[Long]General Tactics? Re: [FT] FSE-tactics

Can't help much with tactics; my experiences are that SM-laden FSE need
no help. However, the faster the battle, the harder to predict your opponent's
location for hitting.

I would hope we expand this into a general tactics discussion, though.

When Thomas Anderson announced a GZG chat, I went on and we covered a few
germaine topics.

I had mentioned a maneuver I'd used once successfully, playing ESU against
FSE. Given that FSE ships spin on a dime in comparison to most fleets, I
thought of the 'Thatch Weave', where a pair of fighters would swing back and
forth across each others forward arc, allowing the guns of one fighter to
cover the other's rear. This was used in the first part of WWII's
US-Japan
pacific campaign by US pilots to negate the Zero's superior manueverability to
almost all US planes of the time.

Tom sez: that sounds like half a corral.

I'd never heard the term as a flight manuever, so he explained that four
planes would form a box, with each ahead of and facing 90 degrees to the
following plane. I then mentioned having heard of the same tactic on the
Russian front, where a number of Sturmoviks would form a circle, and slowly
move across the countryside, and any German fighter attacking would receive
fire from one fighter's rear gunner and the fore guns of another fighter at
least, and plenty of other rear gunners that might be ableto swivel.
Apparently VERY nasty.

Let me point out that these manuevers are very difficult to recreate with
granularity of FT's, or most any other, movement system.

It may be that my success with the Thatch Weave was mostly due to the FSE
player assuming that my swinging out would be followed by attempts to swing
around flanks, thereby his wasting SM's on where I was definately not going to
be.

Still, I'd like to hear if other's have thoughts on tactical maneuvers.

Likewise, I'd like to hear about fleet deployments. I hate lining all the
ships along an edge, then moving in. Do any players use deployment areas,
or off-table deployment?

The_Beast

> On Mon, 7 Jun 1999 devans@uneb.edu wrote:

> When Thomas Anderson announced a GZG chat, I went on and we covered a

that all seemed to work fine, btw (modulo some random person with a japanese
name starting a conversation with me under the impression i was someone else,
but such is the net...). who's taken charge of fixing up schedules?

> Tom sez: that sounds like half a corral.

i should point out that i wasn't thinking of aeroplanes at all, but of
wagons as used by settlers going west in cowboys + injuns time: you
know, they'd round up the wagons when the indians attacked. okay, so that's
not a corral, but a corral is a round thing you see in cowboy flicks so my
brain just latched on to it.

also, since the wagons wouldn't move, and had neither tail nor fore guns, it's
really utterly different.

> Likewise, I'd like to hear about fleet deployments.

well, being a studious follower of fashion: concentrate! unless you're facing
SMs, perhaps. if you group ships, group ships of the same thrust so that they
can maneuver together without leaving some ships with idle thrust. have some
small, fast groups as outriders some way away from the main body of the fleet,
to keep the enemy on his toes.

mind you, i usually lose...

tom