How much to kill a WarShip

[Weirdo]

Yup, the 3145 TROs are actually a gold mine for modern small craft and DropShips. Clan players in particular are now in a position where they have to justify why they *didn't* bring multiple NL-45s to any given space game, they're that good.

[DevianID]

If my players want a space battle for a planetary invasion pre-landing battle, I use the battleforce/alpha strike unit stats/rules/cost.  Squadrons of dropships, squadrons of fighters, and 1 capital ship max.  The sample list funny enough includes a Lola.

Lola 3, Union C, Carrier, Carrier, 10 Kirghiz, 10 Vandal c, 10 Sula, 10 bashkir C all with 3 skill, versus
3 Leopard CV, 1 Titan, 3 Union, 2 Overlord, 1 Avenger '48, 18 Slayer 15A, 18 Samuari 25, 18 Sparrowhawk 5hK, regular skill.

This works out to be 2k v 2k in the alpha strike stats, but about 100k of IS forces versus 200k of clan forces in classic.  I tried to pick ships that are pretty common for the distribution, and using squadrons of dropships and fighters via the free battleforce rules makes it easier to play.  Otherwise, I use megamek with princess controlling both sides for classic stats (I still use the alpha strike costs for force construction cause its so much easier) and just read through the results to get a scope of what happened in the naval battle.  In classic the clan forces are much more expensive then in alpha strike.  Partly because of pilot skill (not just gunnery) requiring a cost multiplier, partly because of how expensive long/extreme range is.

Sometimes the clans bid a naval star to fight without all the support dropships and fighters, but I always find that pretty obtuse of them.  They suffer some pretty hilarious warship v warship losses that way.  I always include at least 3 dropships, even if they are just cargo dropships, in any navy action.  So the idea of using a single Lola without its integrated support versus just 2 dropships without support feels odd.  In the rock paper scissors of warship dropship fighter, warships with their capital guns are pretty great at killing dropships, but the fighters launched from the dropships are pretty great at killing warships.  So who is transporting the fighters is really important, as in deep space (or the outer ring in abstract naval combat) fighters cant attack as the velocity is too great, but dropships and warships can maneuver out there for as long as they want until someone commits closer to the planet/jump point.

In the megamek fight, as the fighters swarmed around, round 3 the Lola just fired some capital missiles and missed.  Round 4, the Lola connected with a NL barrage killing a union outright, while the cap missiles hit 3 smaller targets buzzing around.  Round 5 the NL hit the Avenger for some armor damage.  Round 6 the Lola whiffed but was now engaging fighters (Inneffectively) in all arcs.  The pulse weapons of the Carrier dropships were swatting Sparrowhawks pretty well.  Turn 7, the Lola had 7 capital weapons bays fire on an Overlord, hitting with 4 and killing it.  Turn 8 the Lola connected on a Leopard, killing it with NL fire and 2 fighters with various capital missile attacks.  Round 9 another Leopard falls in a similar manner.  Round 10-11 some scattered damage is done, but round 12 the last Leopard goes down.  After that the Lola is pretty quite until turn 16, when the Lola kills the Titan.  Princess surrendered at that point with just 1 overlord left, 5 sparrow hawk, 7 samurai, 6 slayer.  The clans have lost 2 Kirghitz 2 Sulla 5 Vandal 1 Bashkir.  The 3 dropships and warship didnt really take any damage cause in classic the pulse and skill bonus just thinned the fighter screen well.

If I cut the clan support, so its just a Lola and its 10 fighters (ill do 10 cheap Bashkir C), versus the same IS force, so 54 fighters and a dropship navy--about even BV now.  Still on the board in megamek on turn 28 is the Lola and 1 Bashkir, while just 1 Overlord is left on turn 28.  The IS still has 2 sparrowhawk, 6 samuari, 10 slayers.  The lola has 18 aft but 6 aft left side yet 38 nose armor.  So the fighters may start hitting SI via ALS if they didnt surrender, but with no transports left if the overlord goes down it'll be a cold night for those stranded pilots.

If you inflate the fighters with lots of rockets and bombs they will do more but cost more BV so I dont know.  So with only 6 ALS armor left the few remaining fighters would probably cripple or kill the Lola, but at 75% force loss already it looks like a 100% loss over all... Lola's in classic are just good at murdering dropships.  Still 54 fighters and a good sized dropship force didnt beat the lola in classic in 3050 without losing all their dropships and most of the fighters first.

For fun, if it has to be 2 dropships versus 1 lola with no support, the lola beats 2 tiamats thanks to longer range guns and more damage then their armor can take, but 2 castrums beat the lola thanks to so many AR10 missile crits from thresholds and missile crit rolls.  Something lighter, like the Arondight, died in 1 salvo in my megamek test games.  A single large AC bay just crushes it.  With 1 Castrum and 1 Arondight, the Arondight died on turn 3, while the Catrum died on round 17.  The single castrum did some crippling damage, so a lucky crit could swing it, but the much better arc coverage on the Lola meant that multiple turns the single Castrum wasnt in arc to fight back very well.  Something 2 Castrums fixed.  So after running a bunch of simulations, if you arnt using alpha strike rules only a pair of Castrums dont get blasted apart by the Naval weapons of a Lola, or something similar.  Large naval weapons are just designed to swat dropships quickly, and only the very largest and heavily armored castrum in a pair could trade blows and kill the Lola or cripple it with crits to combat inneffectiveness.  Anything smaller then the Castrum (the Tiamat or the Arondight) died to raw capital damage too fast, so only a lucky missile crit would save them.

For fighters, the fighters got threw the armor after 30+ turns versus an unsupported Lola with just its fighter escort, but the Lola still crushed all the dropships before going down.  So out in deep space its a suicide trip, but above a planet where the Lola isnt allowed to escape a large enough fighter force can lose all their carrier dropships... but the Lola can disengage if it really wanted to.

Hope all the ramblings and megamek simulations helped.  A big reason why I only use the alpha strike rules now for space combat is just how hard it would be to play a 30+ fighter game versus even just a warship without its integrated fighter escort... so many rolls!  Thank goodness for megamek AI doing everything for both sides.  But yeah, Warships beat dropships unless you cheat (nuke missiles or other antiship capital missile spam with lucky crits) OR you roll out multiple Castrums (which also has said missiles, but in a quantity that the regular damage done is also thresholding some).  The Castrum is awesome.

EDIT: For fun, in megamek, once something silly like 36 Eisensturms run out of gauss ammo, thanks to capital SI taking half damage rounding down, the large lasers and medium lasers no longer damage the massive structure.  In megamek this causes a stalemate.  The fighters have crit'd most of the weapons and run the capital missiles out of ammo, but the Lola is still fighting with 27 SI remaining.  In return, the Lola needs 12 to hit the fighters, but has much more time.  With bracket fire and antifighter lasers and ECM and all manner of silly advanced rules, along with allowing fighters to squadron up to cause giant single damage attacks with dozens of lasers combining, the Lola will kill more enemy fighters but is vulnerable to weak attacks--such rules arnt in megamek, so I have to make due with the standard rules.  Without advanced giant squadrons letting standard weapons group up to deal SI damage, you have to save your gauss rifles and AC20s until you peel the armor off, so you have a weapon that can hurt the warship... thats kinda cool.  Means your ac/20 transgressors and such have a real place as anti warship platforms, as you need the big boom for once you peel the armor away.

[Daryk]

Thanks for the reference! 

[Alan Grant]

In theory could other small craft more typical, more common, fill the same role, even in a "C" grade manner?

I'm talking about the more typical K-1 and K-1c or the Mark VII landing craft and other small craft found in TRO: 3057r in particular.

I'm trying to understand where the boundary line is between an "escorting shuttle" that has some value in the role and those where you are just 100% wasting a small craft. As in, there is zero value to deploying it in the escorting shuttle of a warship role, keep it in the warship hangar.

[Hellraiser]

If I cut the clan support, so its just a Lola and its 10 fighters (ill do 10 cheap Bashkir C), versus the same IS force, so 54 fighters and a dropship navy--about even BV now.  Still on the board in megamek on turn 28 is the Lola and 1 Bashkir, while just 1 Overlord is left on turn 28.  The IS still has 2 sparrowhawk, 6 samuari, 10 slayers.  The lola has 18 aft but 6 aft left side yet 38 nose armor.  So the fighters may start hitting SI via ALS if they didnt surrender, but with no transports left if the overlord goes down it'll be a cold night for those stranded pilots.

...

For fun, in megamek, once something silly like 36 Eisensturms run out of gauss ammo, thanks to capital SI taking half damage rounding down, the large lasers and medium lasers no longer damage the massive structure.  In megamek this causes a stalemate.  The fighters have crit'd most of the weapons and run the capital missiles out of ammo, but the Lola is still fighting with 27 SI remaining.  In return, the Lola needs 12 to hit the fighters, but has much more time.  With bracket fire and antifighter lasers and ECM and all manner of silly advanced rules, along with allowing fighters to squadron up to cause giant single damage attacks with dozens of lasers combining, the Lola will kill more enemy fighters but is vulnerable to weak attacks--such rules arnt in megamek, so I have to make due with the standard rules.  Without advanced giant squadrons letting standard weapons group up to deal SI damage, you have to save your gauss rifles and AC20s until you peel the armor off, so you have a weapon that can hurt the warship... thats kinda cool.  Means your ac/20 transgressors and such have a real place as anti warship platforms, as you need the big boom for once you peel the armor away.

1.  Wow, I can't believe a full 54 fighters can't kill a Lola.  Impressive.

2.  How can fighters with multiple LL/ML no longer damage the SI?   I'm clearly not understanding that. 

[Weirdo]

In theory could other small craft more typical, more common, fill the same role, even in a "C" grade manner?

I'm talking about the more typical K-1 and K-1c or the Mark VII landing craft and other small craft found in TRO: 3057r in particular.

I'm trying to understand where the boundary line is between an "escorting shuttle" that has some value in the role and those where you are just 100% wasting a small craft. As in, there is zero value to deploying it in the escorting shuttle of a warship role, keep it in the warship hangar.

If it has any guns at all, it can at least *try* to shoot down missiles if the bearings-only rules are being used. If either of those is not true, don't bother unless it can drop a 2-pt Capital hit, which is the minimum needed to try for crits on a fighter squadron. Anything less can try to scrub armor, but you won't do anything fast enough to keep stuff off your charges.

[Jellico]

What am I missing here?

A Lola III has about 3000 points (STD) of SI and armor. Most of that armor won't need to be removed for the kill.

A Stingray (generic mid range fighter) has 180 points of armor. 50 will have 9000 points of armor.

With accuracy taken into account a Lola does about 20 points of AA damage a turn. A Stingray will do about 3 (166).

It may take a hundred turns but 15 Stingrays should be able to get the kill. The destroyer should be looking at Evasion to extend its life while its escorts kill the enemies. Which is why the first rule of space battles is always kill the ASF first.

[Hellraiser]

What am I missing here?

I don't know, I'm not sure what Devian is saying about Eisensturms not being able to damage the SI after the Gauss run out.

[DevianID]

So, a medium laser does 5 damage.  A large laser does 8.  Versus capital armor you divide by 10, rounding .5 up (per latest rules).  Versus SI, you round down.

So an LBX cannon versus the SI of a conventional fighter.  1 damage, halved versus SI, round down to 0.  Versus Warships though, 10 damage from a PPC, divided by 10 for capital is 1, divided in half against the structure rounding down per SI, is 0 damage.

Thus, you need to not be using individual weapons, but groups of weapons that can 'cheat' the SI rounding problem.  When using individual weapons (like megamek does) you cant hurt capital SI unless you can do 15+ damage.

Edit: So, in effect, in strat ops the Eisenstrums would be able to kill the Lola cause multiple stacks of damage would combine and round up.  But in megamek with everything resolved individually, PPCs do no capital SI damage.  Flaw with megamek for space battles... there is heaps and heaps of special rules in Strat Ops like ECM and bracket fire and capital scale fighters to exploit, but not for megamek.

Edit2.  Normally, you resolve 1 fighter at a time and stack the damage into locations, then round (cause megamek is off a bit).  I wondered, what was the chance something like an eisensturm or other unit with 4 lasers like it can deal capital SI damage if you fire all the weapons, see where they hit, and then do the damage divisors.  You need to hit with 3 mixed lasers, or 2 larges, to the same location, to round to 1 SI damage.  So if the Eisensturm has only a 4 to hit via base total warfare rules without advanced stuff, using 3 out of 4 combination math for the various different hit location properties, you have a 44.73% of 3 or 4 lasers hitting and hitting the same location.  You also have a very small chance you hit with exactly 2 large lasers and both hit the same location, which brings the 44% chance up to about 50%.  So roughly a 50% chance for an Eisensturm hitting the aft on 4s to deal SI damage with stacking multiple lasers to the same location.  Obviously megamek doesnt do this, but in my simulation versus lots and lots of mixed fighters after about 28 rounds the AFT armor was reduced to 18, so it takes longer then 28 rounds for the 18 slayers, sparrowhawks, and samurai to start touching SI.  The 54 Eisensturms did this faster, only needing like 24 turns to get to SI.  Someone else posted 15 stingrays need 100 turns, if they dont bother with rounding properly for SI, so likely longer when rolling properly per total warfare.

[Jellico]

You should be able to load you ASF into squadrons in Megamek.

[DevianID]

I clicked the option, I even clicked the option for large squadrons, but couldnt figure out how to make a capital armor/attack fighter squadron

[Jellico]

Go to game options.
Make sure StratOps Capital Fighters is ticked.
Add some fighters.
Right click on a fighter.
Select Fighter Squadrons/Form Fighter Squadron
Name the Squadron
Repeat but select Join X Squadron

Start building your amarda. Let the hilarity begin.

[Alan Grant]

And let us know the outcome.

I've been watching with growing interest.

[Hellraiser]

Thus, you need to not be using individual weapons, but groups of weapons that can 'cheat' the SI rounding problem.  When using individual weapons (like megamek does) you cant hurt capital SI unless you can do 15+ damage.

Edit: So, in effect, in strat ops the Eisenstrums would be able to kill the Lola cause multiple stacks of damage would combine and round up.  But in megamek with everything resolved individually, PPCs do no capital SI damage.  Flaw with megamek for space battles... there is heaps and heaps of special rules in Strat Ops like ECM and bracket fire and capital scale fighters to exploit, but not for megamek.

Edit2.  Normally, you resolve 1 fighter at a time and stack the damage into locations, then round (cause megamek is off a bit).  I wondered, what was the chance something like an eisensturm or other unit with 4 lasers like it can deal capital SI damage if you fire all the weapons, see where they hit, and then do the damage divisors.  You need to hit with 3 mixed lasers, or 2 larges, to the same location, to round to 1 SI damage.  So if the Eisensturm has only a 4 to hit via base total warfare rules without advanced stuff, using 3 out of 4 combination math for the various different hit location properties, you have a 44.73% of 3 or 4 lasers hitting and hitting the same location.  You also have a very small chance you hit with exactly 2 large lasers and both hit the same location, which brings the 44% chance up to about 50%.  So roughly a 50% chance for an Eisensturm hitting the aft on 4s to deal SI damage with stacking multiple lasers to the same location.  Obviously megamek doesnt do this, but in my simulation versus lots and lots of mixed fighters after about 28 rounds the AFT armor was reduced to 18, so it takes longer then 28 rounds for the 18 slayers, sparrowhawks, and samurai to start touching SI.  The 54 Eisensturms did this faster, only needing like 24 turns to get to SI.  Someone else posted 15 stingrays need 100 turns, if they dont bother with rounding properly for SI, so likely longer when rolling properly per total warfare.

Okay, I see, I didn't realize that MMA doesn't use "bays" function where everything is grouped into a single value per weapon type.
Like AC-30 for twin guass or Laser-26 or PPC-20 or LRM-18 for twin LRM15s etc etc/

In that case, yeah, Capital SI gets a lot harder w/o grouped weapons.

[Daryk]

Laser-26?

[Maingunnery]

Laser-26?

The short range damage of a laser bay with 2 ML & 2 LL.

[Daryk]

Ah, that adds up... thanks! 

[DevianID]

Yes, looked through the rules a lot.  In total warfare, you roll to hit, roll all locations, then do rounding.  Each weapon fires individually, cause its total warfare.  Dropships get to fire in grouped up bays in total warfare, but I dont see anything about letting fighters get uber laser bays.  Using the actual rules as written, it seems that the potential 26 scattered laser damage of an Eisensturm has about a 50% chance, when hitting on 4s in the aft, to hit with 15+ damage in one location to deal 1 point of SI damage.

In strat ops, there is a rule for individual weapons.  Mostly for breaking up large weapon bays, but the rule says if you use individual weapons you may find you have a real hard time damaging warship armor... they give you some rounding options, but you need to deal 15 damage base no matter what when using individual weapons to hurt capital SI.  Since they warn about weapons not being able to damage capital stuff, I guess its intended.  This is how megamek resolves damage for fighters--it dont see a way to change this.

Then in strat ops you can make fighters into capital grade squadrons... this is obviously super duper powerful.  You get all kinds of rounding advantages... reading my rule book for example, if 3 of the 6 fighters have a targeting computer, you 'round up' and all 6 get the targeting computer.  If thats true, well, its a really huge boost to fighters being able to attack in bays like this.  In a test with 6 samurai versus the same 6 in a squadron, the 6 in a squadron killed all 6 out of the squadron.  The squadron meant that the damage was often 11 or 8 medium lasers hitting, and hitting 1 fighter.  When the 6 individual fighters shot back, the fighter that gets hit is randomized.  So despite the squadrons needing a cluster roll, they focused 1 fighter down at a time.  At the end of the battle, all 6 fighters in the squadron were alive (but damaged) as damage got randomized so much.  All 6 individual fighters were dead.

Megamek testing:  In the test with capital fighters, the first thing I noticed is how when a 16 capital damage barrage strikes a slayer, since it has 23 capital armor, it doesnt die.  A normal game without the optional capital fighters part, 160 capital laser damage kills the slayer by going through the 84 nose armor, and then dealing 38 SI damage.  Instead, the slayer loses 16 armor out of 23 and had a threshold crit damage a weapon.  Thats... well thats a major buff.  Supermajor even.  Capital missiles striking a sparrowhawk normally deal 40 damage.  This causes SI damage to any location hit--1 to the nose and 8 if you hit the wing.  But with capital fighters, a sparrowhawk has 12 armor, and can take 2 capital missiles anywhere, and dies on the 3rd capital missile attack.  Thats a pretty big change, from being crippled in one shot to tanking 2 with no issue. 

In the megamek battle, the fighters, 12 sparrowhawk 5hk 12 samurai 12 slayer 15k, lost 10 fighters by turn 15, and stripped about half the armor off the Lola.  On round 16, a slayer squadron hit with 24 medium lasers in the cluster of 24, and started doing SI damage.  This caused an avionics crit, and the wing laser bay did a bay door crit.  It appears all the wing weapons go in 1 group, and both left and right wings get the full front arc.  So those wing bays are nasty.  3 squadrons by turn 16 have gone out of control by this point, as the one minor downside seems to be that the capital fighter squads roll control rolls together, but all of them regained control within 1 or 2 turns.  Conversely any crit that doesn force a control roll seems to do not much of anything, as it goes on the individual fighter.  So fighter 5's wing weapon damaged, or fighter 2's FCS damaged, dont seem to slow the squadron much at all in megamek.  Round 21 the 36 fighters have completely killed the Lola, a massive increase in killing speed.  54 of the same fighters before without capital fighters were not close to a kill yet by round 21, nor were 54 non-capital Eisensturms who got into SI on turn 30ish.  38kBV in capital fighters did more then 100k in standard individual fighters.  Losses were 4 slayers, 5 Samurai, and all the sparrowhawks were lost as 1 squad skid off the table

Edit: I kinda expected capital fighter squads to be better, but holy crap they are much much stronger.  Unless megamek built the capital fighters wrong, but even if the armor is slightly off just grouping both the left and right wing into a SINGLE bay, then giving it the full front arc, is a massive upgrade... forget about all the silly accuracy cheats you can do, forget about the 3x survivability, just making wing weapons grouped bays with full arc had a huge impact in the damage output.

Edit2: So did i miss something?  Squadrons whooped identical non squadroned fighters with ZERO losses, and outperformed individual fighters against the lola by about 300%.  I glanced through the capital fighters section and I dont think megemek is wrong with the rules per say, but the cost was the same for 6 individuals or 6 in a squadron.  Unless I missed some rules or something, capital fighters and fighter squadrons are clearly and demonstrably broken... combined into a capital squadron its almost unholy how much more effective the same fighter is when comparing the stock rules and the advanced option.  Not sure if I can ever play with the rules as written squadron rules in such a case.  Im hoping im missing some major downside, but the cluster roll and grouped control rolls didnt make a lick of difference in the capital squadron trouncing all opponents.

[Weirdo]

Squadrons are good. There's a reason they're used.

[DevianID]

Squadrons are good. There's a reason they're used

They felt too good.  Like, far too good.  300% increase in raw power from the numerous megamek simulations I ran, for the same fighter at the same cost.  Easily the most powerful special/advanced rule in battletech that I have seen so far, from a 'how much stronger does this rule make me' point of view.

[Jellico]

You should have seen Battlespace squadrons.


Before you get too excited remember that everything is abstracted. That 160 points of damage is spread over multiple  weapons which will hit multiple facings of the fighter. I forget the % of armor used in squadron calculations but it is something like 66%.


What I was thinking of is Fatal Thresholds. The threshold is 0.25 total armor. If a hit exceeds the Fatal Threshold roll a 2D6 (to represent the difference between different armor locations) with +1 for every 2 points over the threshold. On a 10+ The fighter dies.

To use the Slayer example with 23 armor. The Fatal Threshold is 6. Take 16 damage. (16-6)/2=5. So the Slayer has to roll 2D6+5 and hope they get under 10. About 30something %.

Really you don't kill too many fighters. What you should be aiming for is 2 point hits. That means you take a critical hit and start losing stuff. Like you noted it is spread over a squadron, but it builds up. Avionics, FCS, and Sensors do bad things. The later two reduce your cluster roll for every fighter hit.

I am going to strongly suggest that you take a look at a Vanir. It is built to game the system. That thing can take down a squadron of Eisensturms and survive a full wing.


But remember those totals I put up earlier? 20 Stingrays have more armor and structure than a Lola III and considerably more usable firepower. Of course any serious number of fighters will go through a Lola in a few turns.

[Alan Grant]

How much counter-ASF can a Lola III reasonably expect to get out of its missiles?

Let's say full blown attack by a large ASF force, it fires all 30 Barracudas and 10 White Sharks. How many of those would probably hit? Just talking an average.

And more broadly, if you have any thoughts on how impactful, or not impactful, that is on the outcome.

[Jellico]

That is like asking what you can get out of 4 AC20s and 40 rounds. 800 points of damage. Two assault Mechs. Doesn't sound so impressive that way.

Ideally you want your large craft maintaining a steady course firing into a melee about 20 hexes away. That  is a brutal scenario. You should be getting about 7s.

If the ASF are attacking the large craft you have a problem. Not even a Leviathan has the guns to chase the ASF away so you need to concentrate on buying time for your friends to save you. Permanent Evasion is the name of the game. Maybe even open the throttles and run. You will be looking at 9s or so.You are not going to hit much.

[Alan Grant]

I've never tried to play this out or dice roll this out.

So, the Barracuda's fluff that it virtually guarantees a hit, I take it, it does not by the game rules.

Sorry for the novice question.

[AlphaMirage]

I've never tried to play this out or dice roll this out.

So, the Barracuda's fluff that it virtually guarantees a hit, I take it, it does not by the game rules.

Sorry for the novice question.

The Barracuda does get a -2 against Aerospace but fighters should be evasive if they are out of their weapons range to a warship so that's a +4 I think. I'm more annoyed that the Piranna lost its -1 bonus as they are much lighter missiles so I could shoot two. White Sharks are really anti-dropship weapons in my opinion (but again an assault dropship should be evasive till short to avoid getting hit).

[Alan Grant]

Got it, thanks.   

[Weirdo]

White Sharks are really anti-dropship weapons in my opinion (but again an assault dropship should be evasive till short to avoid getting hit).

I would say that White Sharks are more for anti-WarShip work. Unless you're throwing Krakens few missile bays have the raw punch to really hurt any but the lightest WarShips, so crits are the name of the game here. Against DropShips, raw damage will pile up much faster unless you're facing a die-cast brick PWS like a Tiamat or Castrum that really needs to be treated like another WarShip. The difference between a 3-point White Shark and a 4-point Killer Whale may not seem like much, but as an example, that means a triple-tube bay goes from 90 to 120 standard damage, a huge threat to the vast majority of DropShips out there. When you're putting hits like that out there, the crits almost don't matter, because odds are the target will be dead in only a few hits anyway.

'Cudas are definitely for fighter work. They've got the accuracy needed, and as mentioned, they do the 2 points needed to hurt squadrons.

You don't kill squadrons, you crit them into uselessness, giving your own fighters the edge needed to score actual kills.

[DevianID]

So in the lot of testing did, critting the fighters was a joke.  Yeah they took some I'll effects from crits, but nothing major that made the squadron useless for long.  And the benefits of fighters in squadrons outweighed the drawbacks by a large margin.  For example?  A sparrowhawk now has a crit threshold of 2 capital damage/15+ regular... Instead of 4 or 3 standard damage.  That feels like a joke.  And sparrwohawks squads were shrugging 4 capital what shark missiles with ease, when instead a white shark hits SI, for a lot, and generates a third crit roll.  You only die on a 2d6 roll of 10 with a sparrowhawk eating a 4 damage capital missile, and it's after all guns have fired.  I didnt understand what the rolls were for until you explaimed that, but I remember most of the time when the roll failed the fighter ALSO took multiple hits and went to 0 armor.  So it often didn't matter.

Like you mention you can really abuse the system if you make things with very specific combos... Right away putting 3 tcomps in a squad gives the other 3 a bonus to hit for nothing.  But in general even the instant death threshold roll is super overpowered--instead of a 160 damage NL strike always 100% killing a slayer, it only kills the slayer 30 % of the time... For free.  (Edit looks like I misunderstood you.  It's a 30% to survive with capital fighters and a 0% chance to survive in normal rules.  Then when you break apart the squadron to land out of combat, the destroyed fighter instantly comes back to life with 3 engine hits and half its SI.  So the fighters crazy survivability to instant death damage comes after the battle.)
  Like if someone takes capital fighters I want to take capital^2 warships.  I'll add all the warships armor up and just use that, with 20 capital threshold instead if the Lolas 5.  And make my left and right side arcs full 180, like fighter wing arcs.

I suppose I'm just miffed cause i went fRom not knowing how to use these rules in megamek to learning about these capital fighters in full detail.  I never ran the Sims before, so years past when I read the rules I didn't understand just how silly they were.  But comparing the results in megamek just upset me how unbalanced the rules are.

[Daryk]

It certainly rivals the more recent infantry "nerf" of free Heavy Burst for primary weapons over 0.60 damage... 

[Jellico]

Here is some stuff that I prepared earlier.

Now the main thing to look at on the Fatal Threshold table is the bracketed number in the top row (x) and the armor on the left column.

So, a Slayer has a 0% chance of dying up to a 5 point hit. At 6 a 17% chance. At 8 a 28% chance. At 10 a 42% chance and so on. At 16 there is an 83% chance of death.

To put that into context. A 10 is 10 PPCs. The armor layout on a Slayer is 84 on the Nose, 50 on each wing, and 48 aft. Across the forward arc a Slayer can be hit by 18 PPCs. Now someone better at math than me can say the chance of 10 PPCs penetrating. It is probably higher than 42%. But by the same token the chance of dying to 6 PPCs is probably lower than 17%. Ie 6 shots in the wing in a single turn. Such is the fun of trying to simulate the granularity of Battletech at a higher level.
And they do die. But it is hard to see because you can't single out a single fighter for repeated attention. The cluster effect is probably the biggest single buff in a squadron. But it is still better than BattleSpace's monster squadrons.