> Nathan wrote:
> With all the talk about missile boats, I was wondering what others
I primarily use missles in a captial ship killing role. escorts and even
crusiers are just too difficult to hit due to there higher thrust ratings.
captial ships carry more defenses, thus making them harder to hit. Fleets in
our game have begin feilding decadated ecsorts carry 2 or 3 ADAF, with captial
ship mounting 6 or more PDAF
With all the talk about missile boats, I was wondering what others thought
about the current state of missile defenses.
By the rules, about the only thing that can deal with missiles are ADAFs,
PDAFs, and C bats. Each system gets one chance to hit a missile on a roll of a
6. This seems a pretty poor chance to me.
Considering that a missile has the following pros and cons:
Pros 1) has the mass of a B bat 2) costs less in points than a B bat with two
arcs 3) ignores shields 4) does 2d6 damage
Cons 1) one shot 2) 3 turn life 3) limit of 18" movement per turn
Seems to me that missiles are an excellent way to go vs. beams. If I had a
mass 40 battlecruiser, I could load it up with 10 missiles (if I didn't bother
with shields or *DAFs). If each missile did average damage (let's say 6 pts
each and 8 out of 10 got through = 48 damage points), it would pretty much
chew up anything it came across (considering a fleet carrier has 49 damage
points).
On the defender's side, let's say I've got a superdreadnought (with 40 damage
points) and an escort of two escort cruisers. That's five ADAF and PDAFs to
defend the superdreadnought. I might get 1 or 2 missiles if I was lucky.
Result is a dead superdreadnought. Then my missile laden escorts take out the
defenseless escorts... but that's another story.
Does anyone else think that missiles are way too difficult to be defended
against? How does stack up with current missile defenses? (what are the odds
of a Phalanx hitting a Exocet or Harpoon?)
Suggestions to deal with missiles better: 1) increasing the odds of *DAF
systems and C bats to hit missiles might be a good idea. (hit on 5 or 6) 2)
allow ECM to affect the chances a missile has to hit 3) allow fighters to
attack missiles
Thoughts?
Thanks,
The only problem with using a missile fleet, is what happens if the salvo
misses. It really is a oneshot weapon & if failed you generally get chewed up
pretty badly by beam based ships.
I agree that missile defences need to be improved. A good compromise
fix is to allow ECM to add +1 to your *DAF fire against missiles. On
average, this improves the chances enough for a ship to survive a missile
strike.
'Neath Southern Skies
---------------------
Ortillery, rich man's artillery.
--------------------------------
> -----Original Message-----
> At 10:45 PM 11/30/97 -0600, you wrote:
> Seems to me that missiles are an excellent way to go vs. beams. If I
That is a tactic that happens alot in the games I play. Not only against me
but by me, too.
> On the defender's side, let's say I've got a superdreadnought (with 40
If you expect lots of missile fire, a Nova or Wave gun works pretty good.
Kinda sweeps them out of the way.
> How does stack up with current missile defenses? (what are the odds of
Real life? Who knows. In Harpoon, I believe it may be as low as 10%. (Its been
a long while since I've played.)
> Suggestions to deal with missiles better:
I have another idea. Allowing missiles to attack missiles. Or go the SFB
(eek!) route and have anti-missile, missiles. Maybe Mass 1, cost 4,
range 18 inches. One turn endurance. Destroys one missile or one fighter. Or
for the insane (which is me and my friends) Nova warheads on missiles. Still
haven't fully play tested those, though.
+++++++++++++++
+------------+ +----------------+
> From ROBERTSON,Brendan
> The only problem with using a missile fleet, is what happens if the
Yeah, most of the fleets that I have encountered had a few missile boats,
approx 1 in 5 say, and they salvoed and jumped out, basically it was designed
as an 'softening up' manouver. Or you hold them in reserve, and jump 'em in
and they hammer a dreadnought that has had it's manoueverability cut or
somesuch.
> I agree that missile defences need to be improved. A good compromise
Yeah this is a good idea. But I still like the idea of using fighters to
intercept the missiles, anyone have any ideas as to possible mechanics to
this? As for the 5-6 to hit idea, not sure. No idea as to how well a
phalanx style system should be able to handle them..... but I think I will
make it a rule in the next game to give it a try. Coz I know that most of the
people I play with think missiles are nasty.
> On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, Nathan wrote:
> With all the talk about missile boats, I was wondering what others
It is. We did a lot of missiles in the MechaZone campaign.
> Seems to me that missiles are an excellent way to go vs. beams. If I
Actually, we've found the best missile delivery vehicle to be a mass 18 thrust
8 escort with 3 missiles and nothing else. It's fast enough to get away from
anything it doesn't want to fight yet sturdy enough to take a couple of hits
and still deliver a full load of missiles.
> Does anyone else think that missiles are way too difficult to be
I once did the calculations, and quite simply the answer is that against a
proper overload attack, you just can't get a cost effective defense with
*DAFs. To wit: You need 6 PDAF's to get a reliable kill against ONE
missile. For that mass and cost, the attacker gets THREE missiles. It's a lost
cause.
> Suggestions to deal with missiles better:
I'd go for the same chances as against fighters. Simpler, too. Another way is
to visualize the missiles as having a swarm of warheads, and deduct the *DAF
rolls directly from damage.
> 2) allow ECM to affect the chances a missile has to hit
Sounds reasonable.
> 3) allow fighters to attack missiles
We did this. We allowed fighters to attack missiles as if they were fighters.
The end result was that everyone loaded up with interceptors. A force with a
good screen of interceptors was immune to missile attacks, a one without was
butchered.
*DAFs had the "vanilla" chances, and they were found to be next to
useless. ADAF ships were especially non-cost effective.
> Thoughts?
The problem I see with missiles is that they allow stand-off attacks.
Now, modern military is very much in love with stand-off attacks,
because they don't put valuable personnel and equipment at risk. Realistically
speaking, stand-off is a very good tactic if you have the tech and the
money to do it (in FT/MT, the tech is there and the money is not an
issue as reload costs are never specified).
It's just not much fun to game.
So, in the interests of keeping the game fun, I do think missiles should
be completely redone.
> Actually, we've found the best missile delivery vehicle to be a mass
That's only 6 mass. What else did you add to that ship? A Mass 16, Thrust 8
ship can carry four missiles without other mass overhead for other systems.
> > Does anyone else think that missiles are way too difficult to be
It's
> a lost cause.
It would seem to me that 'in reality' naval research would focus on ways to
improve the interception odds of hitting the missiles. For that reason,
I like the idea of increasing the odds of a PDAF missile kill to 5-6.
The +1 bonus for ECM is a good idea too. Our group has proposed a rule
to
allow ECM/AECM to 'attack' missiles as a PDAF system.
Another idea our group discussed was to apply FireCons to the point defense to
increase the odds of killing missiles. For each FireCon applied to the
defense, all missile kill die rolls get a +1. The disadvantage of this,
is that the FireCon is unavailable to direct beam fire. This will require a
fleet to time a missile attack with a beam attack in order to overload the
targeting abilities of the defending ships. This will give Capitals a distinct
advantage in missile defense, which they should have. We have not playtested
the ideas.
Just some more thoughts and ideas for the fire...
Yeah,
Our game group added alot of systems and changed some rules to deal with the
one shot missile salvo "issue". We borrowed the Expanding
Sphere Generator from Star Fleet Battles. It's a weapon/defense system
that generates a 6" spherical energy "pulse". Any unit (ship, fighter group,
missile) in range of the ESG when it goes off takes 1d6 damage. Screens don't
protect. The ESG charges like the Wave gun and it's use must be plotted. It
goes off AFTER all units have moved but before the Fire phase.
Another system we use is Bogey ECM and Bogey "missiles". The Bogey ECM allows
a vessel to use a bogey marker of a different designation than the starship's
hull type would normally use. The Bogey "missiles" are purchased before the
game begins and start in play. Missile fleets usually have to scan a number of
ships at long range before launching their missiles. These systems are fun to
play with also because of the guesswork involved.
We allow ECM to jam incoming missiles. We use the C batt rule and
*DAF anti-missile rules also. We've found that missile swarm fleets in
our games are used less often. This is a good thing in my opinion. I like
missiles, but too much of a good thing...
Pete
-------------------- Begin Original Message --------------------
Does anyone else think that missiles are way too difficult to be defended
against?
-------------------- End Original Message --------------------
Yes! I like the rule that Dean Gundburg uses in his Starfleet Wars conversion
PBeM games. And that is:
PDAF's (and C Bats acting a PDAF's) act as ADAF's at 6" or less.
Easy to use and remember. Effective. Does not change the current missile
rules.
> Does anyone else think that missiles are way too difficult to be
Brendan, Nathan, I would suggest using advanced sensors to provide a bonus on
the 'To Hit' for missiles rather than ECM. If missiles become dangerous in a
later edition (like they stop moving first) then ECM could have a value to
determine if a missile can detect its intended target. To be dangerous the
missiles must be concentrated, reducing
probibility of any hit. Dispersed missile attacks have a higher
hit probibility but less damaged is caused by the salvo. If you want to reduce
the chance of missile damage by giving additional plusses to defence, I would
suggest
simply removing missiles from your games. Problem solved.
Missiles are a means of encouraging the SDN w/3 screen crowd,
who likes to sit on the edge of the board and rotate, to MOVE!
(Mass 40 BC W/10 missiles, you would be dog meat to 3 DDs.)
Thoughts from one who likes to MOVE!
Bye for now.
TWIMC, (To play the devils advocate, aahhh! such fun.)
The only time in the FT game I have been hit with a missile,
it was my own fault. If one wants to improve missile defences,
fine, but lets talk about improving the missiles as well. IMHO, (I just found
out what that means), the missiles are in the game to prevent the
Superduperdreadnought from sitting in the corner of the board and playing
spinning top with an
attitude. Missile are reasonably useless against anything else.
Bottom line, The missile defence is almost useless and so are the missiles,
this is called play balance.
Bye for now,
> The only time in the FT game I have been hit with a missile,
I think a few people would disagree with you on this. My experience with
missiles has been mixed, personally. Some games I've had dismal
luck getting them in position, other games dead-center. And ships
*died*.
> (I would be very pleased to have a game with the vast majority
PBeM,John, PBeM...
Mk
> With all the talk about missile boats, I was wondering what others
Hate 'em, actually. Think they're too weak.
Played with a friend a year ago this past summer and we intro'd missiles into
the scenario for fun, just to see what they could do. The targetted ships were
unable to stop the missiles (when they couldn't dodge) and got seriously
hammered. We discussed later that we thought missile defenses
should be boosted to kill a missile on a 4-6. But I'll go with the 5-6
thought presented earlier.
Haven't played around with using Interceptor fighters as anti-missile
defenses yet. Though I like the idea and think it has merit.
Mk
[quoted original message omitted]
> (I would be very pleased to have a game with the vast majority
Of course, someone has to be running a scenario, with slots open, to
do the PBeM route... ;-)
(yeah, yeah, I know, I know; soon as I finish doing my game summary for my
last one, and free up some more space on this account, I'll start my next
one...)
Mk
How would you change them further??
...Snip...JTL
> Try a little PBEM?
To ALL, Being able to take a hint I have signed up for 'The Vanguard Cruise'
as an alternate. (this way I can watch, learn, comment, and not have to pay
off any lost item bill at the end.)
Bye for now,
> >
Mk, Should I learn enough with 'The Vanguard Cruise', and you
free up the space. I will try to answer the call for players
in a timely manner.
Thank you,
> Nathan wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
Has anyone tried to set up a real time game using ICQ, Mirc, IChat, or
something similar?
Chan
> On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, Jonathan Davis wrote:
> That's only 6 mass. What else did you add to that ship? A Mass 16,
Me and my memory... I think the fave models were M16 with 4 missiles and
M18 with 3 missiles and 1 A-batt (ofcourse, who'd mount anything else
in the basic game). Anyway, the high end of escort class loaded up with
missiles was found to be the way to go.
> On Mon, 1 Dec 1997, John Leary wrote:
> Bottom line, The missile defence is almost useless and so are
The problem I see with missiles is that they are very on/off weapons.
Either they hit and cause grievous damage of the battle deciding nature, or
they miss and do nothing (at which point the missile force runs
away*).
It's almost like tediously planning and setting up a game and then deciding
the result with a single flip of a coin.
Missiles do get results when properly applied. That is, en masse, against
formations and with hit&run attacks.
Another point to consider: If you are regularly going fast enough to avoid
missiles with ease, you are certainly going fast enough to avoid any fighter
threat almost completely. Are fighters another weapon system
we want to reduce to the laughable ineffectiveness of B-batts?
*) Yes, I do realize an all-missile force can not handle all situations.
But an all-missile fleet arm is overeffective in some very typical
tasks, like raiding, hit&run and installation attacks.