Convoys, defenses

I have to say I have seen the same as Tom.

Whereas there is an argument that says that if a surface ship gets to a convoy
in the modern day, the convoy is dead, there are ways to affect this. Manoevre
on behalf of the convoy vessel, ECM, PDS, and other methods no doubt unknown
to me. But I think everyone must admit that one thing it is hard to do in the
modern day is steam past an opposing escort group so that they only get one
shot off. Naval vessels are not in the same speed league as FT ships.

I might suggest the following in freighter designs for freighters to be used
in areas of hostility: 1) If the cargo merits it, high thrust. Turn tail and
run like hell if
you have Thrust 4-6.
2) PDS to stop enemy fighters, missiles, etc. 3) ECM suites (or an Area ECM
escort vessel) 4) Some armour to absorb a strafing run from the enemy. 5)
Active defenses that aren't all that expensive (a la Knight Hawks masking
screens or Traveller Sandcasters). A screen of sand or water vapour that
obscures the ship and ablates or diffuses or defelects beams and messes up
torpedos, missiles, etc. 6) One shot PDS defenses (cheaper, less mass) that
fire on incoming missiles. 7) One shot small SMRs like proposed on the list
the other day.
8) Can you say Q-ship? Heavy Torp/SML loadout for awesome punch on the
raider. Armour. 9) Escorts with mines. Since you have a bunch of attackers on
a big vector towards you, you just want to drop some mines along their vector
in the turn or two warning you have (should be a good shield as the freighters
don't move fast) and the attackers will have to pull offline hard or eat
mines.

I assume if you make the builders either lose enough tonnage, or
install enough guns/armour/electronics/expensive defences, then you
have won as the convoy attacker anyway! Freighter defenses have to be
moderately effective and very cost effective and mass effective if they are
not to make convoys inviable.

It would seem to me that your convoy escorts might want: 1) Weapons that reach
the range you might expect raiders to engage at
or further. To me that says 30"+ range for at least some of the
escorts. 2) ADFC 3) Area ECM 4) Enough thrust to stay with the raiders so they
can't just drift in unharassed.
5) Fleet cons if you use something like them - to coordinate the
escorts engagement.

As for formation, if you deploy your escorts in clusters a fair distance out
from the convoy, they can intercept the attackers with a round or two of fire
as they pass, and begin accelerating (when they sight the attackers) to match
vectors and follow them in on the attack run, forcing the attackers to either
burn full tilt through the convoy
giving at most one shot, or to slow down and face the on-going wrath
of the escorts.

Another key thing for the escorts is having at least one ship with GOOD
sensors to make catching the raiders at range an option.

Emergency Thrust/Redlining would be useful for the convoy, and evasive
manouvring optional rules would also be good for them.