@AndrewChristlieb: That was me! That was me! I haven't had time to actually play games with it, but I would refine it and say: 'Escorts swap the Defences and Ordnance columns on the Firepower chart, as well as the Escort and Capital Ship columns'. The rulebook already says stuff about big guns being slow (I think it's in the 'Attacking Ordnance' bit on the Firepower chart page). It seems an elegant option to me, so I like it.
I agree with RaptorEvolved's suggestions for how escorts should be played. To me, though, it seems like they aren't quite all-the-way-there yet: it's like they're missing something in terms of game mechanics. Although Necron escorts have done pretty well against me when rushing up as a pack... probably because of the Tombship killin' my dudes at the same time...
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Seahawk's experiences kind of highlight this missing bit: why waste points on a squishier escort squadron when you can get a cruiser with more firepower? Their niche is almost artificially compressed because of the lack of rules to give them more advantage when escorting. (Chaos is also a bit special because their escorts fill up the holes in the rest of their fleet). What was thy escort to capital ratio, RaptorEvolved?
But I was thinking on what Mallich and AndrewChristlieb (the first time) said about gently encouraging escorts and in between postings Jimmy Zimms said what I had concluded too:
Part of the problem IMO is that escorts don't actually escort with the current squadron rules which is really their purpose in the WW1/2 Naval analog. The other, as is pointed out, is that gunships are actually a separate beast that should work in hunter packs, especially vessels like Firestorms, and should be priced as such to encourage larger packs in fleet list construction. But I'm with Horizon, they can pack a huge punch and are always present when I game. ![Smiley :)](http://www.specialist-arms.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
Although I wasn't in favour of this before (for various reasons at the time) I think that combining escort and capital squadrons is the best way to go to get escorts 'escorting' properly. They are a cheap way to add firepower to a capital, they are partially protected from larger enemies, they help with massing turrets and anti-attack craft duties and you want to take a
pair of Swords for your cruisers (as the rulebook says
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) which I suppose you wouldn't do so often with separate escorts because of survivability. It's really important to keep the separate squadrons for hunter-packs, that is, the current setup, but the WW analogue of escorts squadronning with capital ships is the neatest solution I can think of at the moment.
So, does anyone else (besides Jimmy Zimms
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) think this is a good idea? Or is there a better, nicer solution? I guess someone should play-test a bit too
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Anyway, food for thought:
Thinking Stone
PS: Good thing I copied that before previewing... I had timed out
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