[FT] Shields or not

Here's a question for all the vac heads out there. At which point do you
consider it cost effective to put shields on ships? 50mass? 80mass? Only if
it's planning on getting into beam range?

Jaime:
> Here's a question for all the vac heads out there. At which point do
Only
> if it's planning on getting into beam range?

Rather depends on who it's going up against--if you're building a
fleet to fight the KV, then you don't put shields on at all. However, if
you're thinking of "ships to fight other Human ships",

> Jaime Tiampo wrote:

> Here's a question for all the vac heads out there. At which point do
Only
> if it's planning on getting into beam range?

If the NSL, ESU, Sa'Vasku or Phalons are your primary opponents, you add
shields to a ship as soon as mounting shields still leaves enough mass for the
ship to still accomplish its intended missions. The NAC use some

> Richard and Emily Bell wrote:

> If the NSL, ESU, Sa'Vasku or Phalons are your primary opponents, you

hmm... first we don't play with cannon fleets since one of the big things that
makes FT appealing is the design system so we can customise our ships.

When I design ships I try and balance how much damage they will negate to how
much mass they'll cost and how much more firepower I can put in their place.
Though my fleets have a big gap in ships between 80 mass
and 120-140 mass. I like lots of heavy cruisers and heavy battleships.

My cruisers don't mount shields and the battleships usually only have one but
I found one of my most effective ships to be this battledreadnought.

Mass = 130 Cost = 447 Thrust = 4 FTL = Normal CrewFactors = 7 DP = 26
----  Damage Row Breakdown  ----
[][][][][][][][][][][][][]
OOO*OOO *OOO*OO O*OOO* OOO*O*

> Jaime Tiampo wrote:

> > If the NSL, ESU, Sa'Vasku or Phalons are your primary opponents,

First, a "cannon fleet" is a fleet primarily armed with cannon. You're
thinking of "canon" fleets.

Second, Richard's point is just as valid if you're fighting custom
fleets -
just add an "-ish" to all nationalities mentioned, and read those
nationalities as examples of weapon mixes instead of exact definitions of what
ship designs are available.

> My cruisers don't mount shields and the battleships usually only have

From your statement that this ship is one of your most effective designs, I
can draw two immediate conclusions:

1) You're using Vector movement - in Cinematic, thrust-4 is much too
slow
to get much use out of those B3-1s
2) Your opponents use very few, if any, P-torps or K-guns - this design
has very little protection against such weapons.

Regards,

I usually like to play the custom-design game much like you seem to.  In
my games, we allow any sort of mixed tech (aside from Sa'Vasku), and more or
less anything goes in design from there. A typical game that I play is 5000
points worth of custom ships, and our games _are_ of a sort where we're
assuming there's a reason you need to fight each battle (otherwise, joining an
engagement with a task force of that size wouldn't be necessary), so getting
into a situation where you make a wild guess and have to withdraw because you
took rock to your opponent's paper is considered an unmitigated
disaster -- i.e. whatever you come up with is _expected_ to stand and
fight.

That said, whether or not I use screens depends on the function the ship is to
serve. There are about four or five different roles ships in my games tend to
play:

1.  Ship-to-ship combat as part of a fleet that is designed with this as
its primary tactic. This sort of ship will usually have at least one screen
and perhaps armor as well.

2. Ships designed for longer ranged standoffs with plasma, fighters, or
missiles. These don't carry screens as often, because they don't usually
get into toe-to-toe fights.

3. Dedicated carriers. These usually remain at extreme range, and as such
consider screens as a waste of resources that would be better used to
establish better fighter superiority.

4. Missile decoy escorts. They're only there to sit around and draw salvo
missile fire away from more important ships.  _Maybe_ they'll carry some
small weapons of their own just so you don't ignore them with anything that
doesn't carry missiles, but screens are a complete waste on these.

5. Skirmisher escorts. These usually fly ahead of the main force, often under
cloak, in order to use needle beams, submunitions, or other specialized
weaponry to soften up an enemy before the capital ships join in battle.
Screens are usually a waste on these as well... if they're caught out of
position, they die with or without screens, so the resources are usually
better used on weapons to make sure they do their job before they
need to break off their attack for self-preservation (if they survive at
all).

Any ships of the cruiser size usually are only effective as larger versions of
this last type or as small carriers, and they're not usually considered big
enough to be worth the bother of putting screens on them in either case.

Hope this sheds a little light on it...

[quoted original message omitted]

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> First, a "cannon fleet" is a fleet primarily armed with cannon. You're

Oops:)

> From your statement that this ship is one of your most effective

Correct. None of my ships would do very well in cinematic, except maybe my
superdreadnought with the 12, 2 arc PTs.

> 2) Your opponents use very few, if any, P-torps or K-guns - this

No, we don't have any Kravak players. I do wonder why it doesn't have
protection against PTs. I know the structure is lowish, but I haven't sen any
major problems with a 20% hull 10% armour mix. It seems to do fairly well
against PTs.

What do other people do for structure/armour loads?

> Jaime Tiampo wrote:

> >2) Your opponents use very few, if any, P-torps or K-guns - this

I wrote "very little protection", not "no protection". There's a difference.

> I know the structure is lowish, but I haven't sen any major problems

While the armour will absorb some of the P-torp damage the ship will
start taking threshold checks before it loses all its armour if hit by
concentrated P-torp fire which reduces the armour's effectiveness
(though
not nearly as much as K-guns would!). The ship's main line of defence is

its screens, however - and they are completely powerless against
P-torps.

Regards,

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> I wrote "very little protection", not "no protection". There's a

Yes, And I still didn't see it.

> >I know the structure is lowish, but I haven't sen any major problems

Correct. Against PTs the armour on my units esentially doubles the damage
required to the hull for threshhold checks for the first two rows. To me this
seems the best course since by the time you're onto that third row the ship is
pretty poor shape.

I'd like to know what you consider a good structure/armour load for a
ship designed against a PT fleet and KV, generally if I was to design
specifically against KV I'd lower the armour amount and increase the hull.

Yes this particular ships matches against beam fleets with fightrer or missile
support. I tend not to build fleets designed to go against a specific
opposition but ones that should work against any. This ship is actually fairly
"light" in my fleet for double shields.

> Jaime Tiampo wrote:

> I'd like to know what you consider a good structure/armour load for a

Two points of armor for every seven points of hull works nicely against
K-3's
(which do the most damage per unit mass, per hit).  While K-6's are a
noticeably
less efficient than K-3's, they make it pointless to have more than one
point of armor for every ten points of hull; unlesss, you can mount more than
one layer (the Kra'Vak heavy ships are obviously optimised to deal with Phalon
heavy ships).

If you know that you are only going to deal with smaller ships (K-1's

> Richard and Emily Bell wrote:

> Two points of armor for every seven points of hull works nicely

Ah so decrease the ratio of armour on my units from 1/2 to 2/7. Makes
sense. I'll file that away for later variants of my ships. Thanks.

I managed to delete the post before replying, but someone said something

like "against K3s a ratio of armour to hull of 2:7 is optimal" - or at
least that's how I read it, but I hope what was written (and meant) was
"a
ratio of armour to the first hull row of 2:7 is optimal". Since I no longer
have the post I can't check!

Anyway, in reply to Jaime's question: If I know that the enemy uses
predominantly P-torps, I wouldn't use more armour than my first hull row

(ie., 1:4 or less armour to hull). If the enemy uses K-guns, I wouldn't
use
more armour than half my first hull row (1:8 armour to hull) - the
armour
doesn't degrade the big K-guns much, but they do stop K1s and
scatterguns.

Regards,

On Saturday, December 22, 2001 2:44 PM, Jaime Tiampo
> [SMTP:fugu@spikyfishthing.com] wrote:
Only
> if it's planning on getting into beam range?

It's most effective when you hit 15 hull. Reasons? Before this point, 3 armour
is more effective; after this point the 0.2 per die reduction in beam damage
makes screens more attractive, but
the break point shifts as the ship size goes up.  Screen-2 effectively
has 0.3 per die reduction.

Screen-1
Mass 60 = 3 mass screen vs 3 armour = 15 hull break point Mass 80 = 4 mass
screen vs 4 armour = 20 hull break point Mass 100 = 5 mass screen vs 5 armour
= 25 hull break point etc.

Screen-2
Mass 60 = 6 mass screen vs 6 armour = 20 hull break point Mass 80 = 8 mass
screen vs 8 armour = 27 hull break point Mass 100 = 10 mass screen vs 10
armour = 33 hull break point etc

Even with the break point, it comes down to whether to put more into defences
or offensive armament. Every mass you spend on screens or armour is one less
mass to spend on guns, so you have to balance it with your play style.

> "Robertson, Brendan" wrote:

> It's most effective when you hit 15 hull.

I'm not sure how you're calculation hull break points? Total hull? Hull for
the first 2 lines? Since you can choose any hull amount over 10% of mass
there's a bit more blancing between mass and hull. I'm not sure
about the others but I run with about 20% hull + armour and shields.

From: Jaime Tiampo fugu@spikyfishthing.com
> I run with about 20% hull + armour and shields.

Isn't that a little fragile?  For the IF, I use about 25% hull + 6-7%
armor + shields on those ships which expect to mix it up.

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> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> I managed to delete the post before replying, but someone said
was "a
> ratio of armour to the first hull row of 2:7 is optimal". Since I no

I did not say that that 2:7 was optimal, I said that it was a good number. I
neglected to state my reason. The reason is that if you have any more armor
than a 2:7 ratio, there will be a significant probablilty that there will
still be some undestroyed armor when the ship blows up. Only having two points
of armor for every seven points of hull integrity in the first row implies
that you intend to leave before the second threshold check.

> Richard Bell wrote:

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
was "a
> > ratio of armour to the first hull row of 2:7 is optimal". Since I no

And I'm saying that it isn't a good number against K3s. 1:7 would be a good
number.

> I neglected to state my reason. The reason is that if you have any

You got that backwards. After the 2nd threshold check ships tend to be combat
ineffective anyway (unless of course they've been very lucky with

their threshold and/or repair rolls), so any armour remaining after the
2nd
threshold check will usually just buy the ship a little more time to -
you
guessed it - withdraw from combat.

Simply put, armour remaining after the 2nd threshold contribute almost as
little to an average ship's combat effectiveness as armour remaining after the
last hull box is gone.

Regards,