From: Doug Evans <devans@n...>
Date: Sat, 6 Dec 1997 11:50:02 -0600
Subject: Re: EF Sourcebook, Carrier vs. Big Guns, and other thoughts
Well, the Earthforce Source Book showed. Unfortunately, at the local store, and not my mail box. Don't know how far in advance the distributors paid, but I had figured my pre-pay would put me somewhere near the head of the line. Mark can blame the PS; as for me, it's the last Chameleon Eclectic product I'll knowingly buy. I didn't look inside at the shop, and when it does make it to my door, I'll just put it up on the shelf. After playing with Zeke Sparks at GenCon, I know it'd would suck me in, create in me the desire for any extensions produce. I won't go there. Concerning big ships susceptability to fighters: I always enjoyed what I perceiived as a scissors / paper / rock between capitals, 'lesser' ships and fighters. Using just the main list ships, I saw a tendency for capitals(cruisers seemed to float between the extremes, becoming one or the other by situation; how like real life!), smaller ships could mass enough firepower, especially using C's as anti-fighter, to mess up fighter squadron days, and fighters could be massed to take out big ships. I imagine part of why the escorts could do so well was a house rule that ships in 'squadrons' could use PDAF's to protect the squadron, as long as they were properly bunched. It would seem strange that I never created odd thrust ships except that I always used even thrust as an unwritten rule. I probably still will. I took the example to indicate how to handle damaged drives; silly, as a thrust ten would be beyond the max. Still, I would have prefered a round down except that every ship would have at least one turn; damaged two-thrust would never turn. Course, that would go with the concept I had for a supership confrontation that had three behemouths moving in opposing but parallel courses JUST out of range, and unable to turn, but maybe I'll have it worked up by next GenCon. Does anyone have more miniature 'substitutions' in mind? I think it has been suggested that the mid-range NSL's could be converted to B5 Earthforce, and maybe some of FSL's to Narn for CMD figs. Any other sugggestions? The_Beast