can thus reload weapons). Is this realistic?
(snip)
b) Independent fighter squadrons have some compot (not defence) penalty."

Well, you have a point, but I think it can be explained away. I used a particular line of logic awhile ago, follow me on this if you will...

Kzinti CV(CL,EFF) is worth 18 compot on the line. A BC, CL, FF is worth 18 compot (the frigate is better due to more heavy weapons, but the BC is smaller than the CV hull). Of course, if the CV group is scoring as much damage as the three individual ships, then we have to assume that they are all at the same range - and of course, if they are at the same range, then the CV is exposed to the same directed damage potential that the BC is, being basically cruiser sized hulls. But it's not - the BC dies for 24 damage, the CV probably can't be killed without tons of available damage points. So we assume that the CV stays back, at range 35, while the BC is closer to the fight. That's why the BC can be killed and the CV is protected. Then why does the CV have the same firepower?

The answer: It doesn't. You see, the CV group suffers from a firepower drop at that range, but then they send the fighters forward, and since the fighters are constantly resupplied and supported (the carrier is on the line), the fighter group is worth more than the listed 6 factors. The CV may only be worth 7 compot, for example, but the 6 fighter factors actually supply 9 compot. Of course, if you didn't have the carrier there as constant resupply and support, (say, having is farther back, sending in the fighters as an independant squadron), then the 6 fighters would be worth only 6.

Net result, it equalizes out, and thus we can simplify the the whole system by saying that they all work they way they are currently written as working.

"4) In SFB generally, carriers pretty much invariably have proper escorts (as opposed to ad-hocs or no escorts), yet the F&E reality is very different - weak carriers are often left without escorts and used as de facto FCRs. Should the divergence be allowed?

a) Carriers (and their fighters) without the minimum number of proper escorts cannot be used for pinning calculations. (the valuable carrier would not be risked in this manner in situations where contact - with a lot of drones/plasma - may be sudden)."

My posts on increased casualties solved this for me. If ship counts go down, then carriers are needed on the line, which means they are escorted. However, for modern F&E, yes, I think you have a good idea. A ship doing pinning is logically coming into contact with the enemy, and therefore the carrier would end up in combat without its escorts. A definate no-no.

By Jimi LaForm (Laform) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 11:30 am: Edit

David, if you force the early war alliance to use every single ship in combat every single combat hex then the Hydrans and Kzinti's will be raped as a race. The coalition will win the war. There is absolutely 0 chance that the early war alliance can survive a heavy glut of cripples/dead early on.

Remember this is a game of strategy, not tactics. Each round is 6 months, each hex is what huge, I'm not sure how large at the top of my head but it is a huge amount of space.

When 100 ships pin 100 ships in a hex those 100 ships are all flying around in one SFB hex or even one SFB map. They are flying around in 100's and 100's of SFB maps trying to outflank each other, push fighters forward, go back to repair, resupply, protect convoys, watch for pirates, escort freighters, AND, search for enemy freighters, search out flanking positions, kill convoys, kill ships repairing, kill ships resupplying, kill fighters being fed forward, drop mines, kill mines, disrupt positions etc.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 11:39 am: Edit

Feeding fighters forward. It happens, but in SFB that is boring, so scenarios showing this are never printed. No biggie.

Carriers without escorts and pinning: I could actually see and agree to a rule that carriers without "actual" escorts couldn't count their fighters when pinning.

Ships that pin must fight isn't workable as there are stacks of 100+ ships pinning each other.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 12:39 pm: Edit

I think that discussions like these are what lead to the Kzinti/Lyran and later the Romulan/Vulcan diversions.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 12:41 pm: Edit

I second that Lar.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 03:00 pm: Edit

Concur.

By Jimi LaForm (Laform) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 05:13 pm: Edit

Another possible problem. If operation fighter waves can pin out from Bats, SB etc then why wouldn't unescorted carriers be able to pin out?

A fighter wave pushed 1 full hex away from a Bats should certainly have less ability to pin out then an operationally moving carrier with a full fighter wave flying about it within the same hex.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Thursday, March 31, 2005 - 06:34 pm: Edit

Well, the rule would change to say they can't pin if away from the base. And for most of the war, it's difficult to see how they could. They may be able to force a ship to halt temporarily by intersecting the ship's projected warp path, but the ship can easily go round them when it wants to. Given that F&E combat & movement is supposedly a number of events, this interception will have no impact on a 6-month scale. At the base, things are a little different - the fighters can operate at, say, 50SFB hexes away from the base, effecting their pin ability, and the enemy can't get round them anything like as easily to hit the base. Technically, I see no reason why even then the base's fighters should be able to stop the enemy moving through the hex, although they will help release freindly ships from being pinned.

Fighters with their carriers (+escorts) simply go back on the carrier, and the carrier group shadows the enemy ship(s), maintaining the pin and the usefulness of fighters within that pin.

Even when fighters get booster packs, they are unlikely to have much strategic warp speed (do they even have FTL warp - I'm not sure?), so once the enemy ship has disengaged by acceleration, it can warp round them (although that will entail somewhat more risk than just dodging round fighters and then proceeding on with your course).

Stopping supply is another kettle of fish. Fighters can keep up with freighters fairly well, so they should be able to block supply.