This is why I advocate allocating point value to anything that fights, and not to anything that doesn't fight. If the carrier is good to have with you in a fight (because it can draw fire from other ships and tank it, because it has huge ECM arrays, because it has command and control facilities, whatever), then give it a point value, a point value it retains even when its small craft are off doing something else.Ryan Thunder wrote:This is more what I was thinking of. If a carrier is projecting trans-system power then I don't think its really worth differentiating from a battleship.Darkevilme wrote:Non hyperspace capable fighters though probably aren't worth counting separately as they've not got much in the way of power projection.
Hyperspace fighters on interstellar missions, I hadn't thought of at all. At that point, the carrier isn't really doing anything for them during combat that I can think of.
Then again, at that point they're looking more like independent warships.
If the carrier is not useful in a fight, say because it's just a big defenseless hunk of victim that lacks defensive strength or useful support assets, then do not give it a point value, because it won't be making an appearance in battle except as an "Achilles' heel" for its fighter wing.
If small craft are being lost in large numbers, then they will take ships with them- destroying those ships will force the enemy to spend money. If you lose few small craft, just handwave the replacement cost.Darkevilme wrote:Esquire: No one wants to track the cost of repairing their damaged space galleons. No one. But that does lead to fighters being a bit of a disadvantage due to them costing points to replace so perhaps Ryan thunder has somewhat of a point...
The only time you lose many small craft without doing dollar-value damage to the enemy is if you really screw up by the numbers- say, send 500$ worth of small craft to attack a 1000$ battleship. And since that kind of battle will happen on both sides of the line, it will average out over the long run.
It's cool, but... just ugh. Imagine what Chaotic Neutral, or for that matter Fin, would be like if someone gave them a Galaxy Gun.Though gunships can attack in different starsystems so the idea of just handwaving a carrier/battlecarriers strike craft complement under the banner of 'no special rules' is a little dubious. And I think that's the issue. Carriers with jump capable fighters are capable of power projection in a way most other ships cannot be. Though the idea of a wave motion gun blast or missile that's hyperspace capable is in its own way pretty cool i have to admit.
I'm really much happier counting point costs of the things that do the fighting, rather than of things which do not participate in battle except as a shuttle bus for the things that are fighting.Non hyperspace capable fighters though probably aren't worth counting separately as they've not got much in the way of power projection.
I still do not understand why anyone has any problem with this.
I'll take care of anyone who tries too hard to use rapid replaceability of light forces to wear down an enemy which relies on heavy forces.Esquire wrote:If we go tie combat power directly to point value - which I think is the right way to go about it- then repairs and replacements would also have to be tied directly to point value, i.e. it takes a week to build one point worth of combat power regardless of whether that one point is a fighter squadron or part of a thousand-point superultramegabattleship. Otherwise, it seems to me that there might be problems with fighter forces being easier to replenish (because each fighter is so cheap and easily produced compared to the aforementioned superultramegabattleship) than other sorts of navies.
Of course, that would only be a problem if this turns out to be a rules-lawyering sort of game, which the consensus seems to be against. Maybe I'm just being paranoid?
Don't worry about it.
What if I want to use space battleships without long range weaponry? What if I want Elysian deceres as my battleships? Weapons with interplanetary range should not be a mission requirement for an SDNW4 battleship- if they are, then the next thing I know I'll be having to bawl someone out for being dumb enough to invest all their tonnage in short-ranged monitors that blow things up with incendiary plasma shells, and the hypocrisy will cause the game to collapse into a black hole.Ryan Thunder wrote:There's really no reason not to treat fighters like ammunition in my opinion. If a player doesn't feel like using space carriers with space fighters he can just use space battleships with ridiculously long-ranged weaponry (and whatever else that entails).
If you make it a logical requirement that my nation mount a specific weapons suite, in order for it to make sense that X points of my ships can fight X points of your ships on equal terms, you're doing it wrong. I should not need suspiciously dildo-looking Honorverse ships with multi-AU missile ranges to be able to shoot back at a carrier-based navy in a way that has meaningful effect on them.
See, this is the problem- there is a difference in paradigm between "big things fight" and "big things don't fight, but carry small things, which fight." To make those two mutually balanced, we have to in some way acknowledge the difference in paradigm in the rules, or force every person who writes a story to contort the plot so as to make the difference irrelevant.
So why the hell is it so hard to get people to sit still for making a small addendum to the rules to define what has the point value in a "big things carry small things, which fight" weapon system? Are we really trying to preserve the 'elegance' of having the rules try to pretend that carriers which aren't risked in direct combat are totally 100% identical to battleships that are?
This doesn't make any damn sense. The carrier rules worked fine in SDNW4, why should having them work the same way only without the arbitrary half-double rule suddenly turn them into a problem?
Then have an X point carrier associated with a Y point small craft wing. When committed to battle, the carrier and its wing have an aggregate effect of (X+Y) points.Additionally the carrier isn't produced for free (American supercarriers are some of the most expensive ships on the planet, and they can be and are risked in combat against an equal foe) and should be a significant loss on its own unless its little more than a launch platform and a hangar with engines installed.
Or we could just, you know, use the the original SDNW4 rules, or the modified rules I already came up with. Both of which track the cost of the carrier and the cost of the small craft, so that neither of them can be written off for nothing, and neither of which should be in any way 'hard' for anyone who passed fourth grade arithmetic and has the guts to ask "how does this work?"
But those do it by attributing a point cost to the carrier, and to the small craft.
It's too easy for me to assert that my carrier is kept out of range of an enemy's weapons- especially with FTL-capable small craft, which I'm going to have to write out of the rules entirely if we treat fighters like expendable ammunition.Ryan Thunder wrote:There's no reason why it can't be shot at, either, though, and it does have some value of its own even if it isn't armed.
Unless I write a series of ridiculous contrivances to justify how I just happen to be able to drop ships on top of your carriers over and over, there's a problem keeping points as points.
Why would I care if you have a dozen carriers per fighter? It just makes you look silly, you don't get any advantages from having a huge pile of zero-point ships.Basically, if you make carriers free, there's really nothing stopping me from having a dozen of them per fighter. Which is silly. The carrier's the most expensive part, and its loaded with electronics and fuel and what have you.
You can also decree that all your people wear bicorne hats, it doesn't affect their military performance and you don't get an undue advantage from having all those hats.
That's how my own rules would work- you pay for a 100-point carrier, it comes free with 100 points of fighters. The fighters go up against a 200-point task force, they all get shot down. The 100-point carrier runs away.If you must, just pretend the 100-point carrier limps away after its fighters are shot down by the 200-point battleship. There's really no reason to differentiate.
As I see it, this is a perfectly viable way for the game to work: you spent 100$ on a weapon system that tried but failed to engage a 200$ force, lost, and now needs 100$ of new fighters if it's going to be effective again.
But no, we can't do that, because we have to think outside the box, don't we?
