Re: Small Ships--Why?

On Fri, 22 Jun 2001 10:38:26 -0500 "Galen Thies" <fldmrshl@hotmail.com>
writes:
>To the Wise and Venerable list,
<snip>
>They seem to get smoked well before any beam weapons they are armed 
>with 
>fire.	Their increased manuverability seems to have little impact on 
>increasing their survivability.  It may simply be a function of my 
>play 
>group's lack of experience but larger ships seem to be the way to go. 
>In a 
>design-your-own environment or in the Fleet Book fleets, would small 
>ships 
>have a role in your fleet in one-off games?
>
<snip>
Play a mini campaign where you escort multiple convoys in and out (you
don't need to play the ones without escorts - if they are attacked, they
are totally lost for VP's, if not, they are the owning side's VP's.

Oh, VP = Victory points.

>
>When I think about what would encourage me to take small ships, I 
>imagine a 
>weapon that could conceivably destroy any size ship with one (lucky) 
>shot.	
>In a universe where a weapon like this existed, I would hesitate to 
>stack so 
>many of my eggs in one basket.
>

Needle Beams are my best theoretical answer.  I have yet to field my
Starguard Nekton derivatives with their love for the NB but it's a cheap
way to use Very Small ships (scouts to corvettes) to swarm and take out
FCS/weapons so the cruisers can move in and use more 'conventional' in
human terms to chase off/destroy the opponent's ships.	I hope it works
out because I deplore the 'big ship only' school of game play.	But
that's just my prejudice...

>I have considered allowing ships to sacrifice 2 thrust per turn in 
>exchange 
>for some penalty for other ships to hit them. I am not saying this is 
>wise, 
>just a thought.
>

There have been suggestions in that vein...

>Any imput from this group on my real or imagined difficulty would be 
>greatly 
>appreciated.
>
>Kindest Personal Regards,
>Galen
>
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