FB3: the IF designs, spinal mount

> I have a twofold problem with these ships:

It is minimaxing. I've got a few designs like that but rarely play them.
I even bought the B4 Wars Narn Destroyer since it is off-centered
and have 2 versions: beam 2s or pulse torps that fire F+FS+AS.

I did design some ships with a lot of FP+F+FS beam-2s to make
charge attacks with, they do have a drawback in that once past the enemy they
have to make a big swing around to try again.

(snip)

> I was thinking of having the 1-arc Beam-3 as a trademark for the OU,

In Cinematic mode 1-arc Beam-3s/Pulse Torps are dead meat.
You'll get to fire the weapons once or twice at long range and the enemy will
stay out of the arc for the rest of the game. Maybe, if you're have a Main
Drive of 6 or better higher than your opponent you might have another shot,
but I doubt it.

Re: spinal mounts
I've created "spinal mounts" by putting many Beam-3s or Pulse Torps
in one weapon and treat it such that it can only fire at one target, it also
degrades in performance from damage (just like Traveller spinal mounts do).
It's fun to slice ships in two with my Shadow
ship when 8 class-3 beams fire (a mass 284 ship with 6 MD, I
do have smaller versions), or get really nasty with 24 beam-2s.
Okay, so it's small ships that slices in two, but it sure scars the paint of
Steve's uber MD2 ships (it would be even nastier in the hands of Steve who
averages more 6s than anyone I know).

Glen
MIME-Version: 1.0