Re: Full Thrust 3 rules

> Hey John, I agree with most of what you said.
> 
> Paul O'Grady and I tried the FSE vs ESU using standard FB designs and
> between Heavy Fighters and SMLs my ESU fleet ceased to exist in the
> first pass! Well, 5 out of 9 destroyed and two of the remainder had no
> systems left!
> 
> Paul argued that it wasn't quite so bad and that after his SMLs had
> fired off their salvoes the ships were left with only a couple of 1s
or
> a 2 Class beam weapon. Yeah, right, i should take consolation from
that
> fact when I didn't have a viable force left.
> 
> We both decided the same as John, a bucket load of small scoutship
> 'missile sponges' to absorb the SMLs. But then we are starting to
> min/max the fleets, No?
> 
> Owen G

A friend of mine also really hates how effective 1 structure point
ships can be.  In campaign games that is basically all he builds.
He says that until some mechanic comes into play which reduces
their effectiveness, why do any differently?

The problem isn't just not having enough firecons to hit all the
swarmers, part of the problem is how much wasted damage you will
have versus the swarming ships.  If the average damage one
does to a swarm ship is 3 points, that is equivalent to fighting
a fleet of larger ships which only take 1/3 the damage.

In campaigns, swarms dominate until the advent of effective area
effect weaponry.  Once you have enough Wave Guns and Nova Cannon
to cover the maneuver envelope of the enemy swarm you can kill
them before they close.  A fleet of 10 Nova Gun ships spaced
4" apart covers 40" of front at 48", or well out of range of
the swarm.  Of course, such a fleet will cost 2500 points or
so and is really only cost effective versus swarms which are
substantially bigger than 2500 points...

When you were considering fleets which were limited to beam
weapons the larger ship classes at least had the advantage
of having 3 shields, reducing the damage a ship would take
by 75%.  Of course, between the added cost of shields, the
mass lost for weapons, and the fact that larger ships
maneuvered like drunk cows reduced this advantage considerably.

At any rate, after brainstorming a bit we came up with some
mechanics which would reduce the dominance of the swarm a bit.
1)  All ships now require maintenance each production turn or so.
For Escorts the maintenance is 5 points, Cruisers 10, Capitals
15, etc...  Or in FT3, for mass 1-4, um, 3 points, 5-16 6 points,
17-64 9 points etc...
2)  All ship classes now have to pay for all their formerly free
firecons.  Paying 23 points for a Submunition Scout versus paying
13 may be a steep enough jump to make them less cost effective.
3)  Allow Salvo Missiles and Fighter groups to spread their shots
against all ships in range, allowing the defending ships to
use their point defense of course.
4)  Don't use simultaneous fire.  When alternating fire by
individual ships the bigger ships will kill a number of swarmers
before the swarmers get a chance to fire.  Alternately, in FT3
have ships fire in the order of the Electronics Suites.  All
ships with level 2 Electronics fire before ships with level 1
Electronics who fire before the cheapskates with level 0
Electronics.  Unfortunately, that system would reveal what level
of Electronics particular ships have... :)

Michael Sandy