How much to kill a WarShip

[Hellraiser]

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.

I honestly haven't played aero in over a decade & I've never used Squadron Rules........ just single fighters & dropships in both air & space over the years a few times.
I'm curious, were your single fighters all in the same hex every turn?
Is there any advantage to them being able to "surround" the single squadron unit & hit it from multiple angles?
Essentially initiative sinking?

This doesn't effect warships, just your Fighter v/s Squadron test.


As for Warships v/s Squadrons, I think its just the nature of the beast, no one wants to actually play 60 tokens on a map for a Regiment v/s Battleship battle.
Squadrons allow you to scale things down in a manner similar to Battle Force as I understand it.

I'm not familiar enough with Squadrons to say what a "fix" would be to keep them simple but not OP.

[DevianID]

In the simulation with individual fighters, when the clans had their own fighters the fighters we focused down first.  Then, with the escort gone, the ai moved into the rear arc and shot that up, with the easiest to hit mods.  The fighter stack sometimes hit other out of control fighters but only a couple of times.  With normal init, the warship just had to take it.  With advanced init, sometimes the warship would win and engage with better arcs.  But, normally all warships have to move first so this wasnt common.

As for the capital fighter survivability, I agree that if you are modeling 10 different 10 damage guns, then it makes sense that the capital fighter would distribute it.  But im talking about 160 damage bays from the warship.  Those always hit one spot, and each hit should be a fighter kill.  But with capital fighters its not, making fighters even better versus warships.  Thats just one of the things that made capital fighters, and capital squadrons especially, way deadlier to warships then regular rules.

[Dragon Cat]

Does bracketing fire from the WarShips capital guns not Level the playing field?

I thought the idea behind bracketing (other than to explain why SLDF warships didn't need large conventional arrays) was that the SLDF mastered the art of "filling space with fire" to kill fighters with their big guns

Surely a squadron bunched together would benefit by spreading damage but also make itself a target?

All this thread has been interesting so thanks

[AlphaMirage]

Bracketing doesn't overcome the small craft penalty to hit for capital guns unfortunately. It does however murderize assault dropships (over 500 tons which honestly should be the small craft cut off)

[monbvol]

Does bracketing fire from the WarShips capital guns not Level the playing field?

I thought the idea behind bracketing (other than to explain why SLDF warships didn't need large conventional arrays) was that the SLDF mastered the art of "filling space with fire" to kill fighters with their big guns

Surely a squadron bunched together would benefit by spreading damage but also make itself a target?

All this thread has been interesting so thanks

Sort of.  The thing to keep in mind about the SLFD is that they operated their ships in battlegroups.  Sure the houses were too but the scale of the SLN was such that they were able to make their battlegroups bigger and much more rounded.

As such their main ASF defense tended to actually be the best kind, ASFs of their own.  And more of them.  And supporting Dropships.  And Bracket fire if it was really needed as a last layer.

Bracketing doesn't overcome the small craft penalty to hit for capital guns unfortunately. It does however murderize assault dropships (over 500 tons which honestly should be the small craft cut off)

You don't need bracket fire at all against targets over 500 tons as they don't get the +5 and Bracket fire goes to -4 for a net +1 but fair enough most designs don't have enough guns to get that.

Honestly I think both AA mode and Bracket could use a rethink.

[Jellico]

Bracket fire exists to explain/find a use for the Clusters of small capital weapons the TRO2750 ships got when the later BattleSpace system favoured NAC30 batteries and the TRO3057 ships whole heartedly followed. It is not an AA system and there are only a few niche cases where it is.
In BattleTech tech terms it turns a batter into something like a Variable Pulse Laser, you sacrifice damage for accuracy. When fighting at range or against ECM systems it becomes really valuable. You dial in the required accuracy and get useful to-hit numbers.
However against small craft, the +5 means that you are usually looking at 25 hexes anyway and Naval Laser AA mode is a better option because you get more damage for the same accuracy.

[BATTLEMASTER]

Lately when I've been playing aerospace battles in MegaMek, I've been treating my forces like this:

Aerospace fighter squadrons = Infantry platoons, just real fast ones
Dropships = Combat vehicles
Warships = BattleMechs
Jumpships and Space Stations = Structures

Like a bunch of infantry platoons in ground combat pitted against 'mechs, a bunch of aerospace fighter squadrons can be very dangerous for warships.  Dropships can be pretty nasty too with their big weapon groupings, even worse if they have capital missiles.

And of course there's always the nuclear option.  Nukes are very effective at killing warships.  While it's realistic to use nuclear weapons in space combat, I think it's better as a story element rather as a gaming element unless the group has a lot of fun with one-shot kills.