From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 17:33:07 -0500
Subject: [FT] Power Projection Escort AAR
Joshua and I played his first PP:E game, a single ship duel between his PF Sloan (33 pts) and my Midu Agashaam (26 pts). Set up about 55mu away , facing nose-to-nose. Turn 1, we closed but remained out of range. Turn 2 still on collision course, we fired lasers at long range, with slight damage on both sides; both sides also launched missiles. Turn 3, I launched sand and accelerated through it as both ships passed each other and reversed heading. I won initiative and devoted all four lasers to PDS. My particle accelerator fired through my sand cloud, but missed. He put two heavy laser batteries to defend against my one missile, so it did no damage. He fired his remaining heavy laser at me and even through sand, it did two points of damage. Then his two missiles attacked--my lasers shot down one salvo but the other managed to score a point of damage. unfortunately my ship's hull was 2/2/1/1, so that put me over my second threshold in one firing phase... I rolled a 4 to exactly fail my catastrophic damage check, crossed off my third hull row, but fortunately managed to survive the next catastrophic damage check. The threshold checks took out most of my weapons, and my bridge! Fortunately it was only down for one turn, and we ended up over 30mu away so Joshua couldn't polish me off. I whipped around and briskly advanced toward the rear, and he had too much velocity to overcome before he could start pursuing me, so I was able to get away with one surviving hull box. There are several points of difference between FT and PPE. Two of the most significant were: 1. All weapons (other than spinal weapons) do damage in the same way, so there's not as much different flavor between, say, a particle accelerator, a fusion gun, and a laser as there is between different FT weapons. 2. The turn order is slightly different, with the main bit being that missiles move *after* ships, so you can hit what you were aiming at. The main thing that I'd say PPE needs is a Quick Reference Sheet, with the turn order, firing chart and modifiers all in one place. Modifiers should include *all* modifiers -- in the PPE text, Agility is off on a different page than the firing mods. The two ambiguities in the rules that we found today involved missiles. a) The firing chart has a -1 for laser, energy weapons and missiles if the LoS for a weapon passes through a sand cloud. Does that apply to missiles with a Bomb Pumped Laser warhead, or does it also apply to missiles that contact the ship? If the latter, is it if they pass through the sand in their movement, or only if the ship is itself in or touching a cloud of sand that the missile had to move through? I assumed that sand only affects BPL missiles but not others. b) Mining lasers consider short range to be 5mu. Point defense range is 6mu. If a BPL attacks from 6mu, can a mining laser defend against it, and if so, is there any different effect than if the BPL had closed to 5mu before detonating?