> (There's little doubt that your group finds 6-arc weapons
You're welcome! :)
A lot of the high-arc weapons comes from the miniatures
and previous games (i.e., Star Fleet Battles) we used to
play (for me anyway). Steve uses WW1-WW2 era
battleship miniatures which have turrets, he uses 5-arcs,
and if the weapon comes only in a 6-arc variant (i.e.
class-1 rail guns) he does figure out the fractional
cost (and I don't mind). For the secondaries, he should
actually have twice the number he does but each at 3-arcs
(all Port or all Starboard); but, does not half the number
of 6-arc weapons comes close enough?
Many of my designs using Star Trek based miniatures borrow from SFB designs,
which many have more than 180 degrees (especially Klingon phasers). Also, rear
firing weapons are not uncommon in Star Trek movies and shows. That "no rear
firing" rule is more
of a background/universe optional rule.
Doesn't some of the B5 Earth ships have main weapons that fire rearward? (the
Omega?)
I've also designed hundreds of ships, what I've put up on my website is just a
smidgen. I've thrown away more designs than I've shown.
Andy's designs are just... different. I ain't gonna comment no more on that.:)
I also wonder if some of those designs you have from other people are
variations of the FB designs?
1/3rd of all the B2-6s? Aren't there quite a few of
those in FB1?
I wonder what percentage of FT players play only vector or cinematic. Has
anyone done a poll?
Glen
> Glen Bailey wrote:
> For the secondaries, he [Steve] should
Half the number of 6-arc weapons is OK as long as the enemy stays
concentrated on one side of your ships. The drawbacks become obvious when
he doesn't :-/
> That "no rear firing" rule is more of a background/universe optional
It is more of a "incite players to manoeuvre more" rule than a
background/optional rule, really - cf. the comment about it on FT2 p.2,
and also your own comments some years ago about how hard it is to outmanoeuvre
Steve's battlewagons :-/ More importantly though it is a rule which has
pretty large effects on the game balance, and the ship design system
(particularly the engine costs, but also the fire arc costs) assumes that it
is in use.
> I also wonder if some of those designs you have from other people are
A few are, certainly. Most aren't. Exactly how many are or are not depends
on how liberal you are with the definition of "variant" :-/
> 1/3rd of all the B2-6s?
At the moment, yes. This will most likely go down a bit when the next few
beta-test fleets are added to the archive, but I have surprisingly few
player-created custom designs with B2-6s.
> Aren't there quite a few of those in FB1?
In FB1, yes; but they're more common in FB1 than they are among the archived
custom designs even when you exclude the obvious
Vector-optimized
designs (low thrust ratings, lots of big single- or two-arc weapons)
from
the mix. If it hadn't been for the fact that min/maxers like Steve *do*
use
the B2-6s, I would've started worrying that the 5- and 6-arc weapons
were
overpriced years ago :-/
> I wonder what percentage of FT players play only vector or cinematic.
Has
> anyone done a poll?
There have been several, eg. on this mailing list and at TMP
(<http://theminiaturespage.com/polls/?id=1282800800>). All the ones I've
seen so far point at around 40% Vector, 50-60% Cinematic and the rest
undecided, but they all have had rather small sample bases (less than two
hundred replies) compared to the number of copies of FT and FB1 sold (many
thousand) so it is hard to say how accurate they are.
Later,