Re: FTFB--new fleet design philosophies.

>     It occours to me that with the changes brought about by the Fleet
> Book that there are now innumerable 'styles' of ship that one could 
> concentrate on.  We can go the NSL route and go for armor, beams, and
> no speed, or the FSE which is dead opposite (BTW, Why, oh why did GZG
> make the FSE models so darn cool?  It's annoying--I won't play 
> Frenchmen but I really, really like the ships).  

I'd like to see some task specific fleets posted,
For example:

Commerce Raider force:
10-20 Scoutships spread in a web to find enemy shipping
Scoutship (SML bait)  Mass 5, Thrust 8, FTL, Level-1 Electronics
(I thought I read that level-1 only uses 1 Mass)
By using the electronics to alter size they can appear to
be 17-64 Mass combatants.
plus:
1 Heavy Raider, Thrust 6+, high electronics for stealth, <20%
between Armor and Structure.  It needs an extremely advantageous
range band to make up for the expense of its huge engines and
stealth systems.
Armament mix strategies:
Parthian:  Bat 4's mounted exclusively on one side.  Designed
to maintain range against an enemy convoy without giving up
firing opportunities.  Works especially well if you can
cripple their drives first.
Fast Carrier:  Scouts find enemy shipping, then the fighter
groups hit it while the Carrier stay well out of range.
Pocket Battleship:  Instead of trying to stay out of range of
the enemy escorts the pocket battleship just closes and blows
the hell out of them.  Good scouting is essential to prevent
the battleship from getting damaged far from home.  A significant
portion of its defenses will be armor in order to delay a
threshold check that could strand it.

Another specialized ship, for those familiar with David
Weber's Honor Harrington series:
Tepes Class State Security Battlecruisers.

These are multirole ships decidedly _not_ optimized for fleet to
fleet combat.  The Peeps used them as weapons of terror to keep
both their populace and navy personnel in line.  In a sense they
are really just glorified troop transports, but as the favorite
tool of an intelligence service they probably have a few neat
knick-knacks aboard.

In addition to interface craft for landing troops, a fighter bay
for covert ground attacks would be a good asset.  Or even specialized
fighter groups that carry troops for boarding.

They carry huge electronics suites for eavesdropping, especially
against their own ships.  They should have a much higher effective
electronics ratings against their own nation's naval forces.

Multirole ships might make good exploration vessels.  Imagine a
series of naval simulations designed to build a multirole craft,
they want a ship or squadron that can handle any problem (that
does not actually involve going to war with a major power) on
their own:

1)  Stopping smugglers
2)  Monitoring the planet surface
3)  Monitoring local space
4)  Stopping insurrections
5)  Transporting emergency supplies, or extremely valuable
cargo securely
6)  Authorized for First Contact protocols
7)  Maintaining quarantine and/or customs
8)  Stepping in on the squabbles of local corporate space fleets
ie, prevent corporations from dropping rocks on their rival's
space ports
9)  Chasing enemy intelligence scouts out of the system
10) Not getting destroyed or captured by enemy Q-ship tactics
11) Rescuing damaged ships in system, or at least their crews
12) Long duration, multi-encounter patrols

Because a significant amount of mass and points are going to be
committed to troops, cargo area and specialized systems they
are not going to be as combat effective as a ship designed on
equal points for the express purpose of beating equal sized
enemy ships.

Lets see:
100 Mass Ship, 40 Mass Engine, 10 Mass Structure, 10 mass Armor,
9 Mass Fighter Bay, 9 Mass Interface bay, 4 Mass Electronics,
1 Launch Control, 10 Mass Cargo and Troops, 6 Bat-1, 1 Fire Con

A brief note on firing arcs for fleet designers:
A lot depends on who is going to be determining the engagement
angle.	Convoy escorts are going to travelling from A to B
and especially for the first hit are going to be hit at an
inconvenient angle.  For these ships it really pays to have
180 or 360 arc weapons.  They may forgo the longer ranged
narrower arc weapons on the theory that a force big enough
to do crippling damage at long range is going to wipe them
out anyway.

For ships which are designed to meet an enemy fleet a lot depends
on the average closing speed whether reducing one's firepower
in exchange for better arcs is worthwhile.  Is it worth a 33%
percent loss of firepower to go from 180 Bat2 to 360 Bat2s?

Michael Sandy