Needle damage mechanics plus background

Okay I have my basic FT2 (no FB, remember) Needle-Mouth Killer-Fish
(translated from Nekton) ship at mass 22 each (two of them) each packing
5 standard Needle Guns.  Yes it's a real Nekton FT/2nd design ship. They
attack a Rep-Com (Republic of Commerce) BC [standard 40 mass, three fire
cons] and score the following hits.

NMKF targets Drives and one Firecon - gets two hits on Drives - now
according to page 18 the drives are inoperable (question - unless
repaired?) - and one on firecon (inoperable until repaired.)

NMKF targets other two firecons - hits 1 of two on second - inoperable
until repaired - and gets truly wild results and hits all three on third
firecon. The third hit is wasted it appears since there is no benefit. If each
hit required a separate roll to repair then there would be purpose in mounting
more then three Needle beams per firecon otherwise they should be mounted in
pairs per firecon max.

This came up when I was playing with FT/2nd rules and designing Nekton
Ships. (The original "What's a 'capital' ship?" guys... er amphibians.) and
working the extreme edge of Needle Beam possibilities I ended up with 9 Needle
Beam ship at 36 mass. Going to a 32 mass ship with only '8' Needle Beams and
two firecons means you will almost assuredly waste hits
under the present hit mechanism.  In the FB/MT rules I understand you do
(or at least per Pat's Player Aid) you do one box damage on 1 five and 2
boxes plus kill the target system - until repaired.

If you score a hit on a drive normally, it is halved. assuming there is no
successful repair role, a second hit on a following turn puts it entirely out
of action. A third is ignored.

I suggest on the ship form when a hit is scored, put a slashed line in pencil
and erase the line when the system is repaired (already done, i assume). In
the few games I have played, the standard crews could attempt a repair of one
system each turn (IIRC, roll a six?) without penalizing other aspects of ship
operations. I suggest multiple hits with needle beams be noted by the icon for
the system and require multiple 'repairs' to be fixed. This would make putting
two Needle Beams on a escort firecon a possibly more punishing hit then the
current system that equates two plus shots as equal to a single hit. Drives
still would be affected as currently (1 = halve, 2= out until repaired) but
the effects of multiple NB hits (and hits from multiple NB's) would be
cumulative. Yes, i doubt anybody but the Nektons and IF plan to use more then
one Needle Beam per ship and only the Nektons, I suspect, would have ships
armed with 3 (mass 12,) or 4 (mass 16) needle beams on specialized escort
sized ships; much less the 5 (mass 20,) 6 (mass 24,) 7 (mass 28,) 8 (mass 32,)
or even 9 (mass 36) on the specialized ships integral to 'normal forces' of
ships of equal mass.

Example: a force/flotilla/squadron of 4 mass 32 ships might include the
'normal' ones (Nektons like Beams, the larger the better) equipped with 5 'A'
class beams and 1 'C' Class beam PLUS the appropriate needle beam specialist
ship (8 Needle Beams) as per doctrine. Nektons don't use missiles much and
Pulse Torpedoes are a (spit) Ralnai thing so it's pretty much beams.

Fighters (and carriers) are unusual in my Starguard conversion to DS2/FT
- only the Federation's Starguard use them much.  And by that I mean one
CVL is a lot in a medium sized scenario and the big boys (CV) only show up in
times of out and out war. Rep Com's too cheap (Okay there *is* one in my
sketched out force,) Fabia thinks the system is too bourgeois for true
socialists, and the hive mind Dreenoi thinks 'more is better' (hence the large
number of 'C' Beams on the standard cruiser models,) and the Ralnai like their
"Power over Others" too much to let a group of individual fighter pilots win
glory that belongs to a noble TF commander on his glorious SDN with escorting
cruisers. And the Starguard can't get too many CV's because the funding is
decided by the Federation Senate
(And Rep-Com, as a member,  keeps that reduced as much as possible.)

In FT terms the Ralnai use Pulse Torpedoes and Beams predominately with an
unusual mounting of submunitions on almost all their ships (at least one,) The
Dreenoi Beams and standard range missiles (one per ship at
most,) The Rep-Com use Missiles (ER and SR) and some Pulse Torpedoes
with
a beam or two, Fabia mostly class 'B' [and 'A' on Capital ships/HC] plus
Pulse torpedoes as secondary weapons, And the Nektons use Beams (what's a
class 'C'?  Oh, anti-boarding guns!) and their specialist Needle Beam
ships. The planet the campaign runs around is pretty much stripped of
usable spaceships because of the schism/war between the two rebellious
provinces and the original planetary government - the People's Holy
Republic [classic Christian Communists.]