Hi I've heard a proposed idea for a FT 3 that would allow players to design
and build alternate weapons based on the published weapon systems. These would
be simple formulae to alter the parameters of the weapon. For example to
increase range by 50% you double the mass. As in the
long-range pulse torp from the New Israel beta test page.
A corellation would be, that to decrease the range by 25% you therefore half
the mass. Anybody suggest a way you can alter a weapon to increase the damage,
i.e beams that give 2 damage per hit or pulse torps that cause d6x2 damage. My
first idea would be 4 times mass, but that just seems too extreme. Also how
would you amend a weapon for half damage, for example grasers that cause d3
per hit.
> --- Anthony <a.leibrick@btopenworld.com> wrote:
Suggestion: Link two beams to a single die roll. In this way there is not any
change to the
'build/cost' system, and there is no need to
create/balance a 'new' system. There is a
slight disadvantage in doing this, you have only one chance to hit instead of
two.
bye for now,
One Tony or another said, in Wicked Evil HTML Format:
> Anybody suggest a way you can alter a weapon to increase the damage,
Double damage = double mass. The reason 1.5 x range = 2 x mass is because the
increased range applies over an area.
Let's say you're designing a new all-arc weapon which does damage out
to 10mu. That means it covers an area of 314mu (pi R^2). You upgrade it to
cover a 15 mu radius; now it covers 707 square mu, more than twice as much.
Fleshing out LL's reply a little:
> One Tony or another said, in Wicked Evil HTML Format:
Basically yes... though see the comment about rounding errors, below.
> The reason 1.5 x range = 2 x mass is because the increased range
...which means that the weapon now has a greater probability of having a
target to shoot at. The reason why the weapon size isn't exactly proportional
to the area is that it can only *actually* shoot at one single target per
turn, even if there are multiple targets within its envelope.
Note that this mass-to-range formula DOES NOT WORK for the standard beam
weapons, because the current beam weapon masses themselves are already
rounded to the nearest integer value - specifically, in the case of the
B2 the mass fraction that was dropped was quite big. This means that if you
increase the range of a B2 by 50%, and increase its Mass by 100%, you're
introducing a rounding error of ~1 Mass relative to what the weapon
*should* cost - and the result is a weapon which is significantly better
(measured in bang-per-buck) than the standard B3.
***
Back to Tony's post:
> I've heard a proposed idea for a FT 3 that would allow players to
Proposed and rejected. The B2 example above makes it obvious why: for several
of the published weapon systems the published mass ratings and costs include
rounding errors, and any simple multiplications of those
already-rounded costs will rapidly cause those rounding errors to grow
to the point where they become balance problems.
This isn't very serious when only the damage is modified (since in this
case the main rival to the modified weapon is the original weapon -
their range profiles are exactly the same), but it becomes very important
indeed when the *range* (and thus the range profile) changes since in this
case
the modified weapon doesn't compete with its unmodified version but with
weapons of other classes (eg., a B2 with 50% longer range competes with
unmodified B3s, not with unmodified B2s).
Because of this, the simple "multiply existing weapon by X" approach only
works for *some* of the published weapons, but not for *all* of them. A custom
weapon design system needs to dig at least one step deeper, and
start with unrounded - or at least less-rounded - initial values.
> For example to increase range by 50% you double the mass. As in the
> half the mass.
No, decreasing the range by *33*% allows you to halve the mass. (100% is
two-thirds of 150%, not three-quarters.)
Regards,