[FT] Minatures......

I've recently decided to look into painting some minatures for my Full 
Thrust games.... The little lego space ships didn't go over as well as 
the micromachines star trek ships I had.  Unfortunately, I need some
more 
cool ships to play with.  What I'm wondering is if there are any fleet 
packs that offer a selection of minitures at a discounted price.  Is 
there such a beast?  After all at $6.50 / heavy cruiser for a gzg ship 
its pretty pricy, especially if you're not known for your artistic 
ability.  Also are their any good sources that are drastically cheaper 
then just buying them from the local game store.  I found one site 
offering 35% off price, but $7 minium shipping charge.	Too make it
worth 
while, I'd have to order about 50 bucks to see any possible savings, and

then the shipping and handling eat that to just about nothing.	Any 
suggestions?

...............And on another topic......

Large Ships ( in FTFB ) aka > mass 400).  I've been playing around with 
designing various ships that are roughly on par with a small fleet in
the 
number of points that they cost.  Has anyone else played around with
this 
idea.  I've done some play testing.  I believe that I posted a "day of 
the juggernaught" scenerio a while ago with a mass 400 ship that was 
worth around 1300-1400 pts or so with fighter complement.  I'm curious
to 
see what people have seen in their duels regarding these monstrosities. 

I've noticed a couple of trends in some of our games....

1.  Pack on the PDS otherwise you're fighter/sml fodder
2.  If you're slow up the %space to defenses... you'll need lots o'pds +

armor
    + screens.
3.  Screens seem to be much more effective for the mass then armor given

all of
    the damage points that the ships hull is able to stop.
4.  You need redundant firecontrolls.... its a real pain not to be able 
to
    split fire over several small ships (big multi swatting capabilities

needed)
5.  (We don't play with core rules... but if you do... does this seem to

really
     devalue these large ships effectiveness...? )
6.  When the big ships start to take threshold damage, luck seems to be
a 
big
    factor in weither they're still combat effective or not.... bad die
    rolls have seen some of the ships unable to return fire or defend 
themselves
    properly after only the 1st threshold check.... a lot to lose
because 
of
    bad rolls.
7.  With out fighters, the big ships don't have any flank protection...
    Also against other fighters task forces and SML fleets having a 
reasonable
    amount of fighters helps immensly in protecting your huge ship.
8.  Usually you can destroy quite a number of enemy vessels and still 
flee the
    system to (Strategically thinking) be patched up to 100% strenght
and 
do
    it again.  (Aka big ship survivability)

The above comes from some mucking around with the mass 400 juggernaught 
ship in several battles:

1.  Scenerio posted earlier.... Juggernaught won, took out a lot of
enemy 
ships
2.  Vs Free Cal-Tex Kenedy Cruisers
    4 Kenedy missle cruisers ( 4 sml's/each + 2 rounds / launcher ) + 2 
    beam armed heavy frigates ( NAC -> escourt variant ).
	-> Juggernaught Lost, but just barely 
	   Seems the fighters had bad luck and basically used up 4
squads 
to
	   protect against missles... the other 2 squades unfortunately 
got
	   wasted on their attack run (Bad move there...)  Then the slow

speed
	   bad thrust of the juggernaught and high missle die rolls ment

that
	   about 10 sml's landed the 1st wave, then 4 the 2nd wave.... 
can we
	   say dead juggernaught.  However the juggernaught anihlated
the
	   2 escourt frigates, 1 kenedy class, and crippled another 
keneedy
	   class before being missled into submission.	The
juggernaughts 
slow
	   speed and low maneverability were a problem here.
3.  NSL cruiser force ( 3 CH's, 2 DD's, 2 CL's[Escourt Variants] )
	   Here the NSL's sturdiness keept them in the game for quite a
while,
	   however the juggernaught made short work of one of the CL's
and
	   then even with 1 cl still pulling escourt duty, the fighters 
mauled
	   both DD's and crippled one of the Ch's before all being 
destroyed.
	   The juggernaught rolled well and took out the rest of the 
ships after
	   just taking its 2nd threshold check.  She was able to repair 
most
	   systems lost to the 1st threshold check quite rapidly because

of the
	   large number of DCP on board.
4.  Mixed beam/torp fleet with lots of overlapping adaf coverage ( 2 
DN's,
    2 CH's ).
	   Again the juggernaught did well, but this game came fairly
close.
	   the adaf on every ship coupled with a tight formation and a 
fair
	   number of pds + class-1 beams pretty much eliminated most of 
the
	   fighter threat.  I think I was only able to do maybe a dozen 
points
	   worth of fighter damage the entire game ( 6 squads go by
by... 
)
	   The ensuing fight was rather tough... 1 Ch was crippled, but
managed
	   to evade destruction.  1 Ch exploded from some serious 
overkill.
	   1 DN crippled but still combat worthy. 2nd DN just about dead

( 3
	   hits left, but almost all of its main armament left ).  
	   The juggernaught was on its last row of damage boxes and was
looking
	   to get out of dodge.  It had been striped of most of its 
firepower
	   and really only had 2 class-3's, 1 torp, 1 firecontrol, and 
about
	   8 pds left for what its worth.... FTL'd out.  This was one of

the
	   closest battles fought.  It lasted 13 rounds before the 
juggernaught
	   withdrew.  If a little more firepower had survived the 
thresholds,
	   then the juggernaught should have been able to destroy
another 
	   vessel or two before escaping and would have vindicated the
	   big ship bully idea.

Anyway, that's my synopsis.  I'm seting up an attack on a starbase 
scenerio in a week or two.  I've got the starbase pegged at mass 800
with 
some support ships.  The attacking force I set at around 3500 points ( 
1:1 point ratio ).  Does this seem fair.  I suggested the players take 
SML boats since the station is a sitting duck.... I would think that 
would be a realistic attack route... after all a beam armed fleet would 
take quite a while to kill it.	Should I up the ratio since the station 
has no flt + no thrust that's worth at least 20% mass advantage to the 
defenders, even though the station is a sitting duck for sml fire?

Thanks,
chuck