Automated Defense Turrets in Base game?!?

[Chewmonger 0]

Hi all, so I finally bought myself the base game of Twilight Imperium and tomorrow me a and a few friends, I managed to get a full complement of 6 peeps, are having OUR FIRST GAME EVER. Needless to say I'm stressing out trying to get everyone at least a little familiar with the rules and making sure there is going to be enough fatty snacks and beer to keep them all happy.

Anyway I noticed that a lot of people reckon fighters a crazy over powered in the base game (which is all I have at the mo) and I really wanted to try to tackle that issue.
So firstly unsupported advanced fighters count towards supply. Easy.

But it seems like the Automated Defense Turret tech is a must. What do you guy think is the best way to implement them into the base game?

My brother thinks that we give destroyers +1 die to their AFB from the get go will solve the problem. But I'm thinking that maybe just +1 die would not be enough to balance it out and maybe they need +1 to hit and +1 die and then tack it on to the Antimass deflectors tech.

Anyway would love to hear what are your guys thoughts are!

[Fnoffen 96]

Well imho, fighters, while cheap to produce, are not THAT OP. Sure you can more or less spam them but they shoot worse than a Storm Trooper. In other words, they can be useful to soak up hits but they don't really deal out that much. And you could always counter the enemy fighter swarm with one of your own. If you couple yours with one or two destroyers, you're more or less good to go.

[Steve-O 473]

I agree with Fnoffen.

FT are primarily useful for absorbing damage, not dishing it out. They allow the larger ships to survive a few rounds and do their thing. While they are certainly very powerful in their own sphere, I wouldn't say they're OP. There are ways to deal with large fighter screens, not the least of which is building your own fighter screens. =P

Also, I'm not sure if you were suggesting "unsupported advanced FTs count towards fleet supply" as a house rule, but that's actually how it works per RAW, IIRC.