Re: What makes a Capital ship Capital?

>I am concerned with a number of changes that will
>weaken the effectiveness of Capital ships.  

What changes are you concerned with?

>I have a problem with changing the costs of shields
>to a percentage of mass basis.  If you make all
>weapons and defenses available to all classes FT
>will simply become a contest between huge numbers
>of Escorts.

You think? What are you basing your information on here?

>Capital ships should dominate whatever battle they
>are in, but a good fleet with have heavy cruisers
>for pursuit, and escorts for scouting and destractions.
>The limitation on Capital ships classicly is that
>they are too big and too slow for certain jobs, like
>convoy escorts and anti-pirate patrol.

Redesign your big ships with speed '4' or something. Sure,
it costs more points, but you *are* a bigger ship. Doesn't
take up any more Mass, so you can have the same weapons
array you had at speed 2.

I understand your intent and point here, but just wanted
to point out a...ummm....workaround...to this.

>I don't like wonder weenie fleets of scores of low
>mass Escorts, and I'd prefer to limit them by
>emphasizing Ships of the Wall.
[...]
>There is so much for smaller ships to do, why not let
>the heavy ships dominate the head-to-head clash of
>fleet?  

Ya know, it's interesting that just a couple few months ago
there was a thread running here was complaining about the
ineffectiveness of Escort-class ships, and how to make them
more desirable to players...

>Give them bonuses in combat, but require a
>fleet to have lots of smaller ships for the more mundane
>fleet tasks.

How would you enforce this? Especially in one-up games? Say the
game is with 1200 pts of ships. How do you 'limit' the number of
Caps vs smaller ships here? Pick an arbitrary %-age ratio?

I don't personally hav a problem with Escorts or Caps, or Cruisers,
but then I tend to build rounded fleets if I can. Was never a big
fan of lopsided ones. I think most people are reasonable about this
(I said *most*, Mark S...  ;-)

Mk
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All that is gold does not glitter,
     all those who wander are not lost.

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