Re: Auxillary Cruisers

I considered for awhile a way to use the cloaking optional rules to
create a 
sort of space U-boat.  This however was never followed throuhg because I

could never, under the exsisting rules for cloaking in FT, figure out an

effective method of operation.

Under the rules, a vessel is complete blind while cloaking.  I assume
that 
some sort of navigational systems are functional, but that's about it.	
Under the system I came up with, the vessels would operate from 
pre-determined bases, who's coordinates would be used as a ready course 
after an attack.

Under cloak, they would procede to a predetermined set of coordinates
and 
wait, only when they were in position.	A swift attack, then recloak and

return along a preset course.

This made a lot of sense against emplacements that don't move a lot, but
as 
far as commerce raiding and use against actual moving targets it seemed
that 
the cloakign vessels would tend to come out of cloak off the mark too
often.

Well, that's what I came up with.  any other ideas?

Eli

>From: edens@mindspring.com (Matt Edens)
>Reply-To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
>To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
>Subject: Auxillary Cruisers
>Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 08:02:20 +0000
>
>"Or how about the Merchat Auxilliary Carriers which had a Hurricane or
two
>mounted on a catapult with NO retrieval access at all. The guy hit the
silk
>and waited in a rubber raft for a boat to pick him up. There's
dedication 
>for
>you!"
>
>
>Think those were called CAM ships. The MAC ships, the Merchant
Auxillary
>Carriers were regular merchantmen (mostly bulk ore and grain carriers
if
>I'm not mistaken) decked over with a flight deck and carrying 4-6
Swordfish
>biplanes (gotta love the "stringbags" -- open cockpit biplanes in WWII?
>kinda like bringin' a knife to a gunfight?  Yet surprsingly they
worked).
>No hangers as I recall, carried 'em lashed down on deck 24/7.	I've
>tinkered with the concept a little - freighters that trade out a little
>hold space for a hanger bay or two or strap on a little extra armor and
>guns and pretend to be a cruiser - an idea that was given serious
thought
>during both world wars.  The RN, short on escorts, commissioned quite a
few
>Armed Merchant Cruisers which occassionally got in way over their
heads.
>One was present at the battle of Coronel in WWI and escaped from the
>Scharnhorst and Gneisenau mainly by being hardly worth sinking,
another,
>the Rawalipindi, was sunk by S&G's WWII namesakes, while another, the
>Jervis Bay, fought a hopelessly one-sided action (four 6-inch guns vs
six
>11-inch and numerous 5.9's) against the Admiral Scheer (but saved most
of a
>convoy in the process).  I've played a few commerce raiding scenarios
of
>that sort: auxilary cruisers guarding a convoy versus a small raiding
>force.
>
>Amazingly, despite its obvious drawbacks, the auxilary cruiser was
regarded
>as a real threat going into WWI, particularlly since the Germans armed
>several fast liners, including a few that had won the Blu Ribband for
the
>Atlantic crossing (as fast, if not faster than most cruisers -- by
>comparison the thrust-2 liner in the FB seems a rather pokey old tub). 
The
>RN even armed a few liners as a response (plans at one point called for
>arming the Lusitania and Mauritania, a factor in the Lusitania's
sinking -
>ie German insistance that she was armed).  Once two of these "eggshells
>armed with hammers" even fought - the RN AMC Carmania sank the German
Cap
>Trafalgar off Trindad in 1914.
>
>That's one intersting wrinkle between FT and 20th century wet navy
models:
>commerce raiding.  While carriers may function more or less like WWII,
>there's nothing comparable to a u-boat, so commerce raiding is taken
back
>to more traditional days - fast cruisers along the lines of the CSS
>Alabama, the Emden or even the Graf Spee, quietly lurking near the
"safe
>jump limit".  Reading about the KRS Kohl in the Rot Hafen saga (great
stuff
>by the way) has had me toying with the idea of small "stealth boats" or
>some such as a sort of u-boat stand in.  Thoughts?
>
>			  -M
>
>

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