That depends on which rules you use, though. If you are using the original crew damage rules, by which any crew hit means a mission kill, crew damage is by far the most effective ship killer. Meson guns get hits on the radiation hit table as well as on the surface damage table.
True. I'm assuming here we're talking about the HG rules with the crew variant or MT, whose main differences are the use of sensors and the lesser letality of Interior Explosion result on the SUrface Explosion table (due to the table distribution and the lack of the +6 in the IET roll). Otherwise, crew killing is another of the main ship-crippling result.
By the way, one rule that is often overlooked can considerably influence the balance of many smaller ships vs. one big ship: Individual skills. A genius captain (say Ship Tactics-5) combined with an ace pilot (Pilot-5) will transform a computer-9, agility-6 ship into a computer-11, agility-8 ship.
I never forget about the ship tactics or pilot use, but I also assume that among large fleets its influence would be minor, as you won't have many more such officiers than you enemy (another guess of mine, of course, but I think most fleets would be likely trained).
Another thing that (IMHO) fails in HG too is that if you have a captain with Ship's Tactics 5 and a pilot 5 pilot, the rest of the crew could as well be raw recruits just taken out of the bar, and your ship efectiveness won't be affected.
In MT more skills are assumed to be featured, but it's so badly explained that (again IMHO) makes it useless ecept again for Ship Tactics, but there the tactics pool may be easily abused (how many ship's tactics skill may you have on a 2000 men crew? And even more if you remember tactics may be used as ship's tactics at minus one).
As it would take too much space to repeat it here, let me direct you to early posts of mine (who will again refer you to another, sorry for that):
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=378300&postcount=626
The spare BRs are system defenses. Something that's already being paid for out of system defense budgets.
Hopefully (for him) your attacker would also be spending a sizable part of his military budget on defending his own systems and only build battleships with the part of the budget he feels he can afford to spend on attack forces. After all, the defender's mobile forces are six[*] times as effective as the attacker's, so if he doesn't guard his homeworld, he's extremely vulnerable.
I guess the BB fleet's home defenses will also be paid by the system defense budgets, as your, that also must pay for your spare BRs to make up losses.
I assume you want to hold the system long enough to repair your battleships. "A few weeks" sounds harmless enough, but "more time than the enemy needs to return with reinforcements" is the more accurate term.
I've found your earlier posts about time to mobilize and counterattack quite optimist. In it you assumed that:
-You have a straong enough TF in suport range.
-You know where your supporting forces are (if this battle is not the only operation on the area, there's a nice possibility that any mobile forces it has have jumped from the position you assumed them on the last weeks, so sending your courrier to a wild chase trying to find them.
If you just go rearguard with your tenders to pick reserve BRs as spares to fight again, are you sure you want to jump, with an equivalent force to that who just retreated (even if you have a million BRs waiting where you jump to pick them, your tenders can only carry that many) into the same fleet that has overwhelmed them? And this time without spare fuel to jump away...
Sadly, as written, the main shipkiller in HG is "nibbled to death by hamsters (missiles)" because missiles are both free and available in limitless supply. To make mesons the main shipkiller you need to factor in magazine requirements and charge for missiles fired.
I fully agree with you here. Most of you have already read my opinion about that. In MT, where this is factored, a 50 dton bay nuclear missile salvo costs MCr 3.75, adn a 100 dton one MCr 7.5. If we accept your nubers (2500 factor 9 nukes savos), it costs about MCr 9375 to cripple a 74 kdton ship...
Assuming a turret and a bay missile launcher have a similar number of reloads that's 7 turns of fire with missiles carried in the turret/bay.
At wich cost? How much tonnage do you need for spares?