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Tenders and stuff

From: mehawk@c... (Michael Sandy)
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 20:09:42 -0800
Subject: Tenders and stuff


Yup, more silly questions:
Can the Tender-FTL system be installed on a warship?
If so, it seems a real good fleet design would be
to have all Capital ships with the Tender-FTL system,
for a number of reason:

1)  They can take highly combat capable non-ftl craft
into battle
2)  They can take damaged craft home again.  Especially
vs those nasty people with needle missiles...
3)  They can take _captured_ craft home again, see (2)
4)  If their FTL system takes a threshold check they
still can get their own butts out of there.  I'm
guessing that the oversized FTL engines can take an
extra hit.

Instead of paying for a tender:
Mass x 1.5 Merchant Hull
Mass x 3   FTL-tender
Mass x 2    Normal Space Drive,
or an additional cost of 6.5 per Mass of non-ftl ship,

Buy an ordinary Capital ship where you are already using
the hull, the basic FTL and the Normal Space drive, and
only pay 2.0 per Mass of non-ftl ship.

Since many non-ftl designs can beat ships of 140% their
Mass one can see that a Tug-Dreadnought, non-ftl 
Dreadnought can beat an equal cost pair of standard FTL
Dreadnoughts.

If Tender systems have to go on Merchant hulls, can 
they go on Q-ships?

How about a 100 Mass Q-ship with Reflex Fields
2 ADAF and 19 Missiles?  Fire them in a spread between
Arcs 2 and 10.	If you are playing with the Modular
Missiles rules, use the x2 Endurance, Fast missiles.
24" for 5 or 6 turns is _formidable_, even if you end
up with 3 Mass missiles which are easier to shoot down.

You use the missiles to find out if your opponent has
any wave guns or Nova Cannon :) :)  Once you've fired,
your tender isn't a terribly important target anymore.
And is your opponent going to send his anti-Capital
ships after your unarmed tender when you have heavily
armed Dreadnought around?

One of the weird things about the Reflex Field/ Missile
combination is that you have to lower the Reflex Field
the turn _before_ you fire the missiles.  On the other
hand, you can apparently raise the Reflex Field in the
Movement phase immediately following your missile launch.

More questions:
While reading through the mailing list archives I saw
someone ask whether Reflex fields bounced Fighter
beams.	The only people who answered seemed to think
that Torpedo fighters ignored the Reflex fields but
that all other fighters would be affected.

Obligatory silly ship:

18 Mass
Reflex Field
Super Ship Weasel  (A weasel that makes the ship look
like it is > 100 Mass)
ECM  Just to make it a little harder to scan :) :)

Basically, you jump this into the battlefield and
everything goes after it.  If you are fighting versus
Superships, one of them may be so obliging as to
fire all its beams at it.  If you are lucky, you get
to damage their Superships, if not, well, you only
lose an Escort...

I have some questions about ADAFs as well.  Can ADAFs
go off before a fighter group has checked for morale?
It would be really nice if by killing two torpedo
fighters the whole group decided not to attack.

If you are firing ADAFs at groups within 6" you
should be able to hit them before they have to check
morale.  If you have to wait for them to start a run
on a ship within 6" they will already be committed.

Did you know that 9 normal fighters can fight just
as well as 6 heavy Interceptors?  The replacement
costs of the normal fighters are cheaper, the big
expense, of course, is the launch platform.

Michael Sandy

Looking for FT gamers in Portland, Or


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