FTIII, was Re: Hello from GZG

> On Fri, 14 Feb 1997, Ground Zero Games wrote:

> FTIII will

...does anyone have the result of the poll we made a month or two ago?

Two details stand out: the A battery, and the break points between hull
classes.

The A battery imbalance is easily fixed by changing its mass to 4, as has been
suggested several times on this list.

The break points between hull classes is somewhat different. Adam Delafield
and Brian Bell came up with a new system to allocate damage boxes to rows. I
don't know if you saw it, so here it is again.

Unfortunately I don't remember what Adam called the new ship classes, so I
replace his names with my designations:

Class name:  Mass range: #rows of boxes: Max #boxes/row:
Scout          1 -  8           1               4
Escort         9 - 20           2               5
Cruiser       22 - 36           3               6
Battlecruiser 37 - 56           4               7
Battleship    57 - 80           5               8
Dreadnought   81 -108           6               9

... etc. For each new class, the number of rows of damage boxes is increased
by 1, and the maximum number of boxes per row also goes up.

The damage boxes are placed as follows:

First, you fill up all boxes as per the next LOWER ship class. Then you start
filling out the last row with boxes, 'til it is as long as the upper boxes. If
you still have boxes left, you fill in the final box in each row, starting
from the top.

Brian drew a diagram of it:

1 2 3 4 9 16 25 5 6 7 8 10 17 26 11 12 13 14 15 18 27 19 20 21 22 23 24 28

...etc. As per MT's Superships, all treshold checks after the third are
made at 4+.

While this system is more complicated than the FTII one, it avoids the 'CL is
more brittle than DD" problem, as well as the "large capitals are

invulnerable" one. Each ship in a class is about as brittle as every other
ship in that class.

Adam also suggested changed engine costs for some of the classes
(notably the class I call "battlecruiser", which was to be half-way
between Cruisers and Capitals, and the "scout" class which was to pay less
than today's Escorts) and higher numbers of FireCons (or, more
accurately, Damage Control Parties - to counter the higher number of
treshold checks).

There are, of course, other details - Kra'Vak efficiency, for example -
but the above are the weakest points in the basic rules.

High regards,