[GZG] Battlecruisers

Hello;

I recently read the "Tough Guide to the Universe" and got a small bee
up my nose about how the author used the term "battlecruiser".
Although, what he really got right was that any ship labelled
"battlecruiser" gets its coolness factor upped several notches, so
long as it is fast and has big guns.

It got me thinking about how battlecruisers are handled in games.
They are usually ships between a heavy cruiser and a battleship.  Only
one navy (the USN) ever built ships like that, and they were called
"Large Cruisers" (the Alaska class).  All ships that were actually
called battlecruisers were as large as, if not larger, than
battleships.  The HMS Hood, a battlecruiser, was the largest warship
in the world, until the Bismark was completed.	Battlecruisers were
basically dreadnoughts that exchanged weight of armor for weight of
machinery to get an extra turn of speed.  The only game that ever got
this right was Starfire, as a BC was faster than a BB and if it
accepted less protection, it could mount the same armament.

For an FT ship to be the equivalent of a true BC, it would need to
combine a thrust of eight with enough class-4 beams to threaten a CA
at the 24+ rangeband (preferably 36-48), and receive damage with at
least as much grace as the cruisers it hunts down (in case it gets
caught up close and personal).	Even a minimalist BC with 24 hull
boxes, 4 class-4's, 2 firecons and 2 PDS requires a mass of 120.  As
we might want to add screens, more PDS, and some secondary weapons,
the ship really starts to grow.
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