RE: A, AA, BREW, ...*B5 SPOILERS*

On 16 Sep 96 at 11:42, johnjmedway wrote:

> Massive == durable? Idunno. Most of those ships seem to brew up 
> pretty well when hit. Also, aren't we talking about usable mass, 
> when talking in game terms, anyway? Following that, we figured 
> that even if a human cruiser was as large as a mimbari, it would
> actually rate fewer mass points, given its fragile structure, etc.,
> but otherwise stayed in the normal-ish FT range for sizes.
I had the same opinions about big ship durability until 'Shadow 
Dancing'. In the big space battle in that, on at least two occasions 
large (i.e. cruiser or equiv) ships get hit by beam fire and keep on 
going. With bits missing yes, but they keep on going. Plus the 
casualties coming back suggest ships taking damage but not losing 
hull integrity completely. Also, it seems Shadow vessels aren't as 
impregnable as we first thought - a Narn ship manages to take one 
out using only a main beam weapon. Finally, the only Minbari cruiser 
we see destroyed is the subject of a combined attack by three shadow 
vessels. This implies that in general 'new race' ships are tougher 
than we at first thought, at least when not taken by surprise.

As to relative mass, I would say a EA vessel of the same volume as a 
Minbari Cruiser would prbably be heavier - one consistent form of 
technical advance is that the materials to construct things get 
lighter without losing strength - carbon fibre vs. steel, for an 
example..

> >>  The capital Ship weaponry needs to be sufficiently powerful, and
the
> >>  ships sufficiently large such that fighters do not compleatly
dominate
> >>  the game. In practice, fighters can 'anoy' a capital ship, but
don't
> >>  appear to be much of a real threat.
> Not just for B5, but we already didn't like how powerful fighters 
> were, so we usually give 'em all a -1 in combat against anything 
> but more fighters.
It appears the strategy in B5 is to start with your fighters out 
front, then put your small ships in behind them, THEN put your 
capital ships at the back. The 'waves' combat each other until all 
are merged then we get a free for all. Please also remember that a 
squadron of B5 fighters did an awful lot of damage to a centauri 
battlecruiser in (I think) 'Fall of Night'.

		       TTFN
			       Jon
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