Re: Full Thrust 3 rules

John L wrote:
> 1) In a straight (from the Fleet Book (FB)) battle, the SMLs have the 
> effect of being a 'limited use' nova cannon (up to 6D6 of unmodified 
> damage).   IMHO, this seems to be a wee bit over the top!   After 
> all, one isn't likely to miss to often considering the area covered 
> by four SMLs in a square pattern spaced at 4 inches. (16 in. X 16 
> in. square).

I don't think its that over the top, sure it has the *potential* for 
6d6 of damage but first you have to get the target ship within range, 
then you roll d6 to see how many sub-missiles hit (average of 3.5) 
then the target ship gets to fire its PDS at the missiles reducing the 
final number of dice for damage even more.
If you can afford to fire 4 SMLs a turn great, but some will be wasted 
with that type of coverage and real soon you will be out of reloads 
and then what?

> 2) The other side of the coin.   In a 'design your own' FB battle 
> the SMLs have no value at all!   They are easly defeated by using 
> cheap throw away scout level craft as a damage sponge!

Only if the scout is the closest ship (pick an aim point for the back 
of the formation in order to bypass the escorts and hit the capitals 
behind)

> 8) I feel that 'all' ships will wind up at thrust 5 (or 6), and with 
> this as a fact of life the need for small (escorts/cruisers) ships 
> is gone.
 
 Lets take a look at percentages. With 30% of mass used for the average
hull, 
 and 10% for FTL, the remaining 60% can be used for weapons, firecons, 
 screens, armor, etc, and the thrust engines.  At 5% per thrust point, a

 thrust of 2 is 10%, 6 is 30%.	Thus on a T6 ship 30% of mass can be
used for 
 offensive and defensive systems.  Bring the thrust down to 2 and that
number 
 is 50%, a relative increase of 67%! (or the other way around, a T6 ship
has 
 60% of the systems space that a T2 ship does) In real terms of a mass
200 
 SDN, T6 gives you 60 mass for offensive and defensive systems, buy when
if 
 the same ship is T2, it now can use 100 mass for these systems.
 
 So you have a choice, more thrust or more weapons (though the weapons
do cost 
 more per mass).  For smaller ships the actual mass difference will not
be 
 much so they will have higher thrust, but on the larger ships we will
see... 
 (the 6+ extra 3-arc L3 batts I can fit on the example SDN if T2 are
very 
 tempting)
 
 Dean