> Todd Mason wrote:
Todd, It may have been me talking about the small ships, but then it may have
been someone else long before I joined the list.
The suggestion i have to 'solve' the small ship problem is; 1) Escorts are at
minus one on the To Hit die roll, (this means that an escort ship cannot take
double damage) 2) Cruisers have no modifiers. 3) Capital ships are plus one on
the To Hit die roll. The above apply to beam weapons only as other systems
have different To Hit and damage conditions.
By for now,
Wasn't it Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who spanked a couple of German destroyers in
his PT boat during WWII? I believe he sank one and had the other one in
distress. We know what happens when a mass 2 (or 4) ship encounters 2 mass 14
enemy ships in Full Thrust!
However, can we argue that an escort class ship is significantly more
difficult to hit at tens of thousands kilometers away than a capital ship? I
think not.
-Joseph
> Ref house rules. Someone commented on the limited survivability of
In message <3.0.32.19971110054228.0068cf54@spiritone.com>
> "Joseph A. Troche" <trochej@spiritone.com> wrote:
> Wasn't it Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who spanked a couple of German
The equivalent would be a mass 4 ship carrying a missile. As long as the
missile hits, you take out the mass 14 ship on an average damage roll.
Of course, trying to hit with a single missile is damn
difficult (I've always though missiles should move _after_
ships, with an increase to the effectiveness of PDAFs).
> > It may have been me talking about the small ships, but then it
Ban shields and armour. Small ships tend to carry beam weapons, which are
ineffective against shielded targets. The lack of shields will greatly reduce
the survivability of the larger ships.
Increasing the damage done by weapons against larger ships seems wrong to me.
Another thought:
Big ship --> Production cost X, production time
5 years, eats up one big shipyard slip for that length of time
10 smaller ships --> Production cost X/10
each, production time 1 year, eats up 10 smaller shipyard slips but only for a
year.
At the end of one year, you've got 10 small raiders or escorts ready to
replace losses. He's got half the hull on his BB. Who'll win that fight?
Attritional warfare such as occurs in most major conflicts inevitable makes
small ships more common as they are quickly produced replacements, and large
ships are very valuable because if you lose one, you have a loss for a long
(in war terms) time. You may be able to throw the money at the problem and
have the slip space, but a big ship can only go up so fast, and that means it
will take longer than an equal mass and cost of smaller ships. So, you've got
a strategic deployment issue.
I think Weber hit on this somewhere in one of his novels where they didn't
want to deploy Adm. White Haven and the Home Fleet to someplace because the
consequences of losing it would be horrid. They just couldn't risk losing the
big battlewagons. Similarly, I think England has had this kind of issue many
times over the centuries. I suspect smaller ships have done combat many times
when bigger ships could have fought, if the consequences of losing the big
boys hadn't been deemed too dire.
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