Ordnance

Tom McCarthy:

> I'm more than willing to assume that the hangar bays and SML magazines
> we purchase include 5 postbattle reloads

I like the concept, though I might make the number 4 or 3 - that's a
campaign issue, in the end.

> iii) I'm told by a reliable source that the FT fleets are too small to
> transport sizable ground forces such as we see in DS2 and SG2.  Since
ground
> combat occurs, we can assume that outside the range of our tabletop
weapons
> there are large clusters of massive troop transports, supply ships,
and
> tenders to transport troops.	They may also be available for the
repair
and
> replenishment after the battle.  Why don't they appear on the board
during
> battles (especially surprise attacks) ?  I don't know.  Maybe they're
too
> valuable to attack or it's an oversight in scenario construction.

In part its a 'feature' of the FTL system in the FT canon universe. Deep
space combat is either random or very carefully orchestrated, since
jumping
has such a recovery time for the crew. Ambushes in open space would have
to
be flukes, since if you pop in on someone, you're busy wretching for 2-4
turns before you can be effective, and there's no reason to expect
someone
will pop into you unless you're waiting at a place they have to be.
Modifications like jump points or gates notwithstanding. You could also
just
slightly alter the canon descriptions to allow 1 turn recovery and more
accurate jump-ins. But that's why I think you don't see it. 

Now around planets/bases - that should be another story.