Wouldnt increasing the defence of bombers/fighters have the same effect?

How will this affect PD against missiles, if you have both on incoming? Will we be able to choose which to target first - fighters or missiles? If not and its assigned on mass, then it means the fighters are running cover for their missiles and wont be taking any damage themselves (soaked by their fire capabilities). Not that the proposed changes affect this aspect (its going ot be the same as whatever happens now). Or am I misunderstanding something?

Im against the change (in the way proposed) at the moment for one simply reason - its just making things more complicated, by introducing a new way for something to work. If in principle its the same as increasing the defence values of fighters, then Id prefer that.

Im also concerned at the amount of modifications being done to space fighters - their accuracy was reduced and fighter bays destroyed takes out space fighters (both changes weakening them) and now this proposal to effectively improve them again.

Mark

Isn't that what Shields/Armour is for?

It is if you're the defender...

Again, I think that with the introduction of Starbase Shields, that shielding should be the deciding factor on how much damage gets through.

Not sure how my Gatling Lasers are going to soak damage from a fighters 'lasers'. Phalanx could, possibly, intercept a beam, but that would seem highly unlikely (unless able to put up an inpenetrable 'wall of lead' so to speak...)

Stupid? How so? Effective, yes.

If the above were to be implemented and reductions made to the capabilities of exisiting kit, then I propose that the damage soaking properties of AA/PD be implemented AFTER the effects of Shielding are taken into account - essentially providing a secondary 'shield' inside the main shield system. I also propose that any AA/PD damage not used to soak shield penetrating damage be applied to killing the fighters. Otherwise, why bother having Planetary Shields?

Another avenue to consider would be to assign an AA/PD AR rating based upon the mass of the protected object (Platform/SB/Ship) v. the mass of AA/PD kit. This AA/PD AR would ONLY protect against Fighter/Missile damage and Fighters/Missiles would have an AA/PD AF as well to determine how effective they are at evading point defense weapons. This would keep with the existing structure of Weapons doing damage and having an AF rating that can be countered by a high enough AR. This would also enable ships/starbases to gain an effective indication of how much damage from fighters they are capable of soaking as well as enable the Cloaking variants of missile weapons to penetrate the AA/PD AR better (by improving their AA/PD AF). You could then use the Mass of attacking fighters v. mass of target PD weapons to determine the amount of damage that is applied to the fighters as destructive damage in the same way that you would determine the AA/PD AF. This way, you reuse the existing MassCalculation Function calls as much as possible.

Just a few thoughts...

Rich Fanning
aka
Lord Lawrence Scrimm
CIA Intelligence Director

Increasing the defensive value of SF/SB doesn't help. If you need 1k gatlings and 1k phalanx to take out the SF/SBs, then even if you doubled the SB/SF defence, you just need 2k gatling and 2k phalanx to do the job. This is simply mass production as there is no limit to how many gatlings/phalanx you can have at a Starbase.
For ship to ship to battles, this would make point defence even more useless at taking out SB/SF. It is already hard enough to take out SB/SF using a ships point defence, this would make it worse.

Nik

but how is this different to the proposed changes? If the PD targets the damage-potential of the fighters first, then they can still just build more PD to cover it.

Were is the difference between introducing a brand new way of absorbing damage (the current proposal)...and the existing method?

I agree with what you are saying - it wont solve any of the issues, but if its introduced regardless of what we think, then Id prefer it to be done using an existing system.

Mark

If you send 10k ground bombers against a Starbase, you don't expect to loose them all before round 4 (which has almost happened). The proposal here is that if you do send in 10k and it all goes pear shaped, then you dn't loose the whole lot. You still have say 5k left which you then don't send in day 2 (unless you're stupid). So that there is then a balance, the Starbase being attacked then recieves less damage.

Nik

So the end result will be starbases will double the PD they had before, still take out all bombers day 1, but now the base wont be damaged at all? I was wrong, the change isnt strengthening bombers, its weakening them.

The best the attacker can hope for is the scenario you've outlined - that they get to save some bombers for another battle; they wouldnt be used against the same starbase since they now know they would be destroyed (or at best not hurt the base at all).

Mark

The proposal here will do just that as the point defence will focus on minimising the incoming fire rather than taking out the GBs.

If you have 100:1 odds in point defences favour, then of course you'll loose the lot. If you have 1:1 odds, then you shouldn't loose that many but nor should the Starbase (under this proposal) take that much damage. If you have 1:100 odds, then the Satrbase gets smashed. This is how it should be, and what the proposals should achieve. This is not what is happening at the moment.

Nik

1:1 odds of what, bombers to aa weaponary?

In that case I disagree, if you have the same number of aa guns as the enemy has bombers flying towards them then I would expect pretty much total destruction of the bombers.

History has shown otherwise. The main effect of AA is to break up the attack formation and so mimimise the damage causes.

That is reflected in this proposed change.

But then if you go down that road you should also be looking at developing something like a Stealth Bomber which can negate AA altogether. That would then cause the development of anti stealth AA, and you are back to square one

1:1 is just an example, to show the middle ground rather than being an exact number.

Nik

History didn't have accurate photon based weapons that would be effectivly be instant hit at fighter/bomber combat range when coupled with computer aided tracking.

Although I guess if tracking was an issue then you'd get the formation breakup, so maybe rather than 'stoping damage' they 'disabled' a fighter/bomber for that round due to manvouering out of the way etc.

I realise its the same effect but it makes more sense to me

That was the intended 'in game view' but i just layed out the mechanic.

Will a starbase PD be made advanced enough to pick and choose its targets? Otherwise attackers can simply use their bombers to drain the PD (without taking any damage) whilst their kinetics smash with impunity.

Im also wary that missiles are now mentioned alongside the bombers...is the intention to make PD first absorb their damage giving the missile the chance to return to its launcher?

Wont these changes just encourage bases to have extremes of PD (more than the existing extremes<g>)?

Mark

This is not hard at all, especially if you can see the mobile force.

Ask General Erwin Rommel.

But Rommels opponents didnt have orbit capable tanks or jet packs <g>

Additionally being able to scan a force is radically different from being able to engage it.
This is the same in ground and space combat.

Various factions have used tiny, mobile GPs that have been almost impossible to engage in combat due to their superior manouverability.

Pete