At some point after the Jumbos/Heavies were introduced a brilliant Engineer figured a way to incorporate Jumbos and/or Heavy Auxiliaries into a larger light show against the new Bases.

The yield of using the Jumbo/Heavy Auxes adds the following rules:

(520.1) Larger SAFs have a production cost of 13 EPS.

(521.621) A larger SAF can incoprate the FTH or FTJ in a similar manner reducing the cost as follows: Incorporating a Jumbo or Heavy is relative to is size, in effect removing one FTH (9 points) or one FTJ (7 points). A larger SAF once created can be later disbanded yielding the same ships that were used to create it.

(520.411) It will take 15 points to disrupt (cripple) a larger SAF with a Jumbo and 18 to disrupt an SAF with a Heavy.
(520.42) Combat table: Add +1 SID for the Jumbo and +2 for the Heavy in each category. Example a Jumbo SAF DISRUPTED on a die roll of 3 would produce 1+1 SIDS. Note: A modified roll of zero for DISRUPTED (no matter the size) still yields a "No effect" result.

All other rules are unchanged.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, January 18, 2021 - 06:37 am: Edit

That proposal has been made before, several times. SAFs are bad enough now. I am not sure what you're getting that you couldn't do with two of them.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Tuesday, January 19, 2021 - 12:06 am: Edit

I am not surprised this proposal had been made. I did look through he current list and didn't see it. I agree it seems a natural next step for these to grow in size and effect as they technology improves and the bases get larger (more SIDS needed to take it down).

I was looking to have a larger effect on a single turn (a boost of +25 to 50% effect per round while making it slightly more difficult to disrupt (ala takes more damage).

Not sure what is meant by "bad enough already" does that mean too easy to disrupt, or not effective, or not worth the cost? I suppose it doesn't matter if that ship sailed out to see and was never heard from again except the occasional rumors/legends of its demise.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, January 19, 2021 - 03:58 am: Edit

This was proposed about five minutes after we changed ultra-rare ore carriers into fairly common heavy freighters. Then again when we suddenly said "what about three pods?" and invented Jumbos. We may do it someday, but it is such an obvious direction that nobody gets credit for inventing it.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Wednesday, March 24, 2021 - 08:30 pm: Edit

I'm not advocating for or against this idea, but I think I can answer an implied question why someone would want one of these instead of 2 SAFs. In addition to being harder to disrupt and more effective than SAFs, there's the matter of rate of production. It would be faster to get one of these into service than 2 SAFs.