Re: FT Forts

Topic 1

The main problem as I see it with space stations/hollowed asteroids etc
is that there's one weapon type where the major balancing factor is
dependent on the target being mobile. Against an immobile target, the
weapon is wayyy too powerful for its cost.

The weapon is, of course, the missile - be it Salvo or MT. There is a
similar problem with fighters, but not nearly to the same extent.

I've played in far too many scenarios where I had to have at least some
missile-equipped ships to take out base stations. Make the bases
stronger to deal adequately with the missiles without being sitting
ducks, and they become overly strong against non-missiles.

In order for stations (by that I mean any stationary shiplike things) to
be useful but not too-powerful, we need to be able to balance them vs
missiles.

How to do this? Some of my ideas are below - but regardless of how good
or bad my proposed solutions are, I'd like people to think about the
problem.

Topic 2

The obvious solution might be to give some PSB about the homing
mechanism on Missiles being dependent to some extent on the target
having a manouver drive. Ships which have no manouver drive ( not just
switched off or even destroyed, but not fitted with one ) are to some
degree protected against missiles. How much protection, and how to give
this protection without extra die rolls etc are the difficult questions.
Maybe a 50% protection - halve the number of effective SM warheads (
rounded up? rounded down?) and roll a die for each MTM, on a 1-3 it
doesn't home in. Ignore other targets within homing radius for
simplicity rather than logic. Now a 50% discount still IMHO makes
missiles the weapon-of-choice vs battlestations, but at least it cuts
the imbalance down so they're "somewhat better" rather than
"overwhelmingly better". In a campaign, the logistics involved in
equipping a fleet for a massive missile strike may even balance things
so it's six-of-one, half-a-dozen-of-the-other.

Another solution - which may cause more problems than it fixes - might
be to say that hanger space on base stations gets some discount, fighers
being a good anti-missile defence. Maybe even free, or 1 pt/mass instead
of 3. This means though that base stations become super-carriers, in
order to attack a system which is guarded by battlestations, you'll need
a relatively large carrier fleet. Great if you're simulating WW2 Naval
actions in the Pacific, but do we really want this? I see FT as being
more akin to 1890 than 1945, with fighters taking the place of torpedo
boats prior to the dirigible torpedo.

In any event, it would be nice to be able to use the same basic ship
design rules. So I'd prefer the manouver-drive-homing solution myself.
Comments?