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SV: Tenders, among other things

From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@n...>
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 07:00:59 +0100
Subject: SV: Tenders, among other things

Michael Sandy wrote:

> How important is fuel consumption in the game?  I read that
> tenders and tug use 3x the fuel of an ordinary merchant,
> which would make them 33% less efficient in terms of carrying
> cargo.

Um... where did you read that? In FT, p. 27, it says "...FTL Tugs or
Tenders, which are ships with massively over-powered FTL drives ...
...When
building a Tug or Tender [snip about non-FTL systems] but the FTL drives
cost THREE TIMES the total MASS of the ship...".

Nothing about fuel consumption (not even about the size of the engines),
although it can easily be argued that an engine three times as expensive
should also be at least twice as powerful and require three times as
much
fuel.

> How many FTL jumps can a ship make on a full tank?

Not defined in either FT or MT. It's all up to you.
 
> How expensive is having a boat bay?  

As per More Thrust p. 16, a boat bay costs 1 Mass per Mass of the
transported boats.

> Tenders are useful, but the question is how much of your fleet
> expenditures should go to them and their non-ftl cargo?

> I happen to like the Mother Ship concept.
> Have a couple of 100 mass Tenders with 15 hex range drives,

No FTL range limitations are given in the rules, so how does a 15 hex
range
drive differ from a normal one? (...I assume you're talking about FTL
ranges here, since that's the only place in the rules hexes are
mentioned...)

> thrust 2 and Cloaking and you can build some pretty nasty
> designs for your dreadnoughts.

But once your tender buys it, your dreadnoughts are stuck where they
are.
Yuck :-(
(...I've suffered that very fate in a Starfire:Akelda Dawn campaign.
It's
no fun at all...)
A Thrust-2 ship, especially a freighter, is pretty vulnerable to
counter-attacks - depending on the campaign set-up, of course. Also,
your
damaged non-FTL ships can't retreat from combat very easily - and
certainly
not without endangering the tenders.
 
> (Does a Cloaked Tender cloak the ships she is carrying?  Does
> a tender with Shields, shield her passengers?)

Not defined anywhere. I'd say yes to both.

> Consider a comparison between non-ftl and ftl versions of a ship.

[snip]

> However, the cost of transporting these extremely effective ships
> is _huge_.  Logistical complications is a good phrase for it.
> A tender costs over 8 points per unit mass for a basically 
> defenseless craft.  Even with a quality edge of about 3-4 points
> per unit mass you have to have over three times the carrying
> capacity of your tenders in non-ftl ships before the concept
> pays off.
> 
> On the up side, most of your combat losses are going to be in
> comparitively cheap non-ftl ships rather than your expensive
> logistical chain, right?  Ummmm.  Don't bet on it!  Even if
> you equip your tenders with cloaking devices they are going to
> be vital and tempting targets for your enemy.

Yep. I'd go for them ASAP... preferrably with my fast escort craft,
which
should have no problem hunting them down :-)

[snip]

> Note:  If you are designing a scout ship, then for purposes of
> considering whether you want a non-ftl version or not

Depending on the situation. In a campaign, I'd want _all_ my scouts to
be
FTL capable - I don't want to tie up my tenders with figuring out where
the
enemy is.

> Ob silly ship:  Coffin #583412  (You don't name ships this small,
>				   just number them.)
> Mass 1
> Move 8
> Ftl  none
> Strm Fully  (Why not?  Its effectively free)
> damage 1
> 
> systems: (.75 mass rounds up to 1 mass)

No, .75 Mass rounds DOWN to 0 Mass since you rounded .5 damage UP to 1
damage. The normal practice (not in the FT rules, but blessed on this
list
by Jon T.), is to round one up and the other down; which to go where is
up
to the designer.

> fcs
> submunition pack or C-beam PCS
> 
> cost:  7 or 9

11 or 13.

> If anyone sneezes on one of these, it dies, but it just isn't
> cost effective to shoot them if anything else is in range.

Don't you bet on that. I suggest that these ships be targetted
immediately
- a SubPack is dangerous... and they can be destroyed at very long
ranges
unless they close extremely fast. 1 point of damage to a loaded strike
boat, destroying it, is more worth than 1 point of damage to a
Superdreadnought IMO.

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson

"Life is like a sewer.
What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry

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