Re: New helm being Submitted to Compendium

Downer, Chris wrote:
>
> Yes it is a serious question. I never liked the 100 ton rule and I know
that
> others on this list have had ships in there campaigns that are above 100
> tons. I don't see 500 tons as being a "impossibly crazy amount" and with
> ship critical hits it is possable to cripple a large ship like this. You
> just have to keep in mind that the bigger the ship the more expensive.

<<<<<        I've found that people generally ignore cost as a limitation.
It
doesn't matter if fleets cost more gold than entire worlds could
possibly produce, they just flat out ignore them in the persuit of the
'ultimate ship/faction/whatever'.>>>>>>

Well you are right if the DM lets them. But I was assuming that the DM would
take cost into consideration. Besides with this argument any rule can be
broken if the DM let's it.

> So
> the nation building these ships may not have the funds to make a fleet of
> 500 ton ships. Hell they may not have the funds for many 100 ton ships.
Also
> because they are not very manuverable (and large) they are suseptable to
> smaller (faster) ship attacks. They would make a great target for fighter
> attacks escpecially if the fighters had some fire based attacks.

        SJ doesn't really support fighters well, short of cheezing them out
with really expensive &/or home rules designed to make them more
powerful.  And a 500 ton ship is going to carry enough light weapons to
make sure the fighters aren't going to get close enough to use fire very
often, if ever.

The standard SJ does list a few fighter types but does not go into detail as
to how they move around without helms. They are "non-magical Engines" what
ever that means. So it is not hard to come up with a fighter type helm that
can only power ships under 10 tons. This list has had this discussion
before. Now assuming that there are fighters type ship in the campaign
(whether they have magical or "non-magical helms" Flitters) They can bring
down a ship this large even with the ship armed with light weapons. I'm not
saying that there will be no losses on the fighter's side. Look at WW2 in
the Pacific fighters type craft (this includes dive bombers, torpedo
bombers, etc) took on battleship. And the armament on these battleships were
extensive against small aircraft.
I'm not saying that taking down a 500 ton ship is going to be easy but it
can be done.