Convoys, defenses

I have to say I have seen the same as Tom.

Whereas there is an argument that says that if a surface ship gets to
a convoy in the modern day, the convoy is dead, there are ways to
affect this. Manoevre on behalf of the convoy vessel, ECM, PDS, and
other methods no doubt unknown to me. But I think everyone must admit
that one thing it is hard to do in the modern day is steam past an
opposing escort group so that they only get one shot off. Naval
vessels are not in the same speed league as FT ships.

I might suggest the following in freighter designs for freighters to
be used in areas of hostility:
1) If the cargo merits it, high thrust. Turn tail and run like hell if
you have Thrust 4-6.
2) PDS to stop enemy fighters, missiles, etc.
3) ECM suites (or an Area ECM escort vessel)
4) Some armour to absorb a strafing run from the enemy.
5) Active defenses that aren't all that expensive (a la Knight Hawks
masking screens or Traveller Sandcasters). A screen of sand or water
vapour that obscures the ship and ablates or diffuses or defelects
beams and messes up torpedos, missiles, etc.
6) One shot PDS defenses (cheaper, less mass) that fire on incoming
missiles.
7) One shot small SMRs like proposed on the list the other day.
8) Can you say Q-ship? Heavy Torp/SML loadout for awesome punch on the
raider. Armour.
9) Escorts with mines. Since you have a bunch of attackers on a big
vector towards you, you just want to drop some mines along their
vector in the turn or two warning you have (should be a good shield as
the freighters don't move fast) and the attackers will have to pull
offline hard or eat mines.

I assume if you make the builders either lose enough tonnage, or
install enough guns/armour/electronics/expensive defences, then you
have won as the convoy attacker anyway! Freighter defenses have to be
moderately effective and very cost effective and mass effective if
they are not to make convoys inviable.

It would seem to me that your convoy escorts might want:
1) Weapons that reach the range you might expect raiders to engage at
or further. To me that says 30"+ range for at least some of the
escorts.
2) ADFC
3) Area ECM
4) Enough thrust to stay with the raiders so they can't just drift in
unharassed.
5) Fleet cons if you use something like them - to coordinate the
escorts engagement.

As for formation, if you deploy your escorts in clusters a fair
distance out from the convoy, they can intercept the attackers with a
round or two of fire as they pass, and begin accelerating (when they
sight the attackers) to match vectors and follow them in on the attack
run, forcing the attackers to either burn full tilt through the convoy
giving at most one shot, or to slow down and face the on-going wrath
of the escorts.

Another key thing for the escorts is having at least one ship with
GOOD sensors to make catching the raiders at range an option.

Emergency Thrust/Redlining would be useful for the convoy, and evasive
manouvring optional rules would also be good for them.

Thomas Barclay
Software UberMensch
xwave solutions
(613) 831-2018 x 3008