Tenders, among other things

Hi, I am new to this mailing list and Full Thrust.

I have some questions about tenders.

Can tenders carry replacement missiles or submunitions as cargo?
How fast can they rearm ships if they can?

If more than one ship is boarding a target at the same time, do they
add their boarding factors together?

How much would a bare bones non-ftl gunboat with a boarding factor of
1 and a thrust of 8 cost, and how many could you fit on a 36 mass
tender?

It might be an interesting concept to have gunboats with missiles
or submunitions which then proceed to attempt to board or raid.

Does a 2 Mass non-ftl gunboat have 2 mass units available for systems?
In figuring out what size gunboat would be most effective it seems
that totally swamping a target's fire control is a good option.  It
would be embarrassing for the target to have to inflict 4 points of
damage on a 1 point ship!  A cruiser-sized tender could carry _18_
of these buggers with 2 submunitions or 1 missile each.  A capital-sized
tender could carry 50.

Fortunately for play balance, 1 point ships are going to be quite
vulnerable to fighters.  For all that they can carry somewhat better
weapons, they have their own scanners, and more of them can be brought
onto the battlefield, they aren't a play balance problem.  Just a
book-keeping one.

A quick comparison between fighters and mass 2 or mass 4 gunboats:
Fighters				Gunboats

More agile 12 or 18 move/turn	       Higher top speed with thrust
cheaper to replace
				       Better weapon, Missile vs Torpedo
Continuing combat role after firing,
ability to rearm quickly at Carrier    Scanners and longer endurance
				       Can be deployed away from
				       Specialized Capital ship

Vulnerable to PDAF and ADAF	       Vulnerable to 'A' and 'B' batts
Can easily attack gunboats	       Could have PDAF, an efficient
				       fighter killer, but only if 
				       targetted.  ADAF requires 4 mass
				       gunboat.

				       Better attack range

I don't know.  Anyone interested in running a light carrier against
an equivalent points 36 mass tender + gunboats to see how things
could go?  Assume 3 ADAFs + 12 missile boats.

Note:  If there are gunboats left after the tender and carrier have
been destroyed then a marginal victory goes to the tender.

About non-combat ships:
It has been commented upon that the platform for a Nova Gun has to be
fairly tough.  However, unless you use some armor rules, most of that
tonnage is going to be wasted because it can't be used in conjunction
with the Nova Gun.

The best military ships for a nova gun seem to be those with one-shot
weapons; missiles, submunitions or fighters.  Just be careful that
you don't fry your own missiles and fighters!  You could use the
fighters to fence the enemy into position for the Nova Gun.  A bit of
a conflict there, keep close formation for the ADAFs to go after the
fighters or spread out to avoid getting nailed by the Nova.

However, just for kicks and giggles, imagine the face of your opponent
if your 100 mass merchant ships turn up with either Wave Guns or Nova
Guns.  Yes, it is silly, but with a little ECM to prevent them from
being scanned this would be one _hell_ of a surprise.

Michael Sandy