RE: [FT] Unofficial stats\design principles for new fleets?

Ian Cotgias wrote:

 >I have done some IJN designs using stuff in Fleet Book 1 but the FB2
 >Kra'Vak ships tore them apart (and then some) so I am wondering
whether I
 >made some design blunders or what!!

Judging both from my own experience from the FB2 playtests and from the 
reactions I saw in the first half-year or so after FB2 was published,
I'd 
rate "design blunders" and "tactical blunders" as about equally likely -

particularly if you use Cinematic movement. Designs and tactics
optimized 
against Cinematic-moving FB1-tech ships tend to be much less effective
against Cinematic-moving Kra'Vak.

 >The KV are a bit hard, their Patrol Cruiser was knocking out a
destroyer a
 >round and three Light Cruisers fell to the BS.

"BS"? There's no "BullShit" class of vessels in any of the FB2 fleets 
AFAIK, and no "BattleStars" either <g>

More seriously:

How to counter the Kra'Vak depends very much on what movement rules you
use.

The FB1 and FB2 ships (and, indeed, the entire FB ship design rules) are

designed for Cinematic movement, where ships with mostly forward-mounted

single-arc weapons need to be highly manoeuverable (at the very least 
capable of 3-pt course changes) to be able to point those weapons
towards 
the enemy more than once or so per battle - and the KV, with their
Advanced 
drives, are indeed highly manoeuverable. They still need to predict
where 
the enemy will end up however, so a highly manoeuverable enemy can be
very 
tricky targets for them. If in addition this enemy has decent firepower
all 
around and therefore is able to shoot at the Kra'Vak no matter what arc 
they're in, the KV are in trouble. IME the best "official" anti-Kra'Vak 
ships in FB1 are the thrust-6 NAC and FSE destroyers and cruisers -
well, 
apart from the Trieste, that is. The ESU Volga and Tibet classes are
less 
capable of evasive manoeuvers than the NAC and FSE ships, but their very

wide-arced beam armaments still make them quite dangerous for the
Kra'Vak.

In Vector OTOH a single thrust point is enough to turn the ship to face
any 
direction you want, and even high-thrust ships have a pretty limited
area 
where they can end up after movement. Therefore you don't need high
thrust 
ratings to use single-arc weapons effectively in Vector - not even if
your 
enemies have extreme thrust ratings or Advanced drives. Since single-arc

weapons are also smaller (and thus cheaper) than wider-arced ones, 
custom-designed Vector ships tend to have low to moderate thrust ratings

and very heavy single-arc armaments, possibly with a few wider-arc 
batteries as emergency back-ups.

The NAC Furious-class CE, which is pretty much a complete failure under
the 
Cinematic rules, is a quite typical Vector design - it wasn't
intentionally 
designed to be, but that's how it turned out in practice! John's 
P-torp-heavy Theo- and Andy-class dreadnoughts are also very typical
custom 
Vector designs with limited usefulness in Cinematic - if they miss their

first P-torp shot, they're unlikely to get a second shot in. (Side note
to 
John: Strictly speaking the Andy has a Strong hull - less than 45% of
TMF - 
rather than a "Custom" one.)

Of all the "official" (non-Sa'Vasku) FB fleets the Kra'Vak is the one
which 
is best optimized for Vector movement, having mostly single-arc weapons;

but since they're usually over-engined for Vector and their weapons are 
more expensive than human single-arc weapons with similar range and
damage 
potential it is quite easy to design custom human-tech Vector ships
which 
both out-gun and out-hull them. Of course, such custom Vector ships tend
to 
wipe the floor with FB1 or custom Cinematic designs as well... *in
Vector* <g>

(The reason I leave the SV out above is that the FB2 Sa'Vasku rules
are... 
let's call it "seriously unbalanced". The designs actually published in
FB2 
aren't too nasty, but they're pale shadows of the custom designs you can

create under the FB2 rules <shudder> We're working on fixes.)

 >Also the KV scatterguns render SMLs and fighter groups almost useless.
A
 >fleet needs twice as many fighters or SMLs as against a human opponent
 >just to start denting the enemy. Mind you once they have spent all
their
 >scatterguns they are easy meat if you have any fighters or SML left
but
 >how do you stay alive that long and ensure they don't KO your systems?

Fighters can essentially do two things against Kra'Vak: keep the KV 
fighters off your own ships, and kill KV cripples which have fallen out
of 
formation and (are likely to) have lost scatterguns in threshold checks.

SMs can only do the latter, though not nearly as well as the fighters. 
Neither of them can be used as your primary strike arm against KV. 
Since 
you can't use fighters or missiles as your primary strike arm against
the 
KV, you obviously have to rely on direct-fire weapons for that role
instead 
- ie., your beams and P-torps.

(Side note: an "SML" is a magazine-fed Salvo Missile *Launcher* - you
only 
run out of those by losing enough threshold checks, or by having the
ships 
carrying them destroyed... The missiles themselves are SLMs (Salvo
Launched 
Missiles) or, more commonly and less confusing, SMs (Salvo Missiles).
SMRs 
are the single-shot Salvo Missile Racks.)

In another post, Ian wrote:

>I was wondering whether missiles ala More Thrust may be a useful
addition? 
>Although they take up 2 mass, a KV scattergun only takes it out on a
"6".

More Thrust scatterguns only take MT missiles out on rolls of "6".

Fleet Book 2 scatterguns, OTOH, kill MT missiles automatically. For FB 
point defence purposes each MTM counts as an "SM salvo which rolled an 1

for the number of missiles on target", and you can't roll less than "1"
on 
a D6. Of course, this also means that no scattergun can kill *more* than
1 
MT missile.

So, to summarize: In Cinematic you stay out of the KV (F) arc, avoid 
letting them into your (A) arc, use your wider-arced *direct-fire*
weapons 
to wear them down, and you should be fine. (Of course, if your thrust 
rating is too low the first  two of these may be a tad tricky!) In
Vector 
you simply load up on single-arc direct-fire weapons of your own and
smash 
the Kra'Vak head-on.

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."