Has anyone tried doing SFB style PF's? I'm wondering how they would fair
against the big guys.
For those who haven't dealt with it, the concept is a tug carrying
a flotilla of non-FTL small ships, my concept of the PT boats would
be along the lines of:
Design Summary
Hull Displacement
12
Point Cost
39
Unallocated Mass
0
Ship Type
Military
Hull Strength
Weak
Hull Armor
2
Streamlining
None
Thrust
8
Passive Sensors Active Sensors
Basic
ECM
None
Beam / 1 FP F FS AP A AS
Submunitions Pack (2)
(Done with Armageddon Outfitter, I'm still waiting on my FB).
This would make the most sense in a campaign game because you aren't risking
your FTL drive. For game purposes it drops at distance.
Of course, this would also fit in with the LAC concept from HH.
So will this work in FT or am I wasting my time designing (and building
miniatures for) a fleet based around this concept?
Roger Books wrote:
> For those who haven't dealt with it, the concept is a tug carrying
[snip design]
> This would make the most sense in a campaign game because you
IIRC a larger ship can have mass set aside for carrying smaller ships
internally (I can't remember the details offhand) A decent sized tender may be
able to carry three or perhaps four of your ships.
I'm not sure how useful this would be against standard forces, though you are
making a saving on FTL drive space on these smaller ships they will be easily
destroyed. Scattering them between the ships in a larger fleet may have some
value in that they are reasonably expendable and careful positioning can help
to screen your big boys from SML.
As far as your design goes, I might give them a little less in the way of
thrust and at least a class 2 beam and use them as a close-in picket.
(The beam can be biased to one side and then keep to that side of the fleet
for maximum fire coverage)
These are all my personal opinion, which you may choose to discard as you will
since I've not played that many games.;)
> Roger Books wrote:
> Has anyone tried doing SFB style PF's? I'm wondering how they
[snip]
> This would make the most sense in a campaign game because you
You are risking your FTL drive if the enemy manages to slip a ship or
two behind your attack boats :-/
> So will this work in FT or am I wasting my time designing (and
It doesn't work very well in FB if you pay for the tug (which you have to do
in a campaign), because even the cheapest, slowest, and therefore most
vulnerable tug you can build will cost you more than putting FTL drives into
your combat ships would. In short, you get less bang for
your bucks with a tug/sub-light attack boat combination than you would
with normal ships, provided you want tug capacity for all your
sub-light boats. If you have less tug capacity than you have sub-light
boats you can get more bang for your bucks than standard ships, but you will
be seriously hampered if you want to attack.
I'm not sure about FT2 - on the one hand, the FTL drive is much bigger
in FT2 than in FB (25% of the Mass rather than 10%), but on the other FB tugs
can carry up to 3.5 times their own Mass whereas an FT2 tug can only carry up
to its own Mass of other ships. On the whole, I think the
tug/strike boat concept is more effective using FB rules than FT2.
Best wishes,
In a message dated 6/25/99 1:13:47 PM EST, oerjan.ohlson@telia.com
writes:
<<
It doesn't work very well in FB if you pay for the tug (which you have to do
in a campaign), because even the cheapest, slowest, and therefore most
vulnerable tug you can build will cost you more than putting FTL drives into
your combat ships would. In short, you get less bang for
your bucks with a tug/sub-light attack boat combination than you would
with normal ships, provided you want tug capacity for all your
sub-light boats. If you have less tug capacity than you have sub-light
boats you can get more bang for your bucks than standard ships, but you will
be seriously hampered if you want to attack.
> [quoted text omitted]
In Star Fleet Battles the Warp Drive is much more important to the game than
the FTL drive is in FT, Because the Warp Drives provide raw power for the ship
to power systems (weapons, movement, repair, shields, ECM and ECCM)
There is not enough "impulse" power to provide power to all these systems and
a warp drive means you CAN fight instead of merely providing a "skeet" for the
warships to blow to flinders.
I sprang a rather nasty concept which I called "Binaries" which is a Light
Cruiser-Tug carrying a Light Cruiser non-FTL. This gave my fleet the
flexibility of multiple light tugs with the comabt edge of Heavy Cruiser
armament crammed into the non-ftl CL three Zhulang class binary pairs
massed Nine Pulse torps and were thrust 6...
> -----Original Message-----
for
> the warships to blow to flinders.