Topic: Kzinti Savage Claw Class Early Light Cruiser For SFC 1

[Panzergranate]

The Savage Claw Class light cruiser is extrapolated from the destroyer. It differs only in that a large medium range disrupter turret is mounted in the front of the hull under the bridge tower.

Three Disrupters is stretching the ship's power a bit as players will probally notice. Achieving speed 31 or more than speed 20 will require that the Disrupters are taken offline, more so than the early frigate or early destoyer.

The intention is to provide early Kzinti warship formations with some medium range Disrupter firepower as opposed to the short range Disrupters normally carried by these early warships.
 
During this period warships tended to do battle in large formations and relied on combined firepower to overwhelm an enemy.   

Due to the limited number of missiles carried and the short range direct fire weapons available to them, Kzinti warfleets tended to close quickly with an enemy , expend their missiles from a stand off then either close in to mop up or withdraw.

[Roychipoqua_Mace]

Very neat, fits in well with other pre-TOS stuff. These matches sound like a ton of fun for the reasons you said in the other thread (such few weapons, such limited power).

Also neat that the appearance of disruptors but diminished phasers (only ph-3 in these matches across all races?) turns the dizzies into much more of a crunch weapon than they usually are in SFC.

[Panzergranate]

I just wish that the fore runner to Disrupters, the Particle Beam Cannon, could be included into the stock weapons of the game. If only they'd done the direct fire weapons in a weapons list file so that tables could be added as with a Star Fleet Battles SSD. I would have added these in for an alternative point defence.

Yes, earlier battles are a bit more difficult. Loosing any power box, especially a Warp box, seriously affects a ship, more so than with TOS period ships. There are no minor damage hits that can be shrugged off....

Performing a long range scan either stops a ship dead or reduces speed to a dead crawl.

In LAN games players tend to only power up the weapons that they intend to use for a particular stage in a battle dependant on fighting stretegy.

Shields are usually only powered up when intending to move into range of an enemy. Even with incoming missile salvoes, speed, dropping bombs and firing one's own missiles as anti-missiles is a better option. Power is better utilised for weapons charging, damage control and movement.

Overloads of Disrupters or specific Disrupters is not always possible. Players have to choose more between a high attack speed or overloaded Disrupters and a slow attack run. As the direct fire weapons tend to be short ranged, moving out of range isn't such a problem. Missile salvoes tend to force an enemy to keep a high speed thus limiting the power available to them for weapons charging.

The AI tends to play earlier ships slightly different, perhaps reflecting on the power availability.

Its a more skillful game....