re: Campaign tech levels.....

Robert,

Thanks a ton for the tech levels idea.	Seems a lot like what I was 
thinking for the my second approach.

Actually off the needle fighters idea, I was wondering if any one 
consitantly uses needle beams in their fleets?	I've actually never 
really used the needle beams at all.  I've played around quite a bit
with 
the Salvo Missles, and find that most of my battles end up either of 2 
ways.  1.  Enemy obliterated rather quickly.  2.  Or Enemy formation is 
completely disrupted allowing me to anhilate a small segment of their 
forces ( so far around 1/5 - 1/4 of the fleet ), with little/no loss of 
my own fleet... but basically no where enough fire power to take on the 
rest of the fleet that is regrouping to squash me.

As my opponents are starting to do more of the scatter and regroup 
tactic, I've been switching to pulse/beam armed ships.	Personally the 
nice cannons, heavy hide kinda game that results is fun, but not as 
adrenaline filled as the sml's.  How are needle beams in combat? 
They're 
really short ranged, and as you said previously robert....... firecon's 
got to go.........  Also systems damaged by needle beam fire can't be 
reparied ( MT right? ).  So, your average cruiser that closes to range 
12" for the head on slug-fiest pass on a cruiser armed with a couple 
needle beams and some fighters/missles ( keep pds/class-1 beams going ),

can seriously hamper the other cruisers fire?  You could trade what 1 
class-3, 3 arc beam for 3 front arc needle beams.  Rough statistics, 4 
rounds of fire from the 3 guns will buy you -2 firecons on the enemy 
cruiser...

It almost seems like its not worth it, but then a couple of lucky blows 
and you've completely eliminated a heavy ship from the battle... ( Okay,

except for mark and his infamous light cruiser of protection+12.... [ 12

pds on a light cruiser... and yes, 12 pds at range 3" can destroy your 
happy subpac destroyer ] ).  I'm really curious as to what experiences 
every on has had with the needle beams in a fleet and what kind of 
tactics they use.

I've personally come to the conclusion that SML's are either..... pack 
the fleet to the gills with them and wipe out the enemy fast or flee 
trying.  My mixed fleets usually didn't have the sml fire power to over 
come the enemy's defenses enough to compensate for the loss of 
sustainable fire power.  Unfortunately if I raise the sml weapon mixture

beyond about 30-40% of the fleet firepower mix... I start to manage to 
seriously disrupt my opponents formation, but don't seem to quite have 
enough beam/torp firepower to eliminate the cutoff elements to make up 
for the serious loss in sustainable firepower.	In fact I seem to do a 
lot worse then my all sml fleet when I break the enemy's formation.  
Anyone, have similar experiences with sml's?  Anyone have any really
good 
tactics then pick on the slow movers/big targets who's enemy commanders 
don't create ships with 12 pds on them?

Okay, and my last question/comment.  I know that there was the
gunfighter 
duel where 2 sdn's went at it.	class-4 beams vs class-2+torpedos.  Very

interesting.  In fact, interesting enough that when I was designing my 
space stations for a previous "capture the starbase" battle, I mounted 
class-5 and class-4 beams on mass to a 800 hull station.  Talk about 
picking off frigates at extreme range.	Unfortunately once they're in 
close the big guns are really firepower/mass ineffective.  Has anyone 
experiemented with the class-5 or class-6 beam systems on moving ships? 

I tryed playing around a bit with fast/unprotected light cruisers with 
class-5 beams to see if they could be effective in fleet battles but I 
didn't do so well.  Anyone try the "sniper gun" idea.  I did use the 
class-6 beam heavy cruiser gun cannon to great amusment in one battle, 
but I ended up loosing the majority of my forces.

think about this concept addition to your fleet:

"Snipper Rifle"  ( you need the class-5's range ..... )
hull: 44 (fragil 4 dp)
ftl
thrust-8 
weapons (18)
1*firecon
1*class-5 beam (f)
1*pds

tmf:44 cost: 151

Tactical idea:	Shoot outside of range 36", keep your front facing as 
much
		as possible.

	(Bad thing already):
		1.  Don't let anyone get within gun range of you...
		2.  Fighters with combat endurance are not good....
			(run... you can't afford to get hit/but you
loose
			 a lot of the value of your snipping.... )

Chuck