New system: Gunboat Mass: 2 per Gunboat Cost: 15 per gunboat Speed:10"
Gunboats are similar to bombers of the late 20th century. They have a forward
firing energy cannon (as a fighter but may only attack ships not fighters due
to it's slow recharge rate) two volleys of range 6" submunitions (1
submunition die each) and an anti fighter mount with a 360 degree arc (roll a
d6, on a 6 a fighter is killed) The Gunboat may either fire 1 or 2
submunitions or fire it's energy armament. The gunner may fire his mount
seperately. A squadron of 6 gunboats firing it's submunitions (12 die) at a
ship target would average 8 points of damage regardless of shields on the
target. Gunboats are built for extended missions and thus have an endurance
of6 attack rounds before needing to return to the carrier.
Thoughts? Opinions?
> > New system: Gunboat
Good ideas! i was actually thinking of them as being about like a heavy
fighter (greater ruggedness but lesser maneuverability kind of cancelling each
other out.) I like the idea of bigger beam mounts engaging them in desperation
and hitting on a 6...
> New system: Gunboat
Interesting, but how are they attacked? 2 hits by fighters or *DAFs needed to
kill one? Can A and B batts target them and kill one when a 6 is rolled?
> On Thu, 20 Nov 97 14:11:27 -0600, "Dean Gundberg" writes:
Actually, this sounds a lot like the M Collective rules for Star Bombers from
SfW.
---
Star bombers fill the role in Starfleet Wars that PT or Torpedo Boats fill in
a modern navy. These boats are larger than fighters and are capable of FTL
travel like any warship, but they are much more susceptible to damage than
regular warships.
Star Bombers are treated as thrust 8 ships, and as such write orders like
other ships. Star Bombers, being somewhere in between the size of
fighters and regular warships can be fired on by regular starship weapons and
*DAFs. This makes the Star Bombers very fragile when in close with larger
ships. Also, because of their smaller size, they do not carry the
unlimited ammunition of full size warships. Ammunition restrictions will
be listed with each races ship.
---
> Mike Wikan wrote:
...Snip...(JTL)
> Thoughts? Opinions?
1) TO MANY WEAPONS PER MASS! 2) To cheap. 3) Would drastically alter the game
balence. (consider if you will, facing 25 of these while sitting in the
slightly better than average battledreadnaught. Not a pretty picture is it!)
4) Humans have a limit of thrust 8. (Presumes Speed=Thrust) (Presumes 1 thrust
= 1 G) 5) The main weapon is just too ugly and to small.
By for now,
If they are mass 2 they should be covered by the standard rules (couriers).
Afterall, a Corvette is only mass 6 and would not hold everything you
mentioned.
I would counter-propose the following:
Gunboat Mk 2 Mass: 6 (3 boats and bay) Cost: 18 Speed: 10
Gunboats have 3 ships per squadron. They carry a mini-pulse torpedo.
This
hits on 4+ and does 1d6/2 (round up) damage (ignore screens). Gunboats
are destroyed by 2 points of *daf damage or 1 point of damage from a C beam
(no penalty to hit). Gunboats engage fighters and missiles as attack fighters.
Gunboats follow normal fighter endurance and morale rules.
Brian Bell pdga6560@compuserve.com
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pdga6560/fthome.html
-------------------- Begin Original Message --------------------
Message text written by INTERNET:FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
"> > New system: Gunboat
> > Mass: 2 per Gunboat
Good ideas! i was actually thinking of them as being about like a heavy
fighter (greater ruggedness but lesser maneuverability kind of cancelling each
other out.) I like the idea of bigger beam mounts engaging them in desperation
and hitting on a 6..."
-------------------- End Original Message --------------------
> hits on 4+ and does 1d6/2 (round up) damage (ignore screens). Gunboats
How about does damage like a submunition pack? One less "Damage type" to have
to remember.
+++++++++++++++
+------------+ +----------------+
Oops. I forgot to limit the range to 6". Submunition damage at 6" is too
great for the cost/size of the ship. No fighter should be toughter than
a Mass 2 courier.
-------------------- Begin Original Message --------------------
I should read what I type better. Instead of 1d6/2 round up damage, do
a
single die of "beam" damage ignoring shields, _like_ a submunition pack.
6" range is good, too.
> At 11:09 PM 11/20/97 -0500, you wrote:
Gunboats
> are
to
> have to remember."
+++++++++++++++
+------------+ +----------------+
How do you fit all this neat stuff on this ship? No FTL gives you only 1.5
mass for weapon systems.
-Joseph
> At 11:49 AM 11/20/97 +0000, you wrote:
> From: "Mike Wikan" <mww@n-space.com>
> New system: Gunboat
Nice idea, but I think you may have undervalued it - especially if
you're making it harder to hit than a normal ship of mass 2. I've experimented
with Strikeboats of mass 3, thrust 8 carrying two submunition
packs launched from carriers and costing 18 points - a legal FT
design. A full fleet carrier's worth (12) packs a lot of short-ranged
firepower but, being normal ships, they are easily destroyed by beam
batteries having only one damage point and have no self-defence
capabilities. So, I suspect your gunboat is worth nearer 20 points than 15.
the submunition racks are short ranged variety and the gunboat uses fighter
engines but the greater mass gives a lower speed. Normal
sub-racks have an 18" range while the gunboat sub-racks have a 6"
range. The gunboat is twice as big as a normal fighter in mass, so it would
have the space of, say, a torpedo fighter AND a heavy fighter to play with...
> How do you fit all this neat stuff on this ship? No FTL gives you
> >forward firing energy cannon (as a fighter but may only attack ships
Well, I think Full Thrust should be mutable to cover everything! As far as
Terrain, I've played with Nebula, Planets Asteroids, minefields, Comets, and
Spaceship debris. Many of our games are Carrier Duels with waves of fighters
engaging each other and Starships hanging back and engaging with Heavy Weapons
while Escorts scream in on the flanks. Gunboats are an attempt to make
something
bridging the gap between fighter and escort a "bomber" like a B-1
carrying SRAM loads... The attack fighter is more like an A-10 IMHO
and the Torpedo Fighter is more like a Dauntless in WWII
> Ok, this has been running for a bit.
Ok, this has been running for a bit.
I think Full Thrust should be a big startship/fleet type game.
Fighters should be a generic type thing. This is because one fighter isn't
much compared to a battle cruiser.
If your interested in fighters, then there should be a more detailed level at
which you can play, which on average should
have a similar outcome to the averages at a higher level/scale.
Gunboats sound like something from silent death. Silent death is a nice game,
full of maneuvers and dogfighting. Full thrust is more like broadsides. Not
much terrain in vacuum. Move into range and pound away at the chosen targets.
> On Fri, 21 Nov 1997, Tony Francis wrote:
Actually, it isn't. If you're playing pure vanilla rules, you can't have
an odd mass hull. And techically, you'd need a FTL tender, not a carrier.
> At 10:54 AM 11/24/97 +0200, you wrote:
+++++++++++++++
+------------+ +----------------+
> Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Nov 1997, Tony Francis wrote:
[...]
> > Strikeboats of mass 3, thrust 8 carrying two submunition
Er, where does it explicitly say that you can't have odd mass hulls?
I've not seen it. However, FT does give clear formulae for deriving
point cost and payload space from hull size - Ok, they don't give
integer results for odd mass hulls, but they do give results.
The rules as written imply that a mass 3 in-system ship would have
2.25 points of space (ie 75% of 3) available for systems. Since there aren't
any systems with mass <1 that's effectively 2.
(actually, I think MT adds some systems which use a%age of mass, which could
also give fractional results)
> And techically, you'd need a FTL tender, not a carrier.
Only if using FT alone. If you're using MT, you can carry them internally.
TWIMC, I made a mistake in the initial transmissions about gunboats
that may have colored this discussion somewhat. My error was to
presume that the gunboat was a ship, in truth the gunboat that was submitted
is a form of large fighter. The word gunboat brings to my mind the USS Eire
class, about the size of a large destroyer, armored, 4 6" guns. I still
consider the concept to be overgunned and underpriced. Bye for now,
> From: "Alun Thomas" <alun.thomas@cbis.com>
<snip>
> Er, where does it explicitly say that you can't have odd mass hulls ?
Good, I'm glad it's not just me that thinks it's legal. The hull size table on
P.29 of FT mentions odd sized hulls (eg cruisers are mass 19
to 36, not 20 to 36) the implication being that odd-sized hulls are
allowed.
> Tony Francis wrote:
> Good, I'm glad it's not just me that thinks it's legal. The hull size
To All, I have just added a small number of Kra'Vak escorts to Brian Bells web
page, I was feeling in an 'odd' mode when I did the designs.
One could make the same statement for the thrust values. Escorts buy in groups
of four, cruisers in twos. (Some escorts are shown with thrust 6.)
How about the escort genaric hull, it has 10 damage boxes, this infers that
the destroyer can go to mass 19 or 20.
Just stray random brain debris.
> On Mon, 24 Nov 1997, Alun Thomas wrote:
> Er, where does it explicitly say that you can't have odd mass hulls ?
Hmmm... you are correct. It isn't explicitly stated.
> I've not seen it. However, FT does give clear formulae for deriving
Exactly. The correct roundings are never defined. As most ships (that you are
going to build in a game) are FTL capable military hulls, the rounding
question is the often tricky case of exactly 0.5.
- If 0.5 is rounded down, you have nothing to gain by adding one mass to
an even mass ship
- If 0.5 is rounded up, it opens up a vista of optimizations. To wit,
you should *never* build an even mass ship, because a ship with one mass point
less has the exact same stats (bar mass itself) but costs less
Either way, one choice is ruled out. I prefer to rule it out explicitly,
not as yet another "that newbie was stupid enough to take a book design to a
competition" feature.
> (actually, I think MT adds some systems which use a %age of mass,
I've always rounded those up to the nearest integer. Even though FT/MT
yet again fails to give a rounding method.
-------------------- Begin Original Message --------------------
Message text written by INTERNET:FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
"Exactly. The correct roundings are never defined. As most ships (that you are
going to build in a game) are FTL capable military hulls, the rounding
question is the often tricky case of exactly 0.5.
- If 0.5 is rounded down, you have nothing to gain by adding one mass to
an even mass ship
- If 0.5 is rounded up, it opens up a vista of optimizations. To wit,
you should *never* build an even mass ship, because a ship with one mass point
less has the exact same stats (bar mass itself) but costs less"
-------------------- End Original Message --------------------
I prefer to give an extra damage box but not system space for odd mass hulls.
This explains why all the standard hull ships are even masses. But does not
prohibt them.
Jon, please address this in the FT3 and the Fleet Book.
I couldn't agree more with what David said below. I love the kind of
Napoleonic Sea Battle Feel to the game; SuperHeavy Dreadnoughts exchanging
broadsides and all that kind of thing. Sure, a realistic (!) 21st century
space combat game might well be fighter oriented, but I still don't use them
as much as some people.
The fact is that they're just too good; and being fed up with my dreadnoughts
being taken out by swarms of heavy and torpedo fighters I have resorted to
having a small fleet of frigates with 2 ADAF systems each; this seems to do
the trick!
Tip for the Day: Broadside of Pulse Torpedo Launchers
> Ok, this has been running for a bit.
Re the issue of fighters vs large ship battles:
I have been playing FT with the star wars micro machines for some time. We
tried to come up with ships that seemed to behave like they do in the
movies. As such, we have treated the 'fighters' (x-wings, ties etc) as
small escorts. In the movies, they dont opperate in squadrons, but in pairs or
triplets, and although they cant destroy the bigger ships (except death stars)
they can harrass them and protect the larger ships of the fleet.
> Todd Mason wrote:
Todd, I must differ with you on that one, the chatter on the radio clearly
indicated that the orginization was section, flight, and
squadron. The perspective of the movie was such that the heros
section got all the air time (no big surprise there). All the other sections
of skywalkers squadron were pretty much gone when Luke made the big attack.
Bye for now,
> I must differ with you on that one, the chatter on the radio
Indeed, the formations were present, but they appear to function individually
or in pairs. In the same way that ww2 destroyers etc may be
grouped into squadrons/ flotillas. The star wars 'fighters' (at least
the rebels) behave as significant components of the fleet.
And, as you point out, thge hereos need to get a significant proportion of
'air time'.