Re: FT: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Davis" <davisje@nycap.rr.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 2:01 AM
Subject: Re: FT: Carriers & Fighter Capacity

> Eric Foley wrote:
> > they're supported by something else.  It used to be needle beaming
escorts
> > to take out ADFCs, now I'm favoring plasma bolts.

> An interesting tactic.  I figure the needle beamers get only one pass
at
the
> target fleet.  Are they effective enough to take out a sufficient
number
of
> the opponent's ADFCs?  If the ADFCs have been concentrated on a few
escort
> cruiser class ships, perhaps.  One counter to that tactic is to place
ADFCs
> on all ships and two or more ADFCs on the larger mass ships.

The phalanxes I typically run into will have somewhere between three and
six
capital ships with an ADFC apiece and the PDS duties divided between
them.
The needle beamers usually brought cloaking devices to help them get
close
without being shot, but you're right, even with cloak they're still not
usually going to get away with more than one or two shots before they're
valiantly but inevitably reduced to their component atoms.  I dealt with
that by putting about six needle beams or more to an escort, which gives
me
a law of averages good enough that the phalanx will probably be crippled
enough to let the fighters dogpile them.  However, two or more ADFCs per
ship of the wall would pretty much scuttle this tactic on its face, yes.
 It
wouldn't do the formation much good against plasma bolts, though. 
There,
you either have to split your ships up (thus exposing them to fighter
attack) or risk having the whole group grievously damaged or even
destroyed
outright by the first concentrated plasma barrage that hits it.

Smaller area defense escorts very quickly fell out of favor in our
games.
All the good that ever did was to make me hold my fighters in reserve
for a
moment while my needle beamers or capital ships' armament (which was
always
good enough to at least bring down an escort ship) destroyed or disabled
them all so that my fighters could have a turkey shoot on the rest of
the
formation.  And these days, my plasma bolts would make life very hard on
these guys, indeed.

This isn't to say that small ships are _completely_ unheard of in our
games,
although I'm usually the sneaky bastard that finds something useful to
do
with them.  They don't tend to survive very long, so I usually relegate
them
to missions where they don't _need_ to survive very long...

a)  Precision needle strikes on critical enemy systems.  (ADFC, drives,
etc)

b)  Suicide attacks with MKPs.	Also known as the "submunition bomb".
Having a few combustible mass-30 ships decloaking right next to you and
dropping a few hundred points' worth of ouch on your task force in
exchange
for only 10% of their own really hacks some people off.  Ruins a soap
bubble
carrier force's day.  Also isn't much fun for starbases that can't even
make
the submunition bomb-ships guess where they're going to be.

c)  Itty bitty ships with scatterguns, interspersed throughout a battle
fleet formation with the little dregs of extra budget you're usually
left
with after spending most of the rest of the 5000 point allotment.  Gives
missile-reliant people absolute conniption fits.

Probably am digressing a bit... but tactical discussions like this are
95%
of why I bother staying subscribed to this list, so... :)

E
(aka Stilt Man)