With some of the discussion on fighter bays and launch tubes and the separate
systems balancing their flexibility due to the increased chance of a threshold
taking out a system, I wondered if anyone had house rules on Hardened Systems
or System Armour?
Off the top of my head, for a 50% increase in cost and mass, a system would
get a -1 modifier to all threshold rolls (same level as core systems in
the FTFB). Also needle attacks would only damage the system, not destroy it.
Maybe draw a circle around the system icon to show it is hardened or armored.
Those of you who loose fire cons too fast could harden one and it may stay
around longer. Carriers using the modular hanger/bay rules could harden
the
launch/recovery bay to keep them around as long as possible. Lots of
possibilities.
Is the 50% increase about right or too much since 2 hardened systems cost and
mass the same as 3 systems? What do you think?
In a message dated 99-01-12 09:37:12 EST, you write:
<< With some of the discussion on fighter bays and launch tubes and the
separate systems balancing their flexibility due to the increased chance of a
threshold taking out a system, I wondered if anyone had house rules on
Hardened Systems or System Armour?
Off the top of my head, for a 50% increase in cost and mass, a system would
get a -1 modifier to all threshold rolls (same level as core systems in
the FTFB). Also needle attacks would only damage the system, not destroy it.
Maybe draw a circle around the system icon to show it is hardened or armored.
Those of you who loose fire cons too fast could harden one and it may stay
around longer. Carriers using the modular hanger/bay rules could
harden the
launch/recovery bay to keep them around as long as possible. Lots of
possibilities.
Is the 50% increase about right or too much since 2 hardened systems cost and
mass the same as 3 systems? What do you think?
Dean
> [quoted text omitted]
I have to say that that is a very good idea, what about having sections of the
ship that had there own armor and screens, along with hardining?
-Stephen
[snip ideas on hardened systems]
> Is the 50% increase about right or too much since 2 hardened systems
The Hardened System idea sounds fine, especially as it follows the rules we
already established in the FB1 for Core Systems; I agree that +50%
sounds
about right (as a before-testing starting point, of course!), as it is
high enough to prevent most players using it without serious consideration as
to
the cost-effectiveness. To avoid fractional Mass factors on odd-Mass
systems, I'd suggest always rounding UP the amount needed for hardening to the
nearest whole number.
> >>
I'm much less happy about this idea - I think it would introduce FAR too
> >>
I like Dean's idea for system hardening, but bear in mind that a needle beam
should be able to take out a hardened system as easily as a standard system.
Having separate ship sections covered by armor and screens....
I bought Full Thrust, not SFB or B5W!
:-)
Keep it simple, and let the tactics be complex....
> Dean Gundberg wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> Dean
Dean and All, I did a thing called 'Local Armor' for one of my alien races.
Class L - The armor takes up one mass and allows four systems to
be armored. Only one armor per system. If the
armored system fails the first threshold check the armor is destroyed, the
second failure destroys the system. Point cost is 5 per mass.
Bye for now,
This and the fighter screen rules modification that Dean has made sound really
good.
> -----Original Message-----
This is really getting into a roleplaying level of detail. It's not
required for a standard fleet engagement using FT. For that sort of
detail, I play a dirivitive of original Traveller.
'Neath Southern Skies
http://users.mcmedia.com.au/~denian/
*****
They seek him here, they seek him there; Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive, Pimpernel.
> - 'The Scarlet Pimpernel', Baroness Emma Orkzy
> [snip ideas on hardened systems]
[snip part of Jon's response]
> the cost-effectiveness. To avoid fractional Mass factors on odd-Mass
I think the Hardened systems sound good - I expect that certain people
would be eager to harden their firecons - Would it be reasonable to
assume any system can be armored? or should there be any restrictions?
> >>
It seems the real downside to this is that FT loses it's graceful elegance
if you start mucking with internal sectioning - i.e. anything that
starts
to necessitate or resemble hit-location rolls.
OTOH, 'External' sectioning could have merit. What I mean by this is
things like directional shields or armor that have their effect _before_
the damage in marked on the hull boxes and threshold checks taken.
For example:
lvl-1 screens take 5% mass and give all-round protection. What if, for
the same 5% mass I could have a lvl-2 screen that only covered 3 arcs?
designate on the SSD which arcs a given screen generator covers and
threshold checks work easily - in fact the damage system is undisturbed.
But suddenly my own defensive maneuvering becomes a more important
factor -
I don't want to allow you a shot at my unscreened aft. Or maybe directional
armor?
My point is that I can see fun and challenging tactics coming from things like
that, without overly complicating the game. It takes no more effort to look at
which arc fire is coming in from that which arc a target is in. Just don't try
to make final damage allocation be any more specific than hull boxes in rows,
with thresholds taken at the end of each row.
> Is the 50% increase about right or too much since 2 hardened systems
I'd say that sounds about right.
> The Hardened System idea sounds fine, especially as it follows the
I second the rounding up idea. Let's go playtesters!!
In a message dated 99-01-12 20:45:52 EST, you write:
<< >I'm much less happy about this idea - I think it would introduce FAR
too
> much complication for no real benefit in game terms. Some starship
What I ment for that an armor point for a single system, simular to the idea
of hardining systems, or maybe something like the core systems, no hit areas.
If that was wanted something like your exsample in MT for the multi section
starbase rules. For some large ships (the Deathstar or the Hagri (I
think
that is how it is spelled) Kilrathi carrier (1/2 million tons, 288
fighters) would be better this way, this is not what I had in mind.
-Stephen
> Dean Gundberg wrote:
> ... I wondered if anyone had house rules on
[snip]
> Is the 50% increase about right or too much since 2 hardened systems
For systems (weapons, FCs, screens etc) 50% is way too much. In these cases,
hardened systems should have 25% extra Mass and "softened" ones (ie, systems
which add 1 to all treshold rolls, so they fail the first
check on 5+ etc) should get a 20% Mass rebate. The cost per Mass
shouldn't change.
(I can give you the statistics supporting this as well, but it'll take me
several evenings to type it in :-( )
I'm not at all sure how to handle engines, though - I don't mind
hardening them, but I very much want to figure out how to cost/Mass
softened engines properly for all those ether sail ships of mine :-/
Hull structure and armour cannot be "softened" or "hardened", of course
:-)
Later,
[snip]
> For systems (weapons, FCs, screens etc) 50% is way too much. In these
Did someone say statistics?
Cumulative chance of loosing the system
Regular system: 1st: 16% 2nd: 50%
3rd: 100% (note that this doesn't mean it's automatically gone - it's
just statistically gone)
Hardened system: 1st: 0% 2nd: 16% 3rd: 50%
2 x Regular system: 1st: 8% 2nd: 25% 3rd: 50% (But you also have the advantage
of being able to use both until they're gone!)
So a 50% mass increase is actually not too far off.
----------
> Från: Sean Bayan Schoonmaker <schoon@aimnet.com>
ones
> >(ie, systems which add 1 to all treshold rolls, so they fail the
<sigh> OK, a very compacted version of the correct statistics:
The cumulative chance to lose a system is
1st: 16.7%
2nd: 100% - 83%*66% = 44.4%
3rd: 100% - 83%*66%*50% = 72.2%
ie, the probabilities are multiplicative and not additive.
If you count the average "life-time" of the system, you'll find that on
average it goes down when the ship has lost 2/3 of its hull points for
an ideal ship (ie, one with an equal number of hull points in all four rows
and no armour); for real ships (armoured, etc) the figure usually lies
somewhere between
2/3 and 3/4 of the hull points.
> Hardened system:
Correct values:
1st: 0% 2nd: 16% 3rd: 44.4%
with an average "life-time" for the system of 84% of that same ideal
ship's hull points. 84/66 = 127%, so it is usually sufficient to round
the 25% extra Mass up after you've added all the hardened systems' masses
together.
For real ships (I've used all the FB designs and John Atkinson's NRE ones
for data), the hardened systems have a "life-time" varying between 122%
and 127% of the standard one; 25% is very close to the average for those
ships.
So, if you get ~25% more use out of the system, the mass penalty should
be 25%. Simple as that :-)
> 2 x Regular system:
I'm not even sure what you mean here. The chance to lose one out of two
arbitrary systems, or the chance to lose two systems? Either way you're wrong
<shrug>
Correct table (not that it is really relevant - the average percentage
of your systems that is up at any given treshold level is the same no matter
how many systems you're looking at):
Standard system:
Treshold: Chance to lose... 1 system 2 systems
1st 27.8% 2.8%
2nd 49.4% 19.8%
3rd 40.1% 52.2%
Hardened systems:
Treshold: Chance to lose... 1 system 2 systems 1st 0% 0%
2nd 27.8% 2.8%
3rd 49.4% 19.8%
> So a 50% mass increase is actually not too far off.
Yes, it is. I've played too many battles with this type of hardened
systems not to know this :-)
Try it out in a battle and you'll see. With a 50% mass penalty for hardened
systems, the ship has to be very lucky or do some really brilliant flying to
win.
With a 25% mass penalty for hardened the forces are almost identically
balanced - well enough that other balance problems like screens and
random initiative overshadow any unbalance caused by the hardened systems. The
same applies for weakened systems with a 20% Mass rebate.
However the above doesn't apply for engines and fighter bays. The fighters
aren't much affected by if their bay survives or not until their endurance
runs out (by which time the battle tends to be over... and it is very rare in
my experience that many fighters live to burn out all their endurance anyway),
and the effect of engines on combat outcomes
isn't anywhere close to linear :-/
Because of this, the +25%/-20% hard/weak systems can't be allowed for
engines and fighter bays.
Best wishes,
> On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
cool! however, i'm not sure it's legal; is 'Från' a valid RFC822 internet
email header :-)?
> With a 25% mass penalty for hardened the forces are almost identically
yes it should. armouring hangars is no use, so people won't do it. by all
means warn people, but don't ban it! consider a campaign game where damage to
ships carries over: armouring a carrier's hangars could be vital.
you say that "the effect of engines on combat outcomes isn't anywhere close to
linear"; do you mean that doubling it is less than or more than linear? if the
former, we should allow armouring the engine, it's just that nobody sensible
will use it.
note that if we go with the separate hangar / launch bay idea that has
been proposed, hangars have a mass of 1 x the mass of contents; if you let
people build weak hangars, they can fit 1 mass of fighters into 0.8 mass of
hangar, which is a pretty good trick! in fact, i'm skeptical of the weak
system idea altogether. weakening one part and being dependent on the strength
of another is usually bad engineering.
Tom
> On 14 Jan 99, at 19:07, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
> <sigh> OK, a very compacted version of the correct statistics:
Heh, I just started doing the statistics correctly too, but decided to read
more posts just in case someone beat me to it.:)
> The cumulative chance to lose a system is
[snippage]
> So, if you get ~25% more use out of the system, the mass penalty
Ok, you got the stats right, but I think you are misinterpreting
them....
Hardened systems cannot fail at all until the second threshold check, which
means you don't have to worry about them failing at all until almost half the
ships hits are gone, as opposed to a quarter. In the early part of a fight
this is a major bonus. For selected systems it seems rather cost effective.
Two firecons that don't even have a chance of being destroyed until the ship
is half gone, and will probably both still be active when the ship vapourises,
compared to three firecons for the same price.
So, to summarise... REALLY good early in a battle, you can't lose
them except to needle beams/missiles (and emp missiles
perhaps?). Whether that early advantage can be brought into play is something
I'll try to find in playtesting.
It seems to me that for a small ship which you would normally only give a
single firecon to, but wouldn't consider running to two, the hardened option
is quite attractive. (i.e. 1 firecons ships become totally useless if it goes
down.
I'd not consider hardening everything on a ship en masse, keeping the same
points per ship means your firepower vanishes, but for critical systems it
seems like a good idea, and a good price.
My only other comment is to the other person who didn't like hardened systems
at all, citing that sensors etc. cannot be hardened as they need to have their
sensing apparatus vulnerable to weaponry in order to operate, is missing the
point that hardening may not only be armour, but could be localised intense
shielding.
(eww, entirely too many comma's)
> My only other comment is to the other person who didn't like
Well, since I happen to be online at the moment, and because you are, I
believe, referring to my earlier post, I get to respond (yay).
It has been stated (not in this thread, but elsewhere, earlier, by Jon T and
others) that threshold checks do not necessarily represent damage done
directly by weapons fire, but also represent overloading
and short-circuiting of the systems that took threshold 'hits'. I
always found it amusing that people would describe the fact that their
C Battery (or now Class-1 batt) would be "blown off" or "explode" from
a threshold hit, and then later have damage control repair it!:) Now, if a
given system has been slagged by weapons fire, how can it be repaired by a
damage control team in the heat of battle, without the resources of a
shipyard? Also, extra armour or localized intense
shielding will not help short-circuiting inside the ship. ;-)
Anyway, my point really is that I feel the hardening/non-hardening
aspects have already been abstracted *into* the game; no need to add another
layer to it all, really.
But then, ymmv:)
> (eww, entirely too many comma's)
heh:)
Mk
> Thomas Anderson wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
"Från" is Swedish for "From". Microsoft has approved it, so I guess that
automatically makes it illegal <G>
> > With a 25% mass penalty for hardened the forces are almost
*Armouring* hangars is no use, no - nor is armouring engines much use.
*Weakening* hangars, and to a lesser extent engines, using these rules -
that gives you 20% more fighters or reduces your engine Mass by 20% (which
means *in*creasing your WEAPON payload by the same amount of Mass,
though not necessarily the same percentage) - and the cost for that is
very, very low.
So, OK - you can *harden* engines and bays, but you can't *weaken* them
without blowing game balance out the airlock.
> you say that "the effect of engines on combat outcomes isn't anywhere
That depends entirely on what you double it from. Going from Thrust-2 to
Thrust-4, for example, means you go from virtually no chance to a decent
chance of dodging SML salvoes (which obviously is going to help a huge
lot if your enemy likes SMLs); going from, say, Thrust-6 to Thrust-12
removes just about all your weaponry and much of your hull integrity as well.
Are these examples "less than or more than linear"? No. They're
simply non-linear, and that's all I can say about it for now.
This should be contrasted to weapons or hull boxes - 2 Mass of any given
weapon has twice the firepower of 1 Mass of the same weapon, and 2 hull points
absorb twice as much damage as 1 hull point. They're not exactly
linear either since they're interrelated - if I double the weapon
payload of a given design, I have to reduce something else (usually hull
integrity or engines), but it is fairly easy to analyse what happens if you do
it.
> if the former, we should allow armouring the engine, it's just
I don't mean that it is "less than or more than" linear. It can be either,
depending on what thrust ratings you're looking at.
> note that if we go with the separate hangar / launch bay idea that has
Exactly my point.
> in fact, i'm skeptical of
Think of it like this:
Standard weapons have a lot of back-up systems built into them, to keep
them working for as long as possible. Weak systems lack much of this
redundancy, which means that you can cram more of them into the same Mass...
but at the same time, it means that they're going to fall apart as soon as
someone shakes them around a bit. That is exactly what happens
if you reduce a weapon's mass by 20% but give it a +1 to all treshold
dierolls.
For fighter bays, well... I guess there's not very much back-up empty
space in the hangar to begin with, so there's nothing to remove! :-)
On Thu, 14 Jan 1999, By the time you can make ends meet, they move the
> ends wrote:
or even just heavier construction - rather than use 5 mm plasteel plate
for the frame of your fire director, use 10 mm. or add another few bulkheads
inside the neutrino detector bank. or install a set of backup computers, so
that if the first lot goes down, you have spares. or install a medical team in
the control room so that if a controller gets injured, he can be fixed up
enough to go on, etc. it's not about armour, it's about build quality. think
BMW vs Skoda: same top speed, same fuel consumption, but the BMW costs twice
as much and the Skoda needs fixing twice as often.
also, the exposed part of many systems is quite minor; an FCS has a sensor
bank on the surface, but it also includes computers and crew, which can be
buried. plus, you can, say, just mount one lens on the hull, and have the
actual telescope deeper in. tricky to do, hence the extra mass and cost.
> It has been stated (not in this thread, but elsewhere, earlier, by
plus damage to support systems - that beam hit just happened to knock
out a particular data switch, so you've lost the ability to control your beam
battery. or it hit a power coupling, or a plasma conduit or something. maybe a
blast wave bashed the side of the ammo chute in. all these things are fixable
in battle.
> I
oh, well most engineers i know do have one or two c-batts lying about -
you never know when you might need one :-).
> Also, extra armour or localized intense
no, but an armoured box around the data switches, a local reserve power cell,
an alternate plasma route or a reinforced ammo chute will.
'hardened' does not necessarily mean 'armoured' - it could just mean it
was overengineered so as to have a better chance of surviving in battle.
> Anyway, my point really is that I feel the hardening/non-hardening
certainly, all military systems will have hardening (there will be backup data
lines and power plants all over the ship), but what if you want more? it is
always possible to add to a design to make it more reliable, more
fault-tolerant, etc. just look at mainframe computers as compared to
pcs: they cost more per unit of capability, but mainframes are up 99.99% or
99.999% of the time, something pcs are totally incapable of. mainframes
are overbuilt, because they are used for mission-critical tasks.
i wouldn't demand backup drives, universal power supplies and
error-correcting memory on a desktop machine for a sales worker, and in
wouldn't build double-field polarisation couplers into the PDAF on a
frigate. it's a question of being able to get the right balance of reliability
versus cost for the given task.
just my 0.02 euros.
Tom
Oerjan quoth (in the midst of what would have been a charming and brilliant
essay, until ruined by the following): For real ships (I've used all the FB
designs and John Atkinson's NRE ones
for data), the hardened systems have a "life-time" varying between 122%
and 127% of the standard one; 25% is very close to the average for those
ships.
Please note that the numerous and valiant ships of the heroic Islamic
Federation are certainly as real as those of the ignominious and
uncircumcised infidel dogs of the self-proclaimed New Roman Empire!
Humph!
: )
> Richard Slattery wrote:
> > The cumulative chance to lose a system is
Nope. I've done too many simulations and battles over the last two years
trying to balance weak systems in general to do that.
> Hardened systems cannot fail at all until the second threshold
Not exactly. It is only a major bonus if it means that you'll have more
firepower available than your enemy at some time during the battle. If
you start out with only 2/3 the firepower of your enemy it doesn't
matter that he'll start losing some of his earlier, because *you* will reach
the second treshold before *he* does... and he is very likely to outgun you by
a respectable margin even after his first treshold.
If the mass penalty for hardening is only 25%, you'll still be outgunned until
the enemy takes his 2nd treshold check (though you won't be far behind after
the first) and you'll still take *your* 2nd treshold check before he takes
his, but you'll have so much more firepower left (in absolute terms, not
relative) than he does after the 2nd and 3rd checks that you'll be able to
mutually annihilate each other <g> If the mass
penalty is 50%, you won't catch up - unless you're lucky early on, of
course, but you'll lose far more battles than you win.
> For selected systems it seems rather cost effective. Two firecons that
> don't even have a chance of being destroyed until the ship is half
Average number of FCs available for:
Treshold: Hard: Standard:
0 2 3
1 2 2.5 2 1.67 1.67 3 1.11 0,83
This uses the 50% Mass penalty, or my 25% but rounded up (assuming no other
hardened systems on the ship).
On average, the only time when the "hard" FCs are more numerous than the
standard ones are after the 3rd treshold check. Yes, the certainty that
you won't lose all of them (and thus all your firepower) is nice -
that's
what you pay for, after all - but most of the time you'll have fewer FCs
available than a ship using normal ones for the same Mass would have. Unless
you're one of those people who only roll "6"s on the treshold
checks, of course - it's no coincidence that many of my older (FT2)
capital ship designs had 1-2 extra FCs, and that was when extra FCs cost
3 Mass each rather than 1. Since the FB, that particular demon seems to
have left me :-)
The chance for the hardened ship to have two working FCs after the 3rd
check isn't that good - about 30%, compared to the ~20% probability that
it'll lose both. The chance that the standard 3-FC ship loses all of its
FCs after the 3rd check is about 38%, ie twice that of the hardened 2-FC
one.
Actually, this isn't entirely true, because this ignores damage control
parties. If the *standard* ship loses systems in the first treshold
check, it has a reasonable shot of getting at least some of them back -
it should have over half its DCPs left, at least. This means that the average
probabilities for losing systems I listed above are in fact a bit too high.
Since the *hardened* systems won't fail until *more* than half the DCPs have
already bought it, they have a smaller chance of repairing them early. They
can repair some, but they'll have on average less time to do it in and fewer
DCPs to use, so the the DCP's impact will be less than for the unhardened
systems. The "hardened" loss percentages are a bit too high as well, but not
as much too high as the unhardened ones.
But yes, the FC is one of the systems that benefit most from being hardened.
Depending on what you envision the FCs as it can even be
realistic - if they're the targetting sensors and scanners they'll be
pretty difficult to protect, but if they represent the Tactical officer
and his staff, well... in military SF tend to be located on the Bridge -
which is a Core system, and thus hardened already! <G>
> So, to summarise... REALLY good early in a battle, you can't lose
Quite the contrary, in fact. Hardened systems are really BAD early in a
battle, since by then the enemy hasn't yet lost any systems to treshold checks
and therefore outguns the hardened ships by a rather wide margin.
Hardened systems are good *LATE* in the battle, when enough unhardened systems
have faild their tresholds while the hardened ones hopefully haven't.
> It seems to me that for a small ship which you would normally only
I tend to use 1 FC only on ships of Mass 40 or less - usually only on
Mass 30 or less. The minimum penalty you'll pay for hardening is 1 Mass
(which, if you adopt my idea of adding all hardened systems together before
rounding, covers 4 Mass of assorted systems), which is typically
10-20% of the total weapons payload of the ship. Sure, it buys the
hardened systems more time to be used - but the price you pay is a
significant fraction of your firepower early in the battle... indeed, buying a
point of armour has nearly the same effect for ships this small (and the
armour is slightly cheaper).
> I'd not consider hardening everything on a ship en masse, keeping
For those ships where a little hardening is most likely to make a big
difference, the price tends to be higher than it seems :-/
> Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little.
> Laserlight wrote:
Humph!
Note that the numerous but essentially worthless ships of the degenerate pagan
heretical Islamic Federation are certaintly real, but only until such time as
they get within weapons range of the aforementioned valiant and heroic
defenders of the Roman Empire and Orthodox Christianity. Then they are very
real fragments of scrap durasteel.
> Laserlight wrote:
> Oerjan quoth (in the midst of what would have been a charming and
> For real ships (I've used all the FB designs and John Atkinson's NRE
> Please note that the numerous and valiant ships of the heroic Islamic
Humph!
Sure. I just haven¨t had time to download them and print them out :-)
But
you have a very valid point - all except for the NRE Cerebus-class, all
of my samples are FTL-capable ships; the IF ones would add more system
defence craft.
Later,
> Standard system:
Thanx for the corrections in the %-ages. I was sorta winging it.
However, the reduction from 27% to 0, and the 49% to 27%, for the first two
thresholds are the important ones in my eyes. Usually after the second check,
a ship is not much longer for this world. Even ignoring that, the 50% seems
correct.
Lets say for the moment that 25% is correct. How does the rounding work?
Balance wise, I think that Hardened Systems need to be slightly less effective
than their normal counterparts, or else everyone will use nothing else.
> Schoon wrote:
> >Standard system:
Yes :-)
> However, the reduction from 27% to 0, and the 49% to 27%, for the
> two thresholds are the important ones in my eyes.
For the same cost as 2 hardened systems you could get *3* standard ones if you
use the 50% penalty; this gives you a 7% probability of having fewer systems
than the hardened ship after the first treshold check and an 11% prob. of
having fewer systems after the second; the risks to lose *all 3" systems are
0.4% (vs 0) after the first check and 8.8% (vs.
2.8%)
after the second. The difference here is pretty minor - especially if
you count the ships out after the second treshold as you seem to do below
:-/
> Usually after the second check, a ship is not much longer for this
I'd say that after the third check - after the second, it still tends to
have a reasonable amount of fight left. YMMV, of course, but this is
extremely important for hardened systems - after the second treshold is
where they get their chance of getting even.
> Even ignoring that, the 50% seems correct.
Try it out for yourself. With 50% extra Mass for hardened systems, a ship with
all its systems hardened usually passes its 3rd treshold check on about the
same time the standard ship passes its second, and the standard ship usually
don't have to take a third check before it destroys the hardened ship.
With 25% extra Mass, the two are so closely balanced that things like
maneuvering, random initiative (worth approx. 10% extra firepower in any
turn, at least in smaller battles - I haven't kept detailed enough notes
in bigger battles to know) and plain luck (Teske Fields or Kochte Demons,
your choice :-) decides the outcome instead.
To get those annoying random and skill factors out of the test, put two
ships - one with a standard beam armament, one with all its beams and
FCs hardened; both ships to have the same hull size, engines, hull integrity
and armour - in fixed positions so they can fire all their weapons at
one another, and use simultaneous fire all the time. Use real dice for damage
and treshold checks, though :-) Run this simulation ten times or so, and
see who wins the most. Do it for both 50% and 25% mass penalties for hardened
systems.
For the record, I didn't do this just ten times. Yes, I know I'm perverse...
but it was a lot more interesting than the lectures I
attended (at least physically) at the time :-) And just like you, I
didn't believe the results at first.
> Lets say for the moment that 25% is correct. How does the rounding >
work?
Add all hardened systems together, then round up. Even 0.25 should round
up - otherwise you're getting the hardening for free, which you
shouldn't.
> Balance wise, I think that Hardened Systems need to be slightly less
Balance-wise, they should ideally be exactly as effective as their
normal counterparts... if they're *less* effective, I see no reason to use
them. The few times when they save me from really rotten luck won't hide the
many times they lose me the battle instead <shrug>
Regards,
> On 15 Jan 99, at 0:45, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
> If the mass penalty for hardening is only 25%, you'll still be
You seem to assume a ship where /everything/ is hardened. I
wouldn't harden many systems, not drives, shields etc, just critical systems,
firecon, perhaps a weapon or some weapons... sml's being not a bad option...
losing a launcher with unfired missiles is
so annoying. So the ship won't have 2/3 of the firepower, it will have
nearly the same, but some critical systems whose loss stops your entire ship
being useful.
> Since the *hardened* systems won't fail until *more* than half the
So just before your ship is destroyed you won't be able to repair systems..
uhm, so? as if you were going to do anything other than bail out of the
shattered husk at this point.
> But yes, the FC is one of the systems that benefit most from being
Localised intense shields for the sensors, a bit more redundancy, multiple
routing of data lines back to the bridge and weapons directors... and you get
25% more availability (your numbers;), doesn't seem too unbeleivable.
> > So, to summarise... REALLY good early in a battle, you can't lose
Systems that you cannot lose early in a battle is bad.... uhm, there is a new
form of logic. You are fixated (wink) on a whole ship having every system on
board it upgraded, where yup, you will be horribly outgunned, and die under a
hail of fire, while I would go for only critical systems and keep almost the
same firepower, and keep direction of it for longer, or actually manage to
fire off all your
sml's. Ships that don't fire off all of their sml's in a non campaign game
engagement wasted the points they spent on them. (Probably also true in a
campaign unless you didn't make provision for reloading.. oops)
> Hardened systems are good *LATE* in the battle, when enough unhardened
Well, two beam armed fleets, one with some hardened firecon, the other
without, will do almost the same damage to each other, assuming capitol ships
on either side are much the same, except for the use of hardened firecons...
The hardened firecon ships ought to have more ability to direct their
remaining weapons.
> I tend to use 1 FC only on ships of Mass 40 or less - usually only on
Ok... hmm. For 25% cost/mass increase, it seems too cheap, and
always worth doing for certain systems, and probably for almost all systems.
An extra game mechanic that is always worth employing isn't worth having as an
option, as everyone will use them, might as well not have the option and
reduce the potential complexity.
For 50% it seems too expensive for almost all systems other than some really
critical ones.
.. You see a bigger benefit for hardening some systems than others, which
opens the question whether the hardening should always cost the same... and if
it should be different for different systems.. which is too complicated for
FT.
So a compromise? 25% and 50% are good simple numbers, halving or quartering is
easy for most people... all the percentages between will have people
scratching their heads.. including 33.3% (then again perhaps everyone uses
calculator or spreadsheets, but simplicity is the FT way, so I'd prefer to
keep it simple.)
So the other option is a slightly different hardening mechanic... but the
suggested one is so simple, and already in use for core systems, it's
difficult to reject it.
So, I'd perhaps suggest... 25% more mass, 50% more cost as a compromise.. (so
you don't have so much extra mass to push about with drives or protect with
shields). or perhaps even no mass increase, but 50% more cost?
Stats?;)
> Richard Slattery wrote:
> On 15 Jan 99, at 0:45, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
That's one way to test it. But see below.
> I
> nearly the same, but some critical systems whose loss stops your
Sure :-) Hardening the FCs save you from embarrassing disasters, but
even at 25% (FRU) more Mass you're usually just as well off buying another
spare system, or armour, instead. Armour often has a better effect than
hardening your key systems (for the same Mass and higher cost); the exception
would be if you harden a few FCs on a very large ship... and even there you're
usually just as well off buying a spare FC instead.
> > Since the *hardened* systems won't fail until *more* than half the
Exactly. DCPs have a bigger effect on unhardened systems than on hardened
ones, which reduces the impact of hardening to less than the figures posted
earlier would suggest.
> Localised intense shields for the sensors, a bit more redundancy,
Buying another FC tends to get you more than 25% improvement while you still
have weapons, and costs just as much in Mass. Is that any more believable?
> > > So, to summarise... REALLY good early in a battle, you can't lose
margin.
> Systems that you cannot lose early in a battle is bad....
You can't lose *any* system until you reach the first treshold check (barring
Needle beams and EMP missiles, but hardened systems are vulnerable to those as
well). That's what I consider to be "early in the
battle" :-)
Around the second treshold check, which is when the hardened systems start
showing their true mettle, is in the *middle* of the battle to me
-
not early.
> uhm, there is a new form of logic.
No, just a confusion of terms :-)
> You are fixated (wink) on a whole ship having every system on board it
Nope :-)
> where yup, you will be
> only critical systems and keep almost the same firepower, and
How do you fire *off* the SMLauncher? Do you throw it at the enemy ships?
;-) (Terminology nitpick: You fire SMs (Salvo Missiles) from an SML
(Salvo Missile Launcher) or SMR (Salvo Missile Rack). I've heard some people
discussing launching ICBM silos; that's pretty much the same
error...)
Seriously, though - the chance to lose the launcher is just as big as
the chance to lose the magazine; hardening one but not the other does improve
things somewhat - fairly close to the efficiency *loss* you get from the
increased Mass. You have to have at least three salvoes per launcher before
the hardened launcher pulls ahead of the standard, and so far all battles I've
seen so far where SMs have figured heavily have been decided, win or lose, on
the second salvo. I have yet to se an SML ship fire missiles on four different
turns in a game; three salvoes I've seen on two occasions.
There is really only one other type of critical system, and that's the FCs
(including ADFC). I've covered them in other posts as well as above
already :-)
> > Hardened systems are good *LATE* in the battle, when enough
Sure. Only I tend to concentrate fire against a single target at a time, so I
only usually need one FC per ship anyway... and the probabilities to have *at
least* 1 FC isn't very different for hardened or unhardened ones
spending the same amount of Mass for FCs - not until the ship is so
badly
battered that it's running out of weapons anyway :-)
> > For those ships where a little hardening is most likely to make a
Nope. Probably worth it for ADFCs and FCs, maybe for SMLs if you don't armour
their magazine, balanced (or, at least, much less effect on battle results
than using the same Mass to buy armour or extra screen levels would have had)
for other weapons and screens.
If you use it for all systems, you're doing exactly what you thought me
to be fixated with - and which I have told you (and the rest of the
list), repeatedly but obviously completely in vain, isn't very effective.
You'll be badly outgunned early on, and hopefully be able to catch up in the
later stages of the battle.
> An extra game mechanic that is always worth employing
<sigh> That's what I've been trying to communicate. IT ISN'T ALWAYS WORTH
EMPLOYING - it just gives a different flavour to the ships without
changing the over-all balance. Using *armour* is more unbalancing than
hardening systems with a 25% Mass penalty.
> .. You see a bigger benefit for hardening some systems than
I see a possible benefit for some systems (FCs and SMLs). I *don't* see a
benefit for the rest. I haven't seen it for two years now, and I've been
looking pretty damn hard for it. I explored the statistics to try and figure
out *why* I couldn't see any benefit... and they supported what I
had already seen, ie no benefit - for either side.
So yes, you could say that I see some variation of the level of benefits
:-/
> So, I'd perhaps suggest... 25% more mass, 50% more cost as a
I think the former an unnecessary complication - I calculate system cost
by adding all 3xMass systems together and multiplying, etc; this'd be
impossible with partial hardening. The total cost increase for the ship would
be rather marginal unless you harden everything, in which case the ship costs
approx. 5% more for the same effective overall firepower.
The latter isn't balanced either. If you harden all systems (which would most
certainly be worthwhile if there's no Mass penalty) you get
effectively 25% more firepower for some 15-20% higher ship costs, ie
effectively reducing the cost of the ship by 5-10%.
To give an idea of what a 5% change in cost for the same firepower is
worth, it is about as good as winning the initiative die-roll on every
turn during the entire game (thus shooting first, etc). The Mass penalty
has to be there, even though it complicates the design - it is what
keeps the hardening balanced.
> Try it out for yourself. With 50% extra Mass for hardened systems, a
OK, I will.
> With 25% extra Mass, the two are so closely balanced that things like
OK
> Add all hardened systems together, then round up. Even 0.25 should
This I question. I would prefer to be able to do things on a per-system
basis. It keeps things clean and simple, and allows ship design without a
spreadsheet.
> Balance-wise, they should ideally be exactly as effective as their
Good point. Perhaps I didn't express myself clearly. I agree entirely on the
balance concept. What I should have said was that they need an adequate
"minus" to balance the "plus." This is why we're arguing the mass penalties
et. al. ;-)
> Sure :-) Hardening the FCs save you from embarrassing disasters, but
The value of a hardened FC is for more than can be simply measured. It
effects too many other systems - like weapons >:-)
> Seriously, though - the chance to lose the launcher is just as big as
Same comment as above. The value is quite different.
> Nope. Probably worth it for ADFCs and FCs, maybe for SMLs if you don't
I agree, and because these system cause other systems to be more effective,
the 50% seems more right to me (gut instinct - untested).
> Schoon wrote:
> >Add all hardened systems together, then round up. Even 0.25 should
Well... I'd say it does anyway - I've never used a ship design
spreadsheet at all, preferring the old pen-and-paper as being faster
(and available on the bus, etc).
Rounding the system Masses up individually means that you're back in the 50%
mass penalty (or worse) for everything except screens, SM magazines
and Class 3+ batteries - which makes the hardening pretty much
worthless.
Unless you allow rounding *down*, of course - but that in turn means
that you can harden your FCs for free, with obvious balance problems.
> >Balance-wise, they should ideally be exactly as effective as their
Yep, agree with this definition :-)
> Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> I agree, and because these system cause other systems to be more
Schoon, (It must be my day to disagree, sorry.)
A ship that uses armored systems does not "increase the
effectiveness" of other systems. The armored ship sacrafices
offensive power to increase the survivability of the remaining offensive
systems and movement ability to withdraw from a situation
that has become untenable. An armored ship is a design concept more
suited to a campaign enviroment than a 'one shot' game.
In any case, I feel the 50% increase in mass for armoring the system is far to
high as the system is not a weapon and is not capable of inflicting damage on
the enemy.
Bye for now,
> Schoon,
When will you guys learn that I have no ego. Disagree with me all you
want ;-)
> A ship that uses armored systems does not "increase the
Maybe we're not seeing this the same way. I see a hardened FC as far more
effective than a hardened Beam battery, even thought it can't damage the
enemy. That FC directs the fire of potentially many Beam batteries.
> In any case, I feel the 50% increase in mass for armoring
Would you harden one of the proposed fighter launch tubes (especially if you
had four fighter groups and only one tube)? Tubes don't inflict direct damage
either.
> Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> Would you harden one of the proposed fighter launch tubes (especially
In an attempt to keep everyone confused, no!
I would armor the recovery bay!