RE: Thoughts on FB3

I would go for the 36" movement (with upto a 2pt turn), 3 turn
endurance, no
second movement, range 6.

I would also suggest that they need better protection from PDS. As it
currently stands, no single missile would stand a chance to hit anything
bigger than a corvette (_Each_ PDS has a 50% chance to kill it and each
Class-1 has a 33% chance, most firgates have 3+ anti-missile weapons).
So,
they have to be used in a swarm tatic. This leads to fire and leave ship
designs (which I don't like <shrug>). Perhaps they should take 2 hits to
kill, or be treated as Heavy Fighters (although, this does nothing
against
the scatterguns or interceptor pods). Better would be a -1 on rolls to
hit
it (PDS only hit on 5-6; Class-1 only hit on a 6; scatterguns and
interceptor pods kill it on a roll of 2-6). I still do not have an
answer to
the fire-and-leave ship design, unless you limit the number of missiles
that
can attack a given target in a round, or limit the number of missiles
that
can fire in a round (both bad ideas).

As for balancing them against SM missiles, I think that the PDS does
this
(and will do it even with my suggested changes). It takes ~2.25x the
number
of PDS to shoot down a SM salvo than 1 MT missile (as is) and ~1.5 with
my
suggestion.

-----
Brian Bell
bkb@beol.net
http://members.xoom.com/rlyehable/ft/	   
-----

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laserlight [SMTP:laserlight@quixnet.net]
> Sent: Monday, May 08, 2000 6:40 PM
> To:	gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
> Subject:	Re: Thoughts on FB3
> 
> 
> >aebrain@dynamite.com.au wrote:
> >>
> >> * MT missiles - here we need to consider the things, as we
> now have a directly
> >> competitive system (SMLs) and fighters no longer move 12" vs
> 18", but 24" with
> >> a possible extra.
> 
> I'd say 2 turns at 24" plus a 6" secondary movement (which keeps
> the total move at 54" as current); OR use 2x36" instead of
> 2x24", which lets the missile be faster than most fighters (no
> human pilots to keep the gees down) and gives you a weapon with
> a range suffciently longer to be worthwhile.	Still attack
> selected target, not closest; anyone with a reasonable PDS suite
> still has a pretty good chance of knocking them down.  Unless we
> add in the "ECM-assist" missile we were discussing a few months
> ago.
> 
[snip]