Re: SMs revisited

Roger Books wrote:

>Well, I am in the middle of a combat with a FT (but not sci-fi
>wargaming) newbie.  He is running NAC and I am running FSE.  We
>both started out with 2K fleets.  So far, mostly with SMs, I
>have taken out about 900 points of ships to his 400 points of
>mine, and I'm realizing something.  Even being extremely down
>ships he still outbeams me significantly, and that is not
>counting P-torps. 

<snort> IMO NAC P-torps don't really count unless you're fighting NSL
or the big thrust-2 ESU capitals - thrust-4 ships simply aren't
maneuverable enough to use (F)-arc weapons. OK, the Tacoma/T is nimble
enough to aim its torpedo, but it is brittle instead.

>I have managed to hit with 90+% of my Salvos,
>destroying 3 CE's and a couple of destroyers.	I'm down to
>4 SMs left and it really looks like I have to put them on target
>to have a chance.  This is all in spite of the fact that I have
>managed to make affective use of my salvos AND I managed to get
>in the aft arcs of one of his BB's and chewed away at it 
>unapposed for 3 turns with beams.
 
>So am I doing something wrong?  Is using 3 missiles to take out
>a Furious CE a bad thing?

I'd usually try to hit each Furious with 2 SMs and use my own beams
finish them off afterwards, but it depends a lot on the tactical
situation.

>It still looks like I am going to have to get extremely lucky with my
last 4 >salvos to be on even footing.  Right now he has 35 total beams
to my >32, and he has 4 p-torps.  The only thing that has saved me has
>been 1 arc p-torps and having better thrust than he does.

And it will probably continue to save you - trying to point (F)-arc
weapons at ships that are more maneuverable than you are is not easy at
all. Which is, of course, a big part of the reason why I prefer my own
(F)-arc designs to have at least thrust-6, and preferrably thrust-8 :-7

However, I have to ask... if you have about 1600 points left against
his 1100, don't you also have a considerably higher number of hull
boxes left? Or have most of your surviving ships already taken serious
damage while his survivors are virtually untouched (sounds a bit
unlikely if you've managed to punish his Victoria for three turns)?

The losses in points values that you describe suggest that you have
somewhere around 30-50% more hull boxes left than he has - though of
course this assumes that his survivors are about as badly hurt as yours
are. That's enough to balance his advantage in beams even when you take
his screens into account - I suspect he's got more screened ships than
you have; at least he must've had at the start of the battle. OK, he's
got 4 P-torps, but OTOH you have 4 SMs left to fire - and your ships
are more agile than his.

It's hard to tell who holds the upper hand without knowing more about
fleet compositions and damage levels on the ships involved, but it does
sound as a fairly even match to me. If anything, I'd say the FSE has
the best chance of winning.

>Sorry, just a minor frustration.  I thought as FSE if you could get
yourself >well up by the midpoint of the battle you would be in good
shape.

<g> Quite correct, too. If the FSE gets well ahead by the midpoint of
the battle, it'll usually end as a nail-biter with heavy damage to both
sides. If the FSE *doesn't* get well ahead by the midpoint, they'll get
their clocks cleaned in the second half :-)

As for NSL, well... IMO the FSE are quite capable of swatting them,
even when they resort to clouds of Banzai Jammer corvettes <G>

Later,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry