We've been toying with the idea of going to B5 style drives, and what we're
looking at is as follows.
A drive costs 4% of the mass of your ship +3% per thrust.
A destroyer, which will go boom soon anyway, would probably
get 1 drive. So your thrust 6 destroyer uses (4% + 18%) or
22% of its mass for drives, saving 8%, a box or two. If it fails a drive
threshold it has no drive. Not a biggy as it would probably be a mission kill
anyway.
A Cruiser needs a bit of redundancy, so we put two seperate
thrust 2 drives. This gives is (2x4% + 2x(2x3%) ) or
20% for drives. Dead even with the current setup. Note it could still lose
both drives by failing thresholds twice, but this is less likely. This also
balances a bit the fact that it is cheaper for this ship to have thrust 6
drives.
That dreadnought that you really want powered could be thrust 4 with 1 thrust
two drive and two thrust 1s. This would
be (10% + 2x7%) or 24%. A bit more mass for a bit more
redundancy.
Any thoughts?
I prefer the B5 style drive only in as much as they have 1 threshold for every
2 drive points, giving a more interesting potential damage result, rather than
half or nothing.
Thus a thrust 8 drive makes 4 thresholds. Any failure reduces the drive by one
point, so you could loose anywhere between 0 and 4.
> Roger Books wrote:
> We've been toying with the idea of going to B5 style drives, and
[examples snipped]
> Any thoughts?
1) How do you handle thrust-1 engines? Are they halved when damaged, or
do they go down completely (as a single thrust-1 engine does in the
published rules)?
2) Multiple engine modules take more DCP rolls to repair when they're damaged.
Regards,
> On 20-Mar-00 at 16:15, Oerjan Ohlson (oerjan.ohlson@telia.com) wrote:
We've been playing with the numbers and it looks like 5% fixed +
3% per thrust point.
Thrust 2 4 6
Drives
1 11% 17% 23%
2 16% 22% 28%
3 --- 27%* 33%
4 --- 32% 38%**
*assumes one thrust 2 and 2 thrust 1s ** assumes two thrust 2s and 2 thrust 1s
A single drive goes down when it fails a threshold. You have no thrust. If you
have two drives and they both go down it would take two repair rolls to bring
them back up. If you have 3 drives and all three go down then three repair
rolls. Your single drive destroyers
gain 7%, 2 or 3 mass, which is worthwhile. Your two-drive bigger
ships lose a bit at thrust 4 and gain a bit at thrust 6. The numbers might
still need to be tweeked.
hi guys,
i have been fiddling with this idea for a couple of months now, unfortunately
not too zealously. i like this idea because it introduces flexibility in ship
design and damage outcomes, which produces racial flavor. (e.g. one race might
like one huge engine, while another several smaller ones.)
comments inserted.
> Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 10:56:18 -0500 (EST)
we are close here. we tested at 5% main drives, 2% per thruster.
> A destroyer, which will go boom soon anyway, would probably
we are similar here. the bigger ships (>= cruiser) have main drive clusters to
avoid catastrophic drive loss with one engine. however, our angle was
to optimize drive/thrust arrangements versus traditional opponent weapon
system's damage results (see below), not so much for sheer redundancy.
i like your redundancy idea -- yet another racial philosophy. i am
already imagining a slightly paranoid race with fantastic drive/thruster
clusters, but medium to poor weapon arrangements as a balance....
> Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 08:10:54 -0800
additions and differences
-------------------------
we used the same philosophy for thrusters as main drive clusters. a ship gets
hardware for the port and starboard side rated at the max thruster
potential. IOW, a thruster-2 ship, gets one 2-pt thruster on the port
and starboard side or two 1-pt thrusters on each side. obviously, the
low thruster ships do not have too much choice in design.
i like schoon's idea of a variable (slightly unpredictiable) damage result
per threshold hit. however, i am not sure i care for 1 threshold/2
drive pts. one hit could cause nasty results on average and terrible ones near
the high end. i need to test with it awhile, but how about something less
severe
like 1 threshold roll/3 drive pts or even 4???
for damage we tried two methods, "half rating" and "drop by 2". half rating is
a method by which each successful threshold roll halves
the current rating of the drive/thruster. keep halving the current
rating until 0 (destroyed) is reached. for example, a thrust 8 main drive
would
progress from 8->4, 4->2, 2->1, 1->0 or destroyed by 4 thresholds.
the drop by 2 method is each threshold decreases the rating by 2 points.
small rating go poof in one threshold hit, while large drives remain longer.
once 0 is reached, no more thrust. our group favors the "drop by 2" method so
far.
in cases of one big drive or several smaller ones, damage reduces both designs
about equally. so why the diff then? --differing weapon damaging
philosophies in our B5 "Entilza" universe. an enveloping weapon spreads damage
across several components, while focused weapons (like lasers) damage one or
few components.
therefore, drive/thruster designs are affected differently by each type
of weapon hit. numerous, small thrust clusters are more affected by enveloping
hits, where few, large thrusters/drives suffer from the focused hits.
this adheres to our "racial flavor" design goal.
why all this extra chrome, you say? primary reason: emphasize more maneuver
into the the game and racial flavor. secondary reason: more interesting damage
results. for our group, we enjoy maneuvering to hit opponent weak spots,
flying crippled ships out of tight spots, etc. this tension is where our group
finds its most enjoyment; otherwise, a game becomes more of a "bang, bang,
you're dead". as such, our ideas may not
appeal to every group, since our definition of fun may not be someone else's.
suggestions are welcome.
dave
ps. for those i promised, i am *still* formally writing up our B5 "Entilza"
universe for FT rules. unfortunately, design changes and real world stuff has
slowed down my effort.
> On 21-Mar-00 at 10:59, David Reeves (davidar@nortelnetworks.com) wrote:
> why all this extra chrome, you say? primary reason: emphasize
more
> interesting damage results. for our group, we enjoy maneuvering to
this
> tension is where our group finds its most enjoyment; otherwise, a game
> becomes more of a "bang, bang, you're dead". as such, our ideas may
You don't need to modify the existing rules to make manuever all important. Go
to centimeters instead of inches. You are trying to deal with the fact that
you are playing in an unrealisticly small playing area. If your slowest speed
isn't 20 you are probably artificially constrained (or flying pigs).
What I was trying to accomplish was strengthening small, high thrust ships by
2 mass while totally giving up drive redundancy. We also liked the idea that
you could lose drives entirely in one turn. You may decide how much redundancy
you want.
> Roger Books wrote:
> Any thoughts?
> A single drive goes down when it fails a threshold. You have no
I was afraid you'd say this :-/
> If you have two drives and they both go down it would take two
...and this too.
The only reason which'd make me use more than one engine in this system is if
my opponents get *very* fond of needle beams.
In any other situation, the single engine has at least the same average
thrust (better, if any of the sub-engines has an odd thrust rating;
never worse), and usually better average maneuvering thrust (never worse),
than if I split the engines up into several smaller ones. It also gives me
some extra Mass to spend on weapons (or armour, or whatever) and is easier to
repair when it does get hit, but that's just icing on the cake.
Simply put, given the choice between a reduced risk of losing all my thrust in
the 2nd threshold and a considerably *in*creased risk of having my maneuvering
thrust reduced after the *first* threshold, I take the former any day.
So, well... Interesting idea, but needs more work :-/
Regards,
Replying to my own post:
> >>1) How do you handle thrust-1 engines? Are they halved when
> A single drive goes down when it fails a threshold. You have no
Sorry, I read this as "a single-thrust drive goes down when it fails a
threshold". Important difference, since it reduces the number of cases
where the multi-engined configurations have a lower average thrust
rating (main or maneuvering) than the single-engined one. The ones
that remain all occur for odd-rated sub-engines.
All in all, this comment still holds true:
> Simply put, given the choice between a reduced risk of losing all my
Regards,