[CombatSquirrel]

What I am visualizing is allowing fighters to move and fire as a unit, but simply calculate damage from each unit as it is determined to hit or miss. EA of the target would count in this damage calculation. It would not have to slow down the visual effects of combat at all. Perhaps it would increase processor time slightly, but that would be the only noticeable effect.

In my "cosmic slant", Capital Ships all have mounts that multiply damage of weapon components (along with increased supply costs, size required, etc.), but substantially decreased chance to hit offensively. This makes the weapons of Capital Ships fearsome, and effective against planets and other vehicles of their class (which, because of their size have defensive penalties that match the offensive penalties of their class mounts), but give smaller warships (picture the Millenium Falcon) a chance to survive by simply turning tail and running. This also makes it near impossible for standard weapons mounted on Capital Ships to effectively target swarming Fighter Craft (defensive bonus for fighter size + offensive penalty from Capital Ship weapons). PD weapons, and specific anti-fighter weapons can pick off few a turn, but the massive Capital Weapons, engine requirements (thanx QNP, or mQNP), and space consumming Capital armor leave little room for much of those.

Capital Ship's very high armor points and EA effects give small Groups of warships little chance to significantly damage them (at least without using weapons that make them ineffective against ships of their own class), and make them almost entirely impervious to Fighter Craft. These Capital Ships use Fighter Craft themselves to deal with other non-Capital warships. EA is limited to Capital Armor only, and tops out at 20 points. The largest single shot Fighter Weapon does 25 points, so at best a huge fighter mass might be able to substantially weaken a Capital Ship's armor, maybe even get in few small internal hits, but nothing more by themselves.

These Capital Ships are tremendously expensive to produce and maintain, and the loss of 3 or 4 of them should have a decisive effect on an empire, but they would be a force to be feared.

Now, I can mod everything to make this particular vision playable, except for the oddity of stacking Fighter damage. Even the fact that units do not gain benefit of shield regeneration, or OA regeneration, or repair components, or get blown away in Groups by potent PD or standard weapon fire isn't really in conflict with this worldview.

I guess its just become a pet peeve... maybe I should just start creating 200 kt Fighters with standard ship weapons. Those would be fun in a stack.

CombatSquirrel