> Alan Greep writes:
@:)
@:) Also fast little ships with A batteries on are real killers
@:) keeping at longer ranges and when they get armed up with a pulse
@:) torpedoe (min size 10) and get in close they can be real
@:) vicious.
Likewise, if all your ships are small (biggest ship to show itself in our
current campaign is mass 50 (one of a kind) and it's very likely that,
ignoring that one, the biggies are all maxed out mass 36 cruisers) putting
level 1 screens on an escort can work wonders. People just don't think of it,
I guess, but when it's escort v escort, a screen and an A or B battery can
convert your ship from a
traffic-control vessel to an elite hunter-killer. Against big ships
level 1 screens aren't as good but they do make the bad guys tend to
spend _way_ too much energy on your twiddly little ships, thus saving
your bigger guys the trouble of getting piffled.
Following on the theme, I actually find that my small ships survive longest.
True they are easy to kill when you get around to it but most often my
capitals are attacked first and the smaller ships get to pummel hell out of
the enemy all the while.
Plus I do make them high thrust and when you engage at about speed 20 you have
a high speed ship which can change speed and direction very quickly,
when you make these about mass 14 - 18 they have a much higher
survivability as they need to take multiple hits from almost any weapon before
they go down (I know some weapons will still do it in 1 go). I go up against
Kra'vak a lot and any small ship that has more than six DPs means the Kra'vak
usually end up wasting a 2 or 3 scatter guns against
them (combined with the scatter guns being used anti-missile) they get
used up real quick.
Also fast little ships with A batteries on are real killers keeping at longer
ranges and when they get armed up with a pulse torpedoe (min size 10) and get
in close they can be real vicious.
I tend to favour large numbers of small ships with mixed arms coupled with a
good number of mid size ships with high thrust and few capitals.
Great fun and they tend to get targeted by too few or too many weapons
-
either way you are on a winner.
I like using small ships. In a recent game, I used 9 mass 4 "system
interceptors" that each had 3 sub-munitions. I flew the very fast up to
a Kra'vak superdreadnaught and unloaded. He decides to only attack 2 that turn
concentrating on my capital ship that was approaching. In all, I had 1 damaged
(can't figure out how a 2 DP ship managed to only get "damaged") and 2 others
destroyed. They could just do a single pass, but thats what they were designed
for. I don't think small ship survivability should be changed. A decision as
to which ship to fire on has to be made. If a player decides to split his fire
up amongst the smaller ships, pound on him with the heavies. If he decides to
pound the heavies... well, you get the point.
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