[FT] Minatures and large ships/stations

> Charles Choukalos wrote:

> Is there such a beast? After all at $6.50 / heavy cruiser for a gzg

> ability.

Irregular Miniatures do *very* cheap spaceships (even when you include the
freight costs). They're not that well known for their artistic
abilities either, though - their ground combat ranges vary a lot but are
on average OK (IMO, at least), but those of their spaceships I have... aren't
very impressive.

> Large Ships ( in FTFB ) aka > mass 400). I've been playing around

Yes. Doesn't balance  too well, though - the "big ships take treshold
checks less often" effect is very real when you pit a single jugger
against a squadron. (It drops pretty fast, though - once you have 4+
ships per side, it is pretty much negligible IMO. The fact that a few big
ships are able to fire most or all their weapons before the majority of the
small ships can shoot back doesn't go away as fast, though!).

> I've done some play testing. I believe that I posted a "day of
monstrosities.

> I've noticed a couple of trends in some of our games....

And don't forget your engines at home. Yes, they reduce the number of
weapons you can tug along, but a thrust-3 ship is a sitting duck for
missiles and fighters whereas a thrust-4 ship has a decent chance to
dodge (not all the missiles, but half or so).

> 2. If you're slow up the %space to defenses... you'll need lots o'pds

Yep.

> + screens.

If you are slow, the main danger is IMO missiles (the fighters can catch you
anyway with their secondary movement)... and screens don't help
against missiles :-/ If you're fast... well, see the next comment.

> 3. Screens seem to be much more effective for the mass then armor

If the ship is slow (thrust 3 or less) and has a large number of DCPs, and
your enemy is obliging enough to rely heavily on beams, this is true. If you
want a faster ship, the screens eat up progressively more weapon
Mass, and you can usually get more bang (or anti-bang, since we're
talking defences here) per buck using armour instead.

Your opponent doesn't need a very large proportion of screen-ignoring
weapons to reduce the efficiency of screens below that of armour, though. And,
of course, armour can't be destroyed by needle beams <g>

> 4. You need redundant firecontrolls.... its a real pain not to be

Yep. 2-3 FCs per 100 Mass seems sufficient.

> 5. (We don't play with core rules... but if you do... does this seem

Not really. It does give the smaller ships something to hope for, but they are
just as vulnerable to core hits as the big one themselves.

> 6. When the big ships start to take threshold damage, luck seems to

Sounds like too few FCs to me. Considering that a Mass 400 ship has approx. 15
DCPs left after the 1st treshold check it shouldn't be *that* hard to bring
some of the vital systems up in the end phase, and unless the treshold check
was caused by a missile or fighter attack you're quite
likely to have fired your weapons this turn already :-/

> 7. With out fighters, the big ships don't have any flank
ship.

An Interceptor squadron or two is always nice to have :-)

> 8. Usually you can destroy quite a number of enemy vessels and still

That's why big-ship hunters like needle beams. A hit on the FTL drive,
and you're stuck in-system - and your DCPs can't repair it :-)

> Anyway, that's my synopsis. I'm seting up an attack on a starbase

> 1:1 point ratio ). Does this seem fair. I suggested the players take

> SML boats since the station is a sitting duck.... I would think that

Realistic but boring. 3500 pts of pure SMR boats (not SML - no point in
spreading the salvoes out over several turns and make the enemy point
defence's task easier!) means roughly 90 SM salvoes (or 180 MT-style
missiles), minus whatever losses the station's weapons and support ships can
inflict prior to launch, all hitting the station at the same time... could
hurt. Unless you have nothing but PDS systems on the station, of
course, but such a station seems rather pointless to me :-/

> after all a beam armed fleet would take quite a while to kill it.
Should I up > the ratio since the station has no flt + no thrust that's
worth at least 20% > mass advantage to the defenders, even though the station
is a sitting > duck for sml fire?

If the attackers are going to use missile boats, increase the cost of the
station (or give it a decent support fleet - it'll need it). If the
attackers *don't* use missiles, they're going to need a bonus instead -
probably 25-30% or so extra points.