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Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lI was looking at
the IJN playtest rules for the HDC and realised that there was some room for
abuse. Not that I seriously consider the HDC to be broken, only that you
should be careful of accepting challenges for 20,000 point fleets.
What you get for your 20,000 points is a 5600 mass, thrust2, ftl-capable
battlestation with enough HDC-3's around its periphery to cover the
entire 360 degrees by only firing half of them. Simply because I like round
numbers, there is an extra pair so that the spacing is every 2.25 degrees.
Each turn only half are intended to fire, so the centerline of firing weapons
are 4.5 degrees apart. The hull has 1024 damage points and 256 points of
armor. The first threshold check is unlikely to cause the catastrophic chain
reaction of enough HDC's going up to cause the next threshold check. Lots of
armor is pointless against Kra'Vak heavies, but
Kra'Vak score few hits at 24-30 and take gobs of damage closer in.
I assume that both the intention to fire and the direction must be recorded in
the orders phase, or the battlestation is obscenely deadly in the
0-24
range band, as it adjusts the firing angle of weapons for maximum effect.
Every line of bearing can be swept by six HDC's (for 3 degrees out of every
4.5, a seventh can also fire), at the cost of two 15 degree gaps in coverage
(one on each side of the concentration zone [not necessarily adjacent], or a
single thirty degree gap). Opening a 15 degree gap will allow another 15
degree sector to be doubled up. Opening two 15 degree gaps will allow a 15
degree sector between them to be tripled up. With some good guesses, even
pre-plotted firing angles will deliver a world of hurt to an incoming
attack fleet. Surprise! Surprise! This vessel will often spend alot of its
time with its MD not in use to allow for firing in the aft arc
Although a tough nut to crack, it is hardly invulnerable-- especially if
the HDC, as implied by its description, has no effect on PB's (unless they are
netted by the "damages every target" catch-all phrase).
I suppose my question is really "Can you take this out without building
another one?"
I was looking at the IJN playtest rules for the HDC and realised that there
was some room for abuse. Not that I seriously consider the HDC to be broken,
only that you should be careful of accepting challenges for 20,000 point
fleets (strict NPV).
What you get for your 20,000 points is a 5600 mass, thrust2,
ftl-capable battlestation with enough HDC-3's around its periphery to
cover the entire 360 degrees by only firing half of them. Simply because I
like round numbers, there is an extra pair so that the spacing is every 2.25
degrees. Each turn only half are intended to fire, so the centerline of firing
weapons are 4.5 degrees apart. The hull has 1024 damage points and 256 points
of armor. The first threshold check is unlikely to cause the catastrophic
chain reaction of enough HDC's going up to cause the next threshold check.
Lots of armor is pointless against Kra'Vak heavies, but Kra'Vak score few hits
at 24-30 and take gobs of damage closer in.
I assume that both the intention to fire and the direction must be recorded in
the orders phase, or the HDC is obscenely deadly in the
0-24 range band, as it adjusts the firing angle of weapons for maximum
effect. Every line of bearing can be swept by six HDC's (for 3 degrees out of
every 4.5, a seventh can also fire), at the cost of two 15 degree gaps in
coverage (one on each side of the concentration zone
[not necessarily adjacent], or a single thirty degree gap). Opening a
15 degree gap will allow another 15 degree sector to be doubled up. Opening
two 15 degree gaps will allow a 15 degree sector between them
to be tripled up. With some good guesses, even pre-plotted firing
angles will deliver a world of hurt to an incoming attack fleet. Surprise!
Surprise! This vessel will often spend alot of its time with its MD not in use
to allow for firing in the aft arc. I just realised that the overlap is
actually better than predicted, as the battlestation has 80 HDC's for complete
coverage, but only 76 (not the
79 I initially thought) are needed to form a complete circle-- the
angle covered by a single HDC is 2*ArcTan(1/24), my first, incorrect,
approximation of the angle was 2*ArcSin(1/24).
Although a tough nut to crack, it is hardly invulnerable-- especially
if the HDC, as implied by its description, has no effect on PB's
(unless they are netted by the "damages every target" catch-all
phrase).
I suppose my question is really "Can you take this out without building
another one?"
> On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 12:26:00AM -0700, Richard Bell wrote:
Well, the HDC was obviously intended mostly to be used one to a ship,
and I favour CPV costing - though to some extent you could get round the
latter by using sectional ships, probably a good idea anyway at your proposed
size. I think that a lot of the toughness of your design would
be shared by any ship of the same TMF - consider that 3200MASS spent on
beam batteries would give you 66 class-4 single-arc beams per arc, or
177 class-4 six-arc beams for the whole ship!
However, I see two HDC-specific problems: (1) the HDC has no exemption
from the normal rule that a weapon must be mounted facing into a
specific firing arc. (2) _All_ weapons that are fired from a ship that's
also firing an HDC have to make threshold checks. So when your 80-strong
set of HDCs fires, each of them has to make 79 threshold checks for all the
other HDCs firing at the same time, and has about one chance in 1.8 million of
surviving.
I do accept that the phrasing of the rule is not always clear, and I will look
into amending it. Thanks for your feedback.
> On 1/21/07, Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org> wrote:
> However, I see two HDC-specific problems: (1) the HDC has no exemption
The issue I have with problem (1) is that it violates the spirit of the rules.
If I pay for an arc of 180 degrees, but want the weapon to fire from 20
degrees off the starboard bow, through the starboard beam, to twenty degrees
to the port of dead astern, than that is the arc it covers. By the spirit of
the rules, the layout of the six, 60 degree arcs is a suggestion that has the
added benefit of making ships using standard arcs easier to describe. Odd arcs
require more initial
record keeping, but they are perfectly valid-- so long as they are in
multiples of 60 degrees (as appropriate).
My issue with problem (2), is twofold. First, the rules mention that vessels
can have more than one, and that the paragraph that mentions that a vessel can
fire any number of HDC's it mounts, if it mounts more than one, does not imply
any penalty. Secondly, as the multiple HDC's are not firing at each other, nor
does a single HDC require a threshold check from its own firing, it is not
unreasonable to assume that HDC's are immune to the side effects of other
HDC's.
Actually, the rules do not say that other systems take a threshold check, but
that they are damaged, as if they had failed a threshold check, so allowing
multiple HDC's to be fired from the same ship, in the same turn, would be
strongly contraindicated. Yet the wording implies that it is not disasterous,
or even all that bad.
The rule is poorly written, as it does not specify whether the arc blanked out
by the HDC fire is the thirty degree arc of the weapon or the sixty degree arc
centered on the HDC's plotted line of fire.