Core Systems Thresholds

Personally I like the core systems threshold rules, without them the
games
tend to turn into brute slugging matches.  With the old rules, games we
played with a mix of cruisers, escorts and capital ships tended to wind
up
with all the small ships blown to m-cee square while the big boys
continued
to slug it out.  It got to where it was a little like Wooden Ships &
Iron
Men in space.  The capital ships were "fit to lie in the line of battle"
while the small fry, if they wanted to live, had best hang back and pick
off cripples, stragglers, etc.	which is about all frigates, sloops etc.
would do in fleet engagements in the age of sail (that and scouting,
which,
come to think of it has a parallel in using escorts as sensor pickets).
Battlecruiser class ships even mirrored the dilemma of the old 50 gun
4th
rates -- fit for the line of battle, but only barely so.

	With the core thresholds, not to mention salvo missles and
improved
Pulse Torpedoes, the little ships fast forward to WWI.	Sure they're
still
pretty vulnerable but they have a chance of doing significant, even
crippling damage. By unleashing them at crucial moments you can turn the
tide of battle, like the German destroyer attacks at Jutland that forced
Jellicoe to turn away and allowed Scheer to disengage.

	Naval history is full of lucky hits that turned the tide of
battles.  Like the Bismark, rudder crippled by a lucky torpedo hit,
steaming in circles while the British pummelled it at leisure. Or at
Jutland the magazine hits that blew the Queen Mary, Indefatigable and
Invincible out of the water and prompted Beatty's "there's something
wrong
with our bloody ships" -- and was exactly what happened to the Hood 25
years later.

			-M