Full Thrust: Cross Dimensions is out
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~laranzu/fullthrust/rules/
FT: Cross Dimensions is a variant produced with the much appreciated
permission of GZG Games.
It brings together the core and advanced rules from the first three books,
many of the newer rules in FB2 and the UNSC, and some new ideas for y'all to
fold, bend, and mutilate in one convenient volume.
Being one book should also make it much easier to introduce FT to new players.
Available in A4 and US page sizes. I know the A4 works, but if there are any
glitches in the US letter version, please let me know.
cheers,
Hugh Fisher? Hugh Fisher? Now, where did I see that name before?
I've got it! He was doing that Remixed ruleset that I was supposed to give him
feedback abou... *whimper*
Well, I've printed out several copies of Cross Dimensions and there's been a
small outcry to have Full Thrust again at the store tonight. SOMEBODY will
have a look at them!
The_Beast
Hugh Fisher wrote on 04/08/2009 08:26:36 AM:
> Full Thrust: Cross Dimensions is out
Funky stuff.
So I could have a swing role torpedo bomber/interceptor with this setup
for 45 points? That's... evil. If I've got the budget I don't know why I'd
ever use any other sort of fighter.
But that's just me... and I think I kinda like that idea.
E (aka Stilt Man)
[quoted original message omitted]
Wow! Top job, and thank you. I haven't had a chance to read your work through
in detail, but the presentation looks very good. As a heavy missile fan, I'm
especially interested in your take on that weapon system.
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e, but I have 1 question.
??? Why are ships now limited to only even Mass over 10?
And have Heavy Missile changed from Long/Med/Short range to standard and
extreme range?? I do like that fact that yours a bit "safer" to fire at
your enemy not dying on a 4+
Why can't the PDS guns be used against enemy ships?? we have been using
something very similar for our games with your rule for ADFC..? and it has
worked well.
> Nice, but I have 1 question.
I've always thought the free B1/PDS/armour grade you can get
by going from even to odd mass is a bit of a munchkinism. The Fleet Book ships
have even masses, so I regard this rule as correcting a minor oversight in the
original.
> And have Heavy Missile changed from Long/Med/Short range to standard
"I will ask the question - two questions!"
As far as I'm concerned, yes :-) Heavy missiles seem to be
a gap in the rules that lots of people have tried to fill.
> Why can't the PDS guns be used against enemy ships? we have been
OK, in my opinion FT already has a dual purpose point
defence/anti ship weapon, the beam-1. PDS can't shoot
at ships for the same reason that interceptor fighters can't.
(And if PDS can shoot at ships, then why don't screens work against them?...)
If you disagree, that's what the First Rule is for.
Thanks for the interest.
cheers,
> Hugh Fisher wrote:
> >Nice, but I have 1 question.
Depends entirely on *which* even to odd Mass step you're looking at.
Eg.,
for many ships (particularly Thrust-4, FTL-capable ones), the FB1/FB2
design rules usually cause the step from TMF N4 to N5 to *lose* you 1-2
Mass worth of armament, hull or armour instead...
Also, this example from p.41:
> Thus the smallest possible FTL-drive ship is actually a mass 3 scout or
> courier boat, that will use 1 mass for hull integrity, 1 mass for FTL
isn't entirely correct, due to the order of multiplication and rounding
when you determine the size of engines and screens, the TMF-3 ship can
get
thrust-*9* from its single-mass Main Drive (3*0.45 = 1.35, which rounds
down to 1).
> The Fleet Book ships have even masses,
The *FB1* ships all have even masses. Not all of the FB*2* ships do, though.
Regards,
> Stilt Man wrote:
> Funky stuff.
> for 45 points? That's... evil. If I've got the budget I don't know
Being unable to change roles on the fly takes most of the evility out of
it, though... you get to launch them as (extremely expensive) interceptors
*or* as torpedo bombers, but if you want to use them in the other role you'll
need to recover them on a carrier for rearming. Very useful in a campaign with
reasonably explicit supply rules; not quite so useful in a
single battle.
Regards,
> From: Oerjan Ariander <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se>
> Stilt Man wrote:
> Being unable to change roles on the fly takes most of the evility out
interceptors
> *or* as torpedo bombers, but if you want to use them in the other role
> campaign with reasonably explicit supply rules; not quite so useful in
Well, it'd depend a lot on how much intelligence you had about your
enemy. You could pre-design scenarios for just about any of it, but in
my old very-limited-intel, fixed-budget games where you didn't know
whether you were going to be fighting against carriers, battleships, or
whatever the other guy felt like customizing up, swing-role fighters
would have been absolutely awesome. In our old games, our safest bet was to
have a first wave of fighters to establish superiority and a second wave to do
the bombing run. The first wave had to be either interceptors or some sort of
regular fighters, spending too much on them was usually pointless because they
always died in droves and were of minimal shipkilling capability, and it was a
dilemma whether to risk bringing interceptors that would be useless if your
opponent had no carriers. The second wave pretty much had to be torpedo
bombers, because they were the only thing that could effectively hurt ships
without needing to overwhelm their point defense, and even at that it helped
tremendously to have plasma bolts or missiles to distract PDS or else even
that might not go so well.
Now higher-quality fighters can blur the line between the two waves or,
if you just fielded a whole flotilla of the above, eliminate them. You could
go into a fight, send a scout with scanners up ahead to determine what you
were up against, and if you ran into no carriers, you just launch them all as
torpedo bombers right away. If you ran into fighter opposition, you launch
some or all of them as interceptors, or send ahead a somewhat cheaper
superiority fighter in a first wave that could
later be recovered and re-armed as attack fighters, and have a higher
quality multi-role "ultra-evil" bomber in reserve as a second wave that
could either mop up any incoming fighters the rest of the way as either
interceptors or as heavy fighters depending on how much you needed to kill
versus how much you wanted to preserve the second wave for later bombing runs,
or just launch them as bombers straight away for the
ship-killing attack.
i.e. no longer is your fighter embarkment based on taking a guess on what you
need altogether, you can just decide you're going to budget a certain amount
on your fighters and what capabilities you want them to
be able to do. A true high-quality fighter force can answer to
different needs with good effectiveness and not be caught in a
paper-rock-scissors guessing game where you have to guess which fighters
you want to embark. Something other than the overwhelming
quantity-over-quality methods of the Sopi and their bubble pods and
basestars pouring maximum fighters for minimum ship cost into the fray would
actually be viable regardless of what your opponent was doing. It's more
interesting, more fun, and more believable (if that even applies to a sci fi
wargame) that quality fighters could be more flexible.
Good stuff, Hugh.
> Eric Foley wrote:
> >Being unable to change roles on the fly takes most of the evility out
interceptors
> >*or* as torpedo bombers, but if you want to use them in the other
(The text below is snipped for brevity rather than clarity, but I think I
managed to keep the most important bits. The original post should be available
from the list archives, wherever they are located at the moment.)
> [...] In our old games, our safest bet was to have a first wave of
> pretty much had to be torpedo bombers, [...]
Oh, I fully agree that the swing-role types greatly reduce the risk of
bringing the wrong fighter mix. I just don't think that they're any more
evil than a *correctly-guessed* mix of single-role fighters, due to
three compensating drawbacks:
1) High cost. While a swing-role Int/TB group only costs ~10% more than
a
single-role TB group (once you include the cost of the fighter bay and
its
supporting hull, engines etc., ie. an extra 40-45 pts or so per group
in
the NPV system), it is nearly 50% more expensive than a single-role
Interceptor (or Standard) group - so for any given fighter budget, a
mixed
force of single-role fighters weighted towards the interceptor side can
match the swing-role force interceptor for interceptor-role swinger and
still have a bunch of single-role TB groups left after all the
interceptor-equivalents on both sides have wiped one another out.
Similarly if the enemy only brings cheap interceptors, a screen worth merely
half of your fighter budget is enough to force you to deploy most or all of
your
swing-role fighters as interceptors in order to win the fighter
superiority
with minimal losses to your very expensive swing-role fighters - which
ties in with drawbacks 2 and 3 below.
(Sure, such a mixed fighter force or pure interceptor screen is more risky
to buy than the belt-and-braces swing-role ones, but no more so than it
used to be under the FB rules... in fact, if the option to take
swing-role
fighters makes *you* more inclined to bring fighters to the battle at all,
then *your opponent* also runs less of a risk of wasting points if he
brings single-task interceptors! Isn't the pre-battle guessing game fun?
<g>)
2) Rearming time. Once the fighter superiority battle is won the TB
component of a mixed force of single-role fighters can attack
immediately;
OTOH swing-role Int/TBs that started out as interceptors need to rearm
for the TB role which will take them at least a couple of turns (and probably
more, if their carriers are outside the enemy close-combat ships'
range).
Of course you can keep some swing-role squadrons in reserve and send
them
alone on an anti-shipping strike while the interceptor-roled ones are
rearming, but due to drawback 1 above doing this will leave you with a
rather smaller second wave than if you'd either used a correctly-guessed
mix of single-role fighters or waited for the rearming swing-role
groups. OTOH keeping all your fighters back to send in a consolidated TB wave
later
on leaves your close-combat ships to fend off the enemy's warships for
those extra turns, so either option leaves some part of your forces to
fight unsupported for longer than a correctly-guessed mixed force of
single-role fighter would.
3) Rearming attrition. The fighter rearming rule makes any fighter group
that scores a '1' on its rearming roll unable to re-launch for the
duration
of the battle. Even though your swing-role fighters will probably have
more favourable numbers (and thus take fewer losses) in the fighter
superiority
battle than the interceptor component of a mixed force of single-rolers
would, the rearming attrition means that you'll usually only have a few
extra TB-role groups for the subsequent anti-shipping strike than you
would
with a mix of single-role fighters - and you get those few extra TB-role
groups at the cost of the time delay discussed above.
(Yes, that 1/6 attrition rate for rearming is an optional rule and "if
you don't like it, change it", but it is the fighter rearming rule the
equally optional swing-role fighter rule was written for. If you make
the
fighter rearming rule more lenient, then the cost of swing-role fighters
would need to increase as well to compensate.)
So all in all, I don't see the swing-role option as any more *evil* than
correctly-guessed mixes of single-role fighters. *Different* yes, in
particular much less likely to be total turkeys, but they have a number of
drawbacks to go with their advantages.
> A true high-quality fighter force can answer to different needs with
Not exactly true, as shown above... the swing-role fighters add a
continuous spectrum of intermediate positions between rock, paper and
scissors, but they don't remove the guessing game entirely.
> Something other than the overwhelming quantity-over-quality methods of
Oh, agreed. But this is, at least IMO, something quite different from your
initial response of "I don't know why I'd ever use any other sort of fighter"
which very much implied that you considered them the nuke of a
"rock-paper-scissors-NUKE" game <g>
> Good stuff, Hugh.
x2 :-)
Regards,
> From: Oerjan Ariander <orjan.ariander1@comhem.se>
(more snippage and slight editing to reorder things for response)
> Now higher-quality fighters can blur the line between the two waves
> Oh, I fully agree that the swing-role types greatly reduce the risk of
Quoting this part in summary to set up for later...
> (Sure, such a mixed fighter force or pure interceptor screen is more
> used to be under the FB rules... in fact, if the option to take
Well, theoretically, yes, but this got my opposition burned more often than
not back in the day. Even when I did use fighters, I was never playing the
Sopi Cleansing Fleets that are getting way too fun to pun about with their
Standard Utility Drone (SUD) fighters and Purification missiles launched from
the base stars to sponge away unclean infidels from their dirty homeworlds,
and when I did use them, they were on relatively balanced battlecarriers that
were designed to have several different ways to win on a fixed table, as the
Masters of a Hierarchy
with multiple Slave fleets with more ship-to-ship capability. The
Masters _liked_ having fighter superiority, but even if you guessed
right, and were able to take the fighters away from the Masters they'd
still frequently out-fight you the hard way, and if you guessed wrong
and brought interceptors against the Slaves you got embarrassed. Ditto
guessing Slaves and getting the Masters.
The Masters wouldn't want their Slaves hearing about disastrous battles where
they brought interceptors to a battleship party and got housed, so they would
tend to swing role their fighters to be ready for anything. Conversely, if you
tried to guess and guessed wrong, the Hierarchy would enslave or borg entire
star systems. So ultimately I still think it
would be smarter for either side not to guess -- unless I had firm intel
that I was up against fighters, I'd never bring single-role interceptors
to a table, ever.
> Oh, agreed. But this is, at least IMO, something quite different from
> "rock-paper-scissors-NUKE" game <g>
Well, I _did_ say "if I had the budget" right before that. ;) In real
games, I would possibly give some thought to a slightly more expendible
superiority fighter like Int/Atk (only 33 points) which would be armed
based on the results of early scans, with the hammer wave of Int/TBs
held in reserve until needed one way or the other. If I got
out-fightered with that, the only way they'll beat that is if they're
bringing so many interceptors that I don't care very much what's behind them
because it'll probably get killed by PDS anyway, or if I'm running into the
Sopi, which will probably also have so many fighters destroyed that the
remainder won't have enough shipkilling punch left to get by the PDS either
with any great efficiency. Meanwhile, pure battleships would have a pretty
gross number of attack fighters and torpedo bombers to deal with right off the
bad together with supporting plasma bolts from the same force... I'm okay with
that.:)
Stilt Man/E
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one succeed in down loading the rulebook?
> --- On Wed, 4/8/09, Hugh Fisher <laranzu@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
From: Hugh Fisher <laranzu@ozemail.com.au>
Subject: [GZG] Full Thrust: Cross Dimensions
To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2009, 9:26 AM
Full Thrust: Cross Dimensions is out
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~laranzu/fullthrust/rules/
FT: Cross Dimensions is a variant produced with the much appreciated
permission of GZG Games.
It brings together the core and advanced rules from the first three books,
many of the newer rules in FB2 and the UNSC, and some new ideas for y'all to
fold, bend, and mutilate in one convenient volume.
Being one book should also make it much easier to introduce FT to new players.
Available in A4 and US page sizes. I know the A4 works, but if there are any
glitches in the US letter version, please let me know.
cheers,
Hugh
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> On Apr 17, 2009, at 6:51 PM, Charles Lee wrote:
> Anyone succeed in down loading the rulebook?
Twice.
--
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1951
One at least. I had no difficulty.
I couldn't get the 8.5x11 version to download; the A4 worked fine. I didn't
try very hard though.
Rob
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 5:53 PM, Robert N Bryett <rbryett@gmail.com> wrote:
> One at least. I had no difficulty.