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You know, The Real Chris, you raise some interesting questions.
I have had escort squadrons chewed up, or just gone, because I stuck them out to far and a capitol ship had no other target. Ouch! I try to use escorts to protect the larger ships from the smaller ones - especially the torpedo firing ones - and as a quick sortie against a crippled ship trying to get away. When using the house rule for turrets, I try to string out a 'picket line' that will intercept ordinance. Note "try". I often get enemy escorts thrown at my attempts at a picket line. Even if I nail more of them than I lose, any holes in my defense line lets through the ordinance I'm trying to keep out. The ordinance being obliged to engage my escorts, when markers come into base contact, and using expanded turrets rules, ordinance get thinned out. Of course, some escorts are lost too.
In a way, the Orks have a close approach to what escorts should be. Their class of escort that can launch up to six torpedoes (Other races should have a fixed capacity of four), comes closest to how escorts ought to be used, by most everybody. But the designers gave the IN a mere 2 torps per destroyer, for example. I think torpedo bombers are a better investment when it comes to attacking big ships. My IN destroyers usually deliver the coup-de-gras, rather than attempt 'waves' of torpedoes.
I play each race differently. My opponents want desperately to sweep my escorts as early as possible, because I have so often delivered a one-two punch with them, especially with Orks. My short range (15cm), but heavy WB armed Ork escorts follow behind as the fleet closes on the enemy, then press in to add their firepower. My Ork torpedo armed escorts try to position on the enemy flanks, and within 30cm (one turn's torp speed), to add still more damage with whatever torp strength is rolled. If I should detach my escorts (whatever race I'm playing), my opponent can't ignore them. Concentration of firepower wins battles. Divide my opponents attention, while concentrating my own, should make avery tough day for my battle buddies.
I know this is not the place to discuss tactics, but T.R.C. asked. I just wanted to head off a note to that effect. To continue:
I try to take escorts for every mission, except "Cruiser Clash" natch, if for no other reason then to figure out how to use them, and vary the uses of them where possible, to 'distract' my opponents at least, and maybe do some telling damage.
To use escorts in BFG like destroyers in WW2, each type would have to have a number of torpedoes. The "equalizer" for use on big ships, the "Tin Can" men called them. I don't wish to re-design the game totally, so every escort with torpedoes can't happen. Besides, I'm lazy. I don't want to track all that ordinance all over the place.
You mention Chaos long range guns. Yes, if escorts are the best target, I'LL shoot them up too. But distract your Chaos opponent with a threat he can't ignore, except at his peril, and your escorts should still be around to get in a lick. In WW2, where gun battles took place in the Med and Pacific, destroyers hung back, or ran around enemy fleet's flanks, during daylight battles. Or they would get in the way of the big guns. At night, destroyers made head on attacks on big ships, with darkness as cover. The battle off Samar Island is all the more remarkable because the "Tin Cans" charged in, in broad daylight. This so confounded the Japanese commanders, that they believed the whole US 7th fleet was on the way into the battle. So they retreated.
In BFG, I feel it is only right that if escorts 'get in the way' of big guns, they should go down in flames.
The rub (from the point of view of my group(s) I attend) is that escorts can't get the chance to attempt any role, if they are left in the box because anyone with Assault Boats zap them. And only miss one-in-six times (on average). We never put limits on ordinance (only as many as there are launch bays on the table at once) because we feel that a better limit would be a "launch capacity" limit, but that limit was simulated by rolling doubles, so we left it alone. Besides, we also felt that only one squadron of bombers on the board for "x" turns until they were blasted or finished attacking, was just as unrealistic. If a commander has 'em, he's gonna wanna launch 'em 'till there ain't no more! So in our big games a lot of Assault Boats could 'stack' a lot of critical hits on capitol ships, as well as make a clean sweep of escorts, to the point of feeling just wrong. That problem was reduced by siezing on an earlier proposal for "Fleet Turretss". Ordinance doesn't go away. Just gets whittled down.
A historic illustration. At the close of WW2, the Japanese launched SEVEN THOUSAND Kamakazi planes at the Allied fleet near Okinawa Island. 128 got through to cause 2,600+ casualties. The rest of the planes fell to air interception, and picket lines of destroyers and capitol ships. The destroyer, USS Laffy, was hit by five kamakazi, two torpedoes, and four bombs. She did not sink, and accounted for 28 enemy planes. Other destroyers were sunk (six that month) but helped thin the attacks trying to get at the "big boys".
I find it hard to ignore history. I can "suspend disbelief" about cities in space, pushed around space by engines the size of the Empire State building, and unleashing weapons that would make "Independance Day" aliens extinct in the first seconds. But to imagine roles for different types of ships, and then eliminate them and their roles with a "design anomally", only frustrates some of us.
Horizon can confirm - I do go on - so I'll leave some unsaid, for now.
In closing: Have you ever heard of Steve Jackson, and the "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" principle? A name Steve gave an aspect of game design. I remember that when I find a rule that grinds the gears. If you have not heard, I'll be glad to relate (but a shorter story - promise!).
Oh, and there were a LOT of ships at Jutland, not just big boys, and the losses from that day included destroyers and cruisers (damaged as well as sunk), but most focus is on the big gun duel, and the little guys get overlooked.
G.F.
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Plus destroyers have to get in the way, not just be near the bigger ships! (Maybe then we would see proper fleet deployments!)