RE: (FT) small vs large ships, was YAFS

Binhan, I've never seen you make this many trivial maths errors this 
quickly before. What's up?

You wrote:

>A 150 MASS ship would be facing a set of MASS 10 ships each armed with
two 
>torpedoes

1) 2 torpedoes = 8 Mass. 1 hull box is compulsory. That leaves 1 hull
box 
for both FCS and engines... so either these Mass 10 ships of yours have
no 
FCS, or they have no engines. If I were you I'd try arming them with a 
single torpedo instead :-)

>or twin needle beams

That's more like it. A standard Ash-Shaulah (N), this is.

>- 5 hits (60 needle beams, hitting on 6's = on average 10 hits then 
>divided by 2 targets)

2) Since the targets will get to fire before most of your strikeboats
can 
do so, you're very unlikely to get 60 Needle shots. In my experience
you're 
doing well if two-thirds of your boats get to fire in the first attack
run.

3) Since these Needle boats only have a single FCS each they have to
fire 
both Needles at the same target system, so you'll only kill on average
4.6 
systems per target ship, not 6... IF all of your boats get to fire,
which 
as noted above isn't very likely at all.

>The other scenario is 60 torpedoes at short range

4) The other scenario is *30* torpedoes, not 60. (If you really do mean
60 
torpedoes, your strikeboats either won't be able to fire due to a severe

lack of FCSs, or they won't be able to get to range 6 or less due to a 
severe lack of main drives.)

5) Again, good luck getting to range 6 without losing any of your 
strikeboats to enemy fire. At that close range even the targets' PDS 
systems are likely to kill one or two strikeboats.

>  (hitting on 1-5, or 83% with an average of 3.5 points per hit for an 
> average of 2.7 points per torpedo times 60 torpedoes = 162 points of 
> damage the first turn.

6) 83% * 3.5 pts per hit = 2.9, not 2.7; but since you've only got 30 of

them to begin with and most likely have lost a bunch of boats before you

get to fire you won't get anywhere near 162 pts of damage on your first 
turn of fire. If you're really good (or really lucky) you might inflict 
score 60 points, but even that is unlikely.

>Assuming medium hulls with 75 points of hull per ship both ships are 
>completely destroyed with 12 points left over.

7) Average hulls on a 150-Mass ship means 150*0.3 = 45 hull boxes, not
75; 
but that doesn't count any armour the target ship has.

Now re-run your analysis, but this time take into account that the 
dreadnoughts aren't going to cooperate - instead they'll attempt to stay

out of the strikeboats' (F) arcs, and they'll shoot at them as well. 
Remember the initiative order - even when the boats win initiative, only

two of them get to fire before the 2nd dreadnought fires.

Yes, 30 Mass-10 strikeboats *can* defeat a pair of Mass-150 dreadnoughts
- 
but they're by no means *guaranteed* to succeed.

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry