Re: [FT] Minatures and large ships/stations

Charles Choukalos wrote:

>  Is there such a beast?  After all at $6.50 / heavy cruiser for a gzg
> ship its pretty pricy, especially if you're not known for your
artistic

> ability. 

Irregular Miniatures do *very* cheap spaceships (even when you include
the freight costs). They're not that well known for their artistic
abilities either, though - their ground combat ranges vary a lot but are
on average OK (IMO, at least), but those of their spaceships I have...
aren't very impressive.

> Large Ships ( in FTFB ) aka > mass 400).  I've been playing around
with
> designing various ships that are roughly on par with a small fleet in
> the number of points that they cost.	Has anyone else played around
with 
> this	idea.

Yes. Doesn't balance  too well, though - the "big ships take treshold
checks less often" effect is very real when you pit a single jugger
against a squadron. (It drops pretty fast, though - once you have 4+
ships per side, it is pretty much negligible IMO. The fact that a few
big
ships are able to fire most or all their weapons before the majority of
the small ships can shoot back doesn't go away as fast, though!). 

>  I've done some play testing.  I believe that I posted a "day of 
> the juggernaught" scenerio a while ago with a mass 400 ship that was 
> worth around 1300-1400 pts or so with fighter complement.  I'm curious
> to see what people have seen in their duels regarding these >
monstrosities.
 
> I've noticed a couple of trends in some of our games....
> 
> 1.  Pack on the PDS otherwise you're fighter/sml fodder

And don't forget your engines at home. Yes, they reduce the number of
weapons you can tug along, but a thrust-3 ship is a sitting duck for
missiles and fighters whereas a thrust-4 ship has a decent chance to
dodge (not all the missiles, but half or so).

> 2.  If you're slow up the %space to defenses... you'll need lots o'pds
> +  armor

Yep.

>  + screens.

If you are slow, the main danger is IMO missiles (the fighters can catch
you anyway with their secondary movement)... and screens don't help
against missiles :-/ If you're fast... well, see the next comment.

> 3.  Screens seem to be much more effective for the mass then armor 
> given  all of the damage points that the ships hull is able to stop.

If the ship is slow (thrust 3 or less) and has a large number of DCPs,
and your enemy is obliging enough to rely heavily on beams, this is
true.
If you want a faster ship, the screens eat up progressively more weapon
Mass, and you can usually get more bang (or anti-bang, since we're
talking defences here) per buck using armour instead.

Your opponent doesn't need a very large proportion of screen-ignoring
weapons to reduce the efficiency of screens below that of armour,
though.
And, of course, armour can't be destroyed by needle beams <g>

> 4.  You need redundant firecontrolls.... its a real pain not to be
able
> to split fire over several small ships (big multi swatting
capabilities
> needed)

Yep. 2-3 FCs per 100 Mass seems sufficient.

> 5.  (We don't play with core rules... but if you do... does this seem
> to really devalue these large ships effectiveness...? )

Not really. It does give the smaller ships something to hope for, but
they are just as vulnerable to core hits as the big one themselves.

> 6.  When the big ships start to take threshold damage, luck seems to
be
> a big factor in weither they're still combat effective or not.... bad
> die rolls have seen some of the ships unable to return fire or defend 
> themselves  properly after only the 1st threshold check.... a lot to
> lose because	of bad rolls.

Sounds like too few FCs to me. Considering that a Mass 400 ship has
approx. 15 DCPs left after the 1st treshold check it shouldn't be *that*
hard to bring some of the vital systems up in the end phase, and unless
the treshold check was caused by a missile or fighter attack you're
quite
likely to have fired your weapons this turn already :-/

> 7.  With out fighters, the big ships don't have any flank
protection...
>     Also against other fighters task forces and SML fleets having a 
> reasonable amount of fighters helps immensly in protecting your huge >
ship.

An Interceptor squadron or two is always nice to have :-)

> 8.  Usually you can destroy quite a number of enemy vessels and still 
> flee the system to (Strategically thinking) be patched up to 100%
strenght
> and do it again.  (Aka big ship survivability)

That's why big-ship hunters like needle beams. A hit on the FTL drive,
and you're stuck in-system - and your DCPs can't repair it :-)

> Anyway, that's my synopsis.  I'm seting up an attack on a starbase 
> scenerio in a week or two.  I've got the starbase pegged at mass 800
> with 
> some support ships.  The attacking force I set at around 3500 points (

> 1:1 point ratio ).  Does this seem fair.  I suggested the players take

> SML boats since the station is a sitting duck.... I would think that 
> would be a realistic attack route... 

Realistic but boring. 3500 pts of pure SMR boats (not SML - no point in
spreading the salvoes out over several turns and make the enemy point
defence's task easier!) means roughly 90 SM salvoes (or 180 MT-style
missiles), minus whatever losses the station's weapons and support ships
can inflict prior to launch, all hitting the station at the same time...
could hurt. Unless you have nothing but PDS systems on the station, of
course, but such a station seems rather pointless to me :-/

> after all a beam armed fleet would take quite a while to kill it. 
Should I up > the ratio since the station has no flt + no thrust that's
worth at least 20% > mass advantage to the defenders, even though the
station is a sitting > duck for sml fire?

If the attackers are going to use missile boats, increase the cost of
the
station (or give it a decent support fleet - it'll need it). If the
attackers *don't* use missiles, they're going to need a bonus instead -
probably 25-30% or so extra points.

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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