[FT] Wave Guns, Fighter Racks, Mass/Thrust, & Maneuver Oh My!

Four FT thoughts/questions for the week:

1) Has anyone yet worked up a balanced Wave gun for Fleet Book ships?
I know it's a genre weapon and possibly unbalanced as it is in FT2, but
I was hoping it could be worked with FB mass and point costs.

2) Someone asked just recently about external fighter racks. I, too
would like to locate the old discussion if there was one. Bolt-on
fighters are logical options for FT, with the difficulties in recovery
being campaign level issues rather than sindividual scenario problems.
Assuming they have lower mass requirements than actual bays, they have
to be balanced with cost.

3) When a ship drops expendables (launches missiles, fighters, boats,
SM's) it is in fact losing mass. We could use simple F=ma to figure if a
ship should get a thrust bonus for dropping mass. A Thrust 2 100 Mass
carrier, carrying 4 fighter groups, for example, Generates a Force od
200 (100 mass * 2 thrust acceleration). Once the fighters are launched,
That Force of 200 is applied to only 76 mass, which gets an accel of
2.6, which we still round down to 2. However, a thrust 4 carrier with
the same mass should be able to eek out an extra point of thrust once
fighters are launched. 
	This is more significant when you go to the smaller ships: Take
a Missile destroyer - 30 mass, Thrust 6, 4 MT missiles. Once the
Missiles are gone, the Force of 180 is applied to 22 mass for a thrust
of 8 - perhaps that extra speed and amenuverability is enough to get the
fragile ship out of danger. Or Indy's Tin-can fighter carrier (CVE)
would gain 1 thrust (to 7) once fighters were launched. A missile
Frigate could jump from thrust 8 to thrust 10 after unloading. 
	Granted, this is added complexity, but it can affect campaign
settings - increasing survival of 'delivery' units like carriers and
missile boats, and possibly affect the way individual scenarios
establish victory conditions.

4) I assume that FB2 will determine some of this, but I think it would
be neat to be able to buy more maneuverable ships for a given thrust -
like the Kra'vak maneuverability in FT2. Coud we attempt to balance this
maneuverability with simply point cost? Buy the ability to turn up to
your thrust rating for say +50% point cost on engines? I'd feel as much
or much more comfortable with thrust 4 that could make a 120 degree turn
for the same cost as thrust 6 that could only turn 90 degrees.

Noam R. Izenberg		noam.izenberg@jhuapl.edu