Retrograde skirmishers

> > Yeah... that's basically it.  What wartime operation is a skirmisher

> > going to be able to fulfill?  
 
> In _your_ game universe, possible very little. In other, some might
argue
> more practical systems, they (skirmishers in general) have multiple
roles,
> some already described by others on the list. Are other (tweaked)
> dreadplanets going to escort the fighter replenishment convoy and the
food
> shipments to the outer colonies? Is a "Fast/Heavy/Needle BC fleet"
going to
> be defending each listening post and scout squadron? 

You're making something of a straw man argument here.

There is a role that can be filled by skirmishers:  harassment.  You can
try to cut off supply lines, you can interfere with logistical supports
for
a war effort... and that's basically it.  If you can't bring any meat
and
potatoes to the table to back it up, that is not going to win any sort
of
war by itself.	(See also the Atlantic naval theatre of either World
War.)

That's not to say that skirmishers do not have their LIMITED role in a
larger
war effort.  It might interest you to know that, at the low mass range
of
their forces, the entity that operates the dreadplanet has its own
series
of skirmish vessels, called Shrikes.  There's three main classes that
get
used:

1.  War Shrike.  The original archetype, is a large escort ranged ship,
thrust 6, cloaking device, 3 pulse torpedoes.

2.  Needle Shrike.  Slightly smaller adaptation of the War Shrike,
thrust
6, cloaking device, 8 (I think) needle beams.

3.  Armor Shrike.  Does by simple speed and resilience (it's mass 94 and
stiffly hulled and armored) what the smaller Shrikes do by stealth. 
Thrust 6,
10 (I think) needle beams.

All of these could be classed as "skirmishers".  All of them are fairly
inexpensive vessels.  Needle and Armor Shrikes are the critical-hit guys
that either outflank or decloak behind enemy fleets in large scale fleet
actions and take out a few vital systems to help a larger fleet of ships
bring down the opposition.  War Shrikes are far less useful in large
scale
actions (they get chopped to ribbons before they can do much) but for
smaller
operations they still have their place.

In between the Shrikes and the Dreadplanet Roberts, they have larger
cloaking
torpedo cruisers, faster battledreadnoughts for patrol, and multi-role
superdreadnoughts for the front lines (which, yes, will have Shrike
escorts).

And no, overstocking your PDS is a _suicidal_ countermeasure.  As you
can
see, they have both their own ships that would shred such tactics, as
well
as numerous slave-allies whose ship-to-ship tactics are far more focused
than their own.  If you overstocked your PDS against the master race,
they'd
thank you for making it easy and let their slaves draw straws to choose
which
one gets to hand your butt to you.  (Read:  it's been tried.)

> Another note. You talk about defending hard targets here, but the
> descriptions of your games so far all seem to be open space combats.
Hard to
> have a coherent/consistent line of discussion or debate when the rules
keep
> changing.

Uhhhh... this isn't, itself, very coherent.  Maybe we do happen to
represent
a number of our battle-line combats in open space.  However, the place
where
what you're saying breaks down here is, we're not doing so to a degree
that
we're losing sight of the assumed fact that, somewhere out there, there
_are_
hard targets that these ships are expected to defend.  If they can't
defend
them, they wouldn't be built in the first place.

> IMO, cloaking devices in this context (what I understand of your
universe)
> are wholely unbalancing, since there's nothing preventing a planetary
> assault force from FTL-ing in, cloaking until within 12" of the
target,
> wasting it in one turn of fire, then cloaking out. Talk about boring. 

That's what orbital and planetary defenses with real firepower are for. 
If
anything decloaks at close range to a planet, it's probably not going to
survive.  Cloak-capable ships are _expensive_.	They give up a mild
advantage
to uncloaked ones on mass of weapons and a very dramatic advantage to
them
on cost of delivering those weapons in a ship to the front.  (As much as
25%.)  It's true that they're very dangerous if you get caught out of
position with them.  It's also true that you can't just use them up like
popcorn by firing at planets instead of their defenses due to their
cost.
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 The Stilt Man		      stiltman@teleport.com
   http://www.teleport.com/~stiltman/stiltman.html
   < We are Microsoft Borg '98.  Lower your expectations and	>
   < surrender your money.  Antitrust law is irrelevant.	>
   < Competition is irrelevant.  We will add your financial and >
   < technological distinctiveness to our own.	Your software	>
   < will adapt to service ours.  Resistance is futile. 	>