I think Haley Rockets and the existing weapons are enough to combat the first strike capabilities of FACs (if you have a big table and they can't bumrush you straight away).  But a friend keeps pointing out that torpedo laden FACs can effectively walk their weapons into enemy hulls with their  ability to always move after and always shoot BEFORE capital warships.  If they're killed by return fire, so what?  Handled properly, they will ALWAYS hit first, and likely kill the opposition.

I think the argument has merit.

So I was a'wonderin if folks might want to look at a defensive measure ships can take against FACs, in somewhat similar veins to the whole torpedo net thing.

"Saturation Fire" has the crewmen manning those light guns and machine guns just wailing away without aiming at any definite target -- throwing up a carpet of fire in hopes that they'll down or a least divert an enemy FAC before it can hit them.

A ship can be marked as dedicating light guns and MGs to saturation fire during its movement phase.  The number of weapons it can assign determines what modifier, if any is applied to attacking FACs.  The idea is that the heavier the flak/what have you, the more likely the FAC crews are to pull away from their attack runs, or be just to jittery/pre-occupied to be effective.

IE
For every 3 Light Guns or MGs firing out of a given arc, the defending ships imparts a -1 to hit penalty to any attacking FACs that Turn.  But those weapons can't be used offensively. I picked 3 because most cap ships seem to pack at least 6 light guns, and as you can only use half your LGs out of any arc, that seems each ship will be able to impart at least a -1 penalty.

So if there are 6 LGs or MGs firing out of an arc, you get a -2 penalty, and so on.

Lookit at like this.  You have two Harpune FACs with a total of four D8(X3) torpedoes bearing down on a British Tycho class CL.  If they walk in their torpedoes at point blank range, those FACs have a 50% chance hit with each torpedo, meaning they're probably going to hit at least twice.  And six points of damage rolled on a D12 has a good chance of killing that light cruiser before it has a chance to fight back.

Now, the Tycho has enough LGs to impart a -1 penalty if it dedicates some of those weapons to throwing up a curtain of ether-flak.  So those FACs, instead of now just needing a 5+ to hit, need a 6+.  Which helps at least a little. 

The Tycho would be crazy not to do that if safely removed from enemy capital ships.  But if surrounded by hostile cruisers, the player would have to think about whether or not he really wanted to take this step.

Just an idea.