Seeing as how the list is already discussing the small vs. large ship
A few of the guys in my FT group has tossed out the idea of moving and firing
smaller ships as a squadron. Has this idea been tossed about, dissected and
explored by this group in the past? They're interested in both speeding up the
game as well as making groups of smaller ships more effective when used
in squadrons for "wolf-packing" the larger ships.
On the surface, they like this idea because a squadron of smaller ships could
get more dice rolled (thus more damage inflicted) before firing would get
turned over to the opponent who could use a larger ship's weapons to quite
possibly "immolate" sections of the small squadron(s).
The idea as we discussed it didn't include any sort of morale rules, nor were
we inclined to decide at that time what constitutes a "smaller" ship that is
suited for squadron operations. More than anything, I would think the thrust
of a ship would determine it's ability to particpate in a squadron, with an
upper limit because of the "wake" (EM "noise and radiation) a larger ship's
drive might create when trying to operate in the close proximity required by
effective squadron tactics.
I searched the list archives and found:
http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200210/msg00127.html - Just a sort of
"mention" of the idea.
http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200207/msg00210.html - (Thread) Talks
precisely about the idea, but makes reference to some sort of morale or crew
quality rules.
Anything else to add?
I know we had more discussion than that, but can't recall particular items.
I definitely don't claim to have invented any of it. ;->=
Just out of curiosity, have you looked at the now out of print Babylon 5 Wars:
Fleet Action? It's based on squadrons and the control there of. While hex
based, I've often wondered if there's not something to mine for use with large
FT fleets.
The_Beast
Short answer: No.
> Doug Evans wrote:
> I know we had more discussion than that, but can't recall particular
While
> hex based, I've often wondered if there's not something to mine for use
> Flakmagnet72 wrote:
> A few of the guys in my FT group has tossed out the idea of moving and
Squadron movement is described in More Thrust, so shouldn't be very
controversial. It speeds up movement considerably.
Squadron firing has been tried (should be in the archive somewhere), but it
doesn't have as big an effect as might be expected. While it removes one of
the large ships' advantages (the ability to fire more weapons earlier in
the turn) it does nothing about the others (longer between threshold checks,
more FCSs per ship means that the ship is much less likely to run out of FCSs
entirely, more DCPs per ship means that even a damaged ship has enough DCPs to
repair things whereas on small ships most of the surviving DCPs are on ships
which haven't yet been damaged), so unless the
small-ship
squadrons combined are significantly bigger than the enemy large ships the
latter still have the overall advantage. Of course it depends on how exactly
you form your squadrons, but the concept turned out to be rather
trickier to get to work well than expected.
Regards,
> On Friday 06 February 2004 12:52 am, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
Oh sure, point me at the rulebook that I haven't read all the way through yet.
Sheesh!
I'll print it out and read it today, thanks.
> Squadron firing has been tried (should be in the archive somewhere),