FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

26 posts ยท Mar 12 2002 to Mar 18 2002

From: Imre A. Szabo <ias@s...>

Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 08:07:58 -0500

Subject: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

Here's another idea with how to correct custom built Sa'Vasku ships...

Pro-rate the cost of power generators based on the percentage of mass
they use. Ships with 12.5% PG's pay 1 NPV per PG. Ships with upto 25% PG's pay
2 NPV per PG. Ships with upto 37.5% PG's pay 4 NPV per PG. Ships with upto 50%
PG's, pay 8 NPV per PG; etc... This will affect the price of only one ship in
the FTFB2, the 11 mass scout.

From: Roger Burton West <roger@f...>

Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 14:08:26 +0000

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> On Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 08:07:58AM -0500, Imre A. Szabo wrote:

> Pro-rate the cost of power generators based on the percentage of mass
Ships with upto 50% PG's, pay 8 NPV per PG; etc... This will affect the price
of only one ship in the FTFB2, the 11 mass scout.

The major problem with this is that it introduces breakpoints.

From: Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@t...>

Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 18:23:44 +0100

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> Imre Szabo wrote:

> Here's another idea with how to correct custom built Sa'Vasku ships...

> pay 2 NPV per PG. Ships with upto 37.5% PG's pay 4 NPV per PG. Ships

Good thinking.

> This will affect the price of only one ship in the FTFB2, the 11 mass

It won't even affect that one if you allow those percentages to be rounded to
the nearest integer Mass. 25% of 11 is 2.75, which rounds up to 3.

However, the above idea needs to be combined with other fixes -
otherwise
it doesn't do anything about the problem with SV which stay at range 72+

and picks the enemy apart :-/

Later,

From: Imre A. Szabo <ias@s...>

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 03:10:06 -0500

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

And Full Thrust doesn't have break points??? Threshold checks are based on
break points, the free arcs on class 2 beems, but not class 3 beams is a break
point. The attempt is to come up with something better then "Sa'Vasku can not
have more then 30% of their mass in PG's." I hate arbitrary limits, and I came
up with the 30% limit as the best fix at that time...

From: Charles Taylor <charles.taylor@c...>

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 18:58:40 GMT

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

In message <5.1.0.14.1.20020312181647.00a64b30@d1o4.telia.com>
> Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

> Imre Szabo wrote:
Ships
> >with upto 50% PG's, pay 8 NPV per PG; etc...
Well, fortunately, there are only 3 SV designs in FB2 that can do that
(the 3 biggest) :-)
Less fortunately, All but 4 (the 4 smallest) of the FB2 SV can reach
ranges of 48mu or more, and there are very few non-SV ships with this
kind of range (err... Komarov SDN and... nothing else).

OTOH, I'm not totally happy with the 'reduced range' bands for SV,
largely for aesthetic reasons :-)

No problem with the changed power pool allocations.

From: Jaime Tiampo <fugu@s...>

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 18:47:36 -0800

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> Charles Taylor wrote:

> Well, fortunately, there are only 3 SV designs in FB2 that can do that

I'm not a big fan of the range mods either though the power pool ones make
perfect sense. I'm finding my ships only have an advantage at over 36mu and
under 9mu. In between they fair worse then Humans and generally over 36mu they
only get 1 die for those that can even fire at that
point. Once they get in range to get 2-3dice they get slaughtered. It
feels every time they take a threshold they loose 50% of their current combat
effectiveness. Most times it's not worth attempting to repair anything.

From: Beth Fulton <beth.fulton@m...>

Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 14:08:45 +1100

Subject: RE: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

G'day,

> I'm not a big fan of the range mods either

We've gone back to 12", mind you Oerjan reckons we don't find that a problem
as I roll too many 1s anyway;)

> Most times it's not worth attempting to repair

I must admit I don't do much of that either, unless its a fairly big ship and
whatever was lost was on the first threshold.

Cheers

From: Jaime Tiampo <fugu@s...>

Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 22:17:51 -0800

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:

> > Most times it's not worth attempting to repair

And generators aren't worthwhile to try and fix unless you're way out of
firing range since it decreases your strength by another 25%. Basically once a
ship takes a threshold it sacrifices itself for the good of the pack by being
the closest ship the next turn.

From: Charles Taylor <charles.taylor@c...>

Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 18:31:30 GMT

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

In message <3C900F47.757B912B@spikyfishthing.com>
> Jaime Tiampo <fugu@spikyfishthing.com> wrote:

> Charles Taylor wrote:
Especially as they have to spend biomass on repairs!

Just for intrest - I take it you've tried out both sets of range bands
(12mu from FB2, 8-9mu from list), and so can give us some idea how they
play.

How successful are you at keeping the range open (so your opponents are out of
range)? (which, to the inexperienced, seems the bast way to use
SV).

From: Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@t...>

Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 22:02:19 +0100

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> Charles Taylor wrote:

[snip IAS's idea and my comments to it]

> >However, the above idea needs to be combined with other fixes -

It is not the FB2 designs which cause the big problems. It is all those
custom designs which typically spend 35-40% of their TMF on power
generators, rather than the 17-25% of the FB2 ships.

Later,

From: Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@t...>

Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 22:10:14 +0100

Subject: RE: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

Beth replied to Jaime:

> >I'm not a big fan of the range mods either

I know. OTOH I've talked to other Vector SV players who have never yet lost a
single battle, and consider even the "official" fixes to be too weak. However,
they use custom designs rather than the FB2 ones, and I don't know
what set-ups they use (initial speeds, etc.)

> >Most times it's not worth attempting to repair anything.

Which is also directly opposite to the experience of the above-mentioned

players - if they lose a power generator the damaged ship opens the
range, repairs the PG, and then returns to the fray at essentially full
effectiveness, giving the enemy the choice between shooting at
less-damaged
SV ships at close range or at the damaged ship at long range. For them it
works; the few times I've tried it in Cinematic it worked quite well too.

Brendan (Pratt), Alan (Brain), have you played any more with the SV in the
past year or so?

Later,

From: Beth Fulton <beth.fulton@m...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 10:17:07 +1100

Subject: RE: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

G'day,

> And generators aren't worthwhile to try and fix unless you're

I've never fixed one in game so to speak.

From: Beth Fulton <beth.fulton@m...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 10:24:58 +1100

Subject: RE: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

G'day,

> I know. OTOH I've talked to other Vector SV players who have

I guess that could be where we don't see it as we haven't got too many
"homegrown SV designs". We also play at fairly high speeds, floating map, in
inches on a ping pong table and you quite often get multiple thresholds in a
turn. So I'd wonder at the fixing generators as being that
useful/possible -
at least in the games we play. The SV are usually too weak to get far enough
away quickly enough and then have time to spend a turn putting their energy
from thrust to repair to get a generator back up and going. As soon as you
break the line to go do that the fighters/missiles are off after you as
they know what you're up to... or the "little guys" left round the edges to
clean up. As with Jaime we've found that with our style of play sacrificing
the damage ships is the safer move.

Cheers

From: Alan and Carmel Brain <aebrain@w...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 19:43:05 +1100

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>

From: Imre A. Szabo <ias@s...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 06:58:57 -0500

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> No, my FB2s both went missing some time ago.

You would be better off with a 25% or 30% restriction. 40% is too much.

From: Charles Taylor <charles.taylor@c...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 19:43:29 GMT

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

In message <5.1.0.14.1.20020314215939.00a61b80@d1o4.telia.com>
> Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

> Charles Taylor wrote:

From: Imre A. Szabo <ias@s...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 16:47:25 -0500

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> ...or 50%, or 70%, or more :-)
The idea is to drive the cost way up for "overpowered" Sa'Vasku ships.

0 to 12.5% of mass costs 1 NPV per generator 12.51 to 25% of mass costs 2 NPV
per generator 25.01 to 37.5% of mass costs 4 NPV per generator 37.51 to 50% of
mass costs 8 NPV per generator 50.1 to 62.5% of mass costs 16 NPV per
generator 62.51 to 75% of mass costs 32 NPV per generator

From: Roger Books <books@m...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 17:04:44 -0500 (EST)

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> On 15-Mar-02 at 16:50, Imre A. Szabo (ias@sprintmail.com) wrote:

How about something along the lines of:

X*GenMass*GenMass

From: Kevin Walker <sage@c...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 16:23:54 -0600

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> On Friday, March 15, 2002, at 03:47 PM, Imre A. Szabo wrote:

> The idea is to drive the cost way up for "overpowered" Sa'Vasku ships.

The problem of overpowering is not just percentage of the PGs versus over all
mass, but the total energy available for use in firing. True a

higher PG/Hull ratio makes it easier to maneuver and fire at the same
time, however even an SV ship with 25% mass in generators is going to be

able to do speed 12 in a single turn so they can afford to thrust maximum
every other turn and fire on the other turns. A scale like this

will encourage larger ship designs to take the place of the smaller ships for
the same use. I believe the fix needs to be made with way energy is channeled
to tasks. As it stands more than one stinger is only useful for firing at more
targets, providing wider arcs of coverage

and as backup when thresholds take some down. The fact that a single stinger
is more useful point and mass wise for a larger ship than a smaller ship is
the key to the problem as I see it. Limiting the amount

of power that can be put through it might be a interesting way to do things
but this has been mentioned before.

Hmmm, maybe a stinger class like beam classes? A Stinger of class X could use
4 * X power. Then again this would invalidate or make necessary changes to all
the FB2 ships.

I still like a maximum of 8 points of energy through a single stinger,
allowing stingers to combine together to make longer range shots were more
than 8 points of power are needed for a single shot.

Okay...enough of my rambling on.

From: Roger Burton West <roger@f...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 22:34:36 +0000

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> On Fri, Mar 15, 2002 at 04:23:54PM -0600, Kevin Walker wrote:

Here's a thought out of thin air (or thin vacuum, as the case may be):
how about changing the power/damage/range curve for stingers, such that
it's less effective to power one stinger to do 2 dice at a given range than to
power two separate stingers?

(Example would be: 1 point = 1 die, 3 points = 2 dice, 7 points = 3 dice,
etc.)

I haven't worked on this at all, but I think it would have the effect you
suggest, without breaking existing designs.

From: Kevin Walker <sage@c...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 19:23:39 -0600

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> On Friday, March 15, 2002, at 04:34 PM, Roger Burton West wrote:

> Here's a thought out of thin air (or thin vacuum, as the case may be):

Interesting idea. I'll have to give it some thought. Unfortunately it'll
probably require another table somewhere to help when some people are doing
energy allocation and figuring their beam dice available at targets.

From: Imre A. Szabo <ias@s...>

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 21:02:49 -0500

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> How about something along the lines of:

My system doesn't require recalculating the price of the existing ships, yours
does. I don't have a problem with existing ships, only with player created
ships. I use a spreadsheet, so I only have to do the formula once... Besides,
Full Thrust is full of breakpoints, example damage thresholds, beams, etc.

From: Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@t...>

Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 19:14:31 +0100

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

> Charles Taylor wrote:

> > It is not the FB2 designs which cause the big problems. It is all

70% or more is only possible if you leave out at least one of FTL drive,

Main Engines or Weapons, so it's a bit impractical. 50% is possible, but

tends to leave the ships very short on biomass.

Later,

From: Beth Fulton <beth.fulton@m...>

Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 14:08:39 +1100

Subject: RE: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

G'day guys,

I haven't been a big fan of limiting stuff going through stingers as we
haven't seen a problem with the FB designs, which has suggested to me that it
is the% allowed in PGs that is the problem.

Robert and Kevin's suggestsions about having to tie stingers together may have
merit, but personally I'd prefer to see whether the PG limitations can solve
the problem with the home designs.

Cheers

From: Charles Taylor <charles.taylor@c...>

Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 17:05:27 GMT

Subject: Re: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

In message <5.1.0.14.1.20020316190831.02a8fa00@d1o4.telia.com>
> Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

> Charles Taylor wrote:

From: Brian Bell <bkb@b...>

Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 09:09:55 -0500

Subject: RE: FT: Sa'Vasku ship costs...

My preference would be one that would not have to rework any of the FB2
Sa'Vasku ships.

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