Re: Parasite Racks, External Mounts and Reactive Armour (Was Re: SPOILER ALERT/PARASITE FIGHTER RACKS)

>Second, I'd make the fighters impossible to reload during combat. 
Assume
>that the loading process is lengthy compared to combat (or even
impossible
>without some sort of tender nearby).

Yeah, impossible to reload during combat. ANd/or require a tender of
some sort (base facilities can double as a tender, natch). Yeah, like
that restriction.

>Third, these racks should cost NO mass (or a nominal mass of 1 due to
>placement restrictions). 
>
>So: PARASITE RACK - Mass 1 or 0, Cost ?
>- can be mounted on any cruiser size ship and up
>- fighters are vulnerable and can't be picked up
>- fighters launch as per usual
>
>Any comments? Any ideas on point costs?

What did Mike put them at? 5 pts or 15? I can't remember. Giving PRs a
mass
of 1, are you thinking per fighter, or per set of racks? I'm thinking
per
fighter, and might be more willing to entertain 1 Mass per 3 P-Racks.
Why
1 Mass/3 P-Racks? Well...they aren't full-blown hangar bays, so don't
have
the resources hangar bays have, but to prevent people just *dumping*
P-Racks
on their freighters, the 1 Mass/3 P-Racks gives some inherent penalty.
I'd
also allow less than a full squadron to be attached to a given ship (ie,
a
freighter spends 1 Mass and picks up 3 P-Racks for 3 fighters for
short-range
'Q-Ship' duty of sorts; the fighters function as normal, just at
half-strength
of a normal squadron - bummer if they meet a normal squadron  ;).

As far as limiting them to ship-classes/sizes...why limit them to
cruiser-sized
ships only? Why not sayyyyy....you can mount 1 P-Rack per 4 Mass of
ship? So I
hear you saying, "but you're talking 1 Mass for 3 P-Racks! How do my
Corvettes,
Mass 10, deal with this??" Simple. A Mass 10 ship could only mount 2
P-Racks,
and would have to spend 1 Mass to do it (round up on all Mass
requirements for
P-Racks). Gives this Mass 10 ship a couple fighters for temporary added
'punch'
and requires the Mass 10 ship to give up *some*thing for them.

Okay, so I'm just throwing numbers out. Maybe 1 P-Rack per 5 Mass of
ship.
Whichever.

You'd also want to limit their uses in games, somehow, otherwise
*every*one's
gonna want their ships to have them (I wouldn't, because they don't fit
my
general ship designs, but I would be tempted to create a couple of
specialized
'fighter tender' ships to fill this roll). Maybe allow a certain *small*
fraction of your fleet to have the option of P-Racks, with agreement of
all
parties involved (meaning they can have 'em, too).

Eh....my 2 pence worth.

>This suggests some interesting systems. How about external missile
racks, or
>external pulse torpedo mounts? Again, they would have negligible mass,
but
>would have limited shots and might be damaged when ANY damage is done.
>EXTERNAL MOUNTS could be interesting systems.

Shades of Starfire.  ;-)

Allan, your snailmail arrived  today. :)

Mk
------------------------------------------------------------------------
- 
"Well, you could do that. And I could nail your head to the table, set
fire
to it, and feed your charred remains to the Pak'ma'ra. But, it's an
imperfect
world, and we never get exactly what we want. So get used to it."