Re: FB designs & fighters (& strawmen)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Books" <books@jumpspace.net>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 8:18 PM
Subject: Re: FB designs & fighters (& strawmen)

> On  6-May-02 at 22:54, Eric Foley (stiltman@teleport.com) wrote:
> > The design I gave earlier does not make these mistakes, which is why
one
> > has to search, and hard, to find a FB1 grouping that would stand
much of
a
> > prayer against it

> > So which is it?  Is every weapon in the game that serves those three
> > principles really broken, or do the FB1 ships suck?

> Bad news, but in my NSHO the ship that you threw together really
> sucks.  It has a glaring weakness, it is far too slow.  It allows
> your opponents to chose range and direction of attacks.  I would
> almost say it was designed for the tactless (tacticless?) move
> right in and slug it out.

Spoken like a true FSE player.	:)

Yes, it _is_ true that this ship is largely a straight-forward, "fly in
there and slug it out" sort of affair.	Its design is generally built to
try
and maximize that capability without leaving its flanks unprotected,
since
much of its firepower is invested in class-2 beams that cover all the
arcs.
I _am_, admittedly, beginning to think that throwing more long-range
beams
into it and taking out the missiles would probably make it better
overall.
(I've never been the biggest fan of SMs... they're nasty if you can get
them
to hit in bulk, but they're also pretty trivial to deal with.)	Then, if
the
enemy wants to extend the range, all I have to do is keep my front end
pointed at them, spinning in place if need be.	If they want to close,
there's no angle where the class-2's can't reach them as long as I don't
apply any acceleration or deceleration.  And if I took out the missiles,
it
would probably be in favor of a couple of class-4s, maybe a class-3 or
two
more and invest the rest in still more all-arc class-2s.

OTOH, if you're just too much in love with higher-speed ships that
thrust-2
doesn't float your boat, then it's pretty easily fixed... yank a level
of
hull strength and put it into an extra bit of main drives to boost it to
thrust-4.  Then it'll not only out-gun everything in the book, but it'll
also be able to catch it.  (Yeah, it'll have only about 2/3rds as much
resilience, but with twice the firepower that's a trade I can live
with.)

> Do any of your opponents actually maneuver?  A thrust 2 ship is
> meat for an SM armed opponent.  If you can't dodge a few of
> those missiles you can't put enough PDSs on a ship to live
> through SMs and still give an effective offensive loadout.  If
> playing FSE I would far rather face a fleet designed around this
> doctrine than a base FB NAC fleet.

I don't worry much about SMs.  I have this annoying habit of bringing
lots
of small decoy ships that I don't sweat losing too badly for real fleet
actions.  Even with thrust-2, it's not hard to zig-zag enough to make
sure
that a lot more of your missiles hit the decoys than anything I care
about.
For that matter, I much prefer scatterguns to PDS.

E