I guess I didn't explain myself well in my first post. What I was attempting
to do with my modifications was lower the power of the cap ship. In my mind,
reflecting modern naval practices, the SIZE of the ship has NOTHING to do with
its ability to carry lethal weapons (and thus its striking power). A nuclear
tipped cruise missile can be carried on rowboat or on a BB. If hit, BOTH ships
will sink. Take the weapons down a notch and, if hit twice, both will sink.
See what I mean? With FT, BBs can carry enough A Bats to pummel an escort and
the escort can't do squat in return. If you just add more "torp" weapons that
give high damage with low mass than the Cap ships just stuff a ton of those
into themselves. There needs to be some OPERATIONAL restriction that keeps the
balance. The main one I can think of in FT is maneuverability (thus
my suggestion to make escorts harder to kill with A bats--if a Cap ship
loaded up on B Bats to counter escorts then it would get waxed vs another CAP
ship, thus the system is self balancing). A redo of the scanning rules could
also help as well. Am I making any better sense now?
Thanks,
> On Tue, 25 Mar 1997, Paul Calvi wrote:
Ahem. No offense, but your messages would be easier to reply to if you hit
some hard returns at the end of the lines.
> I guess I didn't explain myself well in my first post. What I was
Not strictly true, or nobody would bother with super carriers.
> With FT, BBs can carry
Well, that was very much the case when big guns rules supreme. Big guns shoot
farther, they're generally more accurate and big ships usually had better fire
control (it was worth the cost).
Ship size wasn't a major factor. The hit/miss ratio of all naval guns
was abysmal. If the big boys had hard time hitting small fish, the small fish
had even harder time.
The limiting factor was the horizon. Aircraft and missiles could strike
targets over the horizon, guns couldn't. Thus the end of the big gun era
in warship design.
But there's no horizon in space. Technological advances *may* bring big guns
back.
IMHO, it is the intention of FT to give big guns a chance again, model perhaps
not so realistic but very cool gigantic space battleships slugging it out with
big guns. I like it that way. Apparently you do not.
If you want to play "Harpoon in Space", just disallow all batteries above C
and stick as many missiles as you can in each boat. Sure, big ships can still
mount more of them (well, they're bigger), but they're too easy
targets for the points because of their low thrust. Thus no-one wants a
cap ship anymore, unless they have to use one, i.e. a carrier.
If you want to retain A's and B's as obsolete weapons, you could just triple
their cost and mass. But then nobody would want any and you could
just as well disallow them.
In FT A's and B's are NOT the weapons to use against cap ships, since
they generally suck against well-screened targets. If you make them
unusable against smaller ships, they become unusable, period.
This will also mean screens are less important, meaning more
non-screened
ships, thus reflecting "modern reality" better.
You would need better EW rules though. And you'd have to stop
"launch all missiles and FTL out/turn tail" tactics somehow.
since hull costs are linear, I have a strange feeling a Mass 4/Thrust
8/One missile "bathtub launcher" would be the ideal design.
Oh, and disallow "C-batts as PDAFs" while you're at it.
Hi, guys; A fair number of the contributors to this thread seem to be trying
to improve the "realism" of FT by making it more like late 20th century
surface naval warfare- I think this risks the important generic nature
of FT and that it's really in the same category as such genre adaptations as
Full Trek or FT Star Wars. Please note, I'm not saying these modifications are
themselves a bad thing, in fact quite the reverse. Quite a few of my own
designs are for what might be called "Wet Thrust" (sorry I couldn't resist
it!). I just feel that they should ALL be recognized as modifications towards
particular style preferences.
I think that, as the rules specifically state that the discontinuous
hull sizes were _intended_ to make escorts FEEL different from cruisers,
etc., the "fix" should be a discontinuous modification of the capabilities of
different size categories. This already exists in a small way with the extra
Firecons on larger ships. In the past, along with several others, I've
suggested increasing the mass requirement for "inappropriately large"
batteries, especially if they're multi-arc, and my designs now
(usually!) follow this scheme:
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 apologize to the old hands for posting this table again)
I think a major improvement would be a change in points costs for
multi-arc beams. At present, the cost difference between an A/1 and an
A/3
is inconsequential, whereas the difference in their effectiveness is large.
Consider a Mass-80 superdreadnought with say, 8 A batteries. The cost
of 8
A/3s is only 48 points more than that of 8 A/1s, but adds 3 "compass
points" of arc, whereas an extra thrust point for the same ship costs 80
points!
The cost of multi-arc weapons should at least compare with that of
increased maneuvreability.
One other thing- Pulse torpedoes. I think they are fairly duff,
especially on big slow-turners. I think they would be greatly improved
if they got a bonus of 1 on their "to hit" roll for each extra Firecon
supporting them. That would let capitals fire them effectively at
significantly greater range than escorts or cruisers (12" and 6" advantages
respectively). Keeping the popular "C-DAF" rule would then provide a
reason for an extra tactical use for fighters, i.e. tying up firecons.
sorry for the length of the ramble! Cheers,
> Paul Calvi wrote:
This allows you to have enough ships everywhere you need them. An all Capital
fleet would be impressive in battle, but you wouldn't have enough ships to
guard your boarders. Your enemies could pin your fleet down in one or two
battles, and then send their light stuff to take your empire!
I liked the ideas for defensive maneuvers offered earlier. It went something
like this (please accept appoligies for errors of memory):
Defensive Maneuvers A ship that expends 4 thrust points in "defensive
maneuvers". This does NOT change course or velocity. Any ship targeting such a
ship counts the target ship at x2 range.
This allowed smaller, nimbler ships to get into striking range. Larger ships
(with a minumum thrust of 4) could also do this, but would not be able to
perform normal maneuvers (such as lining up shots) as easily.
The problem of giving smaller ships a -1 or -2 to be hit is that it
gives
smaller ships the equivilent of buit-in level 1 or 2 screens. This would
add the the problem of a small cruiser being weaker than a large escort and a
small capital being weaker than a large cruiser.
I agree that Large ships need to be in a better balance with smaller ships,
but a more universal (not distinguishing between escort & capital) needs to be
found.
Brian Bell
<SNIP>
In my mind, reflecting modern naval practices, the SIZE of the ship has
NOTHING to do with its ability to carry lethal weapons (and thus its striking
power). A nuclear tipped cruise missile can be carried on rowboat or on a BB.
If hit, BOTH ships will sink. Take the weapons down a notch and, if hit twice,
both will sink. See what I mean? <SNIP>
Actually everything is relative. To make a proper FT analogy you would also
have to state that an escort or BB hit by the 6d6 Nova cannon template will
die in two hits either way and so it doesn't make a difference whether you
have an escort or BB. The proper anaology for FT is the WWII one where a
destryoer would have a significantly difficult time destroying a BB but could
damage or cripple one with a torpedo or lesser damage with 5" guns. A BB on
the other hand would find it trivial to destroy a DD with a single hit from an
18" gun or a broadside of 5" guns. Modern navies aren't just made up of many
little craft carrying nuclear warheads because a variety of response is
required, not overwhemling force each time. That's one reason BB's have come
back into US service is that while 16" guns are not as effective in naval
warfare, they can be invaluable in marine operations for preparing beaches and
bombarding areas up to 20 miles away without having to risk lives in manned
aircraft. Aircraft carriers are still built even though they are huge targets
for nuclear strikes for similar reasons. Things rarely make sense if you take
them to extremes and I think it would make more sense to take more middle of
the road examples.
--Binhan
> Justin Case writes:
@:) I liked the ideas for defensive maneuvers offered earlier. It went @:)
something like this (please accept appoligies for errors of
@:) memory):
@:)
@:) Defensive Maneuvers @:) A ship that expends 4 thrust points in "defensive
maneuvers". This @:) does NOT change course or velocity. Any ship targeting
such a ship @:) counts the target ship at x2 range.
@:)
@:) The problem of giving smaller ships a -1 or -2 to be hit is that
@:) it gives smaller ships the equivilent of buit-in level 1 or 2
@:) screens. This would add the the problem of a small cruiser being @:)
weaker than a large escort and a small capital being weaker than a @:) large
cruiser.
In SFB (duck) Erratic Manouvers works pretty much as described above, with the
caveat that any ship using it gets exactly the same penalty to hit its targets
as they have to hit it. This could be beneficial in FT (as it is in SFB)
because it would allow small ships to get close to big ones. Now the small
ships don't have to worry about being in range of the large ships while the
big ships are out of their range. Otherwise it would mostly be useful in
running away.
<<<Ahem. No offense, but your messages would be easier to reply to if you hit
some hard returns at the end of the lines.>>>
Sorry, my mailer is supposed to handle line length.
----------
From: Mikko Kurki-Suonio [SMTP:maxxon@swob.dna.fi]
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 1997 4:03 AM
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Bigger not always better-Take 2
> On Tue, 25 Mar 1997, Paul Calvi wrote:
<<<Not strictly true, or nobody would bother with super carriers.>>> Well
carriers are different because they carry long range aircraft but they are
also my point. A CV can launch a little fighter that can almost take out a BB
all by itself. The CV isn't killing the BB the fighter is. <<<> With FT, BBs
can carry
> enough A Bats to pummel an escort and the escort can't do squat in
<<<Well, that was very much the case when big guns rules supreme. Big guns
shoot farther, they're generally more accurate and big ships usually had
better fire control (it was worth the cost).
Ship size wasn't a major factor. The hit/miss ratio of all naval guns
was abysmal. If the big boys had hard time hitting small fish, the small fish
had even harder time. The limiting factor was the horizon. Aircraft and
missiles could strike targets over the horizon, guns couldn't. Thus the end of
the big gun era in warship design. >>>
Well I don't want to get into the big gun debate here. Big guns WHERE less
accurate if only because their volume of fire was lower. <<<But there's no
horizon in space. Technological advances *may* bring big guns back.>>>
Certainly, especially if they are "ray guns." I prefer to stick with the
somewhat more modern example because I think it helps play balance. I realize
many don't agree and that's OK. We all like what we like. <<<IMHO, it is the
intention of FT to give big guns a chance again, model perhaps not so
realistic but very cool gigantic space battleships slugging it out with big
guns. I like it that way. Apparently you do
not.>>>
True. I like FLEET engagements. The current FT system in my opinion relegates
escort ships to mere afterthoughts. They play little significant role when
there are a few cap ships around. Also Cap ship fights are boring I think.
They're big and slow and just get in range and pound on each
other. Let the biggets ship and/or best dice win. I think the smaller
ships and the FLEET fights are where the fun is, but again, that is just what
I like. <<<If you want to play "Harpoon in Space", just disallow all batteries
above C and stick as many missiles as you can in each boat. Sure, big ships
can still mount more of them (well, they're bigger), but they're
too easy targets for the points because of their low thrust. Thus no-one
wants a cap ship anymore, unless they have to use one, i.e. a carrier. If you
want to retain A's and B's as obsolete weapons, you could just triple their
cost and mass. But then nobody would want any and you could just as well
disallow them. In FT A's and B's are NOT the weapons to use against cap ships,
since
they generally suck against well-screened targets. If you make them
unusable against smaller ships, they become unusable, period. This will also
mean screens are less important, meaning more
non-screened ships, thus reflecting "modern reality" better.
You would need better EW rules though. And you'd have to stop "launch
all missiles and FTL out/turn tail" tactics somehow.
since hull costs are linear, I have a strange feeling a Mass 4/Thrust
8/One missile "bathtub launcher" would be the ideal design.
Oh, and disallow "C-batts as PDAFs" while you're at it.>>>
I don't see any need to be that drastic with rules changes nor do I see any
dramatic effect on play.
by making the big guns a bit harder "to-hit" smaller ships with you
just give the little guys a bit longer life span in order to have a real
effect on the final outcome of a fleet battle. After all, escorts where
designed to keep other escorts AWAY from Cap ships (as well as other duties of
course) so that big, fat, vulnerable Cap ship could tackle other big, fat,
vulnerable Cap ships and not get
sunk by a ship that cost 1/3 as much.
Yes, we keep waiting for a nice, clean, playable, operational level game that
would generate engagements for FT but still be enjoyable enough in its own
right to make it worth playing.
Most of the operational level games out there (at least that I'm aware of)
focus on economics and expansion (MOO, MOO2, Stars!, Stellar Conquest, etc...)
more than real operational fleet actions. Give me a game where I can take a
"front" or "sector" and defend it (or attack it) with limited resources and
supply. I think that would make for a fun few months of FT gaming!
Just my two cents anyway,
Paul