From: Alan Brain[SMTP:aebrain@dynamite.com.au]
Sent: Monday, December 02, 1996 11:41 PM
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Beam Weapons Redux
A few random thoughts:
A class batteries have 1 dice at long, 2 at Medium, 3 at short - total 6
B Class batteries have 1 at Medium, 2 at short - total 3
C Class batteries have 1 at short - total 1
Points values could be made accordingly: 6:3:1. This means though that you'd
restrict the weapon to no more than 1 extra die per band as the range
shortens.
How about applying this approach to mass instead of cost? Your analysis
computes the equivalent of the probability of hitting a ship given a battery.
Or in other words, the strenght (the power) of a battery. Therefore, it would
be quite realistic to apply those ratio to the mass of the beam batteries
(now... I do not want to restart this whole discussion on realism that has
gone on not long ago. If it irritates
you, replace with the word plausible :-)
Has anyone tried something similar? And I guess the important question
remains: how do the other weapons compare with this new way of computing mass?
In any case, I think you have a good idea.
JP
A few random thoughts:
A class batteries have 1 dice at long, 2 at Medium, 3 at short - total 6
B Class batteries have 1 at Medium, 2 at short - total 3
C Class batteries have 1 at short - total 1
Points values could be made accordingly: 6:3:1. This means though that you'd
restrict the weapon to no more than 1 extra die per band as the range
shortens.
Alternately, you could apply a bias to the weapon, according to range. Say a
die at long range has a value of 3, medium 2, short 1.
So an A class has a value of 1x3 + 2x2 + 3x1 = 10.
B Class has a value of 1x2 + 2x1 = 4.
C Class has a value of 1x1 = 1
Which rather favours C class batteries too much IMHO. Though it does
make for good tactics, as the long-range snipers must keep the range
long to avoid being swamped.
---------------------- <> <> How doth the little Crocodile
> On Mon, 2 Dec 1996, Alan Brain wrote:
> A few random thoughts:
I've recently tried to incorporate 'power' as a limiting parameter (...mainly
since I've tried to convert Leviathan stats into FT...); in this variant the
various power requirements were similar to the above weapon masses. Power is
supplied by engines (...those remaining 25% of
the hull - crew quarters etc are taken to be included in the various
systems masses so far, but it doesn't really matter).
In Leviathan, ships cannot fire all weapons and accellerate flat out;
they have to make compromises. (...besides, all non-*DAF weapons are
single-arc...). Choosing the right engine configuration is fairly
important; in FT it became more so, since engines become more inefficient with
increasing mass (I used <power> proportional to <engine
mass>^(2/3)),
but with certain difficulties to coordinate more than 3 or 4 engine blocks
in a ship (ie, a mass or cost penalty proportional to <#engines-1>!...
which makes the penalty go up _fast_ from 5 engines and up).
Anyway; my goal with this dabbling was to provide a games/design
mechanic
which allows small ships to mount big weapons - but they'll have to
decide beforehand which weapons they can fire while using their full thrust.
This is all _very_ vague so far, though...
Later,