Re: Strike Boats...

>Tenders are a very expensive way of getting FTL capability for those
>boats, though - if you had replaced the tenders with average-hulled
>battleships (with the same equipment as the tenders except for the tug
>FTL drives and having 40 hull boxes instead of 36) and made the
>strikeboats Mass 11, cost 40, FTL-equipped, you could've bought another
>4 or 5 strikeboats.

I would tend to agree with the idea of building a tender that could
stand
in the battle line as well. A light tender is only a target - or wasted
points sitting in the rear.

>His ships also had an effective range of 48mu. Thrust-4 strike boats
>might have been OK if his ships had had thrust *0*, but it is too slow
>otherwise.

Agreed again. The high thrust of SBs is not only to "chase or evade the
enemy," but primarily to close the range as quickly as possible so more
of
them survive to deliver their payloads.

>You mean "would not have been able to go...", no? OK, they soaked up
>some fire which would otherwise have hit the strikeboats, but given how
>frail the strikeboats were I don't think that effect was very
>significant. OTOH going in together with the Victorias would've given
>the ESU a larger number of reasonably hard-to-kill targets to shoot at,
>making each of your BBs/ tenders last that much longer.

On the other hand. SBs should expect losses - high ones even. Effective
design and deployment can help minimise this, but they are meant to
absorb
a certain amount of firepower. Because there are so many of them, the
enemy
must waste more beams to insure kills against each individual, as
opposed
to lumping them all together against one of your ships.

Schoon