Re: FB designs and SLMs

You wrote: 

>It's good to hear that the FSE _can_ win a battle...at our group, so 
far >they are 0 for 2 in recent games.

I've played around a bit with both book designs and some of my own, and 
my comments on SLMs are as follows:

Mass:  You gotta have a LOT of SLMs to be worthwhile.  If you have one 
or two racks, forget it.  You gotta a lot of salvos to blanket the 
enemy's projected endpoints.

Maneuver:  If you're facing SLMs and you don't, you're dead.  Flying in 
a straight line is all well and got, but makes you an easy target.  I 
can't count the times I've gotten a salvo of SLMs in base-to-base 
contact with an enemy capital ship that isn't using it's imagination.  
This is where pickup games can be harder to use SLMs in that against 
your regular opponents.  I can guess 99 times out of 100 what my 
brother is going to do with his fleet, total strangers sometimes 
surprise me.

Escorts:  Gotta have 'em.  

Variety:  SLMs don't kill large ships except in unusual cases.	SLMs 
strip off the escorts and damage capitals, sometimes inflicting that 
all-important first systems check.  If you don't have a beam-based 
punch to back up the missles, you're dead.

John M. Atkisnon