High Guard economics and spinal mounts
I've done a lot of TL 11-15 Book 5 ship designs, and I've found some interesting factoids.
1) Meson bays are almost worthless.
Any bay meson gun can be stopped by a low-quality meson screen, or a target ship's configuration.
2) Planetoid hulls generally aren't worth it.
Exceptions: very low TL armour protection, and for making ships with a higher armour rating than the TL allows.
3) Below TL 15, the cost of a 1000 dt+ ship is determined by the cost of the power plant.
Jump drives, computers, weaponry etc. are incidental compared to the tyranny of MCr3.0/ton.
4) Backup systems are cheap. Backup drives are not.
Backup screens, computers and frozen watches are relatively cheap tonnagewise compared to the combat advantage they give.
5) Before TL 12, nuclear missiles are the dominant secondary weapon.
And they rival even spinal particle accelerators as cheap n' effective ship-killers. There's almost no reason to use beam weapons (unless your referee accounts for ordnance expended.)
6) Drop tanks are a great boon for large combatants.
A TL 12 jump-4 ship with 2 pc internal fuel and 2 pc drop tanks has the advantage of 9-10 levels of armour over a similar ship with 4 pc internal fuel. In other words, drop tanks give starships many of the advantages of battle riders.
7) Combatants should carry 2 pc internal jump fuel at a minimum.
It's way too easy to find out after a single combat round that you don't have the fuel for a 1 pc jump and one week's life support. (I assume that having a 'rally point' in the same or adjacent hex is standard operating procedure.)
8) Fighters are useless...except when they aren't.
Fighters give two advantages in combat: the +1 initiative roll for the bigger fleet, and as a screen for when you need to disengage by acceleration (or have your battle riders dock with their tender.) In combat, though, they aren't anywhere near as effective as an 1000-2000 dton frigate armed with a missile bay, even ignoring the cost of the carrier.
9) Meson spinal mounts get better as they get bigger. Not so much particle accelerators.
Meson gun spinal mounts need to penetrate screens and configuration, so even a measly factor or two on the table counts. (Compare type A and type Bs, for example.) (That said, multiple small spinal meson guns are still very scary.) A particle accelerator spinal mount, however, doesn't have the power to inflict criticals against an reasonably armoured enemy ship of equivalent size, and so their usefulness declines even with the very low to-hit numbers high up the table.
10) One watch is not enough.
...Unless you have enough armour to prevent crew hits. Crew hits are worse even than internal explosion computer hits, because computer backups are cheap (for large combatant vessels) and it takes 2 turns to unfreeze your crew.
11) Better to take a critical than an internal.
Seriously. 'Fuel Tanks Shattered' is worse than anything except a catastrophic hit; it's completely irreparable and makes disengagement almost impossible. (Sure, you can fire missiles and sandcasters, but how well will they work without a computer?)
--Devin
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