fighter and bombers in BFG

[Demoulius]

hey guys,

 

ive been looking in the bfg book a while and the bombers and fighter section kinda has my mind boggled. they are so powerfull and yet the only possible protection against it that i can see is massing fighters against them. carriers that are pomping out fighters however arent doing that much damage (as they could otherwise anyway)

 

there is a part in the book about fighters that id like so clarification of as well. on page 29 "fighter in base contact with friendly ships may move with them to screen against enemy ordenance. if they do so they cannot move in the own player's ordenance phase. multiple fighters doing so are treated as a wave." the way i read that is that you can leave fighter in base contact with your ships, and ordenance markers that hit your ships are removed by the fighters first. having multiple fighter do so is ineffective because the entire wave would be removed after a single ordenance marker (if i got this right)

 

did i understand that correctly? otherwise i have no clue why fighters are even in the game, except for first and second turn ordenance interception :)

[Vaaish]

I think you have a few things confused about fighters. They really only exist for three things. 1. Intercept torpedoes (contact with one fighter marker removes the entire salvo regardless of strength) 2. intercept bombers and assault boats (each fighter will only remove one enemy bomber or assault boat marker, NOT the entire wave.) 3. escort bombers to provide guaranteed attacks against high turret value ships.

 

If you wish, you can move a friendly fighter into base contact with any friendly ship. So long as you move the ship and fighter marker together the fighter counts as being on CAP. A fighter on CAP will act like it does when it's moving about so, yes, it will intercept torpedo salvos hitting the base as well as reduce the size of bomber waves.

 

This really isn't as powerful as you might think since using your own fighters or a small torpedo spread can remove the CAP fighter and if the ship with CAP comes under fire, any BM placed will force the CAP to roll a d6 to see if it is destroyed (this is just like any other ordnance moving through a BM.). CAP is mostly useful for dealing with shotgun torpedo attacks that you wouldn't otherwise be able to intercept before hitting your ships.

 

Basically one fighter will remove one AB or bomber marker so if one fighter hits a wave of 4 bombers, there will be three bombers left. Against torpedoes, one fighter will remove the entire salvo regardless of if it is s1 or s21.

[Demoulius]

vaaish, we actually knew that fighter only remove torpedo markers as a whole. sorry for beeing unclear :)

 

why im asking this is simply because i play space marines, and my buddies bombers have been kicking me in the kidney quite heavily. and at the same time the thunderhawks have only been somewhat usefull against his escorts, whilst they do next to nothing against his capital ships. i wanted to be sure i read the part right so i can use my thunderhawks as protection against his bombers :)

 

strike cruisers are already vunerable enough as it is without beeing obliderated in a single turn. basicly beeing forced to brace or die...with 2 thunderhawks and 2 turrets theyre suddenly a whole lot less frightening :)

[Vaaish]

that is correct, P.21 of armada says that thunderhawks combine the abilities of assault boats AND fighters. That lets you use them to clear torpedoes and target bombers. I'm a little confused though as to why bombers are being so difficult to deal with. It's been my experience that bombers don't typically get a whole lot of attacks even against a 2 turret ship and make even fewer hits. Unless he has an emperor or is placing his carriers in squadrons and then launching waves of bombers from b2b, you really shouldn't be facing too many waves of greater than 4 bombers. That should mean that after turrets only three bomber are rolling for attacks at d6-2. With 6+ armor they have to make at least 6 attacks to do one point of damage. If you have ships in b2b to boost turrets you should be able to knock down at least two bombers which would make it much more difficult to pull off a meaningful attack.

[Demoulius]

well mostly we take a few turns to close up on eachother, and when i do i basicly have to weather d6-2 attacks x the bombers that survive....my luck will have it that i generally dont take out any bombers at all and he rolls insanely well on his attacks getting a ton of hits. my escorts are generally also taken down first and since im slow to close generally means that half of fleet is taken out of action by the time i get close to even start doing something back -_-

 

fact that we dident do boarding well in the past also dident help me much but still its a pain to close the gap between us. one of the game all i had left was 2 strike cruisers and he just flew away from me harassing me with the damn things. i could only get 2 shots at him and since he had 2 shields.... ;) fact that i was out of ordenance dident help either. he was faster then i was so all i could was, was pullig back. and i only figured that out after both had been crippled as well :verymad: go space marines!

 

now at least i can somewhat protect myself against the little blighters. my escorts are still squishy yes but if he targets those instead of my cruisers im not complaining :P and the fact that my thunderhawks have their 4+ save means that they might remove an entire wing of 4 bombers if im somewhat lucky with rolls, which makes me even happier no more i-win buttons for him ;)

[Vaaish]

Out of ordnance? As in couldn't reload or rolled a double? if it's the second, then you no longer run out of ordnance on the roll of a double.

 

You should try AAF with the marine fleet. You have no reason not to close and every reason to get there quickly to pick on the carriers.

[Demoulius]

out of ordenance as in i rolled a double yes. (double 6 in fact, so no last wave either... *sighes*)

 

yea i realised that after my last 2 games, where they basicly tore my fleet apart and the carrier (in both games) remained unschated even after i killed off the rest of his fleet. i keep stopping to take shots at his escorts and other cruisers <_< which is why i want to know how to defend against them.

 

with the escorts in b2b and me AAF-ing i should be able to take the damned thing out asap right? :) even crippling it should do the trick. 2 bombers, eh not so scary when you have 2 bombers :P

 

fact that i can assemble my 4th (and 5th) strike cruiser now my fleet should also fair a little better now, no? :)

[mughi3]

Yeah man make certain you get the updated FAQ. you may only have the number of ordinance markers on the table that you have laucnh capability for(torpedos are exempt from this so spam away), however you never run out for reloading ordidnance now(no doubles)

 

Also i do not see how your Thawks are having problems with his escorts they do not count the shields and the marine +1 automaticaly makes all H&R attacks against excorts a crit of 2 minimum, instantly destroying them. if they are BTB in a squad the damage bleads over.

[Vaaish]

Damage from AB or Bombers never bleeds past the ship whose base they touch since the entire wave has to expend all their attacks even if the target gets destroyed. Since you remove them after attacking and they only attack the ship whose base they are in contact with and all craft in the wave have to attack, the attacks can't bleed over to other ships.

[mughi3]

Damage from AB or Bombers never bleeds past the ship whose base they touch since the entire wave has to expend all their attacks even if the target gets destroyed. Since you remove them after attacking and they only attack the ship whose base they are in contact with and all craft in the wave have to attack, the attacks can't bleed over to other ships.

Ah i thought it was just like shooting as squadrons in BTB for some reason.

 

Then again i mostly play chaos and use fighters and bombers

:fakenopic:

[pwrserge]

Just launch as a wave and split into individual markers at the last second. (It gives his turrets more punch, but let's you nuke multiple escorts.) I generally spam boarding torpedoes and keep my Thunderhawks on CAP on the way in. Then in the enemies turn, I send them out to soften up the ships I am about to board. If any escorts survive past turn 3 against your SM fleet you are doing something wrong. Don't forget that against most IN fleets your BB and Strike Cruisers are much harder to kill than their IN equivalents.

[Demoulius]

well ive used thunderhawks to pick apart his escorts, but a combination of things meant that his cruiser pick me apart before i get to do the same to them (mostly misinterpreting rules and such)

 

lots of stuff that we found out afterwards that would really have made the game go in a different direction (like a boarding action that we severly screwed up :P)

 

on the switchside we also dident do bombers correctly but knowing that they bypass shields just makes them a more fearfull foe in my eyes....sometimes he would get 10-12 attacks (he rolls a ton of 6's on his attacks...) and get like 3-4 hits, if not more...

 

forcing you to brace or get your ships crippled/destroyed in a single turn. the 6+ armour hasent been so much of a benefit so far because the huge amount of attacks always find a way through...

 

that said prioritizing his carriers as targets should fix a great deal of my troubles ;) well that and having 2 groups of 2 SCs...

 

thanks for the feedback though :) im glad to hear that CAP should work fairly well :)