This is just a VERY rough idea at the moment, feedback would be useful.
Reading the WOTW archives, and the lack of agreement on using needle or EMP
weapons, I thought about nicking a idea from the starfire game. We could
have at the bottom of the SSD a text list of all the weapons/systems
aboard the ship (using a standard notation), and have these weapons hit one at
random (IE-The attacker says the needle beam will hit the 3rd system,
although he doesn`t know what it is). Every ship can be different (within
reason, to be determinded what the limits are), after all, no 2 ships are
identical. A attacker may look at the list if he can get within scanner range
(to be determinded what the range is for the different sensors, also makes
advanced sensors a battlefield weapon useful in the game) and suceeded at a
die roll. Once a scan has been performed, the list and order of that ships
systems are avalible to the attackers fleet until said ship goes in
for repairs/refit at a shipyard (to represent the ship having been
recorded and identifiable) as long as one of the attackers ships can pass said
info
back to the HQ (IE-suvives).
Any comments?
Good idea.
The problem with most EMP/Needle mechanics is that there is often too
many systems to justify rolling for each one when the ship is hit by an EMP
blast. Also the choosing of systems for Needle shots takes away the lack of
knowledge of enemy ships.
> We could have at the bottom of the SSD a text list of all the
> >these weapons hit one at random (IE-The attacker says the needle beam
> >will hit the 3rd system, although he doesn`t know what it is).
How about: Group all of the ship's systems into 6 groups
Assign each of these groups a number 1-6
This means that the attacker can choose a group or can roll a D6 to see which
group of systems gets hit.
Because the designer of the ships chooses the groupings, these groups can be
balanced as desired. All eggs can be put into one basket or systems can be
spread nicely with redundancies in Firecon & Shielding for instance.
On the minus side - a Needle shot would take out 1/6 of a ship's systems
-
but if you PSB a Needle Beam as being a targeted EMP blast then you could
attempt to get systems back on line, which might balance things out. Of course
Needle Beams at the moment are only useful when lots are taken, and this
approach might give them more impact...maybe too much?
Bottom line being that this approach takes away the drudgery of rolling 19
times for EMP blasts at Battleships and adds in a bit of uncertainty
> On 6/12/02 3:26 AM, "Bif Smith" <bif@bifsmith.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Any comments?
Why not just have a standard way to read the SSD (i.e. left to right, top to
bottom) and roll for the random hit. It would need no addition to existing
material.
In message <006501c211fb$acf53610$0100a8c0@inty2k>
> "Bif Smith" <bif@bifsmith.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> This is just a VERY rough idea at the moment, feedback would be
Well, I've been thinking that this subject needs to be addressed again
recently as well, there are a number of EMP-type weapons in the WDA that
affect a number of ship systems, rather than just inflicting a blanket
threshold roll, however, they use a number of different methods to determine
which system is affected.
These EMP weapons are:
Ion Cannon (Type 1) - beam-type, has a 'priority list' of systems to be
affected, may ignore screens?
Ion Cannon (Type 2) - beam-type, ignores screens, defender chooses
systems to be affected, number of systems affected is the total number
that must _fail_ their threshold checks.
Ion Pulse Weapon - beam-type, has a different 'priority list', affected
by screens.
Plasma Torpedo - torpedo-type, has a priority list.
I think Needle-Beam like weapons and 'blanket' EMP weapons should be
considered a separate subject, that can be addressed elsewhere.
Some of the possible methods of determining which systems are affected by this
class of EMP, or disabling, weapon are as follows:
1) Priority List - used by 3, (but each has a separate list)
2) Defender Chooses - used by 1
3) Defender & Attacker alternate choices - not used
4) Attacker Chooses - not used - would be very similar to needle beams
5) Random Selection - not used - would require some method of randomly
selecting systems to check
Of these 5, which does everyone prefer? or do you prefer a different (not
listed) option?
If you prefer option 1) which list do you prefer? If you prefer option 5, what
is your preferred method of randomly selecting a system to be affected?
[quoted original message omitted]
> "Sean Bayan Schoonmaker" <s_schoon@pacbell.net> spaketh:
The problem here is with munchkinism. As soon as a munchkin-level gamer
finds out about your use of this weapon, they will redesign their SSDs
so that non-critical systems are all bunched up at the top and critical
systems pushed down as far as possible. No one (that i recall, anyway) said
the actual layout of the SSD had to accurately reflect the perceived
distribution of systems on the mini (while most of us try to do this,
your munchkin-type will circumvent asap in the face of an EMP/Needle
attack)
Re: "ordered scoring of EMP hits"
From: Sean Bayan Schoonmaker <s_schoon@pacbell.net>
> Why not just have a standard way to read the SSD (i.e. left to right,
This would be preferable to generating lists or grouping systems. Anything
that does not require addition or modification of existing SSDs
is inherently simpler to use. There is possibility for attempts to abuse
the system (whether it would be successful or not) by people customizing
SSD's in very odd ways.
As for Charles' list, Schoon's revision of Bif's provides a spin on 4) 4b)
Attacker chooses semi blind. and 1b) Go through the systems systematically in
the above way until N systems have been affected
I'm not the greatest fan of anything on the list except maybe 1b. I
still the straight threshold - rolling allot of dice for a big ship
doesn't bother me. I'd rather fiddle with the to-hit mechanics than the
effect mechanics
As for needles, unless they can have multi arcs and/or a second range
band, they are largely useless systems in FB-style games. Limiting them
further by blind targeting goes in the opposite direction.
> Why not just have a standard way to read the SSD (i.e. left to right,
> The problem here is with munchkinism. As soon as a munchkin-level gamer
Roll 1d. 1=upper left, 2= upper right, 3= lower left, 4=lower right,
5-6 reroll for starting point, but read in opposite direction.
> On 6/13/02 4:10 AM, "Indy" <kochte@stsci.edu> wrote:
> The problem here is with munchkinism. As soon as a munchkin-level
That should have no effect. Say a ship has 18 systems; roll a d20 and start
counting...
In message <380F724C-7ECC-11D6-ADA0-000393071770@jhuapl.edu>
> Noam Izenberg <noam.izenberg@jhuapl.edu> wrote:
> Re: "ordered scoring of EMP hits"
Well, getting back to this, here's an idea, could everyone who is interested
look at the following weapons in the WDA:
Ion Cannon (Type 1) - beam-type, has a 'priority list' of systems to be
affected, may ignore screens?
Ion Cannon (Type 2) - beam-type, ignores screens, defender chooses
systems to be affected, number of systems affected is the total number
that must _fail_ their threshold checks.
Ion Pulse Weapon - beam-type, has a different 'priority list', affected
by screens.
Plasma Torpedo - torpedo-type, has a priority list.
and vote for which they prefer, and how they would like these weapon
descriptions to be combined to 1 (or 2) weapons systems.
i.e. I want to reduce the number of weapons in that section :-)