Re: FB2... hmmmm...

G'day,

 >> going to be the same kind of learning curve with plasma bolts.
 >
 >Not really...

OK maybe not for you, but for everybody else ;P ;)

 >The typical carriers I'm throwing are usually somewhere in the 200-300
range.
 >The Warbirds mentioned are 320.

Nope OK then I should be able to handle them... guess I'd just have to 
think about it a bit more.

 >Well... it doesn't break in the sense that you can design something
about as
 >big as you want.  Whether or not it breaks the gameplay... well, I
leave that
 >as an exercise for the individual player.  Battleships that size can
be
 >_extremely_ vulnerable to just an escort or two quickly zipping over
and
 >needling out their drives.

Yep that's one of the nicest facets of FT every weapon/idea has its
swings 
and roundabouts.

 >More likely both, if I can manage to do it.  Keep the 6 MU radii of
the
 >fighters and plasma bolts overlapping without the fighters actually
being
 >in danger, and you can hit with both at once.

I have a sneaking suspicion you should only be able to do that a few
times 
before your opponent figures a way to outfly that particular tactic.

 >And even an ultra-battleship that doesn't go all class 1's is still
not the
 >best plan.  If your opponent knows you're flying an ultra-battleship
(and,
 >when you give them a pre-warning of the thing's mass, they will...
anything
 >much over 1200 mass is going to _scream_ "I'm a battleship") there are
a
 >great many tricks that can be pulled to beat it

While I believe that you know what you're talking about, why does saying

I'm 1200 mass automatically make you a battleship????
Can you also please explain again exactly how you figure out what's
coming 
(sorry I seem to be getting a little muddled here)... you present ship 
masses and then go off and say what's on them? Or did you mean you
figured 
out your fleets and then present masses and then you think OK he's got
blah 
so with my stuff I can do such and such?

 >The two that come most easily to mind would be (a) any form
 >of carrier force (cloaking or otherwise) that, knowing that they won't

have to
 >worry about enemy fighters, "cheat" on their fighter complements and
go
 >for fourty-odd torpedo bombers

First up I'm still amazed at the assumption regarding 'there will be no 
fighters' and two its interesting that you like torpedo bombers this
much, 
we don't use them much at all (guess its the difference between using or

not using morale rules)

 > and (b) just about any fleet that has either
 >cloaking escorts or stiff, fast cruisers equipped with enough needle
beams
 >to make sure that your drives are prohibitively unlikely to survive
the first
 >pass.

OK I really only put the 1200 mass with PDS/class 1s as a rather extreme

(though probably not very useful, come to think of it) example, but for 
arguments sake lets stick with it. Now I'm not trying to be a pain in
the 
ass here (and now I promptly proceed to be just that sorry), but if I'm
all 
class 1s what have my drives got to do with anything? If I've guessed
awful 
wrong and you've got all little escorts and I've got the beam behemoth
from 
hell then you're going to be so much faster than me in the first place 
there's no point chasing you so I can't see any tremendous impact in
taking 
out my engines as I've got 360 deg arcs.

 >(Although, to be fair, if you just keep the ultra-battleship
 >at 1200 mass and give it escorts so that people won't necessarily know

what it
 >is, that's another story...)

Which is what I'd be inclined to do as there's this little voice in my
head 
saying... "didn't someone who knew what they were talking about say
never 
send big ships out by themselves..." ;)

 >Perhaps not.	But with 15 needle beams, that's two and a half hits per
turn.
 >Point that at a conventional capital ship and their fire controls
probably
 >will not survive more than two or three turns of sustained fire.

Mmmm definitely not in our camp Indy, he actually thinks we'd hit at all

with 15 needle beams ;)

 >Yeah, but if they throw K-gunned fighters _and_ the plasma bolts at
you, the
 >screens and PDS will only do so much good.

True, but that so much may be just enough to tip the balance and let my 
primary weaponry come round. I've found a lot of FT to come down to not 
trying to take any damage, but rather making sure you only take damage
you 
can cope with or at a speed that doesn't see your plans fall to pieces.

 >Now, having to take 10% of your ship mass just to get level
 >2's makes it expensive enough (and with torpedoes, missiles, and
K-guns able
 >to go right through it anyway) that I don't know if it's usually a
sound
 >trade-off.

They have their places, does come down to who you're playing against... 
against beams and PBs double screens can be particularly frustrating for

your attacker to encounter... imagine Laserlight or our man Teske trying
to 
PB a double screen fleet to death.... ;)

 >Immobile, orbital starbases, you mean?  Yeah, those can potentially
give a
 >rough idea of what a giant supership might be like.  (The official 
designation
 >for those giant ships that I use is "mobile starbase"... :)

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

 >I've actually got quite a bit of background material for my various
custom
 >races.  They all (at the moment) use FB1 tech, so it's not like I'm
making
 >new weapons for them or anything, but each one has a different ship
design
 >philosophy (that's far more variant than the various human sides in
the
 >official Full Thrust background) and their own range of tactics.  One
of
 >these days I'll have to get around to putting all this on a web site
and
 >paste the URL here.

There's actually a communal GZG site you can stick them up at, don't
have 
to be fancy just plain old text files will do, Tom Anderson (I think)
set 
it all up. If the instructions on how to use the joint haven't changed
then 
the following should work:

"that would be a job for ...
the unofficial unofficial GZG-L Web Repository!
http://members.xoom.com/gzg_l/
which is writable by FTP:
ftp://ftp.xoom.com
user: gzg_l
password: nacesu
so just make a new directory with some appropriate name and slam your
file
in it. then post the link. the only drawback is that it's on Xoom, which
is a bit slow and unreliable."

 >Yeah.  It could be that Sa'Vasku carriers with enough pod launchers
and wombs
 >could theoretically get themselves fighter superiority for free,
actually...

Not exactly free, don't swing that illusion too far back the other way
;)

 >stack up the expendable biomass, crank out enough interceptor pods to 
decimate
 >enemy fighters, and once you've brought enough of them down start
cranking
 >out your own fighters.  The pods would be an efficient way of taking
down
 >enemy fighters (costs less biomass) and then once you'd dealt with
them you
 >could just crank out as many of your own as you wanted.

Yep, though I have a feeling that once again it may not be quite as
simple 
a thing to pull off as stated ;)

 >I need to get my usual victims together and try some of this stuff
out.  :)

Like I said we'd be keen to hear how it all goes.

Have fun

Beth

------------------------------------------------------------------------
---- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Elizabeth Fulton
c/o CSIRO Division of Marine Research
GPO Box 1538
HOBART
TASMANIA 7001
AUSTRALIA
Phone (03) 6232 5018 International +61 3 6232 5018
Fax 03 6232 5053 International +61 3 6232 5053

email: beth.fulton@marine.csiro.au