I've always thought fighters should deploy in squadron formation and be allowed an AWACs control ship.
As I understand those rules, I asume the carrier/tender to fulfill that role.
I've always thought fighters should deploy in squadron formation and be allowed an AWACs control ship.
As I understand those rules, I asume the carrier/tender to fulfill that role.
But a carrier/tender can't survive in the line. Thus Fighter Squadrons take the "one half" penalty. I like the idea of a specialty ship controlling the fighters from the line.
It would be a potent force multiplier, but, also a prime target.
I don't see the need for this controller to be in the first line. After all, AWACS are usually quite behind...
I tend to agree. What I wonder is though, given the whole "screening" of the reserve, is this an abstract of sensor interference?
Also, if the fighters get the benefit of the AWACs, why not a potential detriment as well? This is another way smaller ships can fit into a large ship battle. This could even be a PC opportunity.
I like it, but allow me to suggest a variation to better establish a command chain:
Fleet Tactics allow the commander to control in the frontline a number of ships equal to 2(Fleet Tactics skill level +1). So, a commander with Fleet Tactics 2 amy control up to 23 (so 8) ships.
For the overall commander in a fleet, those ships can be subtituted by subcommanders (so, the FT 2 officer told about above could control 8 subcommanders instead of ships, each of them controlling some ships, if he was the overall commander).
This number of ships controlled is doubled if the ships controled are subcrafts of his flagship*, due to better command and control (so a comodore with FT 1 in a tender can control up to 8 BRs as long as they are his own tender's giving a bonus for multi BR Tenders).
*Alternativelly all ships are from the same squadron
For fighters, each squadron counts as one ship if controlled by its own squadron leader or a flight officer in their own carrier (how many fighters compose a squadron is to be decided), and they count as subcommanders even for a non overall commander.
So, an aldmiral with FT 2 can control up to 8 tenders, each one with a comodore with FT 1 controlling 6 BRs plus 2 flight control officers, each with FT 1 and controlling 4 fighter squadrons, for a total of 48 BRs and 64 fighter squadrons.
I don't like the Fleet Tactics Skill +1 as the relevant power of 2, McP. It makes it way too easy to acquire the skill to command a large number of ships in the line, and you are almost never going to have a situation where you have a fleet under the command of a leader whose skill level is giving away a "to hit" DM. It also adds additional complexity, and I want to keep things simple. 2 to the power of Fleet Tactics Skill is already rather higher up the complexity scale than anything else we do with skill levels.
The number of Commodores who actually COULD effectively control a squadron of more than a handful of ships in action has always, historically, been pretty limited. I like keeping it that way.
And Fleet Tactocs-0 should not, in my view, be sufficient to be able to control a 2-ship engagement without detriment.
It's probably just a matter of taste; but for me if the "standard" skill level is 2, then this is the level to be assumed as the norm as the first rank where the officer will have more than one ship under command. So he will be competent to command up to 4 ships in line of battle, but will start giving away penalties if you put him in charge of 5-8, and massive penalties if you put him in charge of 9+. That "feels right" to me. To suggest that it is the norm for a Commodore to be competent to handle an 8-ship engagement feels a little optimistic to me.
On the other hand, I DO like the idea of the "chain of command" allowing a larger engagement to be handled with sub-commanders; subject only to this, that I would count the sub-commander as TWO of the head commander's ships, not one; and that the highest level at which the sub-commander can function is 1 below that of his head commander (restrictions of subordination I'm afraid, guys), so that a sub-commander with Fleet-Tactics-4 who was subordinate to a commander with Fleet Tactics-3 would only ever function, in that role, at Fleet Tactics-2.
That would mean that a head-commander with Fleet Tactics-3 could command 8 ships directly; or have up to 4 sub-commanders operating at Fleet Tactics 1 or 2 (maximum), so a chain of command would enable him to double up his effective command ability to 16 ships; or if he had more than 16, he would be able to overload one of his sub-commanders beyond their command ability, but not the others, so it was only the ships of that sub-command which suffered the "to hit" detriment.
I don't think I like this ... although perhaps we're grappling towards the same end result (albeit at far different levels as to the total numbers of ships achievable under effective control) by my suggestion that a sub-command should count as TWO ships, not one.
The reason it is 'forgotten' is that there is no way to account for it in tournament play. ...
I guess the main difference among us is that you're thinking on squadron actoins while I'm thinking on fleet actions...
As I understand you, fleet performance would be quite downgraded if a fighter squadron commander (I asume FT 1-2 at most) is only able to effectively control 2-4 fighters, making them quite small units...
I feel under your numbers you'd need most your unit commanders to have Ft at 3 or more, and fleet tactics is quite a rare skill (only attainable in HG through the Command and Staff colleges or the Staff officer skills table, if you're O4+)
If even your fighter flight (3-4 fighters) needs it, you must assing an at least to this position. I have no experience in any Navy or Air Force, but I think an O2 would be more likely to hold this post...
Or is it just the usual story of out-of-their-depth commanders, who were promoted to the position because somebody had to be, struggling to do the best they can with what skills they've got?
As I say ... I'm not particularly interested in torturing a perfectly good revision in order to accommodate fighters, which canon acknowledges, but even TCS struggles to justify.
No matter.
If you want your fighters, make them independent commands ... put them outside the aegis of the "Fleet Tactics" command and control structure if you like ... perceived problem goes away.
As for "Fleet Actions vs Squadron Actions" ... I'm thinking about both, actually.
And again, if the rules make giagantic fleet actions something that is beyond hte ability of either commander effectively to control ... so what? They both end up giving away DMs. Is that really such an issue?
Would such enormour actions be fought anyway? I personally doubt it ... but if they were, it might well be that nobody existed with the skills TRULY needed to command. Did anybody exist with the skills TRULY needed ot command the Western Front in WWI? Or at Jutland? Is there really anybody with the skills truly needed to be CEO of a MegaCorp?
Or is it just the usual story of out-of-their-depth commanders, who were promoted to the position because somebody had to be, struggling to do the best they can with what skills they've got?
Incidentally, I agree with the majority of your analysis of the probable consequences and effects of the main revision; although I think in your eagerness to prove your own ideas superior to mine you have over-egged the pudding with point (3) in your statement of the effects of my version.
"Fleet tactics is a skill used by individuals in command of groups of two or more space or star ships."
I would interpret a space ship to be a craft of 100 dT or over that lacks a jump drive. A craft of under 100 dT is a boat or small craft. Ergo, I would interpret fleet tactics as the skill of coordinating groups of craft which are individually over 100 dT, the more so because fleet tactics is applied to the initiative DM but, under the current errata, small craft do not count toward the initiative DM.
I'm having trouble with this idea on a couple of fronts. First, that square-of-skill mechanic. The basic idea behind divvying everything up into squadrons and fleets and such - or squads and platoons, when it comes down to it - is the concept of span of control: how much one person can manage without losing track of something. Fleet tactics 1 as presented implies that there's a point at which a person with training in coordinating ships in action cannot effectively coordinate more than one other ship. That just sounds way too low to me. I can see limiting him to 3 or 4 ships - or 3 or 4 subordinate officers with fleet tactics - but two strikes me as baseline: something someone with no fleet tactics skill at all should be able to do.
Second, I'm having trouble with the penalty. You're a ship floating in space with nothing but tens or hundreds of thousands of miles of vacuum between you and the other guy. How is your admiral's incompetence making it harder for your sensor guys to pick out targets or for your gunners to train weapons?
A more "realistic" consequence, if you'll pardon the application of the word to a science fiction game, is to assign some probability that a ship won't be where it's supposed to be - that a ship who is supposed to be screened in reserve will inadvertently find itself exposed to fire because of some mistake in coordinating movement, or that a ship who is supposed to be on the line will inadvertently find itself out of position or out of optimal firing range - at long range when the fleet is supposed to be at short, or at short when the fleet is supposed to be at long, or even in reserve.
Mistakes of fleet coordination result in ships where they're not supposed to be or ships fighting opponents they weren't intended to face - think Taffy 3's destroyers and escort carriers desperately fighting off enemy battlewagons 'cause someone forgot to mention to the task force commander that the flank screening force was off chasing decoys.
And yet I guess that fighters must be quite coordinated for their attack to have any effect, and that would be (IMHO) from Fleet Tactics skill too...
I'm not sure I understand your point here. As Amber Chancer presents it, Fleet Tactics 1 would allow to coordinate up to 21, so 2 ships, while under my variant suggestion it will allow to coordinate 21+1, so 4 ships (8 if unit integrity applies). So, in both cases, a trained character can control more than just one ship as you say...
I understand it as ships interfering with each other actions (either jamming friendly sensors, being in a friendly line of fire, not effectively distributing fire, forcing enemy ships to move where a friendly one does not want, etc...)