Re: FT tactics vs slow ships, tiny ships are toast

In a message dated 1/22/00 7:43:29 AM Eastern Standard Time,
GBailey@aol.com 
writes:

> I'll see if I can get one of his designs.  I've created various
similar 
>  designs:
>  (think of the WW2 BBs)
>  Mass 184, Maneuver 1, FTL, weak hull, 20 armor;
>  weapons: 8 C3s with 5 arcs, 4 at AP+FP+F+FS+AS, 4 at FP+AP+A+AS+FS
>  (4 quad turrets, 2 forward and 2 aft); 2 C2s with 6 arcs
(secondaries); 8 
> C1s;
>  2 pulse torpedoes, AP+FP, FS+AS (I don't know why he added these
recently);
>  6 PDS, 1 ADFC (so if two "BBs" are present that's 12 PDS to deal
with), 4 
> FCs.
>  Cost: 658
>  
>  Sorry, that's 36 beam dice.	Make it 72 with 2 of these in a 1500 pt
fleet.
>  Figure the rest of the points are SMR missile boats that act as BJs
as 
well.
>  
>  Tell me a tactic that works against this.  Cinematic movement.  I
know your
>  first response: SMs.  Give me a sample fleet of this and then try one

> without
>  overdoing the SMs (I try to stay in a Star Trek flavor since I use
those
>  miniatures most of the time).
>  
>  Glen

Well, if the flavor is Star Trek, and you are talking about Federation 
designs, you will have to stick with SM and fighters or just going with
the 
beam-2 approach (then get within 24 fast and stay outside of 12), but if

you're talking Klingons...

...you could make the case for a nice load of D6D drone cruisers and
call the 
drones either MT missiles or SM (or, mayber better yet, extended range
SM).  
For a design for the D6D, just come up with a thrust 4, 3 SML, 2 beam-2
(180 
degree) design, and tack on a shield generator.  A weak hull is okay if
you 
plan on staying out beyond 24".  Call it a Mass 72 vessel.  Roughly 240 
points or so (I haven't done the design, this is just off the top of my 
head).	Add in something for him to concentrate his fire on--lots of
armor, 
screen-2, call it a C8 or D8 or something like that--but shoot that ship
last 
(I'm assuming that you don't allow your opponent to see your ship
control 
sheets) so he doesn't realize how weak it is offensively.  Or you could
just 
go with a bunch of SMR units and call them (in SFB terms) scatterpack 
shuttles off of Kzinti drone frigates...the possibilities are endless!

Personally, I have very bad luck with SM and would just take the massive

Beam-2 approach myself, or massed pulse torps (and call my ships 
Romulans--oooh-there's another idea--use cloaked ships to choose your 
range--thrust 2 or 3 will do for those).

Whatever approach you use--good luck!

Rob