Space Carriers and Fighter Operations, The best, worst and everything inbetween?
Jon Halter
United States
Mesa
Arizona
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Space Carriers, romantic futuristic versions of our wet navy carriers. Improbable? probably, fun? Oh yes.
Are you a Space Carrier Admiral that is tired of those Battlewagon Jockies getting all the glory?
Here are some of my choices for best Space Carrier game. Games must include the carrier and the fighters.
Let the Geekdom weigh in!
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Jon Halter
United States
Mesa
Arizona
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Here's a game that captures the wonderful Yamato (Star Blazers) universe. Fighters play a big role in the game as a lot of Star Blazers is basically WW2 in space. Even the Yamato carries several squadrons of craft.
Mechanics: Carriers launch fighters usually in flights of six craft, so some of the larger carriers in the game can pump out a lot of fighter counters (or miniatures) Some of the bigger carriers carry hundreds of planes. Most attack craft can get off one good attack on capital ships before returning and re-arming. CAP, Attack and Escort missions are all available. Great way to bring out your inner Carrier Commander.
PROS: Great setting, some of the coolest ship designs ever. Good level detail seperates types of fighters from one another...
CONS: When you start to have lots of carriers it's not uncommon to see a 1000+ fighters in a game! At six fighters per Counter it becomes unwieldly fast! (I then play with a squaron per fighter counter)
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Jon Halter
United States
Mesa
Arizona
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Giant ships duel in the Warhammer 40K universe. In this game there are a lot of carriers to choose from.
Mechanics: Most carriers can launch fighters or bombers forever as long as the number of Fighters/Bombers on the board doesn't exceed the number of Landing bays on the ships. While there are miniatures for fighters and bombers most attacks are handles abstractly. When a fighter unit encounters a fighter unit both are removed, no die roll, nothing, they cancel eachother out, in reality one squadron was victorious and returns for refueling and the other destroyed, so for game purposes both Units are removed...
PROS: Carriers can turn the tide of the battle but usually can't win by themselves. Great setting and universe to play in. Simple fighter/bomber mechanics makes attacks easy to figure out and fast to resolve
CONS: Perhaps not enough detail in the fighter department.
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Jon Halter
United States
Mesa
Arizona
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Here is a great Starship combat game set in the Star Trek universe. The Granddaddys of them all. Phone book sized rules give you ship to ship combat in detail like no other. However trying to add fighters to the mix was interesting.
Mechanic: Each fighter/shuttle was it's own unit. Some more advanced fighter/shuttles could carry 6+ drones of various kinds including multi-warhead drones! Fighter/Shuttles moved like slow startships and really didn't act like Carrier aircraft of the 20th century, but more like slow missile platforms to be launched and retrieved quickly...
PROS: FIghters in the Star Trek Universe? Sign me up... Proven game system with more depth then could be imagined
CONS: Fighter/shuttles added to the complexity and length of the game. Fighter/ Shuttles never felt like wet navy carriers. I never finished a battle that included a Federation CVA, just too long...
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Erik Nicely
United States
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(first I'll say this is a very cool list)
The fighters in the Babylon 5 TV show were seen a lot and looked really good.
MECHANICS: A good number of ships carry fighters but aren't dedicated carriers, maybe carrying 1 or 2 flights on average. Every ship can deploy 1 flight at the beginning of the game, 1 during a turn (more than that by taking a special action). Dedicated carriers carry more flights. Carriers have a trait that allows more launches per turn and fleet carriers can deploy a lot more at the beginning of the game and allow a chance for the remnants of destroyed flights to regroup.
PROS: Good simple dogfight mechanics based on 1 opposing roll, fighters are varied in terms of their capabilities and can specialise in one role or another.
CONS: I would like to see a little more detail as far as damage to flights goes, each flight is either full strength or destroyed.
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Robert Wesley
Nepal
Aberdeen
Washington
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 I don't rightly care too much for the extremely detailed kinds of "games" that take forever to resolve, anymore. Now THIS is about RIGHT where I'm concerned. It does have your "Carriers" and 'Flights' or squadrons of "Fighters" that can be launched from those as well.
The "CV" is the 2nd from the LEFT on the bottom there.
Now, there was another kind derived from this 'one' here: Federation & Empire and that went into greater depths for it all with later expansions, but I never did get into this either.
PROS: quickest method for concluding everything!
CONS: not greatly detailed, yet is this really such?
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6.
Board Game: Starfire II
[Average Rating:6.50 Overall Rank:3190]
[Average Rating:6.50 Unranked]
Jon Halter
United States
Mesa
Arizona
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I loved Starfire back in the day. Starfire II added fighters and carriers to a very simple yet suprisingly addictive little space combat game.
Mechanics: If I remember right, each counter was a squadron of up to 12 fighters and they could carry different kinds of weapons; gun pack, laser packs, missile packs, etc. Advanced fighters could carry more then one pack. Fighters moved faster then most anything on the map by at least one hex per turn. (Max capital ships speed was 5-6 hexes per turn. fighters could be configured to kill capital ships or other fighters... Carriers could carry anywhere from 6 fighter to 60+ with the design rules.
PROS: Simple system epsecially it it's original Task Force Games form. Good detail for fighters yet you could handle quite a big force.
CONS: Somewhat obsure background can make introducing other gamers a little hard.
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Don Weed
United States
Broomfield
Colorado
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Carriers, fighters and everything in between. A simple system but the minis are some of the best.
PROS: Great miniatures and it's Star Wars.
CONS: System may be too simple for some tastes. Plus the fact that the play is two dimensional (not unlike a lot of this list).
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Glenn Ironhat
United States
Syracuse
Utah
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Throneworld has carriers called Motherships and fighters among other ships.
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William Hostman
United States
Eagle River
Alaska
Gaming in Greater Anchorage area, Alaska since 1978. Looking for Indy-willing RPG players in Eagle River (or willing to drive to Eagle River). Geekmail me if interested.
Yes, this really is what I looked like when I uploaded that avatar. Not that it's quite current anymore.
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Core box had several carriers in it.
Fighters die like popcorn, but do present a real threat to ships...
And most of the cruisers are also CVL's...
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Tyrel Lohr
United States
Lusk
Wyoming
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Starmada X handles fighters at the flight level, with an average of 6 fighters per flight. Fighters move and fire before ships, and they fire as a single unit against a target, rolling one to-hit die per fighter in the flight. Fighters are typically killed by a single point of damage, so they aren't very survivable; however, they also halve enemy defenses (Shields), so they are able to damage units that would otherwise be nearly invulernable to ship fire.
Several options rules exist to help customize fighters and make fighter a more interesting option. One optional rule is to allow dogfighting fighters to "pin" their opponents, so that friendly interceptor fighters could get the jump on enemy bombers and hold them in position and prevent them from moving against the player's own ships.
PROS: The Starmada X fighter rules are easy to learn and fighters don't slow down the game much at all, and there are very few special rules that apply to the use of fighters.
CONS: Fighters are largely homogenous, and within the scope of the rules it is very hard to differentiate between fighters of different types. This is a problem if you are trying to convert over fighter-heavy sci-fi universes into Starmada X where there are a large number of fighters from across multiple eras. Also, fighters are a bit too efficient for their cost.
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A S
United States
Unspecified
California
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All ships in Leviathan carry fighters, from the littlest destroyers with their 12 or 24 fighters up through battleships and fighter carriers packing up to 360 or so (and one converted battleship/supercarrier with upwards of 1,000 fighters).
Fighters are grouped into squadrons (6), flights (24), and groups (72), per players' choice. The rules, unfortunately, were poorly tested and tend to assume that the largest possible grouping will be used routinely, while driving the choice toward squadrons -- squadrons do damage in a very precise manner whereas flights and groups do damage more generally. The upshot here is that one group will tend to shave armor off a capital ship and leave it perfectly functional, but the same 72 fighters organized into 12 squadrons can drive a crippling strike into a capital ship of any size in a single turn.
Given that, a full fleet-on-fleet game is a little unwieldy, with a couple hundred squadrons to a side.
Still, games are a lot of fun, with lumbering capital ships trying to avoid becoming isolated and swarmed by fighters. In many games, we resorted to detonating nuclear salvos immediately on top of beleaguered capital ships to "scrape off" hordes of attacking fighters before they could go for the kill, hoping that the capital ships' shields would bear the brunt of the blast.
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James Hamilton
United Kingdom
Stockport
Cheshire
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This takes the Traveler High Guard space combat system and turns it into a board game. The battle rider concept is that large carrier ships can carry smaller ones through jump space and then the smaller ships get stuck in. Fighters in the traditional sense are included but a 'normal' battle rider can have a traveler dispacement of 10,000 tons plus and a crew of 100 or more.
The game manages to keep all the essence of the high guard system and streamline it to allow for huge fleets.
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John "Omega" Williams
United States
Michigan
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The Star Frontiers space combat game is still one of my favorite tactical space battle game systems. Carriers and fighters played a role in the game and fighters could also be garrisoned on orbital space stations as well. Assault Carriers, both UPF and Sathar, carried up to 10 fighters.
The only down point was that the fighters were essentially one shot bombers. You swept in, launched your missile then hotfooted it back to your carrier or station to reload and then back at it.
Otherwise the system playes very well and stands on its own seperate from the RPG. I also had the chance many a year ago to play in a Star Blazers variant that use the old midel kits of the ships as miniatures. They do mesh well. (Though KH ships are essentially flying towers as gravity is produced by thrust. No artificial gravity gimmics! Which is another plus point for me.)
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Sounds like 2nd edition really upped the complexity level
Royal Leamington Spa
Warwickshire