Re: Campaign rules?

Hello Folks,
  Thanks for answering my question regards to needle beams and their use
with respect to fire controls.	My "adversary" was correct <grin>.

  With respect to the question raised about the use of the needle beam,
I
think the smallest "sting ship" that I am willing to build is a light
cruiser, hull 22.  With 2 shield generators, 2 needle beams, 1
submunitions pack, a speed of 6 along with a FTL drive, the needle
cruiser
comes in at 197 points (yes, I stole my copies back - but I gotta give
it
back after work tonight...).  I just did a mock battle (playing with
myself?  I suppose you could say that <grin>) with the light cruiser
versus the stock heavy cruiser.  The light cruiser took 5 points of
damage, before it was utterly destroyed in one fell swoop.  The Heavy
cruiser took 2 fire control hits before it too was utterly destroyed.  

REASON:
  One minor "flaw" with the needle beam is that you need to be within 9
inches of the enemy ship in order to use it.  This means that when he
decides to "bug out", you are within the 6" danger zone.  From the CA's
point of view, the CL will always be able to keep on his tail because it
moves 6 to the CA's 4.	No matter what, the CL will hound the CA due to
the fact that the CA must commit something close to virtual suicide in
order to jump.	This will result in a likely capture of the CA. 
Reasoning
thus, I figured that the CA would be willing to risk the jump, rather
than
risk the assured capture, and had it jump.  I happened to roll a 6 for
the
jump, thus destroying the CA, and inflicting another 16 points of damage
on the CL, thus destroying it too...

  Had I taken two of my CL's versus the CA, things would have been
different.

POSTULATE:
  Needle Beam use requires some heavy screened ships capable of
withstanding heavy fire.  Had I used even one less screen than I had,
the
CL would have been toast.  Larger ships with higher damage ratings would
look more attractive, expecially since larger ships can carry more such
weapons.  I would most likely consider a proper mix of ships to be one
where both normal beams and needle beams are working in conjunction of
each other.  Likely targets for Needle beam weaponry should be capital
ships with high levels of screening, with the screens being an alternate
high priority target, allowing the other ship of the lines to pound it
into submission.  All in all I think I will experiment more with the CL
design, and use that as a "softening up" type ship class.

QUESTIONS:
  Did anyone ever create the equivalent ship to a "fire ship"?	Those of
you who know your history would recall the Spanish Armarda fell victim
to
specially prepared ships loaded with combustables, that were then
pointed
directly at enemy by the English.  The crew would leap overboard at the
last possible moment, and watch as their erstwhile ship tangled with the
enemy ship, and then burned it to the waterline.  Such a tactic could be
used in FT if "automated" ships are allowed.  These ships would be hulk
freighters doomed for the scrapyard anyhow, and sent directly towards an
enemy fleet.  Said ship with a decent FTL drive would then automatically
engage, and attempt to either self destruct (ie with a roll of a 5 or 6)
doing the full undamaged hit value of the ship in damage to all
surrounding ships witin 6 inches, or it would do 1d6 points of damage to
all ships in 6" (roll 2-4), or just not do anything on a roll of a 1.

New proposal to the damage rules for attempted FTL entry:  
  Give each ship class an actual FTL "mass" rating.  Subtract the
FTL entry ships mass from the largest mass rating from the surrounding
area of the FTL entry ship's mass.  This becomes the modifier to the FTL
entry chart.  For example: escort  class ships have a zero mass, cruiser
class have a 1, capital class have a two, super ships have a 3, and
planets have a 4.  Thus, an escort ship surrounded by 2 ships, one
another
escort, and the other, a cruiser, attempts to jump to FTL.   Subtracting
0
from 1, leaves a plus 1.  This means that the jumping ship adds +1 to
the
jump entry table.  Had it been an escort trying to jump away from a
supership, then the values would have been 3-0, or +3 to the FTL entry
roll.  In addition, the jump table would now be re-arranged such that no
entry is now a 4, 1d6 damage points is a 1-3, and full destruction is a
5-6.  This way seems more "logical" to me than it currently is, and also
keeps people from using "robotic fire ships"...

Having fun with this game...

Hal