I certainly would not allow that, you are declaring "divert all available power to the jump drive" and "divert all available power to the manoeuvre drive" at the same time. You are using the same power to drive all of the jump drive, manoeuvre drive, and armaments at the same time, which is clearly not possible. ...
No, that's not what I said. Power plant 9: PP-6 powers agility 6, PP-1 provides jump-1 (if provided over 2 turns), PP-2 provides sufficient power for other systems - about 4000 EP, which covers the meson screen (3600 EP at F9), nuclear damper (90 EP at F9), and computer (12 EP at Model/9 or 9fib). Technically there's power to spare for secondary weapons - 298 EP - but an opponent might quibble about one doing power allocation to that level of detail and secondary weapons aren't really worth bothering with when the aim is to get out of Dodge quick. Easier to just say I'm going to emergency agility and applying power to jump; if he quibbles about power, I can show him my math and establish that the power is available for use by the jump drive, satisfying both rules.
...Powering even a Jump-1 requires the output of a PP-2 for a round. ...
Or PP-1 for 2 rounds, and I did mention reducing agility by 1 to manage a jump in one round. I don't need to lower by 2.
...Taking two weeks to get back to base as a doctrine would invite the enemy to raid your base while you were in jump space. ...
Which they would do anyway if I let the battleship get destroyed. He just limps in a week later than the rest of the fleet.
...Trading off armour invites missile boats to scrape the weapons, not quite acceptable for a BB. But, yes, you will not get effective J-4 BBs even at TL15. ...
Yup, that's the dilemma in a nutshell. Good solid warcraft with shorter legs, or warcraft with greater reach that aren't as effective in combat.
...The situation you describe is only at high tech, say TL 15 and possibly TL14. At lower TLs power and hence agility and spinals are much more expensive and you will struggle to get decent armour and agility on riders, much less ships. ...
Well, you forego the big guns and settle for battleships with cruiser-weight spinals - and shorter range.
...Battleships are not intimidating when the enemy knows that he can kill it with a few small riders. It will only invite sniggers about over-compensating ...
Well, certainly anyone playing to CT
High Guard would snigger. Canon universe seems to think battleships are intimidating for some reason. If I were to set about describing an Imperial fleet, I'd include some battleships to conform to canon biases. If I were to design a fleet that fit
High Guard rules, battleships would have been consigned to the dustbin of history when mesons showed up. Actually, carriers are more intimidating for
High Guard rules show-the-flag when you think about it, so long as you send them with good escorts, because they can stand outside of range of the planet's deep meson batteries and send hundreds of little fighters to duel with the planet's military (which I guess would be
Striker rules at that point) and strafe hell out of the cities, and if someone rises up to challenge them, the carrier books for the outer system and rendezvous with their surviving fighters there before going home.
...Also note that you can't prevent a breakthrough of your line of battle if you can't fire your weapons, rendering putting the ships in the line of battle moot if you do not power their weapons.
"A breakthrough occurs if all of one player's line of battle ships have been rendered
incapable of firing any offensive weapons."
They are still capable of firing weapons. They are electing not to. I interpret this breakthrough rule to indicate that it is safe for the opposing fleet to fly through your line to get at the reserve (it's really hard to see why the enemy can't just take shots at your reserve in normal combat otherwise, and High Guard is a very abstracted system) and given the power of these weapons at ground combat ranges (<5 km MT rules, <125 km
Striker rules), it makes sense fleets don't want to get that close. Lasers are carving through Factor 10-11 armor at that range, and let's not even think about energy weapons. I don't think any fleet would have a problem stopping the jump charge-up to take advantage of an opportunity to fire point-blank at an enemy trying to get to their reserve.