Re: [?] Tournament Fleet Composition

	Um I think I should have also said that only Human designs from
FT and MT
were allowed. That solves the missile problem. As a counter to your
swarm
missile fleet I'd suggest large numbers of scout ships, corvettes or
frigates backed up by a number of capitals mounting A's, AA's, PDAF's
and
maybe ADAF's (if you allow them to shoot down missiles.) The capitals
take
out some with the AA's before launch as do the escorts which have closed
the range. The Swarm now has to divide it's fire or ignore the escorts
which set about blowing them all to hell. This and lots of PDAF's give
the
capitals a much better chance to survive the Swarms single bolt while
still
taking some out. Once the storm of missiles has been weathered you clean
up
or follow them in hyper space and then clean up the swarm and any
mother/resupply ships about. Your basically looking at fighter combat
where
the individual ships have grown in size by a factor of 10. I really
think
that a missile swarm fleet is a gimmick that has suprize and novelty
value.
Good tactics should defeat it most times.

At 16:16 22/04/98 -0500, you wrote:
>You wrote: 
>
>>	The idea of all this was to get people to build balanced fleets 
>without >have to spell out too many points ratios or limits. "Swarm" 
>fleets are >totally acceptable.
>
>Out of curiosity, what is the general feeling of the FT community 
>towards lunatics like myself who like swarm-style fleets?  At a recent 
>game I put 36 4-ton ships with one missle each as their only armament. 

>And that costs a mere 912 points, heh.  Out of a 6,000 point fleet[1]. 

>All the other players whined a lot, but that's just because I waxed 2 
>capital ships, a cruiser and a frigate with no losses to myself--which 
>put them a bit at a disadvantage.  The discussion which ensued did 
>point out that modern wet-navies do operate on this basis.  See: PLAN, 
>et al.  8 Styx-class missles and then turn around and run to rearm.  
>And what would be an acceptable counter-response?  I can't think off 
>the top of my head what would be a good counter to this strategy.
>
>John M. Atkinson
>
>[1]Actually 5 people showed up, each with 2K points.  I pulled another 
>2K and teamed up with my brother to take on the other three players.
>
>
>