Re: [?] Tournament Fleet Composition

>
>6,000 points, of which a bit over 900 were sucked up by 36 one-shot 
>missle ships.[1]  You rig your entire fleet to smash my missle ships, 
>and I'll mop you up with the two superdreadnoughts, one dreadnought, 
>Battlecruiser, half-dozen cruisers, and a lot of conventional escorts. 

>That's the problem.  These guys are so cheap, they are a potent 
>_auxillary_ to a real fleet.  They won't wipe out your fleet, but 
>they'll smash enough capital ships to truly unbalance the main fleet 
>engagement.  
>
>I can't imagine anyone with the time or patience to put together 480 of

>these bastards for a full 6K fleet of them . . . 
>
>John M. Atkinson
>
>[1]System   Mass    Points
>   Hull       4     8
>    FTL       1     4
>   Thrust 8   1    8
>    Missle    2     6	   
>

	I think you miss the point. For say 900pts out of 6000pts, I get
virtually
he same number of scout ships and almost twice as many couriers
(standard
FT ships) whose main job is to kill your swarm ships who have only 2
damage
points with the 1st hit causing threshold rolls if not blowing it out of
the sky (space). Using just scouts, and assuming only 1 round of firing,
I
should kill 1/3 of your swarm and cripple 1/6 of what remains before
launch
(and this is not counting the damage down by the supporting capitals).
If I
take all couriers then the odds are good that they will account for 2/3
of
your swarm before launch plus missiles loses to threshold checks. Allow
two
rounds of combat before missile launch and there aren't going to be many
of
your ships left. Then my pinprick ships go after your heavies. They
won't
do a lot of damage in a single turn but there are lots of them and the
damage adds up. And they can make an infinite number of attacks
(provided
they survive).
	Death by a thuosand cuts!
	Now if you have a house rule that allows PDAF's to attack any
target in
range, then 1/6 (more if there is doubling up which there will be but
let's
keep it simple) of the missiles launched will be shot down, if using
scout
ships which makes them my preferred choice, before the heavies open up.
Allow ECM to degrade chances of a hit, then ADAF's and PDAF's from the
target ships (vanilla rules) and you can see that not a lot of missiles
are
going to get through. And we still haven't considered the contribution
of
the supporting capitals to the fight between the swarms, which if your
keeping your capitals up and truly are supporting the swarm won't make
that
much of a difference overall. If fact I'm better off hanging back with
the
capitals. Your swarm fleet is effective at 24" range and if you can get
there intact (take losses only in the turn that you reach that range)
then
my dreads are pretty much dead. If you have to fight my swarm twice,
plus
have the capitals take the odd shot at you, In fact it this senario
you'll
be luck to get more than 2 missiles away. Not much of a problem.
	For the missile swarm to be effective it has to close to 24"
without
taking many losses, it can't afford them.
	Now no doubt you'll argue that not all of your 6000pts (I have
assumed
that you meant 6000pts a side which is really HUGE game) has been spent
on
the swarm or capitals, that you have escorts and crusiers. But then I
haven't spent all my points on scout ships and capitals either and low
and
behold.........
......we've both created balanced fleets which is exactly what your
sample
fleet, given above, is.

	Tony
	twilko@ozemail.com.au

P.S. It is a neat design and I might just take some with my other
escorts
next time (he he he he he ha ha HA HA) :)