Might be worth mentioning that a good counter for Repeating in general is to find ways to reduce the chance to hit, since anything that shifts the odds really drops your expected number of hits rapidly, even with Reroll To-Hit.  ECM, Stealth, the optional Evasive Maneuvers and Fighter Screening rules, using fighter attacks to make explosions in a stacked hex...they can all do the job to one degree or another.

Rich

The obvious question is "how much do those ships of his cost?"  Assuming they're fairly expensive, building 30+ small (one hull, two?), cheap ships with modestly powerful guns and using them as a screen between his ships and your heavier vessels might be a decent counter.  It sounds like his ships are eggshells with sledgehammers, if you build more humble (cheaper) models with just enough firepower to threaten his ships, you force him to either try to avoid your pickets or waste fire on them.  Even a single "tornado" is gross overkill on a ship whose cost should be down in the teens, isn't it?

His expendables are also really optimized for killing large ships, as I'm sure you've noticed.  Maybe building more medium/small-sized ships is a better idea than loading up on capships?  You say he can beat a fleet with twice his CR, but he's only managing it because he's playing rock to your scissors.  I'm pretty sure half his point value in one-hull cheapos (with spinals and some conventional guns, or even less expensive expendables) would take the fleet you've described out back and wrap his rock in paper but good. 

My two cents, anyway.

Rich

Not to mention the obvious, but the first sample fight you gave us features some of the most unlikely die-rolling I've ever heard of.  You rolled for 51 fighters, took only 2 losses to AFB (should have been 8.5),  and hit with 38 of the rest (should have been about 16).  Your shield penetrations were the only average thing about the whole affair, and even they were wrong, since the PDS should have been factored in.

Given any situation where one side rolls more than twice as well as average, you're going to have a walkover.

Rich

But Teleporters are gone now, aren't they?  In part *because* of that problem.

If you're trying to use them to model Star Trek or something, I'd advise having a Q hit knock out *all* your Teleporters.  The Enterprise has what, a dozen or more of the fool things, but when one breaks down, they never just go use another one.  Of course that has more to do with plot requirements and set budgets than anything, but still...

Rich

I'm not even sure it needs to be fixed, as such.  But it does bother me...if I didn't think it would make different ships too similar in terms of performance, I'd suggest assigning a set number Damage Chart "slots" to engines and having each E hit knock off Thrust/X points.  But that would do bad things to the relative vulnerabilities of VS vs VL hulls...

Rich

Perhaps.  OTOH, what if you "condensed" a bit:

One VL or L ship requires
One M or S ship, which requires
Two S or VS ships

That would allow a minimum four-ship squadron to get a VL or L on the table, and give you a fair amount of freedom of choice as to the size of the smaller ships.  It seems to me that L & VL hulls are always major combatants, while cruisers tend to be M or S, and light escorts are generally VS or at most S.

Rich

Yes and no.  I think you've got the point costs right (or at least close) for their combat effectiveness, so gameplay is fine in terms of balance.  But I dislike the way a point of engine damage seems to mean different things to a destroyer and a battleship.  Losing 10% of your thrust is very different from losing 25%, and it feels wrong that a smaller engine room should be less affected by the same amount of damage...especially when that same point of damage will knock out one hull box on either ship, which is a mere scratch to a BB but a possible kill on a DD.  And both types of ships just love catching shells on their light guns, which are nearly a free hit for many vessels.

No idea exactly how to fix that, if it even needs to be fixed, though.  The game plays all right, it just doesn't simulate "wet navy" realities (ie the fragility of small ships) quite right IMO.

Rich

FWIW, I'm already playing in my own universe part of the time.  IS has been very handy for playing those space battles I always wanted to do in the Space 1889 setting.  Well, Space 1905-ish, really, but still...

So canon designs are just timesavers for me when I want a ship quick and don't feel like making my own.

Rich

That looks like a good compromise to me...although I'd still lobby for Gyros giving a bonus of some kind, maybe a right column shift for on the chart for any ship with a momentum of one or more?

And you need an 11-12 column for those over-engined FACs, of course. 

Rich

I'm a (2) user because size alone does *not* indicate whether a big gun would have trouble tracking a given target.  Speed (represented best by looking at current momentum) and maneuverability should be factors, and a ship of any given size can have widely varying thrust and turning abilities.

I'm not entirely happy with it because it feels a little too generous to faster ships (to the point where trading thrust for armor seems iffy to me), and because it's fairly unrealistic in spots.  The momentum modifiers would work better for me if they were adjusted for target aspect, eg: halve the modifier if the target ship is facing toward (bow arc) or away from (stern arc) the firing ship, but leave them the same if it's broadside on, because a closing/retreating target is showing less lateral motion.  Also, I'd add +1 to any positive modifier if the ship has a  Gyrostabilizer, to reflect the enhanced maneuverability...which would also make them a little more appealing.

Historically, heavy guns had a hard time hitting small ships, but they tended to wreck them when they did connect.  In IS, they still have trouble hitting, but a single heavy shell hit is likely to just damage the engine room a bit.

Rich

Tease, tease.  Besides, there are already several defenses.  Depending on which optional rule you're using, either small size or high speed is helpful, and bulky, expensive LPs are generally suboptimal against swarms of FACs or small ships, especially if the little guys are packing Keel Bombards.  d20s make up for a lot...

Nice designs overall, though I think I agree with the carrier launch rate concerns.  You could just bump the hull size up one to increase the launch rate to four, but you'd have to fiddle with the thrust and armor to maintain performance.

Say, empty FAC cradles *are* legit Q hits, right?  You don't *have* to take  out a loaded one?

Rich

Interesting figures there.  Any data on South America?

And how much of that would be changed by the Invasion?  Sure, it failed, but it also hurt some countries pretty badly, the UK in particular.

Rich