Astral Action Design: NAC Faction

 The NAC from the Full Thrust line of miniatures has the following description from the Star Ranger site:

The Royal Navy employs largely general-purpose ships (with the exception of the Fighter Carrier classes), using a broad mix of weapons and systems - beam batteries, pulse torpedoes and some salvo missile systems. They have some specialized designs for duties such as minelaying and sweeping, planetary bombardment and such, but the majority of fleet units are versatile multi-role ships. Energy screens are the primary passive defense, though some hull armour is also employed especially on the heavier units. Mobility is generally average-to-good, with very few ships having less than thrust-4 drives. Fighter operations doctrine is to base them on specialized carriers which rely primarily on supporting escort ships for their defense.

When I inquired from for feedback from Lore on the Facebook group, I received feedback that was summarized by the following:

NSL: Slow, Strong Hull/Armor

NAC: Speed and Screens

FSE: Speed and Missiles

ESU: Slow, Strong hull/Screens

 Most informatively, however, a link was given to a fan-made project by Emerald Coast Skunkworks (Found Here) that gave lore as well as updated Continuum SSD's for the new model range.  Very impressive.  It's a fan-made item, so not "canon", but I doubt any actual "canon" will be produced at this point (although I'd be happy if it did so).  

As a result, for designing the SIC (Ship Information Cards) and building the Stats for each Ship in the fleet I now posess, I'll need to come up with my own design doctrine.  

Combining the two design doctrines from the Facebook group and the ECS NAC manual, I'm going to design to the following philosophy:

In the NAC, capital ships are the front and center pride of the navy.  In general, they aim to be deployed in the center of the board or dominating a major firing lane, with smaller ships in formation if the mission dictates.  The central unit will head at a slow velocity up the center, while the smaller units sweep in towards the vertical center, like the closing of a book.  In this way, they center ships of the opponents should be wiped out while the smaller ships will be pass each other, now covering each other's flanks.

The quick-and-dirty of this is shown below:

I imagine the NAC won't be particularly point's conscious but neither extravagant.

Ships who want to use this will need speed on their medium ships to keep the mix of maneuver/speed as well as shields to make it through and regenerate them later.  The lighter ships are already quite maneuverable, but may have enhancements towards that effect.  Because of the nature of the battle doctrine, they can save points on their primary weapon (presumably a Beam, that they will call a "Lance") by making it have a reduced 180 arc.  Most primaries will be this and Shields, with Boosters, Heading enhance and full coverage Kinetic weapons to round them out.