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

As to the damage that small fighters can cause capital ships then I
think	
there are many	'wet' navy examples fighters/airpower doing large
amounts   
of damage. Pearl Harbour an attack on an unprepared fleet at anchor, the
  
sinking of the Yamamto, the bombing of Taranto harbour, the hunt for the
  
Bismark (Crippled by a Swordfish Torpedo) . The loss of Royal navy ships
  
in the Falklands....................... I could go on. Remember the   
battle for the 1st Death Star the unknown aid turns to Darth vader and	

says "....................... their too small they're evading our turbo 
 
lasers" and lets face it you can't get capital ships much bigger than
the   
Death Star?

 ----------
From:  FTGZG-L[SMTP:FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk]
Sent:  17 September 1996 11:31
To:  FTGZG-L
Subject:  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
 ----------------------------------------------
'And I love what we are but I hate what I am
 And I wanna be like you but I hate when you're like them'
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