But you are right....they would play hell to 'balance' - but are they necessarily balanced now? I think to large degrees, carriers and fighters are really unknown territory when it comes to the kind of set peice battles we have in a league environment. Maybe the current taldren crap are known entities, but I don't think that makes them better for the league than DH's, for example.
I don't know if people ever tried this before, but as a preliminary BPV balancing, I used to launch my SFB fighters out by individual squadrons against an AI opponent of similar total BPV. A flight of F-14's vs a Klink F5C for example. Depending on how well they did would give me an idea whether they were priced appropriately or not.
Let me re-word this, they could be balanced but you have to throw the SFB BPVs in tha garbage and start over.
Yeah - but couldn't the SFB values be used to establish relative strength? ex: the F-14's v the Klink Frigate
No, for two reasons.
One, trying to balance the fighters alone without their carrier is unrealistic. The carrier adds an element of offensive and defensive support which lends to the effectiveness of the fighter group. Ask any experienced carrier pilot how well independent strikes work.
Two, the type of ship you select as a test target will affect the outcome. Different fighters have different effectiveness against different types of targets. Variations in target point defense will also yield different results.
This will be a HUGE HUGE headache to try to accomplish. Personally I think the devil we know is a better choice.
Independant Strikes don't work because the Taldren fighters stink. I made a SFB fighterlist before to goof around, and playtest solo Independant strikes all the time.
I wasn't too different than DH's, although I went with SFB fighter loadouts (so 6 instead of 4 in a Squadron), and I only used the heavier (but slower) missles. The Dogfight drones on the SSD were ignored (I think DH used the light missles for these).
Anyway, just to test the effectiveness of the squadrons relative to SFB bpv, I would launch them on independant strikes against targets of roughly equal BPV. Results varied - for exactly the reasons you state (does the ship have AMD? for ex) - but by and large, the performance was roughly consistent.
So you start with a concept. Lets say DH's SGO ftr list to start.
You balance the BPV v AI.
Then you playtest some missions v Human opponents.