Freespace (Was FT-Battleship designs) (Long)

I may be a bit behind, but then I have just caught up on some 1500
messages
for a period of around a month and a half (lack of time to read til now)
-
and still have the 130 odd United States in FT thread and its spin offs
to
read through on top of the 1500.  I must say that is the longest/most
prolific thread I've ever seen, but I guess there is a lot of proud
yanks
out there. Anyway...

These Battleship Turret ideas are a bit like a Freespace conversion I
fiddled with for a little while around a year ago. A brief summary of
what I
can remember of it is:

  Huge capital ships (very big and strong, kilometres long), with
multiple
large escort craft (corvettes, frigates, escort cruiser's, etc ) whose
masses are actually considerably bumped up compared to normal FT.  The
capital ships were primarily carrier/SDN combined into 1.

The main hull of ships contained Drive Systems, Main Bridge, sensors,
etc,
then all weapons were in turrets.  Turrets were dedicated to one bank of
weapons with a FCS - eg a single large class 5 or 6 battery ( we are
talking
about HUGE ships), multiple class 3 batteries ( kind of a multi
shot/gattling style turret), or an AA turret - a variant on an ADFC and
multiple PDSs on each.	The ADFC variant simply allows targeting of ANY
fighter/missile/Freespace Torpedo within 6mu, without the screening
allowance it has normally (i.e. hitting any fighter attacking a friendly
ship within 6").

The turrets had their own armour and hull points and (I think) a MD type
system representing reactor and other needed systems.	An option that
could
be used was that bridge core box was control computers, normal bridge
effects.  Turrets could then be destroyed/stripped from the Hull
separately.

Fighters would play a BIG role.  They could target any turret on the
same
side of the ship they were attacking from, or could 'tag' a turret.  The
ships could only target the ship (not the turrets), unless a fighter
'tagged' the turret.  If the turret is in the arc facing the ship, it
could
be targeted with the ship's weapons.

The main Hulls contained multiple fighter bays (a fair few), or these
could
be in a turret like module (can't remember which).  The argument for the
separate modules is that given the number of fighters, they would no
doubt
be centralized, and be very clearly visible as a turret would.

If the ship died, all turrets of course died, and I had come up with
some
system for damage to flow onto turrets with each threshold but I can't
find
the rules, and can't remember them.  I had also considered the option of
having sensors, drives, bridge, etc as separate modules like turrets,
like
in the game, except I think it would be getting a little out of hand for
each ship.

As for fighters, the carrier/SDNs would carry many squadrons.  They
would
have a few standard and heavy groups, multiple interceptors for
screening
ships and for defending the all important bomber fighters.  The bomber
fighters had beams like anti-ship fighters (eg more effective against
ships,
but less effective against fighters - except PSB is that they are too
big,
slow firing and hard to aim against fighters compared with kilometre
long
ships).
  The bombers also carried torpedoes (1 to 3 of them), which would be
launched at a ship, detonating with a certain range (somewhat small in
game
terms) with an area effect of 1 to 3 mu radius, depending on scale. 
These
would operate like Plasma Bolts lvl5, for PDS and damage. Damage is
rolled
for each ship in the radius, and applied in full to the ship and each
turret
that can face into the side the torpedo hit from.  For fighters, roll
1D6
for each squadron within the radius, rolls of 1-3 the group escapes
unscathed (they see it coming and run), 4 make the equivalent of 1 PDS
attack on the group (with rerolls), 5=2 attacks and 6=3 attacks.  If a
group
was attacking the torpedo, add 1 to the roll.
Bombers are also the more expensive and (I think) were heavy fighters as
far
as having 2DP each - hence the need for a lot of interceptors.

This was to reflect the game, where interceptors tried to fend off
deadly
bombers and torps, and defend their own bombers from interceptors. 
There
was also no shortage of AA turrets.  Another system I cant remember
details
on is flak turrets which were indiscriminate area effect anti-fighter
turrets.

That's the most of what I can remember of it and is a bit vague, even
though
long. I may dig around for the points and details, but they aren't in
the
obvious places so I don't hold high hopes of finding them.

It would be great if discussion could formulate some details and points
as
it would be fun to have epic battles with these huge ships and masses of
fighters (I dare say fire resolution would take the longest part of each
turn).

Andrew Ayres
www.ftsc.atfreeweb.com