"Custom" fleets

Stiltman,

What's your brother-in-law's E-mail? I've got a fleet for him.

> Stiltman,

> What's your brother-in-law's E-mail? I've got a fleet for him.

Uhhhh... stiltman@teleport.com?;)

Actually, if you had a suggestion I seriously wouldn't mind seeing it and, if
it seems like it'd be interesting, letting my wife play it a few times against
me.

On  7-Jun-00 at 15:32, stiltman@teleport.com (stiltman@teleport.com)
wrote:
> > Stiltman,

You seem pretty sure of your ability to defeat you b-i-l, why don't
you see if your designs hold up against designs from the rest of the world?

Many of your percieved problems could well be that your opponent(s) have a
blind spot with respect to your ships. I have yet to find
that FT is anything other than rock-paper-scissors.  Any "super" design
one person can make can be defeated by another.

Heck, as far as the campaign goes try an even simpler one. Both sides start
with 5K points. After every combat each side gets an additional 500 points to
buy ships, fighters, missiles and possibly even repairs. (We have dropped to
repairs cost the initial cost of the system). It tends to throw a different
light on the game.

> What's your brother-in-law's E-mail? I've got a fleet for him.

> Uhhhh... stiltman@teleport.com? ;)

Vs. the dreadplanet you posted, I'd take a scaled up, Cinematic modification
of my Cygnus BYO fleet:

8xBC's (4976 points)
Mass 174/NPV 622
Hull 17 Thrust 4 FTL Armor 10 1xFC
1xClass 6 Beam F/FP/AP
42xPDS 2xADFC

Step 1) Fly a mutually supporting PDS 'phalanx' in broad counter clockwise
circles around the dreadplanet (clockwise if you prefer and decide to roll
ship :-). BC maneuverability will ensure the dreadplanet will never
leave
range/arc.
Step 2) Vaporize any and all fighters that get near the formation. Even (and
especially) a dogpile of all 41 groups.
Step 3a) Maintain range 60-72" and whittle over ~55 turns (or until the
planet decides to bug out)
-or-
Step 3b) "Risk" closing to range 48-60" and kill the planet in 1/2 the
time.
-or-
Steb 3c) Be _really_ reckless and get as close as 42" (outside max PB
and SM radius) to cut time to kill closer to ~20 turns. Never get so cocky as
to close closer than 42" or allow a dreadplanet maneuver to close the
distance.

The BC fleet would have to roll positively Kochtellian numbers to lose this
scenario.

If you want to start Mod-ing the planet, I can talk alternate designs as
well. ( e.g. Trade some/all PDS for additional C5 or C6 beams, and/or
stronger defenses).

FWIW
- I wouldn't play vs. cloaked ships on a fixed field (even with more
mundane
fleets/setups).
- Flying circles and attacking effectively at speed 30 is an art and a
science (ask Indy). I think Oerjan thinks of speed 30 as "slow to middling"

You get him Fleet Random Effect!!! Those beams stung from way over on the
other side of the map! YOUCH!

Bill "Stray Cat" Shatswell

In a message dated 6/8/00 8:43:44 AM Central Daylight Time,
> Noam.Izenberg@jhuapl.edu writes:

<< Vs. the dreadplanet you posted, I'd take a scaled up, Cinematic
modification of my Cygnus BYO fleet:

8xBC's (4976 points)
 Mass 174/NPV 622
 Hull 17
 Thrust 4
 FTL
 Armor 10
 1xFC
 1xClass 6 Beam F/FP/AP
 42xPDS
2xADFC >>

> >> What's your brother-in-law's E-mail? I've got a fleet for him.

> > Uhhhh... stiltman@teleport.com? ;)

> Vs. the dreadplanet you posted, I'd take a scaled up, Cinematic

> 8xBC's (4976 points)

[SLASH]

*muttering*  All right, all right, thank you... I _think_ that I'd
figured out on my own that if you crammed a ship to the gills with PDS, the
Super Orb is toast. Especially if you give it weapons that can reach halfway
across a solar system, and permit it to fly at fraction-C speeds right
at the beginning of the game instead of being forced to actually start at a
more reasonable cruising speed and actually having to use its thrust to attain
those kinds of speeds.

That said, I don't think my brother-in-law would thank you terribly for
suggesting this fleet to him to fly against me, because in 98.7% of the
battles we fly, I would utterly annihilate these guys and he'd tell you that
after about a three second glance. You're misunderstanding why he
usually doesn't beat me; it's not an issue where I fly just _one_
particular idea at him and he doesn't know what to do about it. It's an issue
where I have an entire notebook full of ship designs, under several different
tabbed sections where the entire doctrine and game plan that the fleet tries
to establish changes from one group to the next (which, incidentally,
represents different subject races in the Hierarchy), our rules don't allow
you to know what I'm doing in advance (nor do I get to know what you're
doing), and I'm simply better than he is at reading the field, comparing my
weapons to his, and then dictating the way the battle's going to be fought to
my own best advantage and his worst.

One of the critical elements in that is, I don't tend to design my ships with
an eye to overspecialization. When I put them together, I think a good two or
three levels into it. "Here's what I want to do mainly. If they take that
away, I'll do this. If they take that away too, I've got
this..." and so on.  My brother-in-law, on the other hand, tends to give
in to the temptation to over-compensate for what he expects me to do.
Then he loses either because I didn't do what he expected or, even if I did, I
fall back on the backup plan and force him to come up with one of
his own, and since he's over-compensated for my first plan, he doesn't
usually have an answer for the second or third one.

The "dreadplanet" example's layers of thinking go about like this...

1. Primary game plan: establish overwhelming fighter superiority.

2.  If they take that away by out-fightering me, they probably don't
have
as good a ship-to-ship armament as I do, so have my fighters dilute
theirs as much as possible while the monster zones off the board and outguns
them.

3. If they take that away by a stiff area defense phalanx, hold back on the
fighters and let the plasma give them something else to shoot that PDS at.

4.  If they _do_ manage to survive the fighters and plasma, the needle
beams ought to prevent anyone from wanting to fly too close to the monster
itself, which will give the fighters and plasma extra time to finish the job.
If they park too close, the needle beams can disable their fire control before
they do too much damage.

Most _broadly_sound_ enemy fleets can be defeated by one or more of the
above plans. Yes, you can really grossly overspecialize and defeat that one
plan in particular, but the problem with this plan lies in the fact
that you _don't_ know what I'm going to do, and the pseudo-campaign
nature of our games reflects that. No admiral's going to countenance building
a fleet _that_ over-specialized and risk an entire task force's
resources doing so, when its real usefulness in the broader campaign is going
to be horrifically limited. That gets reflected in game terms by our lack of
warning of what the other guy's going to bring to the table.

The issue of suggesting that the dreadplanet would be nasty isn't that you
couldn't think of _anything_ to beat it.  The issue is that you couldn't
think of anything to beat it that is itself just as broadly sound.

> stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
	[Noam]
> > > Vs. the dreadplanet you posted, I'd take a scaled up, Cinematic
Not exactly. It's neutralizing the fighters _and_ damaging the
dreadplanet without taking anything themselves, as your strategiec tiers below
enforce.

> Especially if you give it weapons that can reach halfway
Starting speed is immaterial given the difference in thrust between the BC
force and the Orb, and your self-described starting distances (~70 mu).
As for range, well, it's paid for.

> > That said, I don't think my brother-in-law would thank you terribly
Perhaps so. I've not a picture of your other fleets. My experience with the
original version of the Beam 6 fleet is that it's at least good against
multiple fleet types. It'd be interesting to see how someone who was used to
such a fleet configuration (and with its less PDS intensive variants) would
fare in those 98.7% of games. I think the Beam 6 fleet is weaker in Cinematic
than Vector, so would be less coinfident in its all around power in cinematic
games. I certainly would be reluctant to play with it on a 100"x100" fixed
field in almost any event.

> You're misunderstanding why he usually doesn't beat me...

I wasn't really trying to. I was merely countering the ubership. I had already
made the conclusion that he generally plays on your terms, whether he intends
it or not, though your respective fleet and tactic choices.

> > One of the critical elements in that is, I don't tend to design my
I consider an Ubership to be one direction of overspecialization. 41 fighter
groups is agruably another overspecialization (41*(18+27) = 1845 or 37%
of your total fleet NPV in fighters and bays. Compare that to 23% of Fleet NPV
in Class 6 beams and another 23% for PDS for the BC fleet).

> When I put them together, I think a good two or three levels

A standard logical way to design a fleet, that is.

> > ...My brother-in-law, on the other hand, tends to give
Another way of saying he forces himself to play on your terms.
> > The "dreadplanet" example's layers of thinking go about like this...
Here are the Beam-6 BC tactical tiers:
1. Neutralize all Fighter/Missile/Plasma threats and utilize superior
weapon range. (which happens, in this example, to counter all 4 of the
dreadplanet tiers by itself. The rest of the BC tiers deal with other opposing
fleet designs) 2. If the PDS is insufficient for the task, bug out, concede,
and go on to a more interesting game. (in this example, Dreadplanet would have
had to bring
on the order of 50 fighter groups (45% of fleet NPV) - and throw them
all at once, for me to consider doing that) 3. If enemy range is equivalent,
compare overall firepower and determine whether a slugging match has a chance
(if not of winning, at least of being fun). If yes, we've got a real battle.
If not, bug out. 4. If enemy speed is superior, play running game while they
are forced to wade through as many turns of long range fire as you can
maneuver them into.

> > Most _broadly_sound_ enemy fleets can be defeated by one or more of
I suppose I'd argue that the Beam-6 fleet is "broadly sound" in absolute
game terms. Not that I'd suggest NAC or ESU etc. actually _build_ such a
monstrosity...

> Yes, you can really grossly overspecialize and defeat that
In a real campaign type setting. If that's the case, though, I'd never want
to field a dreadplanet, or this particular Beam-6 fleet, since both are
too
rock/paper/scissors to be a reliable strategic asset. You could probably
take both the planet and the BCs, despecialize both, and _turn_ them
into something useable for a campaign.

> No admiral's going to countenance building
Looking at the tactical tiers for both, I'd argue that the Beam-6 fleet
is far more versatile than the dreadplanet, but that's me.

> That gets reflected in game terms by our lack
I think If I were your Brother-in-law, and saw I'd brought scissors to
fight your rock, I'd concede the game and force us both to go back to our
fleet binders until we both came up with a pair of rocks (or paper, or
scissors). So the list of forfeits pile up in the pseudo campaign. At least
the battles that are joined will be fun.

> > The issue of suggesting that the dreadplanet would be nasty isn't
Can't agree that the Beam-6 fleet is any less broadly sound than the
dreadplanet.

> Noam wrote:

> - Flying circles and attacking effectively at speed 30 is an art and a

Noam:

I'd written out a nice elaborate argument explaining why, on the
fixed-edge
table that the Full Thrust rules so obviously assume as the norm, the
keepaway beam-6 BC's wouldn't be as broadly sound as the dreadplanet,
before a pretty stupid and simple mod occurred to me: Reflex field.

Your ships can take about half as much damage getting reflected back as mine
can of what gets through. If you're a starfaring power relying on them, your
enslavement by the Hierarchy would take about as long as a refit, regardless
of whether we were playing on a fixed or floating edged table.

Incidentally, we play cinematic on a fixed edge... which makes this tactic
pretty unsound right there. I honestly don't understand why anyone would
_want_ to play on a floating-edge table... it's basically _asking_ for
people to bore you to death with keepaway.

Stiltman scribed:
> I'd written out a nice elaborate argument explaining why, on

That's a genre weapon, not a standard one. If you take that, then Noam'll take
a Wave Gun or Nova Cannon and kill your fighters with it.

> Incidentally, we play cinematic on a fixed edge... which makes

Your star system has edges?

> Stiltman scribed:

> That's a genre weapon, not a standard one. If you take that,

Pretty difficult to do this, really... with the extra fighter moves it's not
too hard to stay out of a supergun's reach.

Our house rules don't allow them to affect fighters anyway... we assume as a
given that a fighter with an inertialess drive can outmaneuver a battleship
pointing a mega-gun at it for free, so we consider fighters immune to
them unless they get caught landing or taking off (i.e. they're in a place
just as unmaneuverable as the firing ship going in a straight line).

> >Incidentally, we play cinematic on a fixed edge... which makes this

> Your star system has edges?

Not a relevant argument.  If you play floating edge, you're _still_
asking for people to bore you to death with keepaway. The game's designed so
that
class 3 beams are the largest cost-effective beam weapon and to be
fun...
floating edges disturb that intent, to no real game-related end (IMHO)
but to allow someone to get a fast ship with a class 86 beam so that he can
keep out of your reach and sling insults at you from the next galaxy. Sure, it
might be a bit more realistic (as is vector movement) for those of you that
are
hardcore B5-niks, but it's still boring as all heck.

G'day,

> Not a relevant argument. If you play floating edge, you're _still_

Its just as boring for the either guy, which is why it don't happen (at least
not down here). Why take part in it when you could just stop and make them
come back to you? Further, having a floating map increases the fun (for me),
because it increases your opportunities and challenges. You can't sit in a
corner with the long range weapon from hell, because someone's either going to
play chicken with you (as there's not threat of careening into the edge of the
world at massive speed) or swing out round you and hit you from both sides at
once.

Guess its about time I just agreed to disagree with you on that one mate
;)

Beth

> G'day,

> Its just as boring for the either guy, which is why it don't happen

> Guess its about time I just agreed to disagree with you on that one

Well, I guess it's sort of six of one and half a dozen of the other.

We simply don't have people deliberately try to abuse the borders. We may
enforce an edge, but we do so because we expect people to stay near the middle
and fight. Which is, in practice, what we do. If people were to deliberately
turn to put the edge of the table at their back and fire a one-arc
weapon at people, we'd probably start shifting the house rules to decree that
they'd flown off the map even if they were technically on it, because this
sort of nonsense just isn't done in our games. The fixed edge is there to
_prevent_
people from getting too ridiculous in their movements, not to encourage it.

On the other hand, I've seen both Oerjan and Noam suggest with a straight face
that someone make a strategy out of using a long-range beam and abuse
the floating edge to ping away at people.

Stiltman said.
> On the other hand, I've seen both Oerjan and Noam suggest with

On the other hand, I've seen you suggest with a straight face that "space has
an edge".

Now, if you have someone who has faster ships with longer-ranged
weapons, and all you play is one-off games of the "both fleets
meet and slug it out to the death over this stretch of vacuum" type, then
you're in a world of hurt. Any Roman legionary, slogging away after a Parthian
horse archer, would tell you that this isn't the way to operate. This is,
however, something that happens in the real world, and any admiral is going to
have
to learn to cope with it--without relying on "the edge of the
universe" to help him.  It can be dealt with--as a nod to John
Atkinson, I will point out that Byzantine heavy cav and infantry regularly
took on nomad light cavalry and whipped them. The method is left as an
exercise for the student.

> Stiltman scribed:

Care to try it some time?

> Our house rules don't allow them to affect fighters anyway

Ah. Well, my house rule is my ships all regenerate one row of hull each turn.
That's "my" ships, not anyone else's.

> At 17:22 2000-06-08 -0700, you wrote:

It is not an abuse of the edges to sit dread planet in the middle of the

table so it can reach all edges with its gun and deny the opponent the ability
to move out of range? This seems very boring to me.

I usually play fixed edges, because it shortens the game and reduces arguments
on where a fleet is when off the table. But I usually also play with smaller
ships (cruisers and escorts) where the average range is 24tu with only an
occasional 36tu weapon. And I almost play vector exclusevly. If I played more
big ships or cinematic, I too would have to insist on a

floating table.

Going on...

Your arguements have seemed somewhat disjointed. At one point you are talking
about dreadplanets, which can only be in one system at a time, then you talk
about playing from a campaign perspective which would require a

presence in multiple systems at the same time. Then you talk about the cost of
salvo missiles in a campaign, but use fighters (which are just as expendable,
but cost more). You talk about balance by playing against
off-the-shelf ships, but your force is anything but off-the-shelf.

If you are playing a campaign, missiles would be easier to replace than
fighters (you don't have to recruit and train pilots for missiles), but both
are acceptable as long as you include the necessary support elements to your
fleets (manufacturing, training, & transportation to the fleet).

You will also need to suffeciently cover your star systems, so building an
ubership is less cost effective.

Either you use custom fleets or stock fleets. You cannot build a custom fleet
and complain that someone uses a custom fleet to exploit a weakness in your
custom fleet.
---

[quoted original message omitted]

On the other hand, I've seen both Oerjan and Noam suggest with a straight face
that someone make a strategy out of using a long-range beam and abuse
the floating edge to ping away at people.

> Stiltman said.

> On the other hand, I've seen you suggest with a straight face

Hey, dude, watch your tone here. We're all friends here... supposedly.

I concede that it might not be the most realistic way to reflect the nature of
a space battlefield, but to put things in simple terms, we make our house
rules to play the game our own way because we find that it makes things the
most enjoyable. We play a fixed field with no chance of return after you fly
off of it, mainly because it's never really occurred to us to play it any
other way. I wouldn't find it particularly interesting to open the door to
blunt keepaway tactics, and the game doesn't seem to encourage the sorts of
weapons that are deployed to wage one.

We don't play with fighter morale, we allow fighters to recombine at will, and
we allow people to carry any damage inflicted on one fighter group in a given
pile to the next, simply because we want to simply keeping track of how many
fighters are left on the board and because we find the
six-fighters-per-group
to be a simple arbitrary number for placing XXX number of markers on the floor
and little more. We allow any form of genre weapons but have our own sets of
house rules governing each (e.g. fighters are considered able to dodge
super-guns for free, cloaking devices are considered internal systems
and are thus not vulnerable to needle beams) because we find that this keeps a
certain balance without making the genre devices too powerful or not powerful
enough for the cost they bring. We play cinematic movement. My
brother-in-law, to
my knowledge, hasn't seen FB2, so how we'll fit the alien tech into the game
and what house rules we might come up with to do so remains to be seen.

You don't have to like it. It's prohibitively unlikely that you'll ever have
to play under it.  But it's the way we play, and _we_ like it.  The game
does
not exactly discourage modifying the rules in-house if we don't like
something; I refer you to page 40 in FT: "Please treat the background just
like any
of the Advanced rules; if you like it, by all means use it - if you
don't, then write your own, and ignore any ****** who tries to say you're
doing
it 'wrong'..!"

Consider yourself ignored.

> stiltman@teleport.com wrote:

> On the other hand, I've seen both Oerjan and Noam suggest with a

Put it like this: my then-local opponents stopped using such tactics
about half a year after FB1 was published, and designs like the ones Noam
describes, because I consistently beat them with far more
"standardized" (FB1 published style) designs. The extreme-range human
beam weapons are a possible counter-design to your effectively immobile
dreadstar-from-hell, but they're a very far cry from "unbeatable" on
the floating tables.

Regards,

On  8-Jun-00 at 19:06, stiltman@teleport.com (stiltman@teleport.com)
wrote:

> floating edges disturb that intent, to no real game-related end (IMHO)

Funny, I would consider a game where the tactic seems to be "Sit and Spin" to
be rather boring. Maneuver is the fun part, setting up your weapons so I can
do damage and you can't. At the speeds you talk about the
game is a no-brainer.

> I refer you to page 40 in FT: "Please treat the background just like

And thus the final reasonable position in arguments like these is assumed.
They agreed to disagree.

Within the small group stiltman plays in, they have adopted the house rules
that make the game fun for them and fit the background they imagine and work
the way their universe is imagined to. Many of us who have not adopted those
rules don't like them (and it's hard to say if it's cause or effect).

Myself, I don't think I would consistently apply the house rules stiltman
originally listed, but of course he can. But I will always take his advice on
tactics and fleet composition with a grain of salt because I know his house
rules are very different from my own, and he should always take mine (and most
other people's, too) with a grain of salt because they play under different
rules.

Now, Jon T., he's the one with problems. If, under Jon's rules, a particular
race or design proved to be unbeatable after publication just because of a
tactic he hadn't thought of, his name might be mud or he might suddenly have
to divert a lot of resources to making it right. Thankfully, I haven't seen
that happen yet (though many people had to tweak the values of the More Thrust
Kra'vak upwards by 50%).

> Noam:

> I'd written out a nice elaborate argument explaining why, on the

Too easy. I wouldn't fire at you with the field on, and wouldn't let you fire
at me with my distance. If the field turns off for any reason, I plink it. If
you advance on me, I back off. Heck even on a fixed table I could handle it
with my thrust 4 to your 1. FT was designed for flexibility, not for fixed or
floating tables. Only that much is obvious to me.

> Your ships can take about half as much damage getting reflected back

Rock, paper, scissors. You think I'd throw the same fleet at a reflex field?
(BTW, I have yet to see the reflex field, and cloak, for that matter
convincingly balanced for FT2.5). I'd probably have to juggle stuff around to
make a needle strike ship that would survive just long enough to take out the
field. But I'm not going to work too hard on it, because Laserlight had a
better idea:

Laserlight:
> That's a genre weapon, not a standard one. If you take that,

Stilt:
> Pretty difficult to do this, really... with the extra fighter moves

Forget that. Keep all the PDS, replace One or two of the Beam-6's with
Novas. Nova until the Reflex Field thresholds away, then Nova+Beam until
the planet falls. Wonderful, Laserlight.

> Incidentally, we play cinematic on a fixed edge... which makes this

Aside from a fixed edge being an entirely artificial limitation in a space
game, here's four reasons not to play fixed (take a 100x100 field as an
example): 1) Edge crawlers, 2) Corner squatters, 3) Behemoths/fleets
with
kill zones that fill 10-20% of the entire playing field, 4) Snipers that
can cover 80% of the playing field at all times.

Laser:
> Your star system has edges?

Stilt:
> Not a relevant argument. If you play floating edge, you're _still_

Feh. "cost-effective" has real meaning here. You want long range fire,
you a) pay for it and b) risk losing quick to anyone who can claw their way
close and quick for a knife fight. That b) option is one of the main
weaknesses of the Beam-6 fleet.

> Floating edges disturb that intent, to no real game-related end (IMHO)
but to
> allow someone to get a fast ship with a class 86 beam so that he can

If you want any kind of campaign continuity, that single class 86 beam is
3.9x10^25 mass and 1.2x10^26 points in cost. THat's about 10^5 times more mass
than planet earth (assuming 1 mass= 1000kg). I was going to say that you could
simply avoid the starsystem it was stationed in (It can't move,
since FTL would cost a minimum of 3.9x10^24 mass (~660 Earths)/
7.8x10^24
points, and thrust 1 would cost ~2x10^24 mass (~330 Earths) /4x10^24
points. Assuming you've used all the mass in your solar system for the weapon
itself, it's got one arc and no spinning capability. So I waltz up the blind
side with a Needle corvette and cripple it within a couple turns. Sorry. I
couldn't help but get carried away on that, but it does nicely illustrate (in
the extreme) the cost effectiveness of large weapons.

> Sure, it might

A fixed map is almost a moot point vs. a thrust 1 ship anyway, unless he
starts at the edge (which you do in your standard setup, see below). Fighting
a spinner seems boring to me. One can only play so many "attack the starbase"
games before wanting something else. Different folks, different tastes. For
some, better realism makes better games.

> We simply don't have people deliberately try to abuse the borders.

Perhaps not, but your starting conditions play right into the hands of a big
spinner. You said you start ~70" apart 15-20" from the edges. For a
spinner
with 24" range weapons that _is_ sitting on the edge. Anything between
the
spinner and the far edge is a kill zone, effectively cutting off 25-50%
of possible attack vectors for opposing ships (depending on how wide your
table
is).

> We may

Again, that may not be a deliberate abuse, but the very expectation opposes
maneuver-heavy tactics. The fact your wife took a KV fleet straight down
your throat illustrates that your play group either does not know how, or
chooses not to use maneuver in a fight. I'm not sure why highly maneuverable
ships and tactics seem inherently ridiculous to you.

> On the other hand, I've seen both Oerjan and Noam suggest with a

Semantics, semantics. I call it taking advantage of the space. Conversely, as
pointed out above, spining dreadplanet 20" (even 30") away from one edge is
effectively an abuse of the fixed edge.

As a side note:
| Laserlight:
| >> On the other hand, I've seen you suggest with a straight face
| >>  that "space has an edge".
|
| Stilt:
| > Hey, dude, watch your tone here.  We're all friends here...
supposedly.
|
| Me:
| Laser's tone seems pretty identical to that of your barb at Oerjan and
me.
| I took both in the same lighthearted spirit. I hope I did not err.

> You don't have to like it. It's prohibitively unlikely that you'll

Heh. Your Brother-in-law _likes_ losing 99% of the time to house rules
that
cripple tactics he may excel at if he ever got the chance? 8-/

> From Oerjan:

Bingo. A fast ESU or NAC fleet would likely take the Beam-6 fleet in a
standup fight (FSE less likely, since fast speeds and PDS could
avoid/netralize the heavy SM armament, but I could be wrong. NSL less
likely becuase they don't have the speed). I'd do my best to make it painful,
but
once the distance closes, my ships would fall fast. Another thought -
for the SV it would be a cakewalk. They could generate the same or better beam
strength, and have more biomass/carapace to back it up.

'Course as Oerjan said, the initial excercise (killing the dreadplanet) could
be accomplished by a single Kormarov and other standard FB1 ships.

Man, I'd love to play Oerjan sometime (actually, quite a few sometimes). I'd
probably learn alot from the pastings I'd get.

> From: Brian Bell <bkb@beol.net>

> I usually play fixed edges, because it shortens the game and reduces

Out of curiosity... how does one manage the case where both sides fly past
each other and off of the table in opposite directions due to excessive speed?
Where does one "float" the table to?

I would like to use a floating table but haven't found a solution to this
problem that doesn't involve putting my beer down to record where everyone is
located, 'off table'. Too much paper work... is there a more elegant

solution? Otherwise, I'd just soon stick with the fixed table method discussed
in FT2.

Pete

> Peter C wrote:

Guess it depends on how people maneuver, and what speeds they are going. When
this has happened to games I've been in, both sides have been doing their
damndest to get turned around, so the table *usually* ends up floating
sideways. That or we pull some extra table or chair or SOMEthing in for a few
moments to allow people to get back into the fray again.

> I would like to use a floating table but haven't found a solution to

Oerjan's solution is to play in cm, not inches. His playing field
suddenly becomes more than 2.5x larger.  :-)

Mk

> On 9-Jun-00 at 10:27, Indy (kochte@stsci.edu) wrote:

> Oerjan's solution is to play in cm, not inches. His playing field

So do you think we could get Jon to start making "sub-micro" scale
miniatures for use at this scale?:)

No bases or maybe an integral base with directional pointers, you could use
tweezers to move them. <VBG>

> From: Indy <kochte@stsci.edu>

> this

That may not work for me. The beer impaires my motor skills below one inch
measurements... but I can see this as one solution.

Pete

A valid question. As I stated, I usually play fixed edge, but understand the
artificialness of it. Last month, I posted a similar question to Oerjan about
what to do when an opponent performes a pincher movement that takes both parts
of his fleet off the table. I do not remember a satisfactory answer.

To answer your question directly, it seems as if the battle is done unless one
of the groups has the speed to turn arround and catch the other side. If both
groups declare that they are going to turn around and fight, split the table
and keep a marker as to how far apart the two halves are (using
1/2
table off-sets). Now it gets tricky if a fleet exits 2 table edges (say
South and East edges of the table), because you have to start keeping a
counters for 2 dimentions (width and length). It gets REALLY tricky if an
opponent splits the force and half goes off the table East and half goes off
the table West (no good suggestion here).

-----
Brian Bell bkb@beol.net
http://members.xoom.com/rlyehable/ft
-----

> -----Original Message-----

> stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
[...]
> Incidentally, we play cinematic on a fixed edge... which makes this

Well, honestly, if I were playing up against some of the ships/fleets
you've described, I would really insist on floating edges just to keep ranges
open and allow for maneuverability. Otherwise you are forcing tactics which
would benefit your fleets, such as the dreadplanet, and disallowing any other
tactic which would have a chance of defeating it. I'm not talking about boring
keepaway games, though thinking about it more maybe your definition of
'keepaway games' is different than mine. Correct me, please, if I'm wrong:
does your definition mean staying out
of range of the enemy's fleet/ships, so as to not take damage from them
but still inflict damage back? Or is it this 'retrograde' like maneuver in
which your enemy keeps running away from you, forcing you to pursue them? If
the latter, that's my definition. If you're just going to run away, fine. I
will sit and declare victory. However, if you are *maneuvering* and keeping
the range open, but *not* running away (eg,
going up against something that is exclusively Class-1/Class-2 heavy
in beam weapons, and you have a greater number of Class-3s), then it's
a fight. A difficult one, to be sure (one game that comes to mind that was
like this was going up against Noam's NI fleet with their stealthed
hulls - remember that battle, Noam? :-P - frustrating has hell to fight,
but the fleet I had to go against him was *not* designed or optimized to take
on that fleet of his; ultimately iirc he won, but I badly damaged his force in
the process).

If we would have been using a fixed table, the NAC fleet (vanilla FB1 stuff
with less than 10% Mass in modifications, if any) I was flying against Noma's
fleet would have ultimately pinned his NI ships against
a wall/corner and would have dealt a LOT harsher with them than they
did.

However, the 'keepaway' tactic you fear is not used that often, at least in
the untold number of games I've played, with people all across this country,
both in RL and PBeM. Most people I've played with (okay, all people *I* have
played with) favor the floating map, yet do their damndest to keep ships
*engaged* with each other, not to go running off into the nether voids to
dodge retaliation.

I could be wrong, but I think if you and your group decided to open up the
table to a floating map (and this would take some work, actually, because
*saying* the table floats doesn't mean people won't in their own minds do
their level best to not fly off of it; we've taken to using the floor more
often than not to help lift this artificial mental barrier), you will discover
tactics of manuevering will come into play, rather than
a choice between being pinned against a corner/wall or heading down a
'dead man's guantlet' (or whatever it was you described your wife's final
tactics the other night with the K'V). Maneuvering requires there be
space to move about in. Fixed fields of play strongly over-favor things
like the dreadplanet by crippling maneuverability.

Now, granted, I don't typically fly at OVs (Oerjan Velocities), nor do we play
with behemoths such as your dreadplanet (preferring smaller, faster ships; my
favorite battles are those with clusters of cruiser to
battleship sized ships, ranging from masses of 50 - 130 or so). Things
to be taken into account from this side of things.

Mk

> Roger Books wrote:

I'm sure right after he gets done making the 15mm SGII figs
he'll start looking into that.  ;-)

Mk

> Peter C wrote:

*grin*

> but I can see this as one solution.

That's all it was meant to be: one solution.

Another would be to play on the floor. You get a heck of a larger playing area
that way.:)

Of course then you get the, um, counter-arguements about bad knees
and backs.  ;-)  For bad knees I use my caving kneepads. For bad
backs I'd get proxies.  ;-)

Mk

You could just use some of the smaller ships to represent cruisers and capital
ships. Individually mounted fighters can be used as destroyers and frigates.

I've seen B5W games using the NSL destroyers as Earth Alliance Omegas before
AoG issued the Omega figures.

Jon Davis
_____________________________________
GE Corporate Research & Development Bldg. KW, Room C211 P.O. Box 8,
Schenectady NY 12301

davisje@crd.ge.com
(518) 387-5487,    Dial Comm: 8*833-5487,    Fax: (518) 387-6981

[quoted original message omitted]

> Myself, I don't think I would consistently apply the house rules

Well, I don't know if I'd go _that_ far.  I'm actually planning on
trying out a bit of Oerjan's tactics once I've got a few of his designs traded
for mine, not to mention that I just might start sticking a few Kra'Vak drives
on other
ships (torpedo- and beam-armed) to toy around with the idea even without
them. I don't think that would be unbeatable either, but it would be worth a
shot, certainly.

FWIW, high-speed maneuvering is not unheard of in our games, and
sometimes even decides the things. One of my last couple of games with my
bro-in-law,
I was playing a set of carriers mounting the usual Stilt Horde Of Fighters,
but escorting them was a pair of thrust 6 battlecruisers with strong hulls
and about 8-10 needle beams.  My bro-in-law had an area defense phalanx,
which I flanked at Oerjan Velocities with these things before cutting in to
get within needle beam range, and took out about three or four of his ships'
ADFCs to help clear the way for the fighters to attack. The NC's had a rather
rough time of it, yes... one got destroyed outright by Class 1 beam fire and
the other lost half its drives to a threshold roll and barely stayed on the
board. But it's got its place, even in my games.:)

I'm merely saying I wouldn't put thrust 6 on _most_ of my ships... it
always
has its uses on a few special-purpose ones.

> > Noam:

> > I'd written out a nice elaborate argument explaining why, on the

> Too easy. I wouldn't fire at you with the field on, and wouldn't let

One problem: you don't get to know whether the fields are up until you've
already fired at them. That's specifically stated as a rule for them in the
original entry for them in MT.

> > Your ships can take about half as much damage getting reflected back

> Rock, paper, scissors. You think I'd throw the same fleet at a reflex

Major assumption problem here: you don't know if I'm going to fly anything
with a reflex field or not. I might have a dreadplanet (with or without Class
4 beams modded onto them:), I might have battleships. You don't know. That's
why I was telling you that most times, that fleet would get annihilated in our
games: you don't have the luxury of knowing what I'm going to fly, only a
warning of a mass if I fly a supership. If you see a really large
mass, that _might_ be the version I showed you earlier... or it might be
a
horribly beweaponed monster with class-5 or class-6 beams just to tick
you
off.  :)

> (BTW, I have yet to see the reflex field, and cloak, for that matter

They're actually not that bad. Taking a cloaking device is essentially giving
up about 15-25% of your total firepower in exchange for being able to
choose when and if the battle is joined. And a reflex field only works against
beams anyway and costs twice as much as a screen.

> Laserlight :

> Stilt:

> Forget that. Keep all the PDS, replace One or two of the Beam-6's with

This is cinematic movement, remember. You're not going to fire the nova cannon
at me at the same time as you're keeping away from me.  You _have_ to be
either facing me or flying towards me to use it. And against something that
size, you're not going to do damage anywhere near fast enough to make it worth
it.

> > Incidentally, we play cinematic on a fixed edge... which makes this

> Aside from a fixed edge being an entirely artificial limitation in a

These two things simply don't happen with us. We typically play on a living
room floor, and although we do have a fixed playing space the edges are not
real specifically defined; we just agree that if you're too far off to one
side of the room you're going to get your ship kicked off the board. No one
attempts to _deliberately_ hug the walls because they know that they'll
probably get their ships removed for doing so. YMMV, but if you've got people
who are willing to abuse the details of the rules this badly I'd suggest
recruiting new opposition...

> 3) Behemoths/fleets with

We don't have much trouble with either of these because closing on them and
punishing them up close isn't typically that hard.

> > Floating edges disturb that intent, to no real game-related end

> If you want any kind of campaign continuity, that single class 86 beam
Sorry. I
> couldn't help but get carried away on that, but it does nicely

'Salright... I was exaggerating as an extreme myself.:)

> > Sure, it might

> A fixed map is almost a moot point vs. a thrust 1 ship anyway, unless

*shrugs* I fly some games where I spin at thrust 1. I fly some where I cloak
and stalk. I fly some where I have some sit back to support fighters
while others maneuver to crack area-defense shells.  I fly some where I
fly up and slug it out. We don't, by any stretch of the imagination, play
"attack the starbase" every time.

> > We simply don't have people deliberately try to abuse the borders.

> Perhaps not, but your starting conditions play right into the hands of

Yes, but it also leaves them horrifically vulnerable to needle beams if they
try that. Sacrifice a couple of fast needle craft to take out their drives,
then park your ships in their weakest arc(s) and take them apart.

> > We may

> Again, that may not be a deliberate abuse, but the very expectation

See other post. I've used Oerjan Velocities in my games before, to great
effect.  I'm just not going to use them on _all_ of my ships too often.

> > On the other hand, I've seen both Oerjan and Noam suggest with a

> Semantics, semantics. I call it taking advantage of the space.
Conversely,
> as pointed out above, spining dreadplanet 20" (even 30") away from one

Doesn't usually happen. The fighters usually decide the game well before it
gets to this point, and if they don't, the dreadplanet itself usually goes
and runs down enemy carriers ship-to-ship if it gets out-fightered.

> As a side note:
supposedly.

> | Me:

I wasn't barbing at you, I merely observed that you'd both suggested various
forms of keepaway tactics. He was suggesting that he has a house rule that all
his ships get back a full row of hull boxes (in response to our house rules)
and distorting my comments to mean that "space has an edge". I was letting him
know I didn't care for either comment.

If either of you took my observation as a barb, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it as
such.

> 'Course as Oerjan said, the initial excercise (killing the

The Komarov has to point its front end at the dreadplanet to fire Class 4
beams.  In cinematic movement, that means you _cannot_ both fire that
and use your thrust to stay away from me. You've got all of a 12 MU window,
even assuming I _don't_ tweak the "dreadplanet" to carry Class 4's
itself.

That design is still a little experimental, and I'm actually not altogether
happy with the amount that I neutered its beam armament from its previous
prototype version in order to mount those plasma bolts; I'm considering
various forms of mods to change that before I call it a final version. One
thought I have is to take off the needle beams and a couple of class 3's to
put a couple of class 4's and 18 class 1's on it. That gives it an
answer to the Komarov _and_ would much improve its beam firepower at all
distances (2/12/22/50 versus 0/10/20/30); the plasma probably makes the
needles obsolete for the purposes they were originally on there for in the
previous version, and the Class 4's could help replace a little of the
extra-long range threat that the nova gave before.  A Komarov would
never
be able to take the thing one-on-one anyway (it would never survive the
fighter attack) but having taken the nova cannon off of the previous version
it probably would be a good idea to give it back some form of long range
threat.

That is not what Oerjan said. IIRC (IMW) is that the balance of the fleet
was Beijing/BEs (ADAF/PDS escort version of the Beijing/B as listed in
the
text section, and thus stock). The 20-21 Beijing/BEs would more than
enough to take out your fighters. Then the single Komorov would take out your
battle planet (as was listed, since you would not know how to modify it to
fit his force) using the class-4s. The class-4 beams also have a
Forward-Port and Forward-Starboard arc, so do not need to be directly
facing you do hit you. As long as the play area is 97" wide, and you do not
move to push your opponent off the edge of the would, he should still succeed.
If you move so that he must come within 36" of you to circle you or go out,
you are using "edge of the world" tactics. Also, since he will have some
Beijings left, they would dart in when every your rear arc faced them.

-----
Brian Bell bkb@beol.net

> That is not what Oerjan said. IIRC (IMW) is that the balance of the

How many PDS would that be? 60 or so? *makes a note to self to look at his FB1
when he gets home* Not sure that would stop 41 fighter groups...

> Then the single Komorov would take out your
If
> you move so that he must come within 36" of you to circle you or go

Heh... all right. How about I'll make it moot? I'll tweak the thing to get rid
of the needle beams and give it some class 4's. As I observed, the massive
plasma armament I added in the first FB2 version probably makes the needle
beams obsolete for the purposes I had them there before.

(Yeah, that's a minor cop-out... but getting a few ideas _was_ the
reason that I signed on to this list in the first place, so...;)

stiltman@teleport.com wrote, in reply to Laserlight:

> On the other hand, I've seen both Oerjan and Noam suggest with a

Laserlight only used the tone that you had already established, by recycling
the very phrase you had just used about us. If you don't like this tone
directed at you, why use it on others?

FWIW, the only reason your dreadstar is vulnerable to a long-range beam
sniper is that it has so weak engines. If you put some engines on it,
or escort it with a bunch of faster ships (like those thrust-8 needle
cruisers of yours), Noam's snipers are a marginal threat at best - even
on an infinitely large table.

> You don't have to like it. It's prohibitively unlikely that you'll

Fine with me. You consider our style of playing FT abusive; we find your
gaming style (or at least the parts of it you described early in the
discussion) similarly abusive. We'll simply have to agree to disagree.

Let me point out two final things, though:

First, your critiques of FB2, in some places phrased in a tone which
suggested "what idiots wrote this - it's completely out of joint" (not
quite that sharp, but approaching it at times), were based on your own
house rules which no-one else here knew anything about (since you
hadn't told us about them by then). Since some of those house rules have a
quite significant effect on the game balance, many of your comments simply
didn't make sense to those who didn't know exactly which rules you were
actually using. During the about three years of FT playtesting I've done, one
of the most important things I've learned is
to always make sure your readers/listeners know which rules you use as
a basis for evaluation of new systems or rules, in order to avoid this type of
misunderstandings.

Second, during the debate you have successively changed your descriptions of
the tactics and design styles you and your gaming group use. One example: One
of your first claims in this discussion was that you were "infamous" for using
massed fighters, and that your opponents usually didn't bring enough point
defences to survive them for fear of your other design styles. Interestingly
enough however, later on you claim just the opposite by stating that fleets
regularly carry some
100+ PDS.

> Consider yourself ignored.

I'll try to return the favour in the future :-)

Regards,

6 each, so 120-126 PDS.

-----
Brian Bell bkb@beol.net
-----

> -----Original Message-----
[snip]
> --

On  9-Jun-00 at 13:41, stiltman@teleport.com (stiltman@teleport.com)
wrote:

> Heh... all right. How about I'll make it moot? I'll tweak the thing

What cloaking rules are you using? Would a "tons of small, cloaked,
submunition using ships" fleet have a shot? If you don't get to shoot at them
and they can handle one turn of fighters your big boy could have difficulty.

> That is not what Oerjan said. IIRC (IMW) is that the balance of the

How many PDS would that be? 60 or so? *makes a note to self to look at his FB1
when he gets home* Not sure that would stop 41 fighter groups...

---

Certainly more than 3 PDS per Beijing/B.  I think it's closer to 5-6
per cruiser, so roughly 100-120 PDS against 41 groups.  With 3 PDS
per fighter group, they average 2+ kills, cutting the number of fighters
to 160 from 246.  Their first attack will strike with 100+ dice
assuming morale rules are in use.

(B. Bell wrote of 6 PDS per defender.)

> Oerjan wrote:

> >>On the other hand, I've seen you suggest with a straight face

> >Hey, dude, watch your tone here.

> Laserlight only used the tone that you had already established, by

It wasn't that comment alone I was referring to... it was also his sarcastic
comment that he has a house rule where his ships (and only his ships) get to
regenerate a full row of hull boxes each turn. THAT, I objected to, more than
his comment about space having an edge... I have not objected to anything more
that you've written than what I commented about in the first letter. Since
then, you've generally kept a pretty civil tone (and I've endeavored to do the
same).

> FWIW, the only reason your dreadstar is vulnerable to a long-range

In just about any larger-scale battle where it wasn't alone, that's
probably about what I'd do. (Heck, I might give it slightly better engines
anyway, but it'd probably be simpler to just give it longer ranged beams so it
can answer in kind.)

> Let me point out two final things, though:

> First, your critiques of FB2, in some places phrased in a tone which

Well, first off, I think I gave a pretty exhaustive list of our house rules in
the first post or two I made to the list on the subject.

Second, I was careful after your somewhat offended tone of your first letter
(which is somewhat understandable, being that you were a playtester and might
take it personally if you thought I was impugning your testing of the system)
to try to establish that those comments were just initial thoughts and nothing
more. I even went so far as, a couple of posts later, to state that several of
them seemed to be completely wrong.

> Since some of those house rules

Well... that's what I tried to do in the beginning. At risk of sounding
contrary, I'm not sure very many folks paid attention. I know that I've
repeated a few of them.

> Second, during the debate you have successively changed your

Okay... let me clarify a bit here.

The usual fleets have generally settled into a mode where they do in fact
carry somewhere upwards of at least 60-80 PDS, usually not (much) more
than 100. That is enough to give a serious carrier force a run for its money
under our rules but not enough to completely shut the door. If the carrier
force brings needle help to take out a few ADFC's with an high speed needle
beam strike that would likely make you blush with pleasure at the homage, they
can re-seize a fairly dominant advantage.

What _is_ generally not done is to bring PDS somewhere in the 150+
range, which will pretty much completely shut down fighters but leaves the
ships sporting them fairly well outgunned by more reasonably armed
battleships.

The happy medium we've generally settled into tends to sport PDS in about
the 60-100 range.  100 is usually overdoing it a little, and I've been
known
to burn that plan with slow-speed ships by overwhelming them with SMs
and the "Warbird" strategy is also very good for fighting in such cases as
well.

In a nutshell... yes, I'm somewhat infamous for carrier forces. Yes, it's
true that no one tends to put _really_ gross amounts of PDS on their
forces in hopes of spanking my carriers for fear that I'll bring battleships
instead
and render it all kind of pointless.  No, merely 60-100 PDS is not the
amount I was referring to as "gross". Yes, that's more than FB1 ships
typically fly even if I don't consider it "gross". Yes, we generally find a
fair balance
in it (I've been known to get out-fightered and win anyway).  No, I'm
not changing my descriptions of the tactics I use, I'm clarifying them because
it's difficult to sum up four years' worth of evolution in our tactics in a
week's time on a mailing list.

> >Consider yourself ignored.

> I'll try to return the favour in the future :-)

That was directed at him, not you... and even then, only on that one
particular set of comments he made.

> Indy wrote:

> I would like to use a floating table but haven't found a solution to

No, 6.25 times larger. 2.5 times in two dimensions <g> IME, most of the time a
ship which leaves the table in the opposite direction to everyone else is too
badly crippled to do anything more than run away anyway (and has its last DCP
feverishly working on repairing the
#¤%$£@
FTL drive :-/ ), so unless someone else is chasing it with realistic
hopes of actually catching it we tend to let it break off.

Of course, Mikko will very soon comment on how cm-measuring sucks...
I*H*O of course, not M :-/

Later,

> Bell, Brian K wrote:

> A valid question.

Sorry about that. My gaming table is wide enough that the
"non-pincering" fleet needs to be extremely dispersed - effectively
trying its own pincer movement - in order to force the enemy pincers so
far apart that they both risk leaving the table on opposite sides in order to
move outside the enemy weapon range at maneuvering speeds.
Since such a split-up almost invariably leads to one side or the other
reconsidering its plans

During the past six years I've only had it (significant undamaged forces
leaving the table in two opposite directions at once) happen four or five
times, and those times we used the same approach as Indy
described - grab a chair as a temporary extension. Your split-table
approach looks doable as well, but I've never tried that.

Later,

> stiltman@teleport.com wrote:

> Forget that. Keep all the PDS, replace One or two of the Beam-6's

No, but he is firing it from up to 72mu away, at a target with
thrust-1. It is rather trivial to stay away from the dreadstar :-/

> As a side note:
|>supposedly.
> | Me:

I did? Or who did? I must've missed that <shrug>

> 'Course as Oerjan said, the initial excercise (killing the

Only if it wants to fire both of them at the same time. If it is satisfied
with one die per turn, it can have the dreadstar almost straight abeam and
still snipe at it... OK, it'll move a few fractions
of an mu closer each turn, but that's it :-/ But, as I said before -
with your fighter house rules, it has to be *extremely* lucky to survive the
fighters. With the MT fighter rules it's merely a very tough fight, but still
one the ESU can win.

Regards,

> stiltman@teleport.com wrote:

> >This is cinematic movement, remember. You're not going to fire the

> No, but he is firing it from up to 72mu away, at a target with

Well, yes, but he _does_ have to fire the thing while he's pointed at
me. If I'm approaching him at a zigzag, he's got to turn towards me, hope he's
not approaching me, then be able to turn back around and thrust. If I just
thrust continuously at him sooner or later he's either going to go off the
board or he's no longer going to be able to fire the thing at me.

And if all else fails, I'll just head for the nearest planet he wants to keep.
32 dice of plasma bolts might just shatter a planet's crust.;)

> >> As a side note:

> >>| Me:

> >I wasn't barbing at you, I merely observed that you'd both suggested

> I did? Or who did? I must've missed that <shrug>

Laserlight did, in the message to me immediately previous to the one I
actually answered, as a somewhat uncalled-for mockery of my own house
rules.

> >>'Course as Oerjan said, the initial excercise (killing the

> >The Komarov has to point its front end at the dreadplanet to fire

> Only if it wants to fire both of them at the same time. If it is

Perhaps. You've sold me enough that I think I'm going to make the
needles-for-
class-4 trade in my tinkerings.  ;)

On  9-Jun-00 at 17:38, stiltman@teleport.com (stiltman@teleport.com)
wrote:

> > No, but he is firing it from up to 72mu away, at a target with

I would consider that abuse of the edge of the board...:)

Just for a look at most of my last PBeM battle, you can see the pictures
at http://www.jumpspace.net  You can't have this kind of maneuver battle
with fixed edges. It also shows that faster moves can be used for more than
running away.

> And if all else fails, I'll just head for the nearest planet he wants

And if it is a planet you need to keep?

> >> As a side note:

Not precisely.  We're all co-devotees.  This is not intended to
imply anything, by the way.

> >>| Noam:

Stilt:
> >I wasn't barbing at you

I observe that both Oerjan and Noam seem to regard the "barb content" of your
initial comment to be the same as mine. I conclude that neither of us was
barbin anyone?

Stilt
> He was suggesting that he has a

(snip)
> Laserlight did, in the message to me immediately previous to

I'll interpret that "somewhat uncalled for" to mean "partially called
for"...<grin>

  I was pointing out--possibly not as gracefully as I ought to
have--that a) your tactics and designs are based on your house
rules, and b) your house rules vary significantly from the norm. Now, you have
every right to have your own house rules and they
can be absolutely bizarre if you wish--"ships whose names start
with M have double firepower in December," for example.   And of
course your tactics and designs will reflect your house rules. But your
tactics and designs aren't inherently more valid than, say, Oerjan's, just
(possibly) better suited to the
rules-as-modified-by-you.
 ( Incidentally, I don't actually have a regenerating-hull house
rule--not that it would make much difference, as my ships tend
to go *pop* very rapidly once the armor is gone). I'd have to say that I still
regard an "edge" as completely unjustifiable. It isn't realistic; and it
tends, in my
experience, to produce head-on collisions rather than maneuver.
On the other hand, I haven't often gotten into a situation where
I needed to float the board--that's either a sign that my ships
are too fragile, or I'm not maneuvering very well. Or, likely,
both....

> stiltman@teleport.com wrote:

Easily dealt with. If all you are fielding is the 'dreadplanet', the first
ship to fire will only be firing one beam at it. That will reveal quite nicely
wether or not the others should fire and minimize the possible damage from the
field.