Useful fighters

[vegascat]

Has anyone found a use for fighters in attacking armored ships?
It seems any medium ship with good armor and a nuc damper is basically immune to fighters.
The main use I have found for them is scouting, interdicting landing craft, Ground attack platforms (fast tanks), and scaring merchants into doing what you want.

 

[BetterThanLife]

That is about it. The only fighter that is actually survivable in HG starship combat is the FH from Supplment 9. High computer, high Agility, high armor. All the light fighters just get splatted all across the sky. When a factor 3 weapon gets 3 automatic crits on a hit you just die when someone shoots at you. The only thing I have found they are good for is as tanks. In that role, especially if you add a point or two of armor and enough power for agility 6 and a pulse laser they are extremely dangerous. Throw a VFR gauss gun coax with your pulse laser and poof.Though they never bothered to tell us how big a VFR Gauss gun actually is. I would hope it would be smaller than a starship weapon so it would fit in a turret.

I can't find any other uses for light fighters. Why you would dedicate a Capital Ship to carry them is beyond me. The FH is good for pushing Merchies around, dealing with Type-T, Type-C and Type-P ships and the Zhodani Corvette, Frigate and "Strike Cruiser" from the various adventures. You can even give a Kinunir a hard time. (Hint none of these ships have armor.

The 400T SDB from Sup 7 and the 200T SDB from Sup 9 (One of the hardest ships to kill under the High Guard rules.) are actually surivable under most combat circumstances and make more sense as fighters carried by a 300,000 carrier.

 

[mike wightman]

Has anyone found a use for fighters in attacking armored ships?

Which rules system?

It seems any medium ship with good armor and a nuc damper is basically immune to fighters.

By medium do you mean destroyer, light cruiser size, HG scale, or 400-800dt B2 scale?
Not that it makes much difference to the answer . As Bhoins says the light fighter is useless in a HG fight.
They are more useful in the TNE and T20 universes because:
they extend your sensor range; they can act as decoys; they can carry NBP laser missiles

.

 

[shield]

The other task not mentioned is convoy protection. A light fighter is about as offensive capable as a merchant (comp 2 + 1 turret) but much harder to hit. A flight of light fighters can cover all sides of the convoy, scout ahead, overwhelm the odd pirate corsair, and with their high agility they can easily run down a fleeing pirate.

It is comparatively easy to take a cargo ship and load up its cargo bay with a mob of 20tn light figthers. quick and easy convoy escort.

If you have sufficient energy mount a TL14+ single Fusion Gun (F5) which will critical hit 400tn ships are less - and the type P corsair is only 400tns - nice!!

The final use is black war strikes.

 

[cmdrx]

I've found fighters to be only useful for patrol/inteception type work against lightly or unarmoured targets. They simply do not have enough firepower fo do any real damage singly. Now when grouped together into squadrons of 10 or more, you basicaly have an extra weapons battery to use at high USP (10 fighters with 3 lasers each equals a USP9 battery). Fighter squads like this work well as an extra point defense system.

Note that I'm talking about the light fighters here. Sure, sending a squadron of light fighters against a capital ship will merely annoy the ship(oh look, mosquitoes *SMACK*), but those heavy fighters can be a pain. Anyone who has TA#7 has seen the Grigrot Fighter which is a nasty ship. This sucker has got AR14 meaning nothing short of a spinal weapon(!), fusion gun, meson, or very lucky shot(critical) will hurt this thing. And it still manages to pull 6g. Heavy armour like this is needed because of the short range weapon (fusion gun). A squadron of 20 equals the firepower of a 50dt fusion gun bay (but not the range).

It depends on the craft and what mission it was designed for. The right tool for the right job as they say.

Personaly I like fighters, mind you I do try to design them to be more effective than standard TU fighters. Too much Star Wars and BSG in my youth would be to blame.

 

[Ranger]

Challenge 27 has a fighter design that was probably intended to give the small fighter some punch. It's called the Rampart V, and it has the ablility to form four or five fighter attack groups and volley fire its missiles with an attack factor of 7. That seems like a pretty big punch for four 15 dTon fighters. Basically giving you a small warship for only 60 dTons of displacement.

Just a thought,

Rob

 

[Whipsnade]

vegascat wrote:

"Has anyone found a use for fighters in attacking armored ships? It seems any medium ship with good armor and a nuc damper is basically immune to fighters."


Mr. Cat,

You've put your finger on it. Above a certain TL, fighters are generally useless against warships. Remember, that is not a bug in the game. Instead it is a design attribute that illustrates the idea of 57th Century 'otherness' for Traveller GMs and PCs. The idea works by neatly turning on its head the 'lessons' learned from the naval progress of the last century.

"The main use I have found for them is scouting, interdicting landing craft, Ground attack platforms (fast tanks), and scaring merchants into doing what you want."

As Mr. Bhoins puts it, that's about it. There was a HG2 variant published in the old, dead tree JTAS that allowed fighters to 'link' themselves into fire groups for higher battery factors; although those factors are still <9 and thus very weak in HG2 combat. The idea is akin to Starfire's 'data link'.

Despite their handicaps, fighters are still nasty enough to threaten any of the normal vessels that PCs may operate. In that matter, they figure more prominently in the GMs' hands than they do in the operational plans of the Imperial Navy.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[jwdh71]

One of the things that makes fighters in the Traveller universe weak compared to our modern idea of them is that they use the same weapon restrictions of regular ships, i.e. they can only have a weapons fit like any other small craft. To more properly simulate fighters as we see them today (more weapons platform than just any other flying craft) I use the following house rule.

Fighters can mount any weaponry that can fit into their hull, and the carried weaponry may be organized into any battery configuration (chosen on construction). The base price of the hull of such a craft is doubled, and cost of maintenance for any craft built like this is multiplied by a factor of ten (and maintenance time is multiplied by four).

While this doesn't do much for light fighters (Although it gives designers interesting choices of firepower vs. speed, speed vs. protection, and protection vs. firepower), it makes medium and heavy fighters fearsome, and much more like our modern perceptions of fighter craft. Against any but the largest naval vessels, they are shipkillers. It also means that when designing carriers for these fighters, you have to take into account their prodigious maintenance requirements, and have additional crew on your carrier to take care of them (no more forcing your engineering crew to work on both your ship and your small craft).

Not to everyone's taste to be sure, but if you have fighter friendly people in your games, they tend to like the rule.

As always, YMMV
John Hamill
jwdh71@yahoo.com

 

[mike wightman]

Nice idea, just one question if I may.
Do you allow SDBs to use the same house rule?
I personally still like (and use IMTU) the TNE/T4 3t/6t turret system, install as many as you have the volume and energy for.

 

[aramis]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Nice idea, just one question if I may.
Do you allow SDBs to use the same house rule?
I personally still like (and use IMTU) the TNE/T4 3t/6t turret system, install as many as you have the volume and energy for.

T20 has an (had during playtest at least) option of not counting Bays and spinals for figuring hardpoints... but not requiring them for the bays and spinals. Extend that to any fixed forward weapons, and you get a decent fighter design capacity.

And, as for fighters vs armored ships, I use the vehicle combat rules in MT rather than the HG derived ship combat rules. (The tables are there....) So fighters can often get lowpen resutls, and nibble away at the ships Hits values (average damage being in the range of 5-20 points per landed shot). A couple of good hits can cripple a cruiser (x8, x1/10= x4/5 = 400-500 Hits per high-success-shot landing), assuming a good hit at low pen, and hitting drives rather than hull...

 

[flykiller]

Has anyone found a use for fighters in attacking armored ships?
It seems any medium ship with good armor and a nuc damper is basically immune to fighters.
The main use I have found for them is scouting, interdicting landing craft, Ground attack platforms (fast tanks), and scaring merchants into doing what you want.

depending on sensor rules and armor rules "fighters" could fill a midget submarine roll - vulnerable themselves but able to sneak up to the enemy, quietly deliver unexpected strikes, and sneak away.

 

[jwdh71]

Sigg Oddra wrote:

Nice idea, just one question if I may.
Do you allow SDBs to use the same house rule?
I personally still like (and use IMTU) the TNE/T4 3t/6t turret system, install as many as you have the volume and energy for.

I allow it for boats (non-starships) up to 1000 dtons. Anything larger than that has to use the regular weaponry limits. The reason I use this limit is that, as far as maintenance goes, you rapidly run into the point of diminishing returns. You get SDB's or monitors that are so expensive to run, even though they can kill twice or more their weight in regular ships, that you can't afford to keep them operational. Fighters and small SDB's are the best way to use the rule. I have, however played in a campaign which allowed the same rule to apply to ALL non-starships, and we ran into a monitor that had multiple spinal mounts, bristled with bay weapons of all sorts, and was armored and shielded out the wazoo. Needless to say we stood to and prepared to be boarded.

As always, YMMV
John Hamill
jwdh71@yahoo.com

 

[themink]

I play small ship traveller. Fighters are incredibly deadly.

A medium ship is 400 dt and capital ships are in the low kilo-ton range.

Fighters are at least as effective as small ships, (ie 100/200 ton), they are much cheaper.

They also have no civilian role so it is easy for the imperium to jump on people who have them.

Paul

 

[MrMorden]

Arm a light fighter with a few nuclear missiles...it's deadly enough that way.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Since you are dealing with, at best, a factor 3 weapon it still isn't going to do much to an Armored ship, like the Atlantic class Cruiser. Now if you allow your fighters to "link weapons" that may make them more useful agains capital ships.

If you run 100 fighters from a Fleet Carrier against a CruRon. If you ignore the spinal mounts and the escorts, 4 Heavy Cruisers will probably still have more than 100 factor 9 missile bays. All sorts of secondary lasers and sandcasters to intercept incoming missiles or even fighters. With more than 100 missile bays the fighters don't stand much of a chance, especially if the missile bays are sending in Laser heads or Nukes. Even 100 of the FH from Supplement 9 will get really beat up in two rounds of space combat. (Turn the spinal mounts onto the carrier and any of the fighters that survive might as well be dead.) Carriers in Traveller are useful to deal with merchants, IE interdicting a planet, patroling Merchant shipping, keeping small corsairs away but in a Naval engagement are virtually useless and not cost effective.

The big difference between Traveller and everything the Navy does since 1941 is that a single aircraft can sink 2 to 4 ships in one pass. (An F/A-18 carries 2 Harpoons and an A-6 carries 4.) A single Harpoon missile will blow a Destroyer in half and render a Cruiser virtually combat ineffective. A flight of 24 F/A-18s or 12 A-6s can really beat up a Task Force and never get in range to get shot at. In Traveller a fighter has to get in range to get shot at in order to shoot, the weapons are not capable of one hit kills against Capital Ships.

Calling a Carrier a Capital ship is more of a Misnomer. The light carrier is good enough for most fighter roles mentioned above, the Fleet Carrier appears to be a ship looking for a role.

Originally posted by MrMorden:
Arm a light fighter with a few nuclear missiles...it's deadly enough that way.

 

[jfwking]

Just a question but what is the problem with fighters being fairly useless against heavy warships ?

For 1900 years of the last 2000 warships did the fighting and the little boats got out of the way. It is realy only the last 60 years that have changed this.

I see nothing wrong with fighters being all but useless in big fleet battles at higher tech, it takes fighters full circle back to recon and escort rather than the main ship killers that they are in the 21st century.

Leave fighters to scaring the player ships and civilian stuff, warships should only be afriad of other warships (or anything with a high factor meson).

Off to browse the other topics durring my once a month lurk

 

[mike wightman]

Just a question but what is the problem with fighters being fairly useless against heavy warships ?

No problem that I can see, but I think it upsets the SW crowd that a fighter cannot take out a Tigress with a lucky shot up its exhaust pipe

For 1900 years of the last 2000 warships did the fighting and the little boats got out of the way. It is realy only the last 60 years that have changed this.

I agree, but don't forget it is the aircraft/guided missile that has changed things, not a fantastic new type of ship. Maybe what fighter fans need is some sort of brand new space weapon system that allows a smallcraft to mission kill a capital ship with one shot.
IMHO people should stop thinking of Traveller carriers/fighters using the aircraft carrier paradigm. How can a light spacefighter hope to do anything to a ship 10000 times its size but with the same maneuvering capability/agility, heavier armour and defensive weapon batteries?
There is no such thing in our real world (AFAIK) as a submarine-minisub carrier. By this I mean a submarine which carries dozens of torpedo/cruise missile armed mini-subs that are sent out to do the fighting and then return.

I see nothing wrong with fighters being all but useless in big fleet battles at higher tech, it takes fighters full circle back to recon and escort rather than the main ship killers that they are in the 21st century.

Neither do I. The recon role is especially important if you use one of the versions of Traveller with detailed sensor rules.

Leave fighters to scaring the player ships and civilian stuff, warships should only be afriad of other warships (or anything with a high factor meson).

A couple of armed ship's boats are probably capable of scaring most small merchants, but once again I agree.

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:

I agree, but don't forget it is the aircraft/guided missile that has changed things, not a fantastic new type of ship. Maybe what fighter fans need is some sort of brand new space weapon system that allows a smallcraft to mission kill a capital ship with one shot.

Actually, Torpedo Boats changed things briefly. They forced the introduction of Torpedo Boat Destroyers, aka Destroyers. In other words, it became necessary to screen capital ships against attacks by small craft.

The other oddity was the introduction of the ironclad. For a while, at least, ironclads were often smaller than wooden ships of the line. Of course, this changed once you got big ironclad battleships like HMS Warrior and her French rivals.

Memo to self: read that playtest copy of pre-dreadnought miniatures rules you downloaded from Phil Barker's website.

Alan B

 

[mike wightman]

Actually, Torpedo Boats changed things briefly. They forced the introduction of Torpedo Boat Destroyers, aka Destroyers. In other words, it became necessary to screen capital ships against attacks by small craft.

This is close to the model that should be used for fighters in Traveller IMHO. It's the torpedo equivalent that's missing from Traveller, not the delivery system.
Where are the capital ship class tenders that act as motherships to squadrons of torpedo boats in the modern Navy ?
The destroyer proved so effective that the torpedo boat concept went away.
Modern coastguards sometimes employ fast cutters to intercept merchant ships and smugglers but I don't know of any purely military versions ( that's not to say there aren't any, I just don't know about them).

 

[robject]

You-all have brought up a point I keep forgetting: that Traveller space combat is more like submarine warfare than Top Gun dogfights.

Way back in CT, ships would use planetary bodies to mask their signal, or would 'run silent' without maneuver drives to sneak by enemies. This is very much like submarine warfare: ships that keep a high profile tend to attract fire, and ships aren't really capable of outrunning missiles.

And in both cases you're surrounded by an unbreathable medium, both with explosive pressures involved.

What are the chances a player character is going to get sucked out into space when there's a hull breach?