(That's "0.5" as in "half-baked")
FMA Thrust is a way to resolve large battles quickly, while still claiming
something marginally related to a semblance of the results that a FT battle
might give. Mechanics, such as they are, are lifted from StarGrunt. Comments
welcome.
Ships have hull blocks based on Mass/40.
Add up the mass of all weapons, divide by the number of blocks to get
Firepower.
Quality die is 2 x (Turning ability + 1/2 Thrust)--shift up or down if
crack or green crew.
Armor die is based on the percentage of hull+armor--10% is d4, 20% is
d6 and so on.
Example: battleship Nasr ed Din is mass 120 so has 3 hull blocks. It as 30
Mass of weapons so firepower is 3d10. Main Drive 4 and a normal
Human drive so turning ability is 2, which gives a QD of 2 x (2+2) =
d8. 30 Hull + 7 armor divided by 120 mass is about 30% so d8 Armor
die.
Combat resolution similar to the Quick and Dirty SG rules. Roll QD
and FP dice vs defender's range die [and/or quality die? insert
Handwave here]. If minor hit, a hull block is out of action. If major hit, sum
the FP dice, subtract range [handwave, handwave], divide by Armor die type and
get the number of hull blocks destroyed.
Ships can fire on multiple targets but your chances of getting a major hit go
up substantially with each extra FP die.
At some point I'll separate out placed ordnance (SMR, PBL) and
fighters and do something like StarGrunt's missile-vs-ECM roll; and
we'll account for Ptorps vs screens, and non-human weapons, and so
forth. Meanwhile, 'm awaiting your input...
Not a comment, just a couple of questions:
Is your weight on maneuver cine, vector, or with-neither-in-mind?
Don't have SG handy: what is 'defender's range die'?
The_Beast
Doug said:
> Is your weight on maneuver cine, vector, or with-neither-in-mind?
well, I don't account for arcs (other than their extra mass), so it's vector;
and I'm weighting (in the QD) the turning ability as worth twice what a thrust
point is worth, so it's cinematic; and "mind" is probably a generous
description.
> Don't have SG handy: what is 'defender's range die'?
The attacker's Quality and Firepower dice have to beat the defender's range
die to get a good hit. Defender's range, in FT, would be increments of 6mu or
12mu; greater range means higher die type, so "point blank" would be d4 and
"barely within range" would be d12.
Two can play at dumb-and-dumberer...
> well, I don't account for arcs (other than their extra mass), so it's
Well, using the same analysis as one would with a man with one hand in boiling
water, and another in dry ice, it seems nicely balanced for
either... ;->=
I guess my first question should have been to get my muddled thoughts clear:
is your general concept for a simplification of firing and damage, but using
regular play otherwise?
Were you thinking of system and critical 'hits' damage? Possibly tied to hull
boxes? Or perhaps you were thinking of recalculating mass (probably on a table
created before the game) subtracting lost boxes equivalents in mass?
Sorry this is so disjointed (yes, even more so than normal), but talking
interesting things while at work still puts me in a
stream-of-consciousness
mode.
The_Beast
> I guess my first question should have been to get my muddled thoughts
For larger-than-FT battles (eg 40 BB per player), or actions (eg
campaign game) where you don't want to bother to put it on the tabletop.
> Were you thinking of system and critical 'hits' damage? Possibly tied
You lose FP dice associated with the hull boxes you lose. Thus if you have
a SDN (5 boxes) with 48 mass of weapons, it has FP dice 10+10+10+10+8
and you'd have to see which box you lost. You would also have it affect your
drives (and thus your Quality die) and FTL ability--haven't worked that
out yet.
In message <002b01c32a4f$1c91b540$a69ec943@pavilion>
> "Laserlight" <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:
> (That's "0.5" as in "half-baked")
Just a suggestion - wouldn't it be better to have hull blocks based on
some proportion of hull integrity (say hull blocks = [hull boxes +
armour boxes]/10 ?)
> Add up the mass of all weapons, divide by the number of blocks to get
Might be better to base firepower on the total _cost_ of weapons, say
FP = total cost of weapons/(# hull blocks x 3) - otherwise the KV and
Phalons are getting a slight downgrade here :-)
> Quality die is 2 x (Turning ability + 1/2 Thrust)--shift up or down if
Hmm... reminds me of my old crew quality rules, I'll dig them out and see if I
can get them to fit.
> Armor die is based on the percentage of hull+armor--10% is d4, 20% is
With my suggestion of basing hull blocks on hull boxes + armour, you
could base this on shields (it becomes a 'shield die'): No shields: d4, 1
shield: d6, 2 shields or vapour shroud: d8 against shield ignoring weapons
always use the d4.
> Example: battleship Nasr ed Din is mass 120 so has 3 hull blocks. It
Interesting idea, I look forward to seeing more :-)
> For larger-than-FT battles (eg 40 BB per player), or actions (eg
Now I'm back to confusion on the range die, or rather, how you determine range
at all. Sorry.
> -haven't worked that out yet.
Understood in most cases; I'm just hoping the questions jar ideas...
Definitely a worthy subject, especially in campaigns where you want lots of
possible interactions, but worry about gaming the 'interesting' situations.
The_Beast
> Just a suggestion - wouldn't it be better to have hull blocks based on
you could do it that way but you might want to calculate the weapons
differently--otherwise you'd have a 10% hull ship with FPd12 while the
same number of weapons on a 50% hull would be 5d4
> Might be better to base firepower on the total _cost_ of weapons, say
Good. Haven't really decided how best to handle KV as they're an
all-or-none affair with their one-arc-weapons, but
> With my suggestion of basing hull blocks on hull boxes + armour, you
No shields: d4, 1 shield: d6, 2 shields or vapour shroud: d8 against shield
ignoring weapons always use the d4.
okay, although we'd want to look at how much shields affect beams and
compare with how much a die shift affects it (eg shield-1 might be UP2
instead of UP1).
Doug asked how I'd determine range -- I already explained that <grin>
:
> subtract range [handwave, handwave],
In fact, I'm thinking to use the Quality Die plus a player-determined
DRM (based on how aggressive you want to be) to determine range. However, it
has to be non-symmetrical to allow for the possibility that you'll get
behind him--his effective range to you is high, while your range to him
is short.