Re: Campaigns

--- Noam Izenberg <noam.izenberg@jhuapl.edu> wrote:
> More opinions and thoughts on the campaign.
> 
...
> Re: Liberty ships
> In war time you're going to need a way to mimic
> this. Something like 
> deficit spending (which would be a big can of worms
> in a simple system). 
> Were they really more expensive, or just built more
> cheaply? (5 hull 
> rows?, less armor (and therefore mass) for the same

> mix of systems?)
> 

Well, you have to be careful as to what you learn
on the history channel, but according to them, they
were cheaper, using welding instead of rivets (and
so were less resilient to storms and easier to sink.
At one point the shipyards were competing to see
how fast they could build them. The winner was just
about 4 days! 

So in wartime, a highly motivated builder could
probably build a few designs of ship much faster
than they would previously in peacetime, especially
if they could cut corners. A liberty equivalent 
would be merchant ships (useful in campaign games
probably) which had fragile hulls but were cheap
and fast to build.

They did basically the same thing in WWII for 
escort carriers. So I suspect the same trick might
be possible in FT. Perhaps it would be possible 
to design a light carrier (4 squadrons) with a
fragile hull at a very cheap price. Since fighters
are so effective in FT, it might work out well.
Fighters, unlike warships traditionally, tended
to be built on assembly lines. Indeed it was this
assembly line mentality that resulted in ships
like the liberty and the escort carriers.

Also, even discounting these "special" ships, 
regular ships get built more quickly in wartime
too. Of course your campaign system may already
take this into account, but if it is based on
"peacetime" build rates, it might be a good idea
to up them a little to reflect the panic/motivation
involved in fighting a war. Maybe the side losing
would get an increased production rate based on
everyone working to breaking point.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger