> John Atkinson wrote:
> Not entirely true in the case of Langston Fields (Alderson drive,
D'oh! Yes, Langston field. Thanks.
I was careful to say "better represented" rather than "perfectly." There's
always the tradeoff that the more you tailor FT rules to fit one setting, the
less they fit any other. I prefer the more generic approach myself.
> Standard Langston fields can dissipate energy, although unless you
I didn't see anything in the first book or the short story "Face of the Enemy"
that suggested only a single system could be damaged at a time. If you hit the
Langston field hard enough, either with beams or missiles, there's a brief
burn through. That hits the ship, but there's no more control over the effect
than with normal weapon fire. It might blow out an empty compartment, might
hit the bridge. And while it helps to concentrate your fire on a particular
point, there doesn't seem to be any reason why different ships firing at
different points on the Langston field can't both burn through.
To me, the existing FT layered armour would work well enough. A big ship that
concentrates lots of beam fire on the layered armour will be more likely to
get through and inflict actual hull damage than a lot of little ships. Give
the ships weak hulls and lots of armour, and they'll stand up well until the
"field" runs out, then die.
> Expanding Langston fields dissipate energy much more quickly and are
No argument from me, FT doesn't work for this without modification.
cheers,
> TomB wrote:
The two battles unfold completely differently.
First version: the enemy ship hits Enterprise with 10 beam dice. If the
Enterprise (TOS) is a heavy cruiser, say 6 or 7 boxes per hull row, say two
levels of standard screen, on average or just above it gets thresholded.
"Damage report!" "Shields are down! Primary phaser bank offline!"
OK, what happens next? The Enterprise tries to get the shields and phasers
back on line by making repair rolls. If the enemy ship hasn't been equally
damaged or destroyed, next turn it might get even nastier.
Second version: 1D6 is either a corvette trailing the Enterprise, or some
really big beam is being fired at maximum range.
Ping! Ping! "Captain, if we allow the enemy to continue firing for long
enough, it is highly probable that they will eventually determine the correct
phaser frequency to penetrate our shields."
So yes, if the Enterprise doesn't actually DO anything about it, after ten
turns (50 to 100 minutes later):
"Captain, the enemy from part 1 last week is still firing
and my readings indicate-"
BLAM!
"-that they are about to discover the correct frequency."
"Shields are down! Primary phaser bank offline!" "It seems you were right, Mr
Spock. Adjust the shield phasing by 30 microbabbles. That should keep them
occupied for the rest of this episode." Ping! Ping!
...
Even if it isn't statistically accurate, I don't see a problem.
cheers,
On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 4:13 AM, Hugh Fisher <laranzu@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> I was careful to say "better represented" rather than "perfectly."
No arguments philosophically. My point is that my mental map of how to
approach that is to find the rules way to perfectly represent that universe in
Full Thrust rules, then do the minimum modification necessary to ensure a
decent game.
> I didn't see anything in the first book or the short story "Face of
I'm going from memory, but the discussion in Mote seemed to indicate to me
that the lasers were for (relatively) slowly dumping energy into the enemy's
field, but that the nuclear missles would dump a lot of energy at once and had
a much higher chance of burn through. I could be in error.
> To me, the existing FT layered armour would work well enough. A big
Yup, close enough for government work.
This is my understanding; the book never actually comes out and says it, but
the scene where Lenin destroys MacArthur seems to indicate this. However, this
wasn't a typical battle. MacArthur used the
motie-developed expanding Field, so even when the field overloaded
there was a hulk left (rather than the ship vaporizing). Its field lasted far
longer than it should have.
http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0671741926/0671741926.htm
In the battle (cut from the prologue) which I linked above, things moved much
faster and less predictably. John's correct that lasers
don't normally cause burn-through; I'd also point out that Defiant had
trouble targeting MacArthur at all, let alone keeping the beam over a
burn-through. Lasers were mostly used to intercept missiles. The goal
is threefold: pump energy into the enemy's Field, cause burn-throughs
to hurt the ship itself, and finally eliminate the sensor masts that are
extended through the field to direct weapons fire.
Once the Defiant was on the brink of a field collapse, MacArthur's lasers
seemed to have been used to keep it there without further expenditure of
consumables. Lasers might also be useful against a defeated ship precisely
because they minimize the chance of
burn-through. The story points out that most ships on the brink of a
Field collapse are still in mostly good shape, all things considered.
I'd agree with John's interpretation of using a minimal number of hull boxes,
and a large number of slowly regenerating "Langston Field" boxes that no
weapon can bypass, plus a chance of a "critical" with
each shot (or each torpedo hit). The reason I like John's one-system
only rule isn't that a burn-through *couldn't* theoretically hurt more
than one system, it's just that burn-throughs in all the source
fiction almost never do as much damage as a threshold check. One or
zero systems down per burn-through is about right.
On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 5:38 PM, John Atkinson <johnmatkinson@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I'm going from memory, but the discussion in Mote seemed to indicate