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Re: Carrier design in FT

From: "Tony Francis" <TONY@s...>
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 09:20:48 +0000
Subject: Re: Carrier design in FT

> Has anyone tried Nimitz style carrier designs in FT, (i.e. no weapons
> and lots of fighters?)  When I first started to play, they weren't
> workable, but now, with the new fighter endurance rules from the Fleet
> book, they look much more feasable.
They work best in a big game when you can use then as the real Nimitz 
would be used, ie kept well away from the action. As for the problem 
of launch rates (2 squadrons per turn unless you have some house 
rules), my theory is to wait until all of your fighters have been 
launched and then unleash them all at one go - don't send them in 
piecemeal, they'll get minced.

This brings up a couple of questions / clarifications that arose from 
a game I played last weekend (first go with the FB rules) :
1) How fast can carriers recover fighters ? We used the same rates as 
for launching, two groups per turn. Can they launch and recover in 
the same turn ? We said yes in this case because the carrier in 
question was a big Brigade through-deck job with more than enough 
deck space to do both.
2) How long do fighters take to refuel / re-arm ? We assumed one turn 
for each endurance point, ie six turns. There were no long-range 
fighters involved so we didn't have to deal with them.

> Also, does anyone have any ideas on how to make a PT boat in FT?  The
> base ship design rules don't allow for that much comparitive firepower
> on a small hull.  Right now, I'm thinking maybe a big ogre of a
fighter
> that takes two points to kill, and that you can hang several points of
> ordenance on.  
The only way within the existing rules would be to build a Mass-3 ship
with 
one mass of hull integrity, one mass of engines (thrust-8) and a 
submunition pack (I'm assuming no FTL requirement). Grand total, 
seven points. It would suffer from the lack of any modifiers in FT for 
target speed / size which would mean that its life expectancy would 
be about that of the apocryphal snowball in Hell.

Tony Francis


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