[FT] DamCon Parties

Let's see if I'm reading this right: a) damage control parties are there to
repair systems that are damaged in threshold checks; b) damage control parties
have no other game function (eg cannot repair needle beam damage); c)
threshold checks occur only after a row of damage boxes is destroyed.

If all of the above is correct....then why are there DCP's in the TOP row of
damage boxes?

G'day,

> If all of the above is correct....then why are there DCP's in the TOP

The way I interpreted it was that they represented crew factors and thus were
evenly spread through out the hull. Its just that those that survive get to
fix stuff. But then I may have a warped view of how things work (and I can't
check as all the rule books are at home), did anybody else read it this way?

Cheers

Beth

> Laserlight wrote:

> Let's see if I'm reading this right:
destroyed.

c) is wrong. You forgot the MT-style EMP missiles, which are still
supported by the FB.

Beth's explanation is entirely correct too, of course, but you don't have to
lose a complete hull row to suffer treshold checks.

Regards,

> Chris DeBoe laserlight@cwix.com wrote:
I think that FTL transitions on the table top force a threshold check. I could
be wrong however. I remember something about it in More Thrust, in the section
on FTL transitions in the heat of battle.

> On Mon, 3 May 1999, Laserlight wrote:

> Let's see if I'm reading this right:

in addition to what other people have said, i would say that if you board one
of your own ships, DCPs from the boarding ship can go over and attempt to fix
up the broken ship.

hmm. a cheapo merchant stuffed to the gills with DCPs would make a handly
little fleet auxiliary, able to travel with the fleet and fix stuff.

DamCon parties, eh? presumably these are the beer-fuelled after-hours
events at the annual engineers' convention? :-) i'm having trouble
controlling my visions now ... "you should have seen this chick - she
was
built like a DM-220!", "is that the first or second series DM-220?",
"first", "wow! you lucky swine.".

Tom

> If all of the above is correct....then why are there DCP's in the TOP

Adding to the responses that others have put forth.

They represent crew - not just DCPs. Thus they are important for
campaign games and other things that require crew, such as boarding parties,
crewing prize ships, etc.

> They represent crew - not just DCPs. Thus they are important

As in the old FASA TCS game the more percentage of the crew you lost the more
ineffective the ship became, in this case as you lose CF's the damage control
becomes less effective. In the TCS game you also got to hit modifiers on the
weapons and AFAIK weapons lock but that would spoil the basic FT simplicity so
lets just limit it to DCP's.

The similarity to the TCS system may not be an accident of design?

> Laserlight wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> If all of the above is correct....then why are there DCP's in the TOP

Heh, I was also perplexed by the placement of DCPs on the first row. Their
sole purpose has GOT to be to hit the alarm on their way to the great
hereafter. <G>

It is for this reason that I am VERY much in favor of treating DCPs as Core
Systems. They can stay alive until the last box is damage is crossed off or
they can all get killed in their bunks before getting a
chance to sling their toolbelts.  All down to the fickle die-roll.

-=Kr'rt

> Let's see if I'm reading this right:

> Andrew Martin
:-(
> Al.Bri@xtra.co.nz

At least they had the sense to take the valuable things *G*

> Dominic Robertson <nightwinder@geocities.com> wrote:
:-(
> At least they had the sense to take the valuable things *G*
:-(
Even more valuable!

> K'rt wrote:

> Heh, I was also perplexed by the placement of DCPs on the first row.

FB page 8 says:

"For simplicity, it is assumed that crew casualties run proportional to the
amount of hull damage suffered by the ship; as damage is taken and crew
casualties are suffered, CFs are lost and the available DCPs are reduced
accordingly. To record this on the Ship Diagram, dots are placed in certain
boxes on the Damage Track to denote the points at which Crew Factors are lost;
a ships current CF (and thus its current number of DCPa) is the number of
dots
still remaining in non-destroyed boxes on the damage track."

Thus the * in the SSD's are not DC's but CF's, you get so many DC's for the
number
of CF's you have - it just happens to be 1:1 for military ships.

What are the CF's killed proportion of DCP's, doing before the ship gets
damaged? Who knows its an abstraction? Probably killed while getting to their
damage stations by hull spliters or decompression etc.

> It is for this reason that I am VERY much in favor of treating DCPs as

I prefer the cannonical system as its simple and gives a good abstraction for
the background YMMV.