Re: Roles of various ship classes

> But a pulse torp _can_ fire more than three or four shots. If a small
ship
> fires a large salvo of SMPs, I can safely ignore it for the rest of
the
> battle - it'll speed off anyway (unless it wants to suicide by ramming
or
> going into FTL), and I can concentrate on destroying the ships that
are
> able to hurt me. If, OTOH, it fires a PT, I want to make sure it
doesn't
> fire another one once it has turned around for the next attack.

Gee, I know which armament I'd prefer if my fleet commander has
instructed me to attack a Capital ship.  I'd rather have a
decent chance of doing some damage before I'm swatted out of
the sky.  If I am going to have "0-shield Target" painted on
me for every triple-arc A-Beam to swat, I'm going to be a
miserable captain!  If I know that once I get my shot off
I am going to be ignored, I will feel much better about being
ordered to attack Capital ships.

Seriously, using unshielded escorts to draw fire is silly.
I would much rather my opponent fire his beams at my ships
with level-3 screens than doing 4 times as much damage 
hitting my escorts.
> 
> > So the ideal Pulse Torpedo ship is a fast heavy
> > cruiser. 
> 
> That's pretty expensive, that is. It is good - most of my Eldar fleet
> consists of fast PT-armed cruisers - but only as long as it points
towards
> something heavily screened.

Actually, it isn't that expensive:
Think about it, it cost the same for an 8 thrust cruiser
that it does for a 4 Thrust Capital.  A 2 thrust capital
will have a hard time getting out of the arc of your
Pulse Torpedos, and may even have difficulty getting a bead
on you at all.

> > Pairing off torpedo cruisers
> > with cruisers designed to swat escorts is a good idea,
> 
> Yes - except that the escort-swatter usually don't want to mix it with
true
> capitals :-(

True, but the escort-swatter would also have good shields as
well.  Their fleet role would be duel with less heavily shielded
cruisers and escorts.  I ran a 3 shield Heavy Cruiser with
2 A Beams and ripped apart a Cruiser-Escort squadron built on
twice its points.

Oddly enough, a 36 Mass cruiser has the same threshold checks
as a 48 Mass Capital, until the 3rd check, and while the
36 Mass cruiser will be vapor, the Capital won't have much
fighting ability left either.  

> > but mixing pulse torpedos and beams on one cruiser
> > isn't.  If it loses a fire control a mixed armament
> > ship would have to decide whether to fire beams or
> > pulse torpedos.
> 
> But prior to that it is very useful :-)
> 
> > On that line of thought, a ship shouldn't have more
> > different arcs of fire than it has fire controls.
> 
> ...turrets... I assume you mean "arcs of fire" as in "weapons with the
same
> arcs of fire" rather than the FT definition, though.

I was rather unclear here.  A ship with all FP and FS arc weapons
doesn't have a big problem.  A cruiser with F, P and S arc weapons
does have a problem.  Also, a ship which may have to commit a
fire control to needle beams, C-beams or pulse torpedos may not
be able to use all of their weapons even under optimal
situations.  If you distribute your weapons in a way that
you can't fire them all then your opponent doesn't need
to bother trying to get into your rear quarter to avoid your
fire power.

> > "Well, what if you face an opponent from a direction
> > you don't mount weapons?"  Why assume that you
> > won't be able to maneuver to get a good firing angle?
> 
> If you have only one fire arc, it isn't that likely that you'll have
> targets to shoot at all the time unless it is rather big - at least
not the
> targets you'd prefer to destroy (like the small SMP ships that just
got
> into your blind spot <g>). I tend to use turrets with overlapping fire
arcs
> (eg, one left/forward and one forward/right); in this way I have one
> optimal arc (forward, usually) but I'm not entirely naked when
attacked
> from other directions too. (No, I don't use the battery masses
published in
> FT; I penalise extra arcs with extra mass.)

My favorite way to destroy SMP ships is to hit them while they
are out of submunition range.  I would rather have a really
powerful arc that can destroy at least some of them out of
range than to try to get them once they are already close
enough to fire.

A lot depends on the initiative system you use.  If
the system will result in the Capital ship getting
a chance to fire before most of the submunitions
carriers around him, then diverse arcs makes sense.

Michael Sandy