I had an interesting book for Chrismas and amongst all the WW2 naval usual ship info complete with fates, like the IJN Surya CVA was sunk by a single bomb dropped by Dive Bomber Ace, Commander Best, which penetrated the deck elevator during the battle of Midway, was some of the ships involved in the Atlantic U-boat battles.
The Flower Class Corvette was the most numerous warship of WW2 with 166 hulls built over a 2 year period (167 if you count the fictional "HMS Compass Rose from the film "The Cruel Sea").
These little comercial trawler based ships carried the most advanced electronics detection of any warship and specialised in solely hunting U-Boats and turned the tide of the Battle Of The Atlantic, sinking more U-Boats than all other vessels, aircraft and blimps conbined.
Armament was 1 x 5.5" dual purpose gun, 1 x 20mm. Oerlikon autogun and 1 x 25 barrelled SONAR targetted "computer" fired "Hedgehog" anti-submarine mortar launcher.
This device fired all 25 depth detonated bombs over a set pattern and were fired automatically by the ship's "computer" at the correct moment, ahead of the Corvette and had a 100% on target hit rate, hence the high kill rate of U-Boats.
Now picture the situation in SFB during the General War after "Eagle Day" when the Romulan Empire decides to attack the Federation.
Pretty soon after the event the Romulans would have conducted their own version of the "Battle Of The Atlantic" against Federation colonies and outposts, in order to weaken them and render them impotent or easy meat for capture.
With the Lyran and Klingon Fronts tying up so many warships, the Federation would not be able to spare enough escorts for all essential convoys and Q-Ships, as players of SFB and SFC have found, are no match for an experienced Romulan player using a cloaked ship.
I would surmise, using tactical reasoning, that the Romulans would have operated large numbers of Snipes, which were clearly obstelete against proper frigates from enemy races or even their allies, in a similar role as WW2 U-Boats operating a "Wolf Pack" system in order to prosecute a blockade and starvation system against key Federation postions too strong to immediately directly confront.
The Federation would begin to feel this campaign and would be unable to donate more than a few FFR, CLR and conventional warships to cover every convoy and counter the blockades.
With the shipyards hard pressed, the Federation would not also be able to build aditional hulls or convert over vessels.
However the commercial shipyards, being unable to build warships of any type, can churn out freighters almost as quickly as they are lost, rather like "Liberty Ships".
Then some bright spark at Star Fleet, with and interest in WW" naval history, remembers how Corvettes won the "Battle Of The Atlantic" three centuries before.
By removing the backbone spine from a small freighter, extending the engineering hull to double its length and welding the two together, the 23rd century version of the Flower Class Corvette was created.
The commercial shipyards could churn out several hulls a week.
Armament was 1 x Ph2 FX, 1 x Ph3 and 6 x Cargo Tranporters with a store of 24 Transporter Bombs. The ship carries a single Special Sensor and 6 x Btty (for the Cargo Transporters).
Shields = 5 all around.
The Corvette only has very basic special sensor functions, enough to break lock ons, aid with the detection and hunting of cloaked ships, etc. but cannot act as a proper scout.
I've created and experimented with a model of the Corvette in SFC both as hunter and the hunted in games and basically the result of an attack on a cloaked Snipe, even a Snipe C, is as follows.
1- The Corvette makes its attack run, Snipe player cloaks.
2- The Corvette chucks out 6 x Transporter Bombs onto the Snipe inflicting serious damage.
3- The Snipe is unable to maintain its cloak, due to damage, and de-cloaks.
4- An accompanying escort warship finishes it off.
As the Snipe player I found that there were some tactics that could be employed to dodge the Transporter Bombs such as dropping speed to under 4. However, the Corvette player can make feined runs to force the Snipe player to slow down and drop behind the convoy it is supposed to be attacking, which will allow it to escape, ths a result to the Federation player.
The Snipe player can lure the Corvette to lag behind any warship escorts and Q-Ship with the convoy, de-cloak and hit it with a Plasma (Corvettes were one or two hit wonders even in WW2), quickly cloak again and move onto attacking the convoy.
We've had some fun here playing around with the concept of Corvettes, developing tactics to use with and against them.
We've worked out that a typical formation for an average convoy would be 2 x Corvettes to support a Q-Ship or Escort warship.
It was quickly worked out that a lone Corvette is fair game for an uncloaked Snipe, so some sort of warship deterant to be close at hand to deter such a tactic.
A massive Transport Bomb deplyment is still the best way to nail a cloaked ship in SFB and SFC, it is just that normal ships don't carry enough Transporter Bombs or Transporters to deploy them in meaningful quantities.
I'm working on an SSD for submission to ADB.