RE: RE: Limits on armour? and Full Steam

We're using CPV.  It's not strictly the size of the ships that's
daunting; it's the firepower versus survivability.

There's a huge difference in feel between the 'soft' targets with 30% of
MASS in hull and those with 30% MASS in hull plus 10%-12% in armour.
There's also a huge difference in feel between the Ticonderoga, which
packs enough firepower in the F arc to cripple itself with one volley,
and the Waldburg which has the same armament but enough armour to take
two such volleys.

Now that I've had some time to reassess our most recent battle, it may
have had more to do with i) paying too much for the carrier (even with
CPV), ii) paying too much for the fighters (which lost their rerolls),
and iii) having too many ships on the board for the board size.  Point
iii), in particular, prevented the NAC from maneouvring into good
positions.

But I'd still like to see some FB1 designs rewritten to eliminate
extremely heavily armoured or armoured and shielded designs.

To the people on the list, it's clearly not an issue.  Apparently, my
group's use of FB1 designs is purely an anomaly.  If the list population
is to be taken as typical, most players of the game design their own
ships and do not use FB designs or limit themselves to the design
doctrines illustrated by the FT powers in the FB books.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger Burton West [mailto:roger@firedrake.org]
> Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 4:39 AM
> To: gzg@firedrake.org
> Subject: Re: RE: Limits on armour? and Full Steam
> 
> On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 02:59:17PM -0400, McCarthy, Tom (xwave) wrote:
> 
> >In some ways, that what it feels like to me against the Markgraf,
even.
> >Or the Ark Royal.  Average hulls and more than 10% in armour is
brutal
> >to chew through, and even weak hulls seem incredibly durable with 2
> >screens and 5% armour.
> 
> It suddenly occurs to me: how are you balancing these battles? If
you're
> using the old NPV rather than the CPV system, you'll end up with
> disproportinately many big ships...
> 
> R