Yup, more silly questions:
Can the Tender-FTL system be installed on a warship?
If so, it seems a real good fleet design would be
to have all Capital ships with the Tender-FTL system,
for a number of reason:
1) They can take highly combat capable non-ftl craft
into battle 2) They can take damaged craft home again. Especially vs those
nasty people with needle missiles...
3) They can take _captured_ craft home again, see (2)
4) If their FTL system takes a threshold check they still can get their own
butts out of there. I'm guessing that the oversized FTL engines can take an
extra hit.
Instead of paying for a tender: Mass x 1.5 Merchant Hull
Mass x 3 FTL-tender
Mass x 2 Normal Space Drive,
or an additional cost of 6.5 per Mass of non-ftl ship,
Buy an ordinary Capital ship where you are already using the hull, the basic
FTL and the Normal Space drive, and
only pay 2.0 per Mass of non-ftl ship.
Since many non-ftl designs can beat ships of 140% their
Mass one can see that a Tug-Dreadnought, non-ftl
Dreadnought can beat an equal cost pair of standard FTL Dreadnoughts.
If Tender systems have to go on Merchant hulls, can
they go on Q-ships?
How about a 100 Mass Q-ship with Reflex Fields
2 ADAF and 19 Missiles? Fire them in a spread between Arcs 2 and 10. If you
are playing with the Modular Missiles rules, use the x2 Endurance, Fast
missiles.
24" for 5 or 6 turns is _formidable_, even if you end
up with 3 Mass missiles which are easier to shoot down.
You use the missiles to find out if your opponent has any wave guns or Nova
Cannon:):) Once you've fired, your tender isn't a terribly important target
anymore.
And is your opponent going to send his anti-Capital
ships after your unarmed tender when you have heavily armed Dreadnought
around?
One of the weird things about the Reflex Field/ Missile
combination is that you have to lower the Reflex Field
the turn _before_ you fire the missiles. On the other
hand, you can apparently raise the Reflex Field in the Movement phase
immediately following your missile launch.
More questions: While reading through the mailing list archives I saw someone
ask whether Reflex fields bounced Fighter beams. The only people who answered
seemed to think that Torpedo fighters ignored the Reflex fields but that all
other fighters would be affected.
Obligatory silly ship:
18 Mass Reflex Field Super Ship Weasel (A weasel that makes the ship look like
it is > 100 Mass) ECM Just to make it a little harder to scan:):)
Basically, you jump this into the battlefield and everything goes after it. If
you are fighting versus Superships, one of them may be so obliging as to fire
all its beams at it. If you are lucky, you get to damage their Superships, if
not, well, you only lose an Escort...
I have some questions about ADAFs as well. Can ADAFs go off before a fighter
group has checked for morale? It would be really nice if by killing two
torpedo fighters the whole group decided not to attack.
If you are firing ADAFs at groups within 6" you should be able to hit them
before they have to check morale. If you have to wait for them to start a run
on a ship within 6" they will already be committed.
Did you know that 9 normal fighters can fight just as well as 6 heavy
Interceptors? The replacement costs of the normal fighters are cheaper, the
big expense, of course, is the launch platform.
Cargo space would strike me as being the primary set-back to this
design: Warships are constructed for one purpose - war, FTL Tenders
carry and in some instances, repair other ships. Warship designs aren't
supportive of carrying other ships essentially 'moored to it' like a tender
would, besides I think you best summed it up this way and answered your own
question about attaching it to a warship:
> "If Tender systems have to go on Merchant hulls, can
Gil Murphy's Laws of Combat #8
"If at first you don't succeed -
> CALL IN AN AIRSTRIKE!"
> ----------
Military tenders are exceedingly nasty. If you run a comparison, a
military tender gives about 2-3 times the firepower of having to use a
civilian tender to carry your non-ftl escorts & cruisers into battle.
The same applies to Q-Ship tenders, except they die easier. I tried
this when designing my Empress Ariana fleet & Jon turned it down.:(
'Neath Southern Skies
> Michael Sandy wrote:
...Snip...(JTL)
> Since many non-ftl designs can beat ships of 140% their
...Snip...(JTL)
Micheal, Concerning only one issue of the message, that of the
dreadnought tug/carrier. You can bet your boots that the
tug/carrier will be first on the list of ships to kill.
In the stratigic game, you will have 2 dreadnaughts trapped in the system,
unable to move again in the stratigic movement portion of the game. Every
trick one tries has its own hidden danger. Bye for now,
> ROBERTSON,Brendan wrote:
Brendan, You have an evil and devious mind, I respect that in a gamer.
Bye for now,
> At 08:17 AM 12/12/97 +1000, you wrote:
We saw the Tug FTL as taking more space. This would make military tenders more
survivable but they wouldn't have more firepower.
+++++++++++++++
+------------+ +----------------+
> ROBERTSON,Brendan wrote:
> Military tenders are exceedingly nasty. If you run a comparison, a
In order for that design to be used in the tournament, I would have had to
make some specific house rules describing the military tender and design
rules. I would have had to give the other players time to evaluate and
implement any tender designs. The easy option was to restrict the tender
design to merchant hulls.
I can certainly reconsider for the next tournament. I'll have plenty of time
to implement any new house rules. The primary change will be running the game
under the Third edition rules. That change alone should make for some very
different fleet design changes.
I thank everybody who has responded to my questions in the past. It looks like
I'm not going to be able to game for a while, so I'm getting my tactical fix
on this group.
When I first started playing around with the Tender or Tug concept I thought
that it really couldn't
survive a one-off combat. In order to work efficiently
you'd use the Tug/Tender to shuttle the more combat
efficient ships into a system.
Having done some math, just as a non-ftl 50 Mass
ship can match a 70 Mass ship built on similar principles, so too a 36 Mass
Ship can match the
Merchant Hulled 50 Mass Q-ship which brought it
into the system.
If the Q-ship is primarily equipped with one-shot
weapons or launch and return later for the fighters it is a lot harder for its
firepower to be knocked out in time to make a difference in the battle. In
determining the outcome of a single battle, going
after the Q-ship Tug doesn't make sense, it is only
when you compare its construction cost/damage point
ratio that it becomes a more important target.
In a campaign game, I'd say screw the Q-ship concept,
give the tender/tug a Cloaking device and have its
systems/cargo space be devoted to repair and
rearmament equipment.
After the battle it acts as a mobile repair base. During WWII, one of the
benefits of winning a tank battle was being able to repair, refit, or salvage
from the wrecked tanks. In a battle to takeover a system you are going to need
repair facilities and a permanent force anyway, so 'abandoning' the
non-ftl Dreadnought it brought into the system isn't
so bad if that Dreadnought has the strength to prevail.
Obviously, you don't use this concept for a mere raid, but only for serious
attempts to permanently conquer a system. You don't commit this force without
a fair idea of what it would be going up against.