Re: Salvo missile escalation

> For the next game I'm going to suggest a 5 or 6 thousand point game,
> expecting to be knocked down to 4.
> I might try to get them to allow all systems instead of them saying
'no nova
> cannons cause they're silly' or 'no cloaks or reflex fields cause I
don't
> like them'.

Nova cannons, as they're originally described, actually aren't very good
in
FB.  We've started allowing for scaling them up similar to plasma bolts
so
that large ships have a reason to carry them again.

Cloaking devices are a mixed bag; if you know how to handle them they
can be
very, very nasty, and if you don't your opponent can make you pay for
them
dearly.

> Hell, they even banned my 300 mass, thrust 2 ship with a whole load of
class
> 1 beams. Saying that though I have since learned that lots of little
ships
> have a much better survivability than one huge one, currently I use 80
mass
> heavy cruisers but I might lower that to around 50 or 60.

I actually hold the opposite opinion.  For most purposes, large ships
usually
will beat small ones.  Simple reason:  a small ship can be splattered
with
minimal effort, whereas you have to pound on a large one that follows a
similar design philosophy for a while before you can meaningfully reduce
its
capabilities.  Second simple reason:  any sort of mass destruction
weapon
(nova cannons, plasma bolts, whatever) will have its damage multiplied
by the
number of ships it's hitting.  If you hit two ships at once with it, you
just
did twice the damage as if you only hit one of them.

That said, a mass 300, thrust 2 ship with lots of B1s is nothing that
I'd
even remotely consider banning.  This is the guy who flies the
Dreadplanet
Roberts you're talking to.... ;)

> And thanks to Stiltman for reminding us about the benefits of silly
amounts
> of PDAFs, in non-FB I had a wonderfull AEGIS cruiser design that had a
hard
> time stopping the swarms of EMP missiles that were used then. It may
be time
> to resurrect the idea.

My experience is that having about 20-30 PDS per thousand points is a
good
idea if the gloves are off.  Get much less than that and you're asking
to
get swamped by missiles or fighters, and getting much more than that and
you're asking to get swamped by ships armed with beams and pulse torps.
-- 
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 The Stilt Man		      stiltman@teleport.com
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