Re: Soap bubbles?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Roger Burton West" <roger@firedrake.org>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 6:49 AM
Subject: Re: Soap bubbles?

> On Mon, Feb 17, 2003 at 06:40:36AM -0800, Bradley, Jason (US -
Minneapolis) wrote:
> >Being new to FT, I am wondering what exactly a "Soap Bubble" Carrier
is?

> Approximately:

>			  Item	Mass  NPV
>	   Spaceframe: mass 12	  12   12
>	    Fragile hull 1 box	   1	2
>		     FTL Drive	   1	2
>		  Main Drive 2	   1	2
>		   Fighter Bay	   9   27
>			 Total	  12   45

> I.e. something which is the cheapest possible fighter-launching
> platform.

There's also the slightly more efficient "double bubble"...

				   Mass 	     NPV
Mass 23 			23		  23
Fragile hull (2 boxes)	      2 	       4
Main drive 1			 1		 2
FTL drive			 2		  4
Fighter bays (2)	       18	       54

Total				     23 	     87

If you really want to min-max the holy snot out of the system, the
"double
bubble" is the best way I know of to go.

And about the only way to defend against a fleet of soap bubble carriers
without just killing your ability to fight anything else is to pack a
lot of
scatterguns.  Sure, even the number of scatterguns it takes to beat
something like this is rather large, but the flip side of this is that
in a
fleet action of ships without fighters, the first ship or two that
wanders
within scattergun range is most probably dead.

E
(aka Stilt Man)