'Lo, folks, here's a modification of an idea I (and I'm sure lots of others,
eg Allan Goodall) have had concerning ship classes and beam weapons. The basic
idea is that Cs are "appropriate" for Escorts, Bs are "appropriate" for
Cruisers, As are "appropriate" for Capitals, and AAs are appropriate for
Capitals and Superships, especially the latter. An "appropriate" beam weapon
requires the usual number of Mass points. An "inappropriate"
single-arc weapon requires double Mass allowance, a 2- or 3-arc weapon
needs
triple. It is therefore just possible to shoehorn a 3-arc A-Battery
into a superdestroyer FTL hull, perhaps as a monitor, but only just.
All points costs remain as FT/MT; some Mass requirements are
modified as follows:
Beam/Arcs Escort Cruiser Capital Supership
C/1 1 1 1 1
C/2 or 3 1 1 1 1
B/1 4 2 2 2
B/2 or 3 6 2 2 2
A/1 6 6 3 3
A/2 or 3 9 9 3 3
AA/1 n/a 10 5 5
AA/2 or 3 n/a 15 10 5
I would also suggest a triple points cost (or more) for non-burnout AA
batteries.
This lets designers fit heavy stuff in a small hull if they really want to (eg
Chinese "Ping Yuen" (sp) class protected cruisers), but emphasizes the
differences between size classes.
Cheers, Rob
> At 08:21 PM 11/28/96 +0000, you wrote:
The
> basic idea is that Cs are "appropriate" for Escorts, Bs are
Here's a thought to get C-bats used more: Extend this
appropriateness idea in the other direction. If you're building a cruiser or a
capital ship, maybe give a guy a break on mass points if he buys
C-bats in
a group. They might be limited in range but if you could get them at two for a
single point of mass I for one would have to consider their use seriously.
It makes sense--depending on your background universe. Traveller and
Leviathan and Star Wars are all universes where the dominant weapons appear to
be bays or arrays of lots of little guns. If on a supership you could get
B-bats at a mass discount--that would be something to think about. It
would also be a good way to represent those Star Trek movie era phaser
banks--you
know the ones, where two weapons are always fired together. Maybe a rule where
you can get grouped weapons at a mass discount but a single threshold roll
would damage both weapons or something like that. That way you could explain
the mass discount as the grouped weapons sharing components (maybe a single
capacitor or a single connection to the ship's fire control systems) and so
damage to one is effectively damage to the other. I dunno.
James
> At 08:21 PM 11/28/96 +0000, you wrote:
The
> basic idea is that Cs are "appropriate" for Escorts, Bs are
How about this? A doubling of mass points for inappropriateness but
maintainance of ordinary mass for inappropriate weapons but they can only
fire every other turn. We use mass 1 single arc B-bats and mass 2
multi-arc
B-bats. So for an escort you could have a mass 2 single arc B-bat or a
mass
4 multi-arc B-bat that fired every turn or a mass 1 single arc B-bat or
a
mass 2 multi-arc B-bat that fired every other turn. That would be a more
affordable way to equip a smaller vessel with a more powerful weapon and it
feels fairly realistic to me (the ship having to take longer to build a charge
for a more potent weapon, etc.). It would also fit naval destroyer
style tactics--smaller ships with two-turn arming weapons could swing in
and out of range as appropriate to the armed status of their heavier beam
weapons.
Linked weapons could work similarly. You could give somebody a mass
break on linked weapons--say a 25% or 33% discount on all the weapons
that
were linked. So you could get three C-bats at 2 mass (33% discount) or
four
C-bats at 3 mass (25% discount) but if one were lost due to a threshold
check, they all would be (like they were in the same turret or something). You
could calculate the discount for linking (I really don't think I would link
any more than 2 weapons together now that I think about it) and then double
for inappropriateness or again maintain the same mass but fire every
other turn. Again using B-bats for an example, you could link two B-bats
together (two mass 2 weapons at 25% discount would be mass 3) and then you
could double that to mass six to install this two B-bat turret on an
escort. Linked weapons would be, again, good for escorts because they aren't
likely to survive a lot of damage anyway so losing extra weapons to a single
threshold check is not that big a deal.
What do you think?
James