Hello and good day.
Warning this will be a long post so skip it if you do not feel like reading the mad musings of an old admiral. This is just my opinion based on a very long fleet RP life.
So for those who do not know me, All I do Is Fleeting, generally speaking. Been doing it for 27 years now in one form or another. D6, D20, D100 PC, tabletop, writing. I have seen this conversation play out on a dozen different forums two dozen different times. I fleet because I love it. Yes i have written Jedi and Sith and ground pounders. I killed a barber with fire. and I have written Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Battlefleet Gothic, Starmada, full thrust, home brews, almost any kind of fleet role play a person can do. For the better part of three decades, I have been doing starships in one form or another. Through it all one thing is constant. It is always put behind everything else in competitive forum roleplay. I as a Fleeting Grognard have accepted this. Long ago and far away accepted it. It is the way of it. Fleeting is not for everyone, not even for most. It takes far more time in planning, preparing, and even writing than most other realms of roleplay. AS a few have stated the biggest issue in fleeting on Chaos now is the size of fleets. Honestly guys and gals WHat is going on?
SO.... Watch the clone was. they had ALOT of dreadnaughts. but they are not used in battle. how many Mandators, Preators, or Procurators do you ever see in a fight in the show? The took 3 Venators to assault a planet with escorts sometimes. The empire usually tasked one star destroyer and its escorts with patrolling a sector. That's usually one destroyer, two or three heavy cruisers, six light cruisers or frigates, and eight to twelve smaller corvettes and pickets. For a whole sector. Most planets had very little fleet support other than pickets and monitors. If they did have a ship in orbit it was usually a light cruiser or frigate and maybe a couple of corvettes. This varies in wartime when intel says "hey we think we are going to get attacked at this place" so you fortify that place with a heavy cruiser or whatever can get there fast. An Imperial star destroyer coming to your planet meant something was wrong. it was a terror ship, a sight that sent everyone away or into hiding till it left. It was meant not to be messed with. Sadly the current fleeting atmosphere has a mile-long terror ship of death as nothing more than a disposable escort for something bigger. In most cases..... I know there are exceptions.
Think of Ships over 2km as nuclear bombs of the 50s and 60s. even today, they are deterrents, not weapons. that is how Dreadghts are used. Yes, there are a few exceptions to this but battles with them in it are very rare and often end in the dreadnaught being destroyed. Big ship are not practical, they are big, crew, fuel, and supplies for these are expensive. A dreadnaught is usually a defense ship placed at important worlds such as capitals and worlds with shipyards. Kuat had 3 Mandators stationed there for defense. They are deterrents that keep people from attacking important places. Of the dozen or so Super Star Destroyers, only Executor really ever did anything other than repel attacks. Yes again exceptions.... but very rare. and most are EU and stupid instances and again most of the SSD's were destroyed or disabled.
Fleets are never gathered in scale like we do on Chaos. The movies have shown massive fleets of ships for instance the battle of Coruscant. It is for cinematic flair and very unrealistic. The Republic had thousands of Venators, over a thousand at the battle of Coruscant in fact. but they also had a million worlds to defend. The Empire had 25,000 star destroyers but again one million-plus worlds. with over a thousand sectors out there to deal with these were spread thin. Yes I know I have pounded on this a bit and it does little for the conversation. I have a point.
We need smaller fleet engagements!
the few times I have used more than 10km of fleet was begrudgingly and only because I was forced to by the fleet limits. If I had my choice 5km would be the largest fleet I would ever use. Fleeting is not easy and the more ships you have the harder it gets. This forces you to be less focused on the battle and your ships because if you lose one oh well I have 12 more. Losing a ship should be a catastrophe. Losing a Destroyer should be the end game for a fleet. it would diminish your battle strength to a point where you have to choose between running and staying to fight extremely crippled in power.
Three Destroyers with escorts should always be the largest fleet you need. speaking of... they need escorts! There is a lack of understanding when it comes to how deadly fighters and bombers are. Your ship is BIG. It is easy to hit. forget electronic warfare or cloaking or countermeasures. A dreadnaught is something you do not need anything to target. Even Cloaked! if one ship in the fleet is cloaked and unless it is sitting way far away from the battle acting as a command and control ship it will be easy to find and target. just look for a place where nothing is at..... Cloaking 3 destroyers has been done but only to move in close. once a battle is on cloaking goes out the window for a ship that size. Frigates and corvettes .... yeah they work with cloaking if used right. But putting a cloaking device on a destroyer only is useful if you want to hide the ship. Fighters will find it, and will unload death on it and there is not much a big ship can do but take the hits. frigates and above can not dodge missiles and torps no matter how good they are at moving. Fighters are kryptonite to cruisers and above. Even with point defense, they are hard to hit. also another thing.... why so many fighters? why do the ships on chaos have so dang many fighters? WHY?!? a 19 km ship had 144. yes, a few had a ton but they are very unrealistic numbers seeing as that many 10 to 20-meter craft would never fit inside them. I make 3d models for a lot of my ships I put in the factory. I have tried to see how many Y-wings I can fit in a ship. it's not many.... a ship the size of a Victory Star Destroyer looking at its hanger can hold maybe 18 to 24 and that is with about a quarter of the ship being open. Yes they have 24 canons and they are ties on racks. that helps but still..... there is no way 72 fighters will ever fit in the amount of space an Imperial Star Destroyer has dedicated to them. I have tried to fit them in the dang thing. Not happening.
That all being said Fighters need to be taken more seriously and feared. Most of the ships in a fleet battle are taken out by attack craft, not capital ships.
Also, Corvettes are sadly underused and not taken seriously. A group of corvettes can take down a destroyer if done right. I took out a Vic II with 3 DP-20s once. was amazing! small battles are always more fun. Corvette battles are amazing and allow you to use real tactics. they are fast enough and maneuverable enough to avoid turbolaser fire if used correctly. They can put a lot of firepower on a target in a fight. Most corvettes have weapons that can fire in every arch. larger ships do not and even though they have much more firepower often a corvette can maneuver into a position where they can bring limited weapons to bear I.E. under or behind them. It seems people just swat them away on chaos and just ignore them. That is sad....
As for what can make Fleeting better or more fun... As stated previously in this thread. Communication! talk to your opponent. make plans, talk about what you want to do, and give each other an idea of where and how you would like the battle to go. You do not have to give away your plan or lose any advantage. This is a story, it is competitive to a point. But Fleeting is far more detail-driven than dualing or ground battles. And it takes an understanding of how ships and weapons and even people work in space battles.
In a battle not so long ago an opponent came to me and asked me if they could ram my ship. They also wanted me to not see them coming even though my initial plan was to see the ships with tech I had onboard some ships capable of doing so I agreed. Just because you have some tech or something that can do a thing does not mean that in the heat of battle it does.
He ramed my ship and I took that and ran with it destroying my entire fleet in a cascading explosion which should have damaged his ships more but hey. YEs you know who you are..... and i still love ya
in closing Guys and gas, this is supposed to be fun. Talk to each other and work out guidelines and ideas for the battle then play off each other. Use their actions against them if possible and take your licks when you can not. In the end, you are responsible for the damage done. by the enemy. we do not have counters or sheets or dice to do it it is about co-operation and good gamesmanship. you do not need to win a fight to win a battle. Also, we need smaller Battles! I will and have preached this for years now. there is a sourcebook that lays out how imperial fleets and alliance fleets are built. MSG me and I will be happy to explain and give you resources.
Again sorry for the long post. things needed to be said. This is just my opinion based on 27 years of playing starships.
Caarlyle Rausgeber
