Capital Missiles on Fighters, Capital Armor Scaling, and Alternate Solutions
A Worked Example
Ive been thinking that, despite my early endorsement of the idea, capital ship immunity to standard weapons, coupled with fighter carriage of capital missiles, has lead to a deleterious series of knock on effects.
1.) Fighters carrying capital missiles generate truly monstrous missile waves.
2.) In response to those waves, ships end up mounting insane PDS belts, and we start adjudicating PDS as so effective that it bears no resemblance to the base game.
3.) PDS belts then extend onto off-board fighters and small craft, which require their OWN special rule, lowering the effect of off-board PDS.
What if we just expand on the 'Warship Scale != Fighter Scale' issue, enough to dent fighter firepower, while at the same time removing the 50 ton missile on the 50 ton fighter?
Lets consider these assumptions:
1.) Fighter Damage is 30 damage (about right for a 50 ton fighter)
2.) Fighter lifespan is 60 damage before its combat ineffective/going home (again, in my play experience, about right for a 50 ton fighter).
3.) Capital Damage to Standard Damage is 1:100 - but there is no immunity.
4.) An attacking fighter 'flock', moving second, can always choose its target facing and relative aspect. The Warship cannot, but benefits from ECM bubbles baked into the warship rules. Call it 50% accuracy each way.
5.) The attacking fighters will always draw fire from their 'target hexside' and the two adjacent ones. This has an advantage of making 4-corners designs worse (recieving 1/4 of their AAA firepower, vs an all facings design which would get 3/8)
6.) Missiles, firing off-bore, may defend all aspects.
7.) NLs kill fighters in one hit, and hit about 1/3 of the time (AAA mode). The same is true of Killer Whale and White Shark Missiles.
8.) Barracudas kill fighters in one hit, and hit about 1/2 the time (accuracy bonus)
9.) All other capital weapons kill fighters in one hit, and hit about 1/4 the time.
Hypothetical Walkurie deckload: 700 fighters, ~ 210 capital damage possible, average of 105. 60 Standard Scale Lifespan each. Firepower is lost as fighters die.
Target: Hypothetical PDS-Improved Buri: 200 LRM 20 per corner, 180 PPC per corner, 40 Barracuda per corner. (Other corners remain NPPC heavy) ~680 Capital Scale Lifespan. Firepower is preserved until ship loss.
Salvo 1: 105 Capital Damage to Buri. 20 Fighters lost to LRMs, 15 to PPCs, 80 to barracudas. 585 Fighters remain.
Salvo 2: 88 Capital Damage to Buri. Same 115 fighters lost - 470 remain
Salvo 3: 70 Capital Damage to Buri. 355 Fighters remain.
Salvo 5: 53 Capital Damage to Buri, 240 Fighers remain. (Armor fails during this salvo - criticals now possible)
Salvo 6: 36 Capital Damage to Buri, 125 Fighters remain
Salvo 7: 19 Capital Damage to Buri, 10 Fighters remain
Fighters destroyed, Buri loses all armor on one facing, takes significant SI damage and likley resulting critical effects.
Complications:
1.) The 40 HNPPCs would kill an additional 10 fighters per turn. This is likely trivial.
2.) In fleet engagement, warships would be lost as fighters focus on first one ship, and then another. This would degrade defending firepower. However, the focused warship could perform evasive manuvers, reducing its damage sustained, while all other warships are free to make a turkey shoot of the fighters focusing on a difficult target.
3.) Rules allow an ECHO turn, for 2 thrust, AFTER other movement (I believe after fighter movement). This could allow the warship to turn a better aspect, or preserve armor, in the face of 'all fighters stacked in one hex at range 1'.
4.) Incoming damage would actually hit not just one armor side, but several, depending on engaged side. However, this also helps capture the impact of criticals by artificially foreshortening ship lifespan.
Impacts:
1.) Lacking massive fighter-borne capital missile salvos, 'Tabletop' PDS efficacy (20 MGs knock down 1 Barracuda per turn, 30 for a White Shark, 40 for a Killer Whale) is sufficient, and sane numbers of PDS are sufficient, because as noted, capital missiles are of limited value in an anti-ship role after about 5-7 salvos loaded.
2.) Barracuda Tubes become the weapon of choice for an anti-fighter role, against massive strikes. AAA standard scale weaponry and dual purpose NLs will support this effort, but the real 'Anti-Fighter' choice will be Barracudas, due to accuracy, capital scale damage creating instant kills, off-bearing fire, and long range fire (degrading inbound strike before arrival). Ease of support of nearby warships is a bonus. I hear an Aegis cruiser in the distance.
3.) In the worked example, ~9.5B of VERY PURE Carrier+Fighters loses 3.5B of fighters while badly injuring, but not killing, an 11B BB which carries an extensive, but not prohibitive, AAA array. This seems 'about right'. A Heavy 'AAA' Escort, notionally a Tyr Refit, carrying 640 Barracuda Missile Tubes, would cost less than either the carrier or the BB, and would quickly destroy a Walkurie strike. It would also be crippled or killed doing so, and would exhaust ~60% of its missile supplies in doing so. This seems reasonable.
If the same Tyr-CG tried to engage 'normal' warships, its huge long range throw weight (1280 potential damage, more than twice what Buri is capable of) would be potentially powerful - but soon exhausted (5 rounds per launcher), with all the problems of having a known limited endurance - enemies would use EW, EM, and long range to draw fire and empty magazines, or the ship would have to accept unanswered volleys.
Rather than a stand alone system, missiles would serve a role as anti-fighter (of course), and as additional short-duration punch in support of some other strategy, due to low reloads, but would have problems if relied on as a primary weapon system.
This looks like tabletop.
4.) Reigned in PDS efficacy (as it is no longer necessary to inflate MG Anti-Missile prowess, as there will be no more Vega Strikes) allows for meaningful shipboard carriage of missile launchers - shipboard missile launchers are special case rather than general case anti-ship weapons (due to ammunition restrictions, etc), but this would allow them at least some use.
5.) Fighters would likely work better as part of a fleet, rather than the all-or-nothing approach of Walkurie. Some fleets might carry more or less, and the best defense against a fighter would likely remain another fighter - but fighters in conjunction with shipboard arms would seem to work better in this model than fighters attacking alone in massive missile waves. The author considers this a net good.
Retconning, or 'But they definitely carried missiles 20 years ago...'
A concern can be raised that such reversion to the original rules breaks continuity with what has been observed in universe.
I see a few easy options to deal with this:
I.) Technological Advancement: Perhaps newer missiles are coming into service. These missiles coordinate via light-speed links with their fellows, and with their mothership, to engage in evasive action, counter-electronic warfare, etc. Such missiles much more effectively penetrate PDS arrays (thus requiring 20MGs to kill a Barracuda, as in tabletop, rather than the current much much lower total), but active links to the launching ship are required, and the control computers, links, EW, etc. are a part of the launcher tonnage. Fighter carried missiles lack this support, and such missiles are slaughtered in such job lots by improving PDS that they are no longer worth firing and wasting the missile, or tasking the fighter to carry them.
II.) Doctrine/Tactics Changes: Perhaps AAA Fire and Fighter on Fighter tactical doctrine has evolved to the point where a fighter, burdened with a 30-50 ton external missile, is simply too cumbersome to survive in the tactical environment.
Such changes in technology and doctrine might also explain why standard scale weapons are suddenly able to threaten capital armor, which they could not, before... either computer linkages focusing fire on single points, or training and tactics to do the same, might represent a successful effort to improve fighter performance against warships, as the fighter-borne missile is rendered obsolete.
Advances in both technology, AND doctrine, seem a reasonable thing to happen in the decades after Vega, as the missile users go 'How do we make missiles kill more of their things', and the missile targets go 'how do we make missiles kill less of our things'