Re: What makes a Capital ship Capital?

I have a hard time sympathizing with people who can't
fit escorts into their battleline.  A fleet without
some escorts is dead meat versus a fleet designed to
exploit that lack.

On the other hand, if Capital ships don't have a slight
edge in fleet to fleet combat, why in world would they
be built?

Obligatory silly ship design:

Marine Scout  cost 5-7
Mass 1	(Only if odd massed ships are allowed)
move 8
damage 1 (everyone keeps telling me to round up for
	  damage and down for systems, sounds fair)
systems:
Crew consists of 1 armored marine with an ejection
system	(cost, 1 or 2?)

The Marine Scout has four important roles that it can
serve:
1)  There is no cheaper scout.	If you want to quickly
scan everybody in the opposing fleet, or to shadow
their fleet reporting their position, these guys are
great.

2)  Decoys.  With 180 point frigates around, having
a few cheap decoys around will keep your Torpedo
frigates around long enough to get some use out of
their weapons.

3)  Boarding, 4 marine scouts = 1PDF.  Fleet tactics
would be to disable an enemy ship's drive and then
board.	A variant on this scheme would be to have a
heavier Cloaking version which approaches a drive
disabled ship under Cloak and then boards.
Technically, you could say that any ship has enough
mass available for a Cloak as the mass required for
the Cloak is 1/10 the mass of the ship.

4)  The ship can attempt to ram.  It is always on its
last threshold check and would do 1d6 damage if it
hits, which is competitive with missile costs.	It
is possible to include an ejection system which gets
the pilot clear before final maneuvers.  Of course,
if the ship misses its ram attempt the pilot has to
signal his ship to rendevous with him, which takes
1d6 turns or so...

On this general subject:
Remember that pirate ship design someone came up with
a while ago, a ship with its own Marine Barracks, a
good fleet design would be a whole bunch of missile
boats with needle missiles to take out drives, and
a bunch of cloaked ships completely filled with
marines.

Once the drives are knocked out it is a trivial
matter for your cloaked ships to match courses and
then decloak right behind the afflicted ship.  Depending
on the initiative roll boarding could be accomplished
before anyone gets a chance to fire!

Also known as the "How I lost my Superdreadnought to
three Escorts" courtmartial.

I would like to add my voice to those who want to
change the ADAF, PDAF, C Beam rolls versus missiles
to 4+.	Say, how much would a missile with shielding-1
cost?  7 points?  I don't want a single Escort to be
able to decloak, fire 4 needle missiles, destroy a
Dreadnought's drives in a single volley and effectively
take a 1000 point ship right out of the war without
giving the Dreadnought some effective defense against
them.

If a player chooses to skimp on missile defense because
he scorns missiles, that is one thing, but a ship with
the ability to scrag a whole fighter group should be
able to stop a few missiles!

Although, there is a scenario in that:
Take the Kramsib!

Start the scenario with a successful sneak attack or
needle mine that kills the dreadnoughts drive.	Don't
inform the dreadnought player of this when he constructs
his fleet however.  Have the other player construct
a much smaller fleet, knowing what the scenario is
going to be like.

Basically, have the dreadnought player set up, inform
him that 2 or 3 escorts suddenly decloaked, fired
a load of needles at its drives, were crunched.  Roll
for, say, 6 needle missiles.  The escorts promptly
scuttled their vessels and surrendered, or were blown
up.

The dreadnought player has the initial vector the
escorts were coming from, and a few turns to shift
formation.  Shortly after, the other player brings
his force on field, with a quick report of the
damage done to the Dreadnought.

Unless the Dreadnought player does something quick,
a fast force is going to come on map in his 6.

Victory points:
Capturing the Kramsib and getting away:  Total raider
victory even with 100% ship losses.
Fending off the raiders with equal losses or less for
10 turns, (+5 for each Threshold check on the Kramsib)
which is how long it will take the Kramsib's engineers
to jury-rig her drives.  Total Kramsib victory.

Set up the scenario so that if the raiders lose all their
ships but destroy the Kramsib that it would be a
Draw.  Basically, if you can't take a Dreadnought with
surprise and a good composition fleet you aren't going 
to win the war!

If the raiders abort the mission it is a partial Kramsib
victory.

Special rules:
Repairing Needle Damage:
Okay, normally this can't be done, but we can make an
exception.
Basically, for every 30 DCS-turns you have you can jury-rig
one system.  Captured DCS working at gunpoint don't work
so well, so if the Raiders want to repair the Kramsib's
drive they need to bring their own techs.  They can also
have some drive components with them.

The thing to remember is:
You can't enter FTL with no drive.

Moving a disabled ship:
Okay, what about using small ships to help the Dreadnought
maneuever?  This should be a dangerous, but highly
dramatic move.	For one thing, if the small ship blows
up the Dreadnought will take a significant amount of
damage from that, and no, the Dreadnought's shields can't
be up during this.
Michael Sandy