[FT] Even more NAC ships

I've been designing and testing some new NAC ships (for Outworld Command, so
mostly escorts and cruisers) and finally got around to creating some web
pages:

> Hugh Fisher wrote:

"are the only genuine rival to the Oceanic Union in willingness to go
where no-one has gone before"....the ORC, and the Alarishi Empire, would

be aamused to hear such a description from the NAC. And you should get Alan to
tell you about OU survey buoys.

> Laserlight wrote:

Don't get me started on OU buoys. They are all over the place. I am still
getting rid of all the dents in the recently returned ore transports.
Sigh:-)

From: "Frits Kuijlman" <frits@pds.twi.tudelft.nl>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 12:08 AM
Subject: Re: [FT] Even more NAC ships

> Laserlight wrote:

Well, you know what they say: Buoys will be Buoys...

And that's funny coming from VRC, since they own some of the designs, which
the OU manufacturers under licence, or buys when they're running short.

These "Nav Buoys" (which come in several shapes and sizes, most unmistakeably
broadcasting their position, but some of which are very effectively stealthed)
have several uses.

1. As Claim markers. "OU Was Here First". Or Second. No-one takes much
notice of this. 2. As SARBE (Search and Rescue Beacons). A ship which has
misjumped but has some thrust left can often get to a system which has a buoy
in. They know that they'll get a visit sometime in the next 6 months, 12 at
the outside. There's plenty of O2, H20, Food, and energy there, plus
medication
adequate to keep large numbers of people sedated and low-maintenance.
Pilfering from these buoys by Pirates hasn't been a problem, as the OUDF uses
such Pirates as live targets during FLEETEXs. How do they know who did it? See
3 below. 3. As a record of who entered the system, and when. Even if the
data's years old, it's nice to know what activity was going on. The Stealthed
buoys have

> --- Laserlight <laserlight@quixnet.net> wrote:

As would the FCT, the original point of putting 'Harmony' on the map was to
allow players to have an exit to the unknown at the map edge.

Bye for now,

> On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 02:39:04AM +1100, Alan and Carmel Brain wrote:

> And that's funny coming from VRC, since they own some of the designs,

And then of course you have the ESU navigation assistance beacons, AKA
"fishing trawlers", which are designed to prevent interference with
astronomical observation (i.e. are very heavily stealthed) and to avoid
spectrum-swamping radio noise (i.e. only communicate by tight-beam
laser). Naturally, they assist in keeping astrographic information
up-to-date, and therefore carry powerful suites of observation
equipment.

Likewise, the Texaco Free Trade Zone, if it actually existed, would have to
acknowledge the usefulness of such info as would be possible to glean from
other nations' equipment. Such a technological feat as being able to find,
much less download, from these assets, would have to be one of the crowning
achievements of such an entity.

Any suggestion that it would have the covert assistance and approval of such
nations, along with subtle gaps in coverage that might allow hidden base
worlds, in exchange for material that large corporations always seem to shower
on larger nations, is as bogus as the suggestion that the ESU, the only navy
to regularly use class 4 beams, would supply same for such favoritism.

The fact that the non-existant TFN's deep space raiders are rumored to
be
equiped as such is pure dis-information.

And, no, I know nothing about the Bavarian Illuminati... *wink wink nod nod*

The_Beast

> Hugh Fisher wrote:

> I've been designing and testing some new NAC ships (for

Tacoma/C: NPV is 93, not 91. This was the only design error I could see.

Mosquito: Legal, but... there's a good reason why so few others use screens on
ships this small: they simply don't have enough hull integrity to make the
screens worthwhile. If I were the RN admiralty (not sure whose navy the R*S*N
is, but it ain't the NAC's!) I'd stick to the armoured version even if the
Solar War heats up again.

Vandenburg/AT: Legal, but I've never managed to understand why the RN is

still so fond of putting single-arc P-torps on thrust-4 tubs - this made
a
lot of sense when the main threat consisted of the old-style thrust-2
ESU capitals, but there aren't many of those left in the 2190s!

Vandenburg/M: Completely wasted against the KV IME (the probability of
hitting with the SMs is too low to make them useful for reducing the KVs'
scattergun loads), but could be very useful against Phalons -
particularly
if the missile launch is combined with a close-range beam/torp attack.
(If
you can force the Phalons to use their Pulser-Cs for point defence work,

they can't fire them at your ships... and if they hold them back to fire at
your ships, they tend to get rather badly hurt by the missiles before they can
fire.)

Vandenburg/HK: Looks like a good Kra'Vak killer.

Renown: If this was intended as an anti-Kra'Vak ship I kinda doubt its
success rate - unless it gets lucky on its first attack run it is too
clumsy to bring its P-torps and B3s to bear on the enemy.

Excalibur/M: Jack of all trades, master of none. Single-arc P-torps on a

thrust-4 ship again :-/

Wasp and Essex: Having a lightly-protected carrier with lots of fighters

makes good sense if the main threat against the carrier comes from enemy

fighters. Trouble is, with the short operational ranges FT fighters typically
have (ie., the carrier is there on the table instead of a few blocks to the
rear) the likelyhood of a carrier staying out of the enemy's range for very
long isn't all that high unless the fighters are able to take the enemy out
first. IOW, the underlying doctrine behind the Wasp and the Essex relies on
the current imbalance where the fighters usually
*are*
able to take FB1-style enemies out before they can hit the carriers :-/

***
Looking at your rule suggestions:

> Aft attacks

The main effect of this proposal is to make screens and armour less
desirable than they currently are - very nice for the Kra'Vak and for
those lighter NAC and FSE ships which don't have either screens or armour, of
course, but in my experience being able to shoot at the enemy without him
being able to return fire is quite sufficient to encourage sneaky tactics
already.

> 180 degree turn (cinematic)

times its >maximum thrust level may reverse course (change facing by 6) by
writing "180" as its >only movement instruction. In that turn the ship is
moved straight forward by a distance >equal to half its starting velocity,
then turned 180 degrees in place. Its final velocity is >zero.
> The 180 degree turn is more difficult than regular ship movement, so

Interesting concept, but this means that the ship effectively gets 2x its
normal thrust in the turn it uses this manoeuvre. If your engines are that
powerful when you flip over, why can't you use their full power to accelerate
straight ahead as well?

> Often used in Andromeda, and occasionally in Babylon 5 by even the

IME the EF ships are best represented by using EFSB-style
limited-rotation
Vector movement, not Cinematic <shrug>

> Turning while halted

but cannot take advantage of this.

Being able to use the full thrust rating for turning instead of only half *is*
"that much faster", unless you of course have Advanced drives in which
case there's no difference at all - and by your "not subjected to
simultaneous thrust in a different direction" logic *any* ship should be

able to do this "double-speed turn" no matter how fast it is currently
moving, as long as it isn't using main drive thrust to change its speed at the
same time...

I agree with your real reason for this concept, but IMO you should go all the
way and say that a halted ship should only be able to turn as quickly as it
can when it is moving.

> Entering battle under FTL drive
The player writes down the initial >velocity for the ship which must be
between 1 and its maximum thrust rating.
> Each ship then rolls 2d6-1 for direction of displacement, with 12

How do you define "towards the enemy" if there is more than one enemy ship on
the table? If there is more than one enemy formation present? If you arrive in
the middle of the enemy formation?

[...]
> After all ships have been placed in their final positions, any that
[...]
> The real reason: the current rule is randomly destructive, and

ENTERING the battle under FTL drive isn't much of a problem IME, since you
have to note down when and where you're going to arrive at the start of the
game - so unless you drop out of hyper immediately in the enemy's
deployment area, you're not particularly likely to hit him. 'Course, the

hit probability would be higher on a small table than on the 80x120 mu ones I
usually play on!

LEAVING the battle under FTL drive is a worse problem IME, particularly if you
use Mass 3 "FTL torpedoes" to do it. They're not as destructive as a

really bad FTL exit can be, but they're far more accurate.

> Beam 3/4 damage (cinematic)
[...]
> The class of a beam is the range band at which it does 1 die of
At the next >closer range band (Class 2+) it does 2 dice, at the next 4
(Class 3+), and continues to >increase by 2 dice for each closer range
band.

The B2s were deliberately designed to be somewhat more cost effective than the
larger beam types in order to keep the larger beam types from dominating the
game completely on large gaming tables where the
longer-ranged beam types can use their range advantage to the full. On
smaller tables, such as those generally used by the Canberra club (at least
according to Alan and Brendan) the longer-ranged weapons can't use their

range advantage much since the table doesn't allow the opposing forces to
manoeuvre much outside B2 range, and this naturally favours the
shorter-ranged B2s.

Because of this, while increasing the close-range firepower of the
larger beam batteries is a way of making them more useful on smaller gaming
tables
it risks making too powerful on larger tables - not quite as bad as the
old A batteries used to be, but going in that direction. If I were you I'd put
in a note that this modification is intended for small-table games.

[...]

> To prevent too many superweapons, each beam level above 4 has a mass

This is of course the standard beam mass progression, not a new rule.

> If this is too drastic a change in the game mechanics, instead shift

This mass reduction is a *more* drastic change to the game balance than the
above firepower increase. If you use the freed-up Mass to buy more small

beam batteries the mass increase gives *at least* as many extra beam dice
as the above proposal - but if a ship has multiple large batteries, it
can give even *more* extra dice than the above, and with wider arcs to boot!

> Soap bubbles

In that case my suggestion would be that you're either very naive or very
lucky with the selection of opponents available to you. Probably the latter,
if you're a Canberra gamer.

> The only real solution to the problem of "soap bubble" carriers is

soap bubble carriers, they'd >be building soap bubbles with extended range
missiles, or, well something.

"The type of player who builds soap bubbles" can just as easily be a new

player who stumbles across them without knowing that it is "impolite" to

build them as an actual munchkin. How do you explain to such a newbie that
"you mustn't use these designs, they're too powerful"? Same with the
large-ship balance problem - how do you explain to a newbie that he
mustn't put all his points into a single or a few very large capital ships?
"Because I say so" is only marginally better than sending the NBS at him.

> Designing a set of tabletop rules that are both playable and cannot be

abused is a near >impossible task. [...] The immediate temptation is to add
new rules to restore balance. It
> doesn't work.

Designing a set of tabletop rules where the potential rules abuses only give
an advantage similar in magnitude to the effect of winning an initiative roll,
or where "mainstream" designs (eg. like those in the Fleet Books) are slightly
more effective than the "extreme" ones, isn't all that
difficult - IF you aim for this from the outset. Unfortunately Full
Thrust wasn't designed this way, and adding balancing rules afterwards can be
very difficult if the basic rules structure is screwed up; in this case it is

often better to re-write the entire trouble area from scratch.

> Full Thrust is simple and playable, which puts it ahead of 90% of the

Full Thrust is steadily losing market shares to the space combat games among
the remaining 10% of the wargame rules on the market. I'd say that

this makes FT's loopholes a fairly serious disadvantage, unless you want FT to
drop out of the market and get replaced by other games...

> Certainly keep striving for a simple, playable, and perfectly balanced

game, but don't be >too disappointed if it's not.

Above you told us NOT to strive for a simple, playable and perfectly balanced
game because "it doesn't work". Make up your mind.

> There is a solution that does work and is universally applied in

In historical gaming, it is possible to write historical/"canonical"
OOBs because we know at least reasonably well what units were available to the
historical army/navy we're modelling. We also know from history roughly
how powerful the various units ought to be relative to one another.

In SF/Fantasy gaming OTOH we *don't* have any such knowledge.
Restricting players "canonical" forces is equivalent to saying "you may only
use the

stats we provide" - and implicitly also "you may only use the models we
provide" - which means that the game can't be used to play out battles
in any background *other* than the Official (TM) one. "You want to use Full
Thrust to play Star Wars battles, or Star Trek, or BattleStar Galactica?

Sorry, you're not allowed to do that - none of them are in the Official
(TM) background, and you're only allowed to play games set in the Official
(TM) background." Is this what you want?

Also, how exactly do you think any new Fleet Book fleets can be both balanced
against and different enough from the existing FB fleets to be interesting if
the game rules aren't balanced? With unbalanced game rules
you either get a GW-style "must have the latest official fleet" race, or
a game where all fleets are minor variations of the FB1 ones. Is this what

you want Full Thrust to become?

> One last thought before you write new ship construction rules to ban

Changing the ship design rules to ban soapbubble carriers outright has already
been tried; so far all such attempts have either had no effect at all or made
the FB2 Phalon carriers illegal. This does not seem to be a practical solution
to the problem.

> On two occasions we see large, FTL capable raider motherships that

The reason why the Raider carriers got beaten is that the B5 battles were
not points-balanced. In the first of these battles the other side had
not only heavier large ships but also at least as many fighters as the Raiders
had, and of higher quality than the Raider ones (Starfuries are explicitly
described as being more effective in space dogfights than the
atmosphere-capable Raider delta-wings); in the other case that the
Raider ship ran into a Shadow vessel capable of slicing up multiple Narn
warcruisers just as easily as it diced the Raider carrier.

By bringing up these two examples, you're implicitly suggesting that the

cost of soap-bubble carriers be increased to allow the opponents to
bring
more powerful units to an equal-points battle against soap-bubbles :-/

Regards,

> At 11:00 PM +0100 2/10/04, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

Imho, shields are a Cruiser and above fit. Even in the case of a
heavy-DD (destroyer leader) that exceeds the older cruiser masses,
they still don't have shields. Its a question of protection level (usually
some armor too) balancing out the equation and defining the role.

[KERSNIP!]

> Hugh Fisher wrote:

> Full Thrust is simple and playable, which puts it ahead of 90% of the

Oerjan Ohlson responded:

> Full Thrust is steadily losing market shares to the space combat games

My questions, to any and all:

Is that the reason for FT losing market share? Do players actually cite the
rules/construction loopholes as such a problem with FT that they switch
to other systems? What systems are they going to? I simply don't have enough
space combat players around here (Central Indiana) to be able to tell; the
only groups that I know of play FT, or Battlefleet Gothic. The rest that

are commonly available here are barely represented (Aerotech, Hard Vacuum,
etc.). Maybe I'm lucky; the small FT group that I know of would rather play
interesting scenarios/campaigns, than push the edges of the design
rules.

> laserlight wrote:

And various people expressed similar views.

 Web page re-edited to read "boast that they are the only rival
 to the OU" :-)

Roger Burton West wrote: (sorry, you'll see this twice)

> Tacoma/C NPV is 93, not 91. CPV 73.

Do'h! Corrected.

 [ Mosquito and screens moved to another message ]

> Fury NPV is correct, CPV is 193. I think I'd want more PDS to justify

Like just about everyone else the OC don't think the Furious cuts it as an
escort. The Fury is mostly a fast cruiser, and occasionally useful as an
escort. Or, it was too hard to take
 the ADFC out :-)

> Invincible CPV is 190. I think the armament is possibly a bit low - is

 The background section on tactics/doctrine was for the 'quicks'
only. The slower guys defend places, or convoys, and don't run away. If the
enemy send in a big fleet, they expect to be warned in time to jump out. No
doubt this leads to some heroic and futile last stands...

> A thrust-6 version (lose the screens and all but one box of armour: NPV

Rewritten to include the long running debate: "we need a fast carrier!"
"Sending two squadrons along won't really help" "Yes
 it would, besides we could hot-rod a light carrier and get
four"... Currently on hold since against the Kra'Vak fighters
 don't work terribly well :-(

> Vandenburg/AT: a torpedo escort cruiser would probably be a /TE

 "A" is used for Tacoma and Minerva variants. Ack-Ack?

> Excalibur/M: CPV 528. I don't think a single-arc pulse torpedo on a

Agreed, particularly not against Kra'Vak! Like most of these designs it's from
before the Xeno War. No doubt there are new
 NAC ships being produced, but I assume Core/Defence would grab
them first.

> Wasp: CPV 288. Same comments as the Invincible really.

I was thinking quick and cheap to build. There might be an export market.

> Essex: CPV 428. Again, I'd be inclined to cut back on the defences and

It's a speculative design. Yes, it's tempting to instead strip half the
protection from an Ark Royal and fit some heavy guns on. Maybe the Essex will
never get built...

> variants. I suspect that a group called "Outworlds" would have supply

Agreed. The number of missile cruisers is too high, it's
 really a specialist/experimental design.

> The "SSD sheets" link returns a 403.

Do'h! Forgot to upload. Has been fixed. Not terribly exciting though, just
links to a couple of PDFs with ship record sheets.

Thank you, and to everyone who replied.

> Roger Burton West wrote:

> and Ryan Gill wrote:

plus some others with similar comments.

I find the screen makes it very effective against ESU, OU, and FSE light
opponents. The screen may not be the most efficient use of mass, but it's nice
to still have protection when you've burnt the armour off your foes. Also very
useful for those Mosquito crews lurking around the edges of large scale
actions, or (ahem) running away.

On the other hand, yes it's no help when the enemy are shooting large chunks
of metal out of railguns at you.

As I wrote on the web page, these designs are meant to be interesting, not
necessarily efficient. I like the Mossie.

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> Vandenburg/AT: Legal, but I've never managed to understand why the RN

I would like to think that by the 2190s either the RN has managed
 to build a P-Torp turrent or they've bought them from the NSL
 despite NIH syndrome. But I'd also expect that Core/Defence get
 priority on the new gear. For the moment single arc P-Torps are
characteristic of NAC ships, so I kept them.

> Vandenburg/M: Completely wasted against the KV IME (the probability of
(If
> you can force the Phalons to use their Pulser-Cs for point defence

I didn't claim the missile tactic against the Kra'Vak actually
 worked, only that they tried it :-) And they're not bad at
cracking big ESU ships.

> Renown: If this was intended as an anti-Kra'Vak ship I kinda doubt its

 The P-torps, yes. That's why only two were built, the Van/HK
is just as good.

> Excalibur/M: Jack of all trades, master of none. Single-arc P-torps on

 See note above about Core/Defence getting the good stuff first.

Thanks for the feedback.

> Noah Doyle wrote:

> >Full Thrust is steadily losing market shares to the space combat

> the rules/construction loopholes as such a problem with FT that they

One of the major reasons though not the only one, and yes.

The lack of a US distributor (and the fact that FT is currently spread out
over four different books, one of which is OOP) certainly discourages
*new*
US players from trying it out.

However, there are also a growing number of *old* FT players who switch
from FT to other systems - and the reasons they give for giving up on FT

are precisely the loopholes and imbalances. They switch to other systems

which offer better game balance, fewer loopholes and either more flexibility
and flavour or larger battles in shorter time; at the moment

Starmada seems to be the most popular "more flexibility and flavour"
alternative.

This means that Full Thrust takes a double hit: in addition to the overseas
marketing problems caused by the lack of a US distributor, there's also an
increasing number of gamers who tell interested newbies "well, Full Thrust is
good, BUT this other game is even better". Even getting a US distributor and
publishing FT3 yesterday won't help much unless the flaws that caused these
players to switch rules are fixed, because if they aren't fixed FT

will get a rep as the *second* best space combat game on the market. As
they saying goes, "Second place is the first of the losers" :-/

Later,

> As they saying goes, "Second place is the first of the losers" :-/

I had a Prof. in college once tell me that it's easier being #2 -- find
out what works and copy the hell out of it.

> On Wed, Feb 11, 2004 at 08:02:55PM +1100, Hugh Fisher wrote:

> Agreed, particularly not against Kra'Vak! Like most of these

I suspect "anti-KV refits" to existing classes might happen - I'll have
to see about designing some. :-)