Strikeboat Design

Hi All,

I was poking around on the Brigade Models site <>, and was looking over their
design for the Saar Class Strikeboat. For those who don't feel like going
there to look, it is as follows:

Saar Class SB MASS [6], POINT COST 6 Weak Hull Integrity, 1 MASS, 2 POINT
COST, 1 Hull Point Main Drive 8, 2 MASS, 4 POINT COST 1 FireCon, 1 MASS, 4
POINT COST 2 Submunitions Packs, 2 MASS, 6 POINT COST TOTAL POINT COST = 22

A basically solid design, packing the most destructive power into the smallest
package. However, consider this slight design change:

Saar+ Class SB
MASS [8], POINT COST 8 Fragile Hull Integrity, 1 MASS, 2 POINT COST, 1 Hull
Point Main Drive 8, 3 MASS, 6 POINT COST 1 FireCon, 1 MASS, 4 POINT COST 2
Submunitions Packs, 2 MASS, 6 POINT COST 1 Armour, 1 MASS, 2 POINT COST TOTAL
POINT COST = 28

With a 2 MASS increase and spending an extra 6 POINT COST, the survivability
is doubled.

The basic design is eliminated after a single hit, meaning that long range
Beam fire can destroy a significant portion of your boats before they can get
in range.

The MASS 8 design keeps the same 1 Hull Box but adds the Armour point,
preventing the threshold that would be forced from a stronger Hull, but still
giving the twice the boxes.

Now the enemy must concentrate his long range Beam fire in order to assure a
kill, and many more of your Strikeboats will survive to unload their
unpleasant little suprises at close range

A MASS 10 version adds another point of Armour at a total cost of 34 points.
I'll need to do some playtesting to see if this has reached the point of
diminishing returns.

> Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote:

> Hi All,

I should point out that my strikeboat designs are mass-6 so that they
can fit neatly into a fighter bay. To achieve a more survivable Saar I'd
probably ditch one SubM pack and add the armour point in the space freed up so
that they'd still fit in the fighter bay. That said, I don't usually deploy
SBs
from carriers since carrying ships internally isn't cost-effective. My
preference is FTL tugs such as the Netanyahu class which deploy the Saars from
external mounts - much cheaper :-).

> The basic design is eliminated after a single hit, meaning that long

A known problem... getting crews to volunteer for service in Strike Squadrons
has proved problematical :-/

The one thing about these designs is, used in moderation they are fine. But
used as a fleet, then they become munckinee (or cheesy if you prefer)

I've seen a similar fleet used against someone who said FB was crap since the
optimum fleet was very large ships. So the death scout was invented
to show him bragging that you are unbeatable is a bad idea :-)

Death Scout 36 pts Mass 10 Thr 4 Fragile Hull FTL Armour 1 FCS
P-torp

> On Tue, 8 Feb 2000, Graeme Bradbury wrote:

> Death Scout 36 pts

Drop the FTL drive and you have the FT equivalent of a torpedo Boat.