Roles of various ship classes

I am finally getting some actual Full Thrust games
now, and at the last game a bit of a debate arose
over the role of certain ship classes.

Specificly, what kind of ship was appropriately
armed with Pulse Torpedos.

I was of the opinion that an effective Pulse Torpedo
ship has to be survivable, to get off several shots
and also very maneuverable because of its limited
arc of fire.

If you aren't using a very survivable ship you may
as well use Submunitions, which can deliver all
their damage in one shot.  Pulse torpedos are better
than submunitions only if they get off >3 or 4 shots.
They also have an advantage in a campaign game where
they don't have to keep getting replaced.

So the ideal Pulse Torpedo ship is a fast heavy
cruiser.  With a more reasonable cost of 4 Mass,
a heavy cruiser with Level-2 shields, 2 Pulse
Torpedos and 2 PDAF you've got a ship that can
get that all important first threshold check on
a Capital ship.

A non-ftl heavy cruiser would be even more formidable
because it could have 3-shields and 3 torpedos and
thus be practically immune to beam weapons.  Versus
a beam equipped Battleship it could take several
rounds of beam fire while doing severe damage.

It would be a very odd class of ship.  A middle sized
ship which specializes in attacking Capital ships.
The closest analogue I was able to find were the
heavily armored coastal monitors which carried huge
guns and stayed so close to shore that battleships
couldn't close with them.

It doesn't make sense to have an armament mix on
a pulse torpedo Cruiser or Escort because it can't
spare the fire controls.  Pairing off torpedo cruisers
with cruisers designed to swat escorts is a good idea,
but mixing pulse torpedos and beams on one cruiser
isn't.	If it loses a fire control a mixed armament
ship would have to decide whether to fire beams or
pulse torpedos.

On that line of thought, a ship shouldn't have more
different arcs of fire than it has fire controls.
"Well, what if you face an opponent from a direction
you don't mount weapons?"  Why assume that you
won't be able to maneuver to get a good firing angle?
If you build your ship so that you can't ever use
all your fire power you are being silly.

A Kra'Vak escort should have all its weapons in one
arc, a cruiser, 2 arcs, only a Capital ship would have
all three arcs covered.

Michael Sandy