Stopping the Swarm in Campaign Games...

> John Atkinson wrote:

Small ships usually aren't FT capable; thus they can't project offensive
power. Furthermore, they usually are limited in range,
equipment, or some other factor that makes them cost-inefficient in
games.  (This ties in with the modern wet-navy idea, see below...)

> >Modern wet-navies given a costal defence mission. Try crossing the

Yes. However, costal defence is not the only mission navies have. Costal
defence is only a small subset of the Sea Control mission, denying the use of
the sea (or space) to the enemy. It's very hard to escort convoys long
distances with small vessels; they just don't have the range and the
equipment. The same problem occurs with Power Projection (the other main Navy
mission); since the little ships don't have the endurance to get from here to
there, how do you project power? Their combat endurance is pitiful as well;
you better hope you got everybody, or you're toast, as you've got nothing left
to throw.

For example, the USN is betting that small ships will be extremely
vulnerable to carrier-based aviation From The Sea doctrine
depends critically on this premise. Unfortunately, this seems to be
invalidated by the fact that the USN will not be using the stand-off
range of their carrier aircraft, putting the carrier in harm's way. Or use
subs, take out the harbour facilities for the boats before going after the
boats themselves. Take out their means of resupply and repair (because small
boats have extremely limited organic qualities of each), and then wait till
they fall apart. On the flip side, the USN is going to send a fleet of small
ships to project
power half-way around the world; they'd never survive.  The OHP FFGs
are a perfect example of this; an example of the 'High-Low'
philosophy of purchasing, they turned out to be too fragile for the hard use
the USN puts them through, which is why they're retiring early when ships like
USS Enterprise (33 years old, and due to serve until 2005 or something like
that) are still serving.

> >In FT, area weapons like the Wave Gun or Nova Cannon would be good

Not abusive if done right. But definately goofy. (That's a small oversight in
FTII; no real area affect weapons.)

> >Loading your ships with PD would help. Fighters. Banzai Jamming (if

Oh sorry.  (8-)  This doesn't really work in vanilla FTII, but you
can kind of fake it with Sensor rules (i.e. make every ship you have look like
a Capital, and then have the swarm decide what to shoot at...)

Anyways... Banzi Jamming. What you do is use signature enhancers (radar
transponders, FTII Weasel Boats, etc) to enhance your target footrpint. THEN
(this is where the 'Banzai!' comes in), you put your ship along the threat
axis. The incoming missiles (or whatever) being stupid, lock on to your tin
can as opposed to the valuable target you're protecting. Then depending on
what happens next, you either lure the missiles so their sensors can no longer
find the target you're escorting, and turn off your signature enhancer, so you
disappear. Or, you end up taking every missile that was intended for the
target plus whatever they decided to fire at you to take out an escort. Ouch.
(Essentially, you set yourself up as a more inviting target than what you're
escorting, and sucker all the pain giving stuff on to you. Takes guts.)

In the FTII case, since all they're doing is firing missiles, you nominate a
poor destroyer as the Banzai Jammer. When they launch, you set up your
destroyer in the way, turn on the jammer, and sucker most of the missiles on
to it. You lose the destroyer, but they lose their offensive punch, and gotta
run for it. Thus, if they salvo, you can sucker their missiles away. If they
launch singly, your PD can handle it. In other words, you've got effective
counter-moves to whatever they can put out.  You win.  (8-)

Apologies for rambling...

J.