Re: Questions before my rules even arrive, was: Needle fleet

On Wed, Dec 05, 2001 at 09:18:35AM -0500, Flak Magnet wrote:
>When people say "Smaller ships" are we talking fighters or
>Frigate-class ships?

"Ships" are always ships, rather than fighters - fighters don't have
long-range strike capability. (It gets a bit too much like Harpoon if
one allows that - launch the fighters just so that they can launch their
long-range missiles, then recover and re-arm them.)

>Can these smaller ships be equipped with missiles/rockets for a hard
>initial strick then pick apart the damaged foe with smaller weapons?
>I would think that the higher maneuverability associated with smaller
>ships would help them out... does that concept not make it's way into
>FT?

It's certainly there, but one of the key elements in FT is that higher
acceleration and smaller size doesn't make you harder to hit. The way
for a small ship to survive, IMHO, is (a) to manoeuvre outside the
enemy's primary weapons envelope, (b) not to appear to be a threat until
it's too late, (c) to strike hard and cripplingly as part of a
coordinated salvo rather than plinking.