Re: [FT] Tug confusion

On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Jared E Noble wrote:

> >Does this mean I can build a ship that is basicaly rickety tin-can
FTL
> >engine with clamps for fighters with the cost of 5 mass and 15
points?
> 
> Technically, yes, but there are some caveats---See below

as with several other apparent holes in the design system, it is indeed
possible to make optimised hard-hitting ships that are way too cheap,
but
they always lose out at the operational level. without fighter bays, you
cannot refuel, rearm or repair your fighters, or put your pilots
anywhere.

uou could, however, envisage the use of these fighter tugs in
combination
with the ferry carriers we've discussed before. a bunch of ferry
carriers,
basically eggshells with thrust 2 and huge numbers of fighters, would
carry your fighters around, and when you wanted to attack, you'd load up
your tugs and jump in. this is probably not much cheaper than ordinary
carriers, and you are at a severe disadvantage if your ferry fleet is
attacked.

in a simple tactical game, of course, this never shows up; thus, i'd
recommend that there be an extra points cost for any fighters deployed
without fighter bays, to account for the rear-area ships. the cost of
one
fighter bay (27 in FB?) per squadron deployed.

> Also, tugs may not be able to use their own drives to tow the fighters
in
> realspace (read FB p8 - "designed to tow other ships through jump by
extendind
> their jumpfield around them".  So you need mechanical linakge, or else
the
> fighters use their own drives for all maneuvering.

well, forget about towing the fighters through realspace and just use
the
jump-tug for moving them between star systems. in fact, if you were
moving
things between two systems a lot, you could just slap a tug down
somewhere
and have ships use it regularly. you could then get rid of drives, and
probably cut down on weapons, armour, hull, etc. relying on more mobile
ships to move and defend it (after all, you would be using it mostly in
friendly territory). if you built the tug big enough, it could move
ships
as well as fighters.

i think such things are usually called "jump gates".

Tom