"Fixing fighters in Full Thrust" Topic

Hi there,

I plan on getting back into spaceship gaming after having tried several rulesets, the one we had most fun with is Full Thrust. The problem: we remember the Fighters being utterly broken as they were way to powerful.

Any reccommended fixes from grognards to make them a bit more even?

thanks

It depends on the version of the rules u are using. in Project Continuum there is an optional rule that allows all ships over 20 mass to add 1ADFC for 0 mass and 8 points. Fighter and missle attackes become much more difficult to pull off with all ships able to protect one another. There are other PDS options as well

Back in the day we stuck to the main rulebook, so ive got no clue about these add-ons. Will have to look further!

I don't think fighters are overpowered now. Especially if you use the scattergun which is very powerful.

Steve

"now"? there's been some rule revision? last time I playes is like 4-5 years ago

lets face it one fighter getting through a fleets point defense and anti fighter weapons should kill its target just like in a modern navy battle. A fighters weapons should be one hit one kill or they are not worth the time and money put into them. The way around this is don't use them in the game.

but yea take a look at the new rules. there are better point defiance weapons.

where are those new rules? on GZG site I find the regular ones

Jump over here and look at the variants in the Files section. FT:Continuum is probably the single best consolidation of the later additions and changes.

link

Thanks! Will do.

So, if I use Cross Dimensions along the ship designs on star ranger I hope to get a workable game in no time

Full Thrust Project Continuum combines Cross Dimensions with a buch of other stuff out there and has been endorsed by GZG and Hugh Fisher. check it out and let us know what u think.

link

Modern fighters are utterly broken as they are way too powerful. A single F18 gets through on your cruiser and it can blow it away with harpoons. Man, they should fix that.

I don't recall them being utterly broken. It depends on the style of game you are looking for, though. I like my fighters powerful. Some of my favorite sci fi memories are filled with one fighter being pivotal. Red 5 and the Death Star, that A Wing that takes out the bridge of the Executor which causes it to crash into the second death star (because, umm… space gravity), The Last Star Fighter, Rick Hunter and his Skull Leader Valkyrie screaming along the surface of an enemy cruiser, and the list goes on.

I don't think Full Thrust's fighters were ever that powerful, but it depends on what you are looking for.

YouTube link

Keep the To-Hit rules the same, but roll D10s, or D12s for the attacks.

That way, the combats last longer, and they'll be less lethal vs. ships, and each other.

The problem with fighters is that their value is not a linear scale. A single fighter group can't do much so it doesn't have that much worth. But the 6th group is worth a lot more. Plus the value is based on the number in the fleet, not on a single ship.

On the other hand, fighter defenses were limited and to make a single ships able to defend itself against a big swarm of fighters, it couldn't do much else. So there was a lot of debate about fighters on the GZG-L mailing list in the early 2000's and one result was the Beta Fighter Rules:
link

Basically, all ships can use their main weapons to fire at a fighter group and have some chance to take out fighters attacking another ship or just flying around. A regular fire control has to be dedicated to targeting that group though so it does make the player choose what is more important and those weapons fired at fighters can not be fired at ships.

I've used this version and think it works well but I have not tried the ADFC for no mass rule so I can't comment on that.

Just double their points cost?

The one reason I don't really jump into FT is the plethora of rules/options… more of a tool-kit than a rule-set, but that is their strength.

…more of a tool-kit than a rule-set, but that is their strength.

The way my group mis-remembers, then soldiers on anyway, that's our description of any rules. ;->=

Honestly, for the build system, fighters fit poorly no matter what. The scalability just isn't sufficiently linear.

Now, with the right scenario initial conditions, they can work 'okay.'

I tried some limits on the numbers that could fly in one attack, 'What the hell kind of traffic control is this? ', but mostly I try to avoid, because they just aren't real to me.

They use movie logic to break FT's cinematic movement system.

Now, I'm fine using FT to fight dogfights if I want something fiddlier than Tacship. I think it works better than X-Wing.

With some chrome, of course. It IS a tool-kit…

Doug

Well, the problem with FT fighters, as TheStarRanger says that their power is not linear, and also scales differently based on how prepared the enemy fleet is to deal with them.

One or two flights versus any fleet with a 'regular' amount of PDS will probably die without doing too much.

Five-ish flights versus any fleet with a 'regular' amount of PDS will probably inflict a fair bit of damage.

Ten or more flights versus any fleet with a 'regular' amount of PDS will probably massacre the other fleet in a horrible destructive display.

A fleet with lots of PDS will push all of these numbers up, fleets with poor PDS will push all of these numbers down. It's a hard balance to get right.

The hard part isn't making the cost so high that a ruinous number of fighters isn't also ruinously expensive, the hard part is making it so that the same solution doesn't mean that taking a moderate number of flights is totally useless. That's one reason I highly dislike the 'free ADFC' rule, as all it does it push the 'how many fighters do I need to totally overwhelm the enemy' threshold up and ALSO pushes the 'If I take less than x flights I'm totally wasting my time' threshold up at the same time.

-Will