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Re: Retrograde gimmickry

From: stiltman@t...
Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 21:45:56 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Retrograde gimmickry

> In the circle i play in, if you are in a position where there is no
clear 
> objective (in most scenarios with an objective, the retrograde tactic
falls 
> flat on its face),

Yeah... that's basically it.  What wartime operation is a skirmisher
going to
be able to fulfill?  If you need to provide cover while you're
conducting
troop landings or evacuations, skirmishers are useless.  If you need to
defend
a planet under concentrated attack, the only reason they'd be any use at
all
is if they had the luxury of a week between FTL and planetfall, and they
lose
even that if the enemy has fast drives, cloaking devices, or reflex
fields.
If it needs to press in on a layered defense net of patrols at an enemy
planet,
it's going to be pretty useless.  Neither can it present a particularly
daunting defense grid of its own; surgical FTL placement or cloaking
devices
will both defeat their purposes as such just by being there.

> and it looks like a (very boring) loss is almost certain, 
> you fire up your ftl drives and piss off.

Yup... let them have the open space.  Nothing there but dust. :)
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