Four FT thoughts/questions for the week:
1) Has anyone yet worked up a balanced Wave gun for Fleet Book ships? I know
it's a genre weapon and possibly unbalanced as it is in FT2, but I was hoping
it could be worked with FB mass and point costs.
2) Someone asked just recently about external fighter racks. I, too
would like to locate the old discussion if there was one. Bolt-on
fighters are logical options for FT, with the difficulties in recovery being
campaign level issues rather than sindividual scenario problems. Assuming they
have lower mass requirements than actual bays, they have to be balanced with
cost.
3) When a ship drops expendables (launches missiles, fighters, boats, SM's) it
is in fact losing mass. We could use simple F=ma to figure if a ship should
get a thrust bonus for dropping mass. A Thrust 2 100 Mass carrier, carrying 4
fighter groups, for example, Generates a Force od 200 (100 mass * 2 thrust
acceleration). Once the fighters are launched, That Force of 200 is applied to
only 76 mass, which gets an accel of 2.6, which we still round down to 2.
However, a thrust 4 carrier with the same mass should be able to eek out an
extra point of thrust once fighters are launched. This is more significant
when you go to the smaller ships: Take
a Missile destroyer - 30 mass, Thrust 6, 4 MT missiles. Once the
Missiles are gone, the Force of 180 is applied to 22 mass for a thrust
of 8 - perhaps that extra speed and amenuverability is enough to get the
fragile ship out of danger. Or Indy's Tin-can fighter carrier (CVE)
would gain 1 thrust (to 7) once fighters were launched. A missile Frigate
could jump from thrust 8 to thrust 10 after unloading. Granted, this is added
complexity, but it can affect campaign
settings - increasing survival of 'delivery' units like carriers and
missile boats, and possibly affect the way individual scenarios establish
victory conditions.
4) I assume that FB2 will determine some of this, but I think it would
be neat to be able to buy more maneuverable ships for a given thrust -
like the Kra'vak maneuverability in FT2. Coud we attempt to balance this
maneuverability with simply point cost? Buy the ability to turn up to
your thrust rating for say +50% point cost on engines? I'd feel as much
or much more comfortable with thrust 4 that could make a 120 degree turn for
the same cost as thrust 6 that could only turn 90 degrees.
> Izenberg, Noam wrote:
...Snip...JTL
> 2) Someone asked just recently about external fighter racks. I, too
...Snip...JTL
> 4) I assume that FB2 will determine some of this, but I think it would
...Snip...JTL
> Noam R. Izenberg noam.izenberg@jhuapl.edu
Noam, Items 2 and 3 can be handled under the rules by buying a tug and
allowing the parasite fighters to come and go as necessary. The one big
limiting factor on the parasite fighters is that no special types with
expendable ordinance
could be carried/rearmed. (I.E. no attack or torp fighters)
Item 4 will lose the ability of the 'K' to be an interesting
and dangerous enemy. If you want a ship with Kra'Vak maneuvering
ability, play a Kra'Vak. The logical extension of this line
of thought is that everybody can have anything they want. Where
is the challenge in that?
Bye for now,
> "Izenberg, Noam" wrote:
> John L. wrote:
Six. If you're building a tug to tow a ship you need to be able to tow the
ship's mass, not it's mass*1.5.
> Are attack fighters armaments considered expendable?
Presumably yes. The extra 50% mass premium when carrying fighters must include
armouries for expendable ordinance so if you're not allocating that extra
space you don't therefore get the reloads.
> From owner-gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu Wed Feb 24 10:11:19 1999
(PST)
> env-from (Noam.Izenberg@jhuapl.edu)
<47FCB6DBADBFD211A36700104B95BD830D07A0@spacemsg2.jhuapl.edu>
> From: "Izenberg, Noam" <Noam.Izenberg@jhuapl.edu>
My
> !
Well, if you jump the timeline forward ten or twenty years, I'll bet that you
would find plenty of human ships that use KV armor, weapons,
and drives--especially if they really *are* superior to human tech.
Sa'Vasku tech might be another story...or it might not, if you look at B5.
> Hm. How interesting or dangerous the KV will be depends alot on what
I
> believe that with reasonable justification and work at play balance,
Once the FBII is released, I'll probably add some Illuminati ships with
Kra'Vak tech--not much, but enough to add some flavor. I'll probably do
the same thing with the Sa'Vasku--hollowing out a few of the bigger
ships and making some random attacks on shipping lanes might be fun....
In the meantime, I'm going to run a game sometime soon that will test
some new weapons, including my variant Railgun rules--used by the
"Kra'Mock"--against some of the Fleet Book designs. It should be
interesting, and bloody. Balanced would be a nice bonus, but I'm not expecting
it. But then, that's why I'm running a test game....
> I wouldn't mind going after a time-travelling 27'th century frigate
Maybe, but sensible. I like variety myself, and try to make my ship (and
tank*) designs as distinctive as possible. I'm going to be making my Imperial
ships (yes, GW figures) something like your 27th Century frigate: Class Three
shields, Waveguns, Reflex fields.... But, on the other hand, they are not
going to have any sort of missiles because they
no longer have the ability to replace the ones they fire, and fighters will be
VERY rare. I'm going to leave some empty mass on each ship, to represent
systems that no longer function.
> Noam
*The Illuminat ground forces use lots of Stealth, and are primarily
armed with HELs--they want to engage from a distance, without letting
the target see who (or what) is shooting at them.
> John Leary wrote:
> Item 4 will lose the ability of the 'K' to be an interesting
Only if you want to play in the canonical Tuffleyverse. There are no
Kra'Vak in other backgrounds. I need the high-maneuverability option if
I want to play, eg, those "telerobotically controlled" Syndic raiders from
"The Fleet" series, or the B5 Centauri. Neither of those races use
railguns for ship-to-ship combat, so the KV are a rather poor simulation
of them.
FB2 will *NOT* be a product where you have to stick to a specific race's
combination of engines and weapons. That'd kill the entire idea with a generic
space combat game.
Regards,