FT-Some of bifs ramblings

I was thinking of fighters recently, specifically torpedo fighters, and a idea
struck me. A torpedo fighter can cause upto 6 pts of dammage (1D6), but it`s
either a roll to hit and 1D6 for dammage, or a roll to hit, with a hit causing
that number of dammage (can`t remember). Instead of this, how about
a torpedo fighter carring TWO missiles, each rolls a 1D6-3. If it gets a
positive number, that is the dammage it causes. This would only require 2
boxes to be added to the fighter record sheet (or a pair of markers to the
fighter base) to record when the missiles are fired. This would also make
torpedo fighters more flexible, and if the can fire both missiles at once,
then there would be no difference from the present torpedo fighters. Comments
anyone?

Also, I was thinking of the comments I made about the technology in the FT
universe. Specifically, the comments about the SV only showing the other races
limited technology and reserving their better weapons until someone
threatened their home planets. How about these for 2 totally OTT/Off
balanced weapons? The first is a beam weapon that fires a beam that causes
1D6 points of dammage minus 1 per 9 mu to target (ie-1D6-3 at 19 to 27
mu) and minus 1 per level of sheild the target has. Extra power points can be
used to give a +1 bonus to the to hit roll, but cannot make a roll of 1
anything other than a miss. Any extra power points can be used to increase the
dammaged caused by a extra 1D6 per power point minus the range modifier
(ie-like firing multipul beams at once at the same target through the
single emmitter). Just one OTT idea. The other idea for a OTT SV weapon is a
focusable wave gun. This would be able to fire in 3 modes. The first would be
a normal wave gun, requiring 6 power points to fire, without the limitations
as present with wave guns. for every 6 power points extra used, the dammage
would be doubled. The second way is that it could be fired as a 2 mu wide
beam, that would cause 1D6 dammage for ever power point, dropping
1D6 per 9 mu range (ie-6 power points=3D6 dammage at 19-27 mu, 2D6 at
28-35
mu). The third way the weapon could be used is as a direct fire weapon,
causing 1D6 points of dammage per power point, but rolling to hit as a p.torp
(with the same range bands). For every extra power point used, the
weapon gains a +1 on the to hit roll, with a 1 a miss no matter how many
power points used. This weapon would be unaffected by sheilds. The reason I`m
posting this, is that it replicates the shaddow weapons used in B5 (the more
power used, the longer the duration of the beam, hense the more the beam can
track the target) and I have some vorlon heavy (!!!!) cruisers models (not the
fleet scale) that are crying out for a BIG weapon to do them jusitist. Both
these weapons would be sutable as weapons I would see a advanced race keeping
hidden. Also, these weapons would require the player to state how many power
points he is allocating to targeting and how many to dammage at the time of
firing, before rolls. Just my idea for a superior SV weapon, totally
unbalanced, and very nasty.

Bad, very bad.

Right now average damage for a torpedo fighter is 3.5, roll a d6 once.

The way you want to do it you are bringing in bell curves.

You roll two dice the most common roll is going to be a 7 (6 out of 36) for a
damage of 1. 1 in 6 is going to be 1 point damage, sounds the same so far,
however...

You chance of doing 6 points damage is 1 in 36 as apposed to the original 1 in
6. As a matter of fact you have a 15 in 36 or roughly a 42% chance of no
damage. It's not worth the struggle to get those fighters in to have 42% of
their shots go ping.

> Bad, very bad.

Actually FB2 modifies this so Torp Fighters hit on a 3+ then then do
damage equal to the roll of the die when a hit is scored (ie 4, 5 or 6
points).
 So
average damage PER HIT it 5 points of damage, but you only hit 50% of the
time, so average damage PER SHOT it 2.5 points

> The way you want to do it you are bringing in bell curves.

True, BIFs idea will result in far fewer occurances of the maximum 6 points of
damage but will result in more occurances of at least a single point of
damage.

> You roll two dice the most common roll is going to be

Well if the dice end up 6 and 1 then 3 points are scored using a d6-3
damage. The individual rolls still are more important than the total. Per hit
average for this mechanic is 2 points, per shot average is 1 point, but you
now get 2 shots so double the results and it ends up a bit less than powerful
than the current FB2 version of Torp fighters (and a bit more
powerful than the More Thrust Version - 3.5 ave/damage per hit, 1.75
ave/damage per shot)

> You chance of doing 6 points damage is 1 in 36 as apposed

But then current currently torp fighters miss 50% of the time but with the 2
shots at d6-3 mechanic, both shots miss only 25% of the time.

I think you are using the d6-3 only as the damage roll where BIF is
suggesting it be used for both the to-hit and the damage roll (1-3 is a
miss, 4-6 is a hit with damage equal to the result minus 3)