Re: FB designs & fighters (& strawmen)

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Leary" <john_t_leary@yahoo.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: FB designs & fighters (& strawmen)

> --- Eric Foley <stiltman@teleport.com> wrote:

> > > FB ships can defeat custom designs in a duel; it's
> > been proven.
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~southernskies/webgames/guns1/index.htm

> > Er... not to put too fine a point on it, I wouldn't
> > use that custom job to
> > transport prisoners of war, much less fight a
> > battle.
> ------
> Then you should put the battle in perspective,
> the 'Trial by Combat' is a commerce raider vs
> a ESU SDN with an additional type 4 beam in place of
> the hanger bay/fighters.   If the TbC was used in its
> proper operational venue, it would play merry he**
> with the defender!

Okay, I can begin to see that rationale for it.  The TbC still wouldn't
be
that effective against a real warship with a more concentrated weapons
mix
though.

> > "Trial By Combat" makes
> > the two biggest of those errors even worse than
> > _any_ of the FB1 ships do --
> > it has no appreciable fighter defense at all, and it
> > devotes a staggering -80%- (!) of its mass to
> >non-weapons systems.  As a result, even at its
> >_favored_ range and arcs, it's still only
> > bringing 3 pulse torpedoes and 18 dice of beams,
> > which is _catastrophically_weak for a ship that
> > size.>
> > Not too shockingly, it lost the battle.  Go figure.
> -------
> I think you better look at the results again, the ESU
> SDN did not look as if it had been fighting a
> 'catastrophically_weak'... ship.

Well, the Komarov itself is only slightly less guilty of
mass-distribution
design errors than the TbC, with 70% of its mass taken up in
non-weapons.
In addition, the Komarov's choice of weapons is somewhat suspect for
such a
clumsy-maneuvering vessel -- in my opinion, the two greatest weaknesses
of a
thrust-2 vessel are its potential vulnerability to having its enemies
choosing range and angle of attack.  The Komarov is able to address one
issue (range) pretty well but not the other (angle).

In short... both ships sucked.	The TbC just sucked worse.

E