Kurt, looking over the last posts I see a trend towards not having assault capable fleets. Virtually everyone has a fleet that is optimized for deep space battles. This may make sense as most have been that but no one seems to have a fleet with an assault component. In the game Starslayer and I have going, at around this tech level that was a mix of CA, BC, and BB. Personally i find the BC a poor assault ship as it costs much more than a CA and is far less sturdy compared to BBs and so tend to use CA&BB. With your changed WP rules I have no idea how to go about determining what size ship makes most sense. But outside of the CU no one seems to be considering how they will get through a defended WP. How to defend one seems to be everyone's question.
Well observed. You aren't wrong. Here's the major race's attitudes on this issue:
D'Bringi Alliance: They hate the thought of the massive casualties involved in an assault, and in particular the Rehorish don't want to throw their well-trained crews into a meat grinder. Because of this they are focused on building up their defenses and their mobile fleet. With a large mobile fleet they can take advantage of any links to Mintek systems they discover, or the Mintek reveal. The Rehorish, who largely control strategic thought in the alliance, are focused on mobile warfare that allows them to use their fighters and elite crews to their maximum advantage. There are those that recognize the value of an assault capability, just as an option to have on hand if needed. The T'Pau, in particular, recognize that having this capability is vital and their battleship that they are building is indeed a heavy assault design.
Colonial Union: The New Dawnists are using the Union Assault Corps as a recruiting tool and a point of national pride, so its more of a political thing for them than anything else. Still, it is an assault corps, and they learned some valuable lessons from their recent failed attack. Primarily that their light cruisers are too small for their intended roles. Therefore, they are bringing some cruisers out of mothballs to be refitted as the next generation of assault ships. Now that SD's are in production, the UAC is going to make a play for the battleship hulls as well. At this point, though, their targets are limited. They have no interest in war with the D'Bringi Alliance, as they are too large and the general population has no interest in a long, bloody war. And really, the New Dawnists have no particular interest in ruling over aliens. That leaves Tomsk and the Confederated Free States. Attacking the Confederated Free States will lead directly to war with the D'Bringi, and now they've learned that attacking Tomsk will lead to war with the Bjering.
Bjering/Tomsk Alliance: This alliance is focused on peaceful expansion, and views its naval power as essentially defensive in nature. Neither the Bjering nor the Tomsk governments have any interest in ruling over alien races that don't want to be in their alliance. In particular, the Tomsk are completely defensive minded, probably to their detriment. Much like the French before WW II, the Tomsk have focused on defensive measures to the detriment of offensive capability, mostly because their capital planet and most important system has a direct link to their biggest threat.
Mintek: The Mintek do have an assault fleet, based on SD hulls. Their original SD force performed poorly, so they refit their remaining SD's into an assault variant with moderately heavy shields and armor, six fighters, and HET lasers. They haven't had the opportunity to use them, and for the last several years they've been pressed into duty as defense stations in the home system, reinforcing fixed defenses. The problem is that they know that the D'Bringi Alliance is larger than them, and therefore they can't afford attritional warfare against the larger empire. They had a nifty assault plan for attacking the D'Bringi prepared defenses in the Phyriseq system, and then advancing into the Chruqua warp nexus and fragmenting the Alliance, using their assault ships and newly developed anti-matter weapons and SBM pods, but their economy wouldn't support the forces needed and now they're diverted by contact with the Bedu.
Just a note on hull sizes for assault ships. The two races with existing assault units are using the hulls they had on hand, not what is best. The Colonial Union is using light cruisers because the old Soviet Union built a bunch for attacking the D'Bringi forces that were besieging the Solar System. The USSR built light cruisers because it was the largest ship they felt they could build relatively quickly. They were effective in the attack on the Tomsk system, but were revealed to be fragile, so the UAC will be moving to larger hulls if possible, The Mintek are using SD's, but that is because they had SD hulls available. Under the rules I am using the best size assault ship is dependent on the size of the warp point being assaulted. If it is a 100 capacity warp point, then a battleship hull is perfect, because you can fit five through per turn. If it is 100 hull spaces and you are using SD's, like the Mintek, then you are only going to be able to squeeze three through per turn. Because of the uncertainty, most races are going to use whatever hull they have available, but anything over 100 hull spaces is going to be less effective.
I have a request, as everyone seems enamoured with fighters and we skipped over this TL without significant combat, or at least combat that wasn't F0 vrs pGB, could you make some comments later on how you see the balance going with the 3rdR changes, I'd like to know if my view is personal or something other people are seeing. One point that I noticed from playing through the SAW scenarios for the start of ISW3 was that fighters are great against lighter ships, awesome against bases but against sufficient numbers of capital ships they suddenly deflate. Against the combination anti-fighter escorts and capital ships they take serious losses, and this with the SAW designs (no Ai, S0, Zi, etc). I'm very curious what your experience is, particularly with F0/F1.
Do you plan to limit the number of shot fL can take? The München group decided that it, in particular, needed reigning in. We settled on 3 anti-shipping shots and unlimited dogfighting.
At this point the Colonial Union is the only race without fighter forces, but because of the recent battle they are aware of the threat and are building escort forces capable of engaging fighters, and their next refit program will likely increase the point defense on all designs, to counter the perceived threat. They are close to developing their own fighters, and will likely go big as quickly as they can to remedy the perceived imbalance.
My experience with fighters up to now is that they are the next generation of swarmers. Swarmers can be very effective in the right circumstances, namely, when they out-mass their enemy by a significant margin. When they don't they tend to take significant losses without inflicting significant damage. When the swarmers are corvettes, figuring out the mass balance is easy because you are comparing hull spaces to hull spaces. Its harder with fighters. I'm curious to see how they fare against well-handled fleets of capital ships with escorts, when the defending fleet is not surprised by the fighters. At this point in the campaign every one is either using fighters or has seen them, so surprise is gone. We'll see what happens.
I hadn't been aware that there is a concern with fL's. From your comment above I'd guess that there are those that fear that they are too effective?
