Re: The GZG Digest V1 #608

On Fri, 10 Dec 1999, Sindre Cools Berg wrote:

> Tom Anderson wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, Sindre Cools Berg wrote:
> >
> > > Roger Books wrote:
> > >
> > > > You know, maybe only playing with official designs is the
> > > > way to go...
> > >
> > > I our games, we've never had that much problem with small ships
> > > escorting...though we use Fleet Book only designs,
> > > and try (sometimes at
> > > least) to make logical fleets.
> >
> > however, i think there is a good case for banzai jammers being
realistic,
> > to some extent. basically, those tiny ships have jobs other than
banzai
> > jamming;
> 
> Though I agree with you on the need for small ships I see a problem
with the
> willingness for a fleet to sacrifice large amounts of small usefull
ships just
> to soak up damage...In a campaign it would mean a non-FSE fleet would
need as
> much resupply of small scouts as the FSE would of missiles (i..e. you
trade
> one banzai jammer for each salvo).

there's obviously a balance to be struck here. on the one hand, a fleet
with no granaatscherven is obviously in trouble on the strategic scale
(no
communications and no scouting). on the other hand, given the choice
between losing two or three granaatscherven and losing a battleship,
what
admiral will throw away the BB?

perhaps fleets will need resupplies of granaatscherven, in the same way
that they will need resupplies of fighters. given that granaatscherven
(mass 3-9) are closer to fighters (mass 1) than cruisers (mass 60) in
mass, maybe they should be seen as large small-craft rather than small
ships. they are usually pretty simple, so they should be easy to
mass-produce. yes, it's a nasty way to look at things, but it makes a
certain twisted sort of sense.

> Not to mention the morale effect etc...

well, there is that too. i PSB my way out of it by saying that the
granaatscherven are semi-robotic, so if they are used as banzai jammers,
the crew can bail out.

> > > And isn't it better to spend the
> > > points you spend on surrounding the large ship with small
corvettes on
> > > some proper escort cruisers or other ships with overlapping ADAFs
?
> >
> > this is a point of debate.
> 
> In theory only one jammer per salvo (at least if the firer spreads his
> missiles in an intelligent fashion), but take a decent NSL fleet with
one
> Super-Dreadnought as the main ship. With 2 overlapping Light escorts
you get
> 10 PDS + the ships own PDS on any ship in the convoy..I've seen in
played that
> way and it is really a hard nut to crack without severe losses (I'll
gladly
> accept any good hints on how :)  and that without banzai jammers...

i don't know exactly how many PDS the SDN has; by looking at the FT Ship
Registry, i guess it to be 4. that's 14 PDS in total. that kills about 7
SMs, i think, which is 2 dice. thus, on average, only the first two dice
in a salvo will be stopped. that's pretty good, and when the average
salvo
is 3-5 dice, probably enough.

tom