I got sidelined by reality and just finished getting caught up...
Three things sorta stand out:
1. With reduced growth rates it is nearly a requirement to force grow colonies to medium (400 PU) status. This likely flies in the face of conventional SF wisdom but both Starslayer and I came to this same conclusion in our game. The Shanirian's have been relying a bit too much on growth as they were forced to expand their fleet. But basically I got 2 races that were seriously in the red income wise and both of them are now in a good economic state due to this concentrated effort to both colonize and push up benign world populations. Also hostile worlds are worth settling due to the surplus population they produce on growth turns that can be used for in-system colonization...the Drakes have completely filled several systems and in particular if you allow asteroid colonies they are a great seed source. The D'bringi ignoring these worlds...has cost them a lot of money.
Yeah, I have been slow to adjust to the new reality of low population growth rates. Over time, it has forced my races into radically different behavior from a normal game. Almost all of my major races are now colonizing habitable worlds in the 5-8 jump band now, which is more expensive and slow, and some are eyeing planets in the 9-12 jump band. In a normal game I'd never do that, as if you just wait for a while a nearby colony would grow to the 400 PU level and you could begin shipping out colonists from there much cheaper than from the home planet. In this game, though, I've reached turn 180 and colonies planted at the start of the game are just now reaching the 400 PU level.
Some of the races are 'force-growing' their colonies to the 400 PU level by shipping additional colonists from their home planet. I'm not convinced that this is a good economic idea, as every 5.2 PTU you ship turns into only 2 money producing population units, but I think most races will turn to this rather than ship colonies out to the 9-12 range band.
2. Did you roll for the commander who attacked the crabs? I mean that was a very bad case of snatching total defeat out of the jaws of victory....unless those PDCs had a lot more armour than I can believe the DDs could wipe them out...then wipe out the orbital stations...and then and only then does the fleet need to close in...basically when the DDs are out of missiles. If the ESs charged the whole fleet can withdraw ahead of them using their XOs to slow the ESs down to the point where they can't close the distance. Charging forwards...and even letting the BM equipped ground based launchers have any chance to hit??? Madness...and the DDs can cycle in and out...they had shields their targets not. The crabs could not be crushed without losses but there is no reason for the losses they took.
Part role playing, part random chance. The Sligo forces were mostly green, as home built or reserve ships would be, and their commander, as a local political appointee, was green as well. I decided that a green commander, appointed for political reasons, would be most likely to launch a frontal assault, and would also be very sensitive to losses. Worse such commanders also tend to overestimate their enemy's effectiveness, and underestimate the damage they have done to the enemy during the battle. At the critical point, I rolled against the Sligo (RM+RD)/2 to determine if they would press forward. They failed the roll badly, and thus retreated in confusion. Had they enough time to try again, they would have had a better plan and been more effective in applying it. Sligo was almost certain to win in the end, the income and tech disparity was significant and was all in their favor, but as always there are political factors as well.
3. Did you forget the detection range of F0s? I'm baffled by how they managed to find the ships they supposedly attacked... I used to always send along an ast with each F0 strike where the ast was the eyes and even that is only range 20. Once the Mimbarii ships transited out the fighters were effectively blind...if they were in 6 hexs of the CTs they could follow those but the fleet could just turn away from them. They could have played cat and mouse with the nearsighted F0s till their lifesupport was up.
Yeah, I did forget the piss-poor detection range of the fighters. In the end it didn't matter, the D'Bringi just lost some fighters they wouldn't have otherwise lost. Fighters really need an Xr equipped ship to spot for them.
A more general comment about fighters is that they are rich man's weapons. F0s are well attrition weapons since the only thing they can do is close to FR range...and under most circumstances that will result in a lot of dead fighters...even though it is going to take out ships unless the fighters are insufficient and should not be deployed. This means the races that consider them secondary support systems likely have to consider very carefully how and against what they deploy their fighters. There are a lot of hidden costs with fighters...magazines costing more than the carrier, the upgrade to new fighters, the reduced effectiveness of the damn things till fM2LT2 shows up. UTM nerfed them seriously with Zi, Ai, S0, !2 and Dz. It is clear that how they are deployed has to change from what was typical in the past but I must admit I'm not sure the best way to do so. Basically an X fighter squadrons with weapon # are required to destroy ship type xx table needs to be generated for each race. Based on that they can then determine how many fighters they want to attach to each force. But affording enough of them to be decisive I think will be the constant issue.
You are right. Fighters are the quintessential swarm weapon, but as with most swarms are very vulnerable to being outnumbered. All other things being equal, if two fighter groups meet each other, the larger group will destroy the smaller group completely, while losing about half of the smaller group's number of fighters. In other words, if force A has 100 fighters, and force B has 50, then force A will always destroy force B, while usually losing around 25 of their own fighters. This is dependent on grade and what the fighters are armed with, but only to a small extent.
In an F0 vs F0 fight, the FO has the following chance of destroying its opposing fighter at range 0:
F0 with two fR: 91%
F0 with two fG: 75%
F0 with 1 fG and 1 fR: 85%
This is somewhat frustrating, as the fG is supposed to be an anti-fighter weapon, and indeed can't be used against ships. It does have the advantage of not being expendable, though, meaning that if the fighter survives its initial round of combat it can go on attacking while a fighter with fR has to retreat after expending its fR. Because of the way the alternating combat sequence works, the smaller fighter group is only going to be able to engage with approximately 50% of its fighters, as the other 50% will be destroyed before they can fire. Meaning they will likely only be able to destroy up to 50% of their own number of enemy fighters.
This has widespread effects. Basically, I can see three basic strategic strategies for deploying fighters:
1. All-fighters, with only light supporting 'conventional' forces;
2. Balanced forces, divided between carriers and conventional forces;
3. Fighter-support, with heavy conventional forces and carrier escorts.
The above equation of being outnumbered and resulting losses is the same no matter what strategy you choose, you can only affect your chances of being outnumbered. Obviously, your best chance of outnumbering the enemy is by choosing strategy #1, while your highest chance of being outnumbered is if you choose strategy #3. Random chance, empire sizes, and other factors also have a say, so even if you choose strategy #3 you can still have a chance at outnumbering your enemy. Other factors will change this, such as better fighters at higher tech levels, and better weapons.
Having said all of that, outnumbering the enemies fighter force, and thus being the last side with fighters in space, does not automatically mean you are the winner of the battle. As you pointed out, you are going to have to attack the enemy ships with your fighters, and you are going to take losses doing that, perhaps significant losses to your already depleted fighters. It is possible that a balanced force, well escorted with ships designed to engage fighters, can deal with the remnants of the enemy's fighters after those fighters are depleted taking out the balanced-force's fighters, and then go on to engage and defeat the fighter-heavy force's combat ships. Very situational, though.
Kurt