RE: FT Intellectual exercise? (long)

G'day,

> Well to get to the point it mentions an iunusual design
> concept (for me) called a "Cluster Ship". This being
> something like a "Space Control Ship" made up of 100
> individual ships called "Wedges" arround an engine
> core, for planetary System defence.

I've never read the book and my firewall stripped off the attachment
(doesn't usually expect to get them from a mailing list so gets
suspicious
when it does) so I haven't read your excerpt. However I do play an alien
species which uses an FTL capable spine to jump into a system and then
the
fleet detaches itself does its fighting and if forced to go home must
reattach etc. I do this via the tug ftl system. The only thing being the
ships have to be fairly small to pull this without requiring a MAMMOTH
spine. Works ok in my background as the species that uses it a little
and so
have the equivalent of miniaturisation (they've just built things to
their
scale so the end up smaller than what we use), I based the costs for
this
off Noams stuff in the Weapons Defence Archive. Probably not exactly
what
you're after, but it may help a tad.

Cheers

Beth