Re: B5-3 Aft

>   The issue of high class beam weapons being king of
the battle area 
> came up years ago and has been factored into current
play-testing.  
> When the costs of larger beam weapons were smaller,
I witnessed most 
> designs involving beam weapons consisting of
cramming as many class A 
> beams was the way to go in most cases

In the real world, these were called "dreadnought
battleships", and 
some 
were really ridiculous, like the American
classes with 5 or 6 twin 12-inch turrets (making the
ship really long), 
or the French class with quadruple 16-inch turrets (to
save dwt from 
having more but smaller turrets).  The term
"Dreadnought" refers to a 
battleship or battleship-cruiser (latter termed a
battlecruiser) armed 
only with guns of the largest caliber (originally 12")
and possibly a 
number of small secondaries (3", 5" or 6") for use
against small ships 
like MTBs and DDs.  "Super-dreadnought" refers to
dreadnoughts with a 
main battery of 13.5" or 14" guns or (latter) larger.

The arms race of 1905-1922 was to see who could build
the most powerful 
* all big gun * battleships.

The problem is that people design for the "rules" and
not for the conditions. They are so busy trying to
design the "best" ship as far as the rules that they
forget that endurence, reliability and other factors
that were not written into the rules (simulation)
should have an impact on the design. Some "ideas"
of how to include this would be:

-Ships on duty with the fleet can take hull hits
(actually they stress their hulls) depending on
what is their mission. Any repair dock can repair
this damage but over time ships will be forced
to be serviced with weaker hulled ships requiring
more down time.

-The maximum acceleration of a ship is dependent
on the condition of their hull. A ship that has
lost 1/3 of it's hull can accelerate at only 2/3
of it's maximum speed or else take a chance at
more hull damage (over stressed the hull).

-Ships which are running at reduced power or
are stealthy (scout ships for example) are
detected at shorter ranges. That battleship
that did not accelerate and has it's weapons
powered down may not be detected till it's
in close enough to fire (the turn after it
powers up).

The arms race of 1905 - 1922 was more then just guns.
The second generation dreadnought battleship brought
in the all or nothing armor and the third generation
dreadnought battleship ( came out in the 1930s)
brought in improved compartmentation. By the 1930s
all battleships had between 6 to 10 guns of
14" to 16" with a few odd ships (German: 11" on
Scharnhorst class, Japan: 18" on Yamoto class).
Each navy had interacted with the threat from
the others.

Scott Siebold