Re: Needle Beams

Hello Folks,
  I'm kinda confused here about the tactics required to make needle beam
armed sting ships work...

  If I have only two needle beams per ship, each with two fire controls,
and
I send 6 of them against one capital ship, all I have to do is aim 4
needle
beams per fire control.  I don't have to aim each needle beam at one FC
right?	Thus, the odds of getting a 6 with four shots per FC winds up
being
roughly a 2 in 3 chance per FC.  From what I have seen in FT and FT 2,
the
odds of taking out a decent sized ship quickly are rather poor.  One
design
I liked was taking a DD hull (standard) and mounting a submunitions
pack,
along with a level 1 shield, and an A battery with 3 firearcs.	Taking
two
of these against a standard heavy cruiser, I was able to defeat a ship
that
worth more than the two ships combined.  I haven't had the chance to
"test"
my thoughts on needle beam armed ships, but as it stands right now, the
concept would be that each needle beam arrangement should have an added
FC
per needle beam, and then load up with "normal" weaponry.  Since I don't
have my FT or FT 2 books right now (trying to entice a friend of mine
into
getting involved with FT <grin>), I can't work with real numbers just
yet...
  But the theory seems sound - spread your fire amongst different
targets,
so that you don't get multiple kills against the same unit, when you
need to
get multiple hits on different units.  I saw one battle where a cruiser
took
a level 1 damage check, and lost over 50% of it's armaments, as compared
with a ship that took a level two damage check, and lost only one B
battery!
Likewise, I expect there will be battles where the needle beams reign
surpreme, and others where they stink big time...

  As for speed being the main defense against needle beams, that is why
you
target them against the slower capital ships.  Not only are the capital
ships likely to be heavily armored (shielded), but also slower and
likely to
contain the higher portion of the enemy fleet's weaponry.

  Again, I must point out that these are musings without the benefit of
having the books in front of me...

Hal