Ok, so with the feedback from Laserlight, here's an updated proposal:
REVISED MISSILE RULES PROPOSAL Same Goals as before:)
Definitions: A ÂSalvo is all of the missiles from a single launcher. A
ÂVolley is all of the salvos of a single type from a single ship directed
at a single target.
We represent a Volley with a SM marker with the number of missiles on the
marker represents the number of SALVOES in the Volley, and the die represents
the number of missiles in the last Salvo.
Using Salvo Missiles Standard salvo missiles have a either 4 or 6 Endurance
Factors (subject to testing). Each EF allows the SMs to travel 6MU. This
represents their powered attack envelope. They also have a terminal attack
range of decreasing effectiveness. They are targeted against a specific target
ship/station/facility/installation, not an area of space.
1) After ships have moved, any ship that has loaded SM launchers or Racks may
launch SMs at targets. One FCS must be used to for each SM target. (Advanced
Option: FCS used to launch SMs may not be used against a different target
during the Direct Fire Phase, only the same target as the SMs.)
2) Place volley markers for launch. Each launch platform places one volley
marker for each target representing all of the salvoes fired at that target by
that launch platform. E.g. Ship A fires 3 salvoes at Target B and 1 salvo at
Target C. Place a single 3-salvo Volley counter against Target B and a
single
1-salvo Volley against Target C.
If the SMs expend all of their EF and have not reached their target, place the
Volley counter at the end of its powerd flight along a straight line from the
launch platform to the Target. If the Target is within range of the SMs by
expending EF, then place the Volley counter directly against the target along
a straight line from the launch platform to the Target. For each unexpended EF
that the SMs retain they may either (launching player's choice): adjust the
direction from which the missiles attack by up to 30 degrees OR receive 1
"terminal attack point" for evasive maneuvers against PD fire. E.g. if the SMs
have 2 EF left upon reaching their target, then the Volley can either a)
adjust the direction of the attack by 60 degrees b) receive 2 Terminal Attck
Points or c) adjust the direction of attack by 30 degrees and receive 1
Terminal Attack Point
3) Perform anti-missile and point defense fire as normal. Note that in
some cases the direction of the attack will affect which PD or other weapon
systems can bear on a particular Volley. All PD and anti missile fire is
alloted against Volleys, not individual salvoes, so the amount of overkill may
be reduced compared to FB1 rules. For each "Terminal Attack Point" that the
Volley has, the effectiveness of PD
and ant-missile fire is reduced. For weapons that score their PD/AM
rolls as beam dice, treat the number of TA Points as the level of screens that
the
Volley has. For weapons that score their PD/AM rolls as straight die
scores, reduce the score by a number of points equal to the number of TA
Points that
the Volley has. For weapons that roll to-hit for their PD/AM rolls,
increase
the score required to-hit by 1 for each TA point.
4) When it comes time for the Volley to attack their target, roll one die for
each missile remaining in the Volley. This roll represets a combination of the
missile's guidance quality and all of the non-PD/AM tricks that the
target does to try and spoof, decoy, distract, or mislead the missile into
generating a miss. For Volleys attacking within their Endurance Range, each
missile
successfully attacks the target on a score of 2+. For Volleys attacking
outside their Endurance Range, add +1 to the To-Hit number for each full
MU between the target and the Volley. E.g. missiles in a volley placed at the
limit of its Endurance Range measures 0.5MU to its target will have to roll a
2+ To-Hit, while one measuring 2.5MU to the target will need to roll a
4+ to
successfully attack the target.
7) For each missile that hits, roll and apply damage as per FB1.
STEALTH, ECM, AND FCS So far, the description has assumed that the target and
missiles all have Standard ECM, Stealth, and FCS (missile guidance) as
described in my post of:
http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200509/msg00077.html
However, this SM proposal is perfectly capable of being used with differing
levels of Stealth, ECM, and Guidance as follows:
* For each level of Stealth Hull and/or ECM the target has above
Standard
(Level 3), increase the missile's to-hit target number by 1 (more
difficult to
hit).
* For each level of Stealth Hull and/or ECM the target has below
Standard
(Level 3), decrease the missile's to-hit target number by 1 (easier to
hit).
* For each level of Guidance the SMs have above Standard (Level 3), decrease
the missile's to-hit target number by 2 (easier to hit).
* For each level of Guidance the SMs have below Standard (Level 3), increase
the missile's to-hit target number by 2 (more difficult to hit).
* For each enemy ship within 1MU of the target and/or 1MU of the
missile's flight path with an active ECM system equal to or greater in Quality
to the
missile's Guidance, increase the To-Hit target number by 1 (more
difficult to
hit).
EXTENDED RANGE MISSILES
The following rules REPLACE the rules for ER-SMs from FB1.
SMs are available with longer ranges than the Standard missiles described
above. These missiles have a smaller warhead in excahage for their longer
range.
* Extended Range SMs (ER-SM)can move 9MU per EF expended, but do 1d3
damage when they hit.
* Long Range SMs (LR-SM) can move 12MU per EF expended, but do only 1
point of damage when they hit. SMs are also available with larger warheads in
exchange for shorter range.
* Heavy Warhead SMs (Hvy-SM) can move 4MU per EF expended, but do 2d6
damage.
* Extra Heavy Warhead SMs (XHvy-SMs) move 3MU per EF and do 3d6 damage.
Each of these types of missiles takes up the same amount of magazine space as
standard SMs.
J
Hi
These rules just seem to make missiles a no brainier.
As soon as the enemy moves within 30" you salvo all your missiles. These all
move to the target and then they hit on a 2+ after defensive fire.
Because these weapons fire after ship movement they work like plasma torpedos
that can be shot down. (except they have better to hit scores at long ranges)
These weapons look very complicated. If you don't want the guess mechanism of
ordnance in FT then just use direct fire weapons.
If you want a composite weapon come up with something like "Rocket launcher".
This could have range bands like a plasma torpedo and roll to hit taking into
account ECM instead of shields. The rockets could then do 2d6 damage and the
defender could then use PDF to try and stop the rockets.
I can't see how your weapon proposal won't simply become the best direct
fire weapon in the game.
How has your playtesting gone with say a Richthofen class battleship,against a
Roma class battlship? In a quick simulation here's what it looks like happens.
The 2 ships close (the FSE ship is the same speed and the NSE has overlapping
front arc weapons). Inside 30" the FSE ship fires 2 salvoes into one volley at
the
target. There are 12 missiles, each has only used 5 points of endurance so
PDF suffers a -1 DRM. The PDF kills 2 missiles and another 2 miss on a
2+.
The NSE ship takes 8D6 damage, average 28 points.and loses 3 rows of hull
boxes. In return the NSE ship inflicts 4 points of damage with it's beam 3
weapons.
At this point the NSE ship is crippled most of its systems are offline and the
most difficult decision the FSE ship has is weather to use another missile
salvo from close range or close and kill the enemy ship with beam fire.
If this is how you want to play why would you not jsut pack ships full of
missiles and antimissile systems.
I'd certainly like to use these rules with anti matter torpedos.
> From: john tailby
<snip>
> These weapons look very complicated.
Is it just me, or do these two sentences really not got together?
I haven't tried this variation yet but I have tried similar, and there's
really not a problem. Missiles *should* be target seekers; if you want
something where you just toss it out there and hope something wanders within
range, that's more like mines.
You do have to adjust the PDS rules but you have to do that anyway, due to the
Great Fighter Imbalance Problem (which we won't rehash here). So
in your example, the NSL ship doesn't waste its anti-ship fire on the
FSE ship; instead it shoots down more missiles.
[quoted original message omitted]
While not having followed all ins and outs of fighter and missile discussions,
I think John's idea on moving some before and some after ships' movement is
interesting in addressing giving flexibility but not an automatic hit. I'm
piping up just 'cause I thought it was neat, and I'm
curious if it was considered in any of the fighter or missile discussions so
far. Since they aren't plotted, it wouldn't be a big time sink to do it
twice.
> From: john tailby
Okay, that makes more sense.
> If you want to make the missiles more seeking then why not let them
Why bother? Is there a reason for them not to be direct fire?
> If you play with ships moving slowly say 6mu / turn in cinematic then
Well, yeah, if the target is that slow the missiles will hit 100% of the time.
> If...[snip] you have to guess the course of the enemy ship.
But in cinematic, ship courses can vary wildly, particularly if you're using
reasonably high thrust ships and high speeds.
> Its also how homing torpedos work. You have to get your torpedo
Which is exactly how salvo missiles DON'T work at present. No matter how close
you are, you have to guess right; if you do, you hit, if not, you miss, and
the enemy has to chance to evade unless he guesses when you're going to
launch. With the revised version, if you get close, you can hit; if you launch
from farther away, he has a chance to evade.
> If your PSB has missiles achieving relativistic speeds or their own
Neither of these are necessary.
> From: john tailby
I'm disagreeing with you based on the fact that I have *actually used* similar
rules from the Playtest List and (given the chances to PDS etc which were also
proposed) salvo missiles were no problem. I and my usual opponent both said
the SMs felt more like the way missiles ought to feel and they were not
overpowering. And that was without using ECM, which would further weaken SM.
To be fair, I did discover a munchkinable aspect of the rules but it didn't
apply to SM.
Chris wrote on 06/21/2006 08:29:01 AM:
> >From: john tailby
I figured you understood the first time; I know I did, and you can sound a
bit sarcastic, even unintentionally. Not that you're the king... ;->=
> >If you want to make the missiles more seeking then why
I thought the whole idea was something other than direct fire, but that is
tricky when detaching from the movement system.
> >If you play with ships moving slowly say 6mu / turn in
Showing it getting tricky. 'Reasonably' is in the eye of the beholder. 6 MU
speeds cause me to spit my coffee out at first reading, but 24-32 MU
will cause me to do the same. Remember, the original movement examples were
10-12. That said, I did notice the FB description of Vector includes one
example of 6 MU. ;->=
What were the velocities in the playtesting you did?
> >Its also how homing torpedos work. You have to get your torpedo
Have to give this point to John; how you place the SM marker is 'getting it
into engagement range'. Not getting your SHIP into engagement range, which is
important as well, but only in staging to the former. Ok, not exactly like
homing torpedoes, but similar to other deployable submunitions.
> >If your PSB has missiles achieving relativistic speeds or
More to the point, this is the tail waging the dog; plenty of rules don't fit
with the published background. If necessary, we adjust the background, or drop
the whole thing, when we play.
Your reasons of playability, fun, balance, variety ALWAYS trump.
The_Beast
> From: Doug Evans
You probably didn't have a high school graduation with all the relatives
visiting, the all night grad party, and all the clean up. I'm going to plead a
severe caffeine deficiency.
> and you can sound a bit sarcastic, even unintentionally.
moi???
> I thought the whole idea was something other than direct fire
I thought the whole idea was to get something which feels like a missile,
which IMHO salvo missiles as written do not.
> What were the velocities in the playtesting you did?
Don't recall, probably 10 at start and approaching 20 by end. We sometimes get
to 25 or so, but usually not.
> Have to give this point to John; how you place the SM marker is
Um, I read John's para as meaning that your job was to get the SHIP close
enough that the target didn't have time to detect the launch and evade.
John said:
> >If your PSB has missiles achieving relativistic speeds or
What I proposed was a move distance of 18mu, which is fairly common for ships
and fighters. I don't see why a missile shouldn't be capable of it. I concur
that 30mu might be a bit much; if you recall, when I suggested that, I implied
that shooting targets at the edge of your envelope would mean you'd used up
most of your delta vee and make you
more likely to miss--and that would make it a lot like PTorps.
It's neat, but unbalances the salvo missiles in the wrong direction.
An FT3 game was played here in Albany and a salvo missile only fleet crushed a
standard beam and direct fire weapons armed fleet without difficulty.
Quoting Rich Oden: For whatever it's worth, I tried another game with the
FT3 PD/missile changes recently. Still seeing the
same problem, missiles have jumped in effectiveness to the point where a
dedicated missile fleet (I ran against a custom one for playtesting) is just
stupidly powerful. I deliberately ran mobs of ~30 Mass escort
hulls, all with Thrust-6 and decent Beam and PDS
arrays (which should be fair-to-good versus missiles),
and he still mashed me flat in no time at all, and that without even using
fighters for ordnance synergy.
Jon
> Andy Skinner wrote:
> a big time sink to do it twice.
> It's neat, but unbalances the salvo missiles in the wrong direction.
Using the rules from St Jon's post to the test list about a week before ECC?
I've had half a dozen games using IF ships with the usual SMRs and
we just didn't see that at all--see my Test List AAR from, oh, March
10th or so for example.
Caveat1: I don't recall trying an all-missile fleet after finding the
ash-Shaulahs-with-HMRs approach.
Caveat2: we may have tweaked the PDS rules from what JonT originally proposed.
> >If you want to make the missiles more seeking then why
> I thought the whole idea was something other than direct fire, but
All our games are played cinematic movement and most peoples ships more
12-18mu, typically around thrust 4.
We have had people that have had missile heavy fleets but these were mostly
the heavy missiles rather than Salvos. People quickly had to learn that they
needed an effective anti missile doctrine to counter this tactic.
> >Its also how homing torpedos work. You have to get your torpedo
Why would range of engagement with a missile affect it's chance of a hit? I
can see situations where missiles have a harder chance locking on up close
than they do at a distance. Missile chance to hit would likely be a function
of sensor lock from parent ship - ECM with distance a neutral factor.
> Have to give this point to John; how you place the SM marker is
Exactly what I meant. When attacking with deployable ordnance its the
placement of the weapon relative to the target that is important. what the
launching ship does after launch is less relevant. I'd expect that the
launching ship will begin an escape turn in case the enemy has similar
capabilities.
What feel do you want with your missiles? If you use a couple of 20 century
models as examples. If you want the game to feel like 20C naval warfare then
your missile speed
/ engagement envelope needs to be much larger than the speed of the
ships. Missiles lauched today are thousands of times faster than the speed of
a
warship and may well act more like direct fire weapons. So you could have
the missiles placed on the target and then hit n a 2+ modifed by ECM and
then targetable by anti ship weapons.
If you use air-air combat or submarine combat as your model then you
have a situation where the missiles are not that much faster than their
target. Is this case you need to predict where your target is going and get
your missile into that area so that your target runs into it's terminal
envelope.
> Your reasons of playability, fun, balance, variety ALWAYS trump.
There really are only 4 weapon types in the game. Weapons that use the beam
mechanism. Weapons that use the torpedo mechanism (pulse torps and K guns for
example) Weapons that use the missile place ordnance counter mechansim
Fighters.
For additional variety my gaming group invented seeking missiles that can burn
endurance after the ship moves. These cost 2 mass have 3 endurance and do 1d6
damage. We also invented rockets, these hit like pulse torpedos, modified by
the ECM level do 2D6 damage and can be stopped by PDS fire. This is the
missile system for people that can't guess.
> laserlight@verizon.net wrote:
Correct
> For additional variety my gaming group invented seeking missiles that
> We also invented rockets, these hit like pulse torpedos, modified by
What's the group response been? How many times have y'all tried them?
JonD said:
> An FT3 game was played here in Albany and a salvo missile only fleet
Ah, well, back to the drawing boad...
JohnT said:
> We also invented rockets, these hit like pulse torpedos, modified by
I said:
> What's the group response been? How many times have y'all tried them?
I should clarify--"Hey, I'd be interested in trying that and passing it
along to the Test List". I don't like the "Hits as PTorp" mechanism
simply because it doesnt sound to me like a seeking weapon--but if you
said "Locks on target on a 2+ out to 24mu, with DRM -1 per 2mu after",
or something along those lines, I could go for that.
I normally stay out of the FT design discussions because I simply don't get to
play FT very often. Like, maybe once a year (twice this year at the ECC!). The
various discussions on missiles have me thinking though.
One camp appears to want to do SRMs as a "select your target; roll some
dice with modifiers for ECM/Range/whatever, apply defenses (PDS) and
then score hits" system.
The other camp appears to want to place missile markers down, and have the
player guess/estimate where the target ship is going to be, and hope
that some target ship (not necessarily the intended target) moves to within
the effect range of the missiles, and gets attacked.
Given that for most weapon systems, you move your SHIP into position to
have an enemy within firing arc and then roll dice to hit/damage a
target, why does the player having to additionally guess where the target will
be as he drops a missile salvo onto the table make any sense? If the player
was a gunnery officer, wouldn't he also have to do more to fire his beam
weapons? Like lead the target? The direct fire weapons are ALL abstracted into
a die roll resolution. Why are *homing missiles* harder
to use?
Also, there is the fact that they are PSB'd as HOMING missiles. Missiles today
can be directed at a specific target, and for the most part, don't
zip off and hit something that's kind of nearby if the target happens to
move. They *home* on the target that they are directed towards.
I agree with the folks (sorry, I don't remember who) that stated that current
Salvo Missiles do seem more like mines.
I think that ECM, Range and PDS should be major factors in how many missiles
lock on and how many get through, but it seems to me that if you have homing
missiles, you should not have to guess where the enemy is going and drop them
onto the table in the hopes that he'll essentially run into their target
envelope.
I'll go back to DS now...:)
Thanks!
J
John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University
> On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 laserlight@verizon.net wrote:
> JohnT said:
> John Tailby wrote:
> Why would range of engagement with a missile affect it's chance of a
In reality, you mean? The longer the missile has to fly to reach its target
the more time the target's ECM has to break its target lock and/or
simply outmanoeuvre the missile; and the farther away the the missile's parent
ship is from the target, the greater the time lag on its sensor returns
becomes and the less up-to-date the targetting data the parent ship can
send to the missile will be. Distance is far from neutral for missile
engagements.
> What feel do you want with your missiles?
Er... if you used a little less hyperbole and shaved a zero or two off from
that "thousands", your example would probably be more convincing.
A missile "thousands of times faster" than the warship it is targetting
would fly at speeds of Mach 50+ (at sea level, since that's where most
of
today's warships tend to be located). Not even solid anti-tank
projectiles can fly that fast without melting within a fraction of a second...
Actual anti-ship missile speeds today are generally in the Mach 0.5 - 3
range; the fastest Russian supersonic ship-killers might go up to Mach
5,
but that's *really* extreme.
IOW, typical missiles today fly 10-50 times faster than the ships they
are
targetting. Still a big difference compared to the anti-air situation
where
missiles could even be *slower* than their would-be targets on occasion,
but the gap to direct-fire weapons is even larger.
Regards,
John L weighs in:
> I think that ECM, Range and PDS should be major factors in how many
So we'd have direct fire weapons, the defense to which is distance (and
perhaps ideally a combination of small cross section and high agility to
induce misses); and missiles, the defense to which is point defenses (and
ideally ECM, to induce misses). And perhaps mines, the defense to which is
avoiding their area.
> JKL wrote:
> Given that for most weapon systems, you move your SHIP into position to
> have an enemy within firing arc and then roll dice to hit/damage a
You're thinking of *anti-tank* homing missiles, which typically are
locked
on to their target before they ever leave the launch tube - and which
are launched at such short ranges (a few miles at most) that the target
doesn't have time to move very far while the missile is in the air.
FT's salvo missiles are more akin to many of the long-ranged *anti-ship*
homing missiles in service today, which can fly quite far (eg., the latest
versions of our RBS15 anti-ship missile has an unclassified range of
"over 120 miles") and usually don't turn on their target seekers until they
get to the general area where the target is supposed to be located. If the
target has moved outside the missile's sensor footprint by the time the
missile gets to the supposed target area, well...
(FWIW "smart" - ie., target-seeking - anti-tank artillery rounds like
STRIX, SADARM or BONUS have similar problems with long flight times and
limited seeker footprints.)
> Also, there is the fact that they are PSB'd as HOMING missiles.
Missiles
> today can be directed at a specific target, and for the most part,
Again you're describing *anti-tank* missiles. Short ranges, no time
lags,
no line-of-sight issues. They might miss, but they don't veer off to
attack some *other* target than they're supposed to... because they are never
allowed to select their own target.
The problem with *anti-ship* missiles (and target-seeking anti-tank
artillery rounds too, for that matter) is that they tend to be launched
against targets beyond the horizon. If you can't see the target, you
*can't* direct your missile towards it -instead you have to equip the
missile itself with powerful enough sensors that it will be able to find
and attack the target on its own. Unfortunately today's navies have a lot of
tricks to play on incoming missiles, including the US Navy's "Banzai Jammer"
tactic where the frigates of a CVBG deliberately try to make themselves look
like carriers in order to draw the missiles onto themselves and away from the
real carrier.
In space there's (usually) no horizon to block your line of sight, so if
your missiles carry enough on-board fuel you'll be able to guide them to
the *general* area of the target. ('Course, that "if" might not be entirely
trivial...) However, instead of the horizon you start to get significant
time lags in the communication between the launching ship and the missile,
so the missile still needs good enough target seekers - and enough
autonomy
- to find the target on its own.
Trouble is, as soon as the missile has *any autonomy at all* wrt target
selection it also runs a risk of attacking some other target than its parent
ship intended...
Later,
Oerjan said:
> In space there's (usually) no horizon to block your line of sight, so
I rarely hear anyone suggesting that a mu is more than 1000km (although there
are many who feel it should be less), so assuming you're on a
100mu table, you have less than a second of speed-of-light delay. And
you don't generally don't have a horizon. I don't mind a banzai jammer having
a chance to seduce a missile away from its main target; what I object to is
launching a missile and finding out that the target zigged and the missile
stupidly kept running to where the target *used to be*. I f the target sees
the missile coming, jinks away, and the missile runs
out of fuel trying to catch it, that's okay--although I'd allow the
missile to re-target if there was something in range, or perhaps to cut
thrust and drift a while, ready to reactivate if its parent ship calls it
again.
I have to agree here. While OA, as usual, is insightful and incredibly up on
technology, I have to disagree with this being *that* close to
anti-ship Earthside.
The "over the horizon" piece doesn't map. There is no horizon in space.
And further, for the most part, there is nothing to hide behind (think
horizon, not asteroids or planets!). Thus, the missiles in FT would never be
at a target that the firer hasn't "seen". Granted that "seen" is "detected by
sensor". The missiles are not fired "blind" into an area, but should be able
to be directed towards a ship or task force. If they
are fired blind (beyond sensor range), then the "drop them into an area and
hope something comes into their firing envelope" method makes more sense.
<shrug>
J
John K. Lerchey Assistant Director for Incident Response Information Security
Office Carnegie Mellon University
> On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 laserlight@verizon.net wrote:
> Oerjan said:
And you don't generally don't have a horizon. I don't mind a banzai jammer
having a chance to seduce a missile away from its main target; what I object
to is launching a missile and finding out that the target zigged and the
missile stupidly kept running to where the target *used to be*. I f the target
sees the missile coming, jinks away, and the
missile runs out of fuel trying to catch it, that's okay--although I'd
allow the missile to re-target if there was something in range, or
perhaps to cut thrust and drift a while, ready to reactivate if its parent
ship calls it again.
> _______________________________________________
*comes out of lurk status*
> From: Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@telia.com>
> In space there's (usually) no horizon to block your line of sight, so
> Trouble is, as soon as the missile has *any autonomy at all* wrt target
> selection it also runs a risk of attacking some other target than its
This is an excellent explanation of what we're trying to model within
the game as compared to real life anti-ship missiles. Unfortunately, it
just flat out doesn't work for the FT model of missiles. The real life
missiles you're describing are far longer ranged than the direct fire weapons
mounted by the same vessels, and cannot be guided by the firing
vessel -- if they're guided by anything other than autonomous computers,
it will be by external scouts such as recon planes or satellites.
In the case of FT, the missile ranges are dramatically shorter than the beam
weaponry that the firing vessels have readily available. So quite
independently of whether it makes for a balanced game, the PSB doesn't sell in
this case as to why the firing vessels can't use the same beam technology that
goes into their weapons to simply laser guide their missiles and other solid
projectile weapons to their targets.
> John K Lerchey wrote:
> Also, there is the fact that they are PSB'd as HOMING missiles.
As a Naval Combat Systems Designer, who has dealt with a variety of missiles
and homing torpedos, I must disagree.
For most of such a weapon's lifetime after firing, it merely goes to a
pre-planned point, whereupon it activates its homing mechanism, and
starts looking for a target that matches its pre-programmed parameters.
Usually these are pretty simple, as the more selective they are, the more
likely it is that smart decoys will look more attractive than a heavily
stealthed and jammin target.
In a high EW environment, with decoys and such like, it's by no means certain
that the missile or torpdeo will home in on the intended target.
Example: Atlantic Conveyor - a missile was decoyed from the Illustrious
(IIRC) and found another target - in 1983.
Anti-aircraft missiles are usually "homing all the way", but the longer
range ones can't be. For example, the Standard SM-2 fired from the AEGIS
cruisers flies under autopilot, the cruiser's radar then guiding it in in the
last few seconds. This way one radar can control a large number of missiles in
flight, each one only takes a few seconds of the radar's "attention" instead
of a minute or more.
Wire-guided torpedos, whose speed is comparable to that of their targets
(less than double) are steered by the launching submarine to *approximately*
the target's location, whereupon they go "active" and
self-home. The wire then is usually cut, as the weapon requires all the
speed and agility it can get to hit a manouvering target. But at close range,
with plenty of wire and lots of fuel, they can be manually
Zoe said:
> For most of such a weapon's lifetime after firing, it merely goes to a
Will that necessarily be the case when there are no horizons? Even if a
launching ship can't keep a laser focused tightly enough to burn its target,
isn't there a pretty good chance it could designate the target for a missile?
I think we shold also unpack this into two separate issues. Should homing
missiles be guaranteed to the right general area (assuming they have fuel, of
course)? Once they arrive in the neighborhood, should they be guaranteed to
get to the right target?
I think they answer for #1 should be "yes"--if the target does P2+2
instead of the S1-3 that I was expecting, the missile should still home
in to the right area(either on its own or under the launching ship's
guidance).
For #2, I don't mind if a banzai jammer spoofs or seduces the
missile--although I'd rather have it be based on a ECM/ECCM rolloff
instead of a simple "which one is closest", so a tramp freighter isn't
as good at it as a first-line escort/EW frigate, and so that frigate
still has a chance even if it's on the wrong side of the target.
On 6/23/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> <gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 08:55:43 -0500 (CDT)
> Will that necessarily be the case when there are no horizons?
For every PSB there is a counter-PSB: Couldn't you say ships have a
laser-absorbing coating that absorbs the energy from a targeting laser
and stores the energy in batteries? Beams, etc. might cook away this coating,
but the coating is good enough to make targeting lasers a thing of the past.
Or, if that PSB isn't to your liking: if screens can make it harder to hit
with beams, presumably screens also make targeting lasers less useful.
This is one reason game rules tend to stick with a single universe instead of
being generic. You can simply handwave weapon system irregularities as "this
is how they work in the myverse universe". It's when you go generic that you
have to deal with all these,
"such-and-such a system doesn't work the way I want it to for universe
Y" complaints.
> laserlight@verizon.net wrote:
Ah, but then there may be all sorts of PSB about spatial distortion due to
manuover drives being present, etc etc.
Me, I like to have an "optional rule" that states that any time two ships
exist, where neither have an activated manouver drive nearby, and where the
target is civilian (without ecm etc), then any beam shot has
unlimited range, always hits, and always rolls a 6. Add +4 to succeeding
die rolls.
This never actually happens of course.
The game mechanics can be assumed to have lots of PSB factors built in to
them. Otherwise how can beams miss, and how can they not do immense damage
when they hit? I assume that a turn of firing consists of multiple shots, some
of which miss due to spatial distortion or decoys or whatever PSB you choose.
The point is - the game's the thing. We have "borrowed" concepts from
[quoted original message omitted]
On 6/25/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 21:00:21 -0700
> I just don't buy either of these.
Fine. I just made it up off the top of my head. It wasn't intended to be
convincing. My point is that any argument based on PSB is silly
because it can be counter-argued with more PSB.
I'm more interested in a fun game than one that's "realistic", when the topic
is interstellar spaceships a couple of hundred years in the future played on a
2D board and "cinematic" movement.
I realize some folks are unable to suspend their disbelief unless the PSB is
at least marginally reasonable. If the only thing stopping a fun rule from
being used is PSB, though, I'm more willing to work on the PSB than on
stripping the rule from the game.
That's not to say I like the salvo missiles as they are. I haven't played FT
enough in the last few years to have any opinion either way. I haven't been to
a game convention in almost 6 years, and I've lost some interest in FT while
waiting for FT3 to gel.
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lMy recommendation
to you is, if you don't like the mechanic, don't use Salvo Missiles. If you
want a direct fire weapon use one of the direct fire mechanics and call it a
missile. The reason SMs use the mechanic they do is because they are extremely
powerful. If you can hit with them every time you can win every time. What's
the fun in that.
Personally I don't need an ECM race, the fighter/PDS race is bad enough.
I also like the fact that you have to severely outguess your opponent to make
them work. It's a challange.
Roger
> On 6/25/06, Eric Foley <stiltman@teleport.com> wrote:
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lHell, screw the
guesswork altogether. If we're given infinite space, and logically we are, the
best combat doctrine for deep space combat under FT ultimately becomes to
build a fleet of ships that are designed to never drop below 100 MU, that
sport long enough ranged weaponry to basically point and
laugh at all the slowpokes with their B-3s and short ranged placed
weapons. With enough of a mixture of fighters (largely for system defense
against slower moving enemies if you can't interdict them in deep space) and
stupidly large beams to resolve a variety of threats, there really would be
nothing an opponent could do about it but respond in kind. Yes, it'll take
twelve weeks to resolve actual combat at any scale, but when the future of
your civilization is at stake, who cares? You're not winning quickly, but
you're not losing, either. If infinite patience means you win every single
battle against anything that doesn't respond in kind, guess what? If that's my
home planet on the line, I'll take infinite patience over gameplay fun any day
of the stellar week.
At some point, Oerjan is right... flying at really stupidly high speeds just
makes too much sense for the ability to practically ignore
basically all of the most instant-death weapons in the game. If we
don't assume that fighters can build up this kind of thrust, they become
useless, and the placed weaponry becomes useless in any case. That doesn't
make for a game that I like either, which is why I usually play on a fixed
living room floor at relatively low speeds and let a bit of strategic judgment
with fairly good intelligence on where the enemy's going to go and a bunch of
dice rolling resolve the battles regardless of the scale of the fleets. The
problem is, FT ultimately has no mechanics other than player interest in
quicker games and table space to stop us from flying around like gnats on
crack and hurling insults at each other from the next planetary orbit.
E
[quoted original message omitted]
> From: Roger Books
That is what we've been suggesting....
> Personally I don't need an ECM race, the fighter/PDS race is bad
"My recommendation to you is, if you don't like the mechanic, don't use"
ECM/ECCM. <big grin!>
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOh, I play ECM and
like it. I just don't want a race mechanic.
So what is the latest on the fighter front? I like the concept, having
several mega-carriers in my fleet. They never see the table because
it feels too much like munchkinism.
Roger
> On 6/26/06, laserlight@verizon.net <laserlight@verizon.net> wrote:
Roger Books said:
> So what is the latest on the fighter front?
The general concept, when last we saw, is that anti-ship weapons will be
able to fire (with reduced chance to hit) on fighters, missiles, etc. The
devil is in the details, as always, but I think most of those who initially
opposed the idea (including me) have been persuaded that that's the way to go.
> The general concept, when last we saw, is that anti-ship weapons will
The
> devil is in the details, as always, but I think most of those who
Addendum: of course, if St Jon doesn't like it, then we pitch it out and try
again...
> The general concept, when last we saw, is that anti-ship weapons will
The
> devil is in the details, as always, but I think most of those who
Does not the effectiveness of carriers and ordnance carriers depend on the
kind of deployment and initial velocity you use?
In our campaigns we have 2 types of game. In our real space engagements we
play on a rolling table and initial deployment distances are ~70MU apart
with a maximum initial velocity of 10mu. We also have hyperspace engagements.
In these, the table is a 48mu diameter circle. Fleets enter during the
movement phase of the first turn with their initial velocity set between 1 and
10 and proceed straight ahead. Ships enter from the edge of the playing area
with a random placement. With a mixture of hyperspace and realspace
engagements to design ships for you can't just consider one set of scenarios.
Tactics are also substantially different.
Hyperspace games are very different from normal games and are often to quote
B5 "a disaster for both sides". Also in our games if you want to flee a
hyperspace battle you have to use your FTL to get you out but it has to be
activating the turn you get to the edge of the hyper bubble.
We have found that presenting players with a mix of deployment options this
goes a long way to counter people designing ships with a very extreme
viewpoint. If someone wants to have an all carrier fleet they have to be
prepared for how to get past a hyperspace blockade.
Wow! I go out of town for a week and all the good stuff gets hashed out while
I'm gone:)
I think LaserLight's responses have been close to what I would have said. So
I'll just add a little.
First, keep in mind that this suggestion originally was for the benefit of
Robert Bryett, whose nephews want to use missiles after having read some of
David Weber's HH books. Quite frankly, the existing SM rules do not reflect
ANY popular SciFi or SF setting that I know. Missiles have been shown in
Babylon 5, Andromeda, and the new Battlestar Galactica, and all of them appear
to be either very accurate homing-all-the-way missiles, or have a speed
and
range 10x-100x that of the V of the ships in the battle scene. The FB1
SMs also do not reflect the way missiles are represented in a lot of written
works. While someone may be able to come up with PSB to justify the current
rules, it costs me suspension of disbelief, as well as flexibility to use in
other settings. FWIW, the genericness of FT is, to me, one of its primary
features; the more it shifts to reflect the GZGverse, the more inclined I am
to look for another fystem to play.
> --- laserlight@verizon.net wrote:
> I think we shold also unpack this into two separate issues. Should
I agree.
> For #2, I don't mind if a banzai jammer spoofs or seduces the
I would add the caveat that the "Banzai Jammer" sould have to be specificly
declared to be doing this, and should also suffer in some other way, such as
being more vulnerable to other types of fire. Under the current rules, all
ships are assumed to be in Banzai Jammer mode at all times.
I'll also point out that the suggestion for optional ECM/Stealth/FCS
advanced rules for my suggested SM rules that ships "on the wrong side of the
target" DO
contribute to reducing the SMs to-hit number.
J
Been following this thread for a week now and just wanted to make two general
comments:
- Lots of folk want ECM, jammers, uber homing complicated missles. Its
call Star Fleet Battles, play it. This is Full Thrust.. you the know the beer
and pretzels version that you can sit down and play fast and fun.
- The revised rules (ranges, speeds, etc) don't seem to work well at
LOW SPEED ships of the line slugfests (think Jutland sort of battles). These
are usually the games I play: cinematic, large fleet, SLOW (average velocity
BY END OF GAME (lets say 30 or so turns) is maybe 20 tops). SM as it stands
already works fine in this situation. A single turn volley of lets say 30 SM's
salvo's spread along the entire range of possible enemy fleet movement does
wonders. Think of WWI Torpedo Boat barrages (as I think of SM's).
Not sure I like ANYTHING about the proposed SM changes. They are fine for
optional or local group, but would hate to see it official in FT3.
[quoted original message omitted]
From: "Peter Thoenen"
> - Lots of folk want ECM, jammers, uber homing complicated missles.
Its
> call Star Fleet Battles, play it.
That turns out not to be the case.
The main change we are discussing is "when do missiles launch--before or
after ships move?" That's pretty simple. I don't recall a specific set of ECM
rules being proposed but it need not be complicated. "Each salvo rolls Xd6 for
lock on, reduced by Yd6 for ECM,
where X and Y are 1 / 2 / 3 for basic, enhanced, and superior systems."
> of possible enemy fleet movement does wonders. Think of WWI Torpedo
That's fine, and SM do act pretty much like that, but some of us want the
missiles to behave like, well, missiles. You know, the whole "homing on a
target" thing.
From: "James Hiegel"
> The strength of FT is its generic structure (most new players are
> teach a brand new player how to play in less time that it takes to
I agree--see http://mysite.verizon.net/laserlight/ft_lite.pdf for my
one-page introduction to Full Thrust. However, simplicity can be taken
too
far--you want your game to simulate reality, even if it's just an
imagined reality. If it doesn't do that, you might as well just just flip a
coin to decide who wins instead of going to all the time and trouble to set up
a bad game. (I'm thinking of a Napoleonic naval game whose rules made it well
nigh
impossible to use a line of battle--just the opposite of what you'd
expect).
Hey, don't blame me:)! I asked about MT or Heavy missiles in FT2.5 rather than
Salvo Missiles and *I* don't have a problem with the "placed marker" mechanism
that some listees seem to find so offensive.
I've stayed out of this because most of the debate really seemed to
be about people's tastes in PSB and just how "guaranteed-to-hit-
because-they're-homing" missiles ought to be. Of course I too have
PSB ideas and personal feelings about what is credible and "realistic" in SF
space battles, but I think house rules or "universe" rules are the place to
express those, rather than wanting to change the basic rules of FT because
they don't fit with what happens in Star Warts, Star Drek, Bumblestar
Gargantua etc.
From a gaming point of view in the rules as they stand at present, a
successful attack with a volley of missiles (Salvo or Heavy) can be pretty
crushing, so some balancing feature needs to be present. FT2.5 seems to make
use of the placed marker mechanism to make it more difficult to achieve a hit.
If you want missiles to be perfect homers, something else would be required. I
don't want to fiddle
about with masses of modifiers and IF-THEN conditions for Attack
Points, ECM, endurance, powered vs. coasting flight etc. I'm sure the guys who
come up with this stuff would say that it's all quite easy, but then the
publishers of Attack Vector: Tactical claim *their* game
is fast and simple to play for 12-year-olds...
From: Robert N Bryett
> Of course I too have PSB ideas and personal feelings about what is
Perhaps the distinction is between a generic mechanism ("beam dice") and
a universe-specific name ("phasers" or "blasters" or...). If you agree
that missiles ought to home but don't, then you'll understand that we'd like
to see a generic mechanism for them, regardless of whether it applies to
Moties or Harringtonverse or what. (If someone thinks missile homing is
adequate the way it is, I'm going to assume that person
haven't used them much--sorry).
> pretty crushing, so some balancing feature needs to be present.
Right. What I'd like is to replace the current lock-on roll with some
kind of ECM/ECCM roll, just enough to allow crew/equipment quality to
make a difference. Otherwise missiles are going to lock on to brand new NAC EW
cruisers just as easily as they do to 80 year old PAU tramp freighters, which
seems a bit unlikely.
I pretty much agree with laserlight here. He's said it more eloquently than
I have: they're _missiles_. Missiles have guidance stuff. This
strikes me
as especially strange when we have other solid-projectile weapon
mechanics that can hit more accurately at longer ranges despite the complete
absence
of either guidance or post-firing propulsion. (Namely, just about
everything the Kra'Vak use.)
This is all I'm really interested in either -- we should have a lock-on
roll based on ECM of some sort, perhaps a central guidance for the salvo at
large and then perhaps a second one for how many missiles within the salvo
hit. I'm not saying we shouldn't still allow salvo missiles to just plain
miss. They should, on occasion. I just don't buy that something that's
presented to us as "missiles" should have a "spray and pray" aiming mechanic.
EF
[quoted original message omitted]
Lets just rename Salvo Missiles to Salvo Rockets (its more inline with what
the game mechanic is like), many people like the current SM game mechanic so
we should not necessarily get rid of it.
I played a game last night using laserlight's opposed roll mechanic. I like
it! I just took one of my ship designs with an SM launcher and played them
like fighters (tho you still launch then in the ordinace phase) with an 18"
move and 2 turns of endurance. Then I just counted a PDS on the other ship as
a lvl 1 ECM, then I changed a ADFC on another ship as a lvl 1 Area ECM, but
used the ADFC protection rules. Each level of ECM gave one opposing die roll.
Layered ECM is a pain for
basic missles (1D6-2D6=# of missiles that hit), tho you can still roll
two ones (happend last night).
Tonight I'm gonna try "enhanced" SM, basically increase the cost by 2pts per
mass to give two die to roll against ECM (2D6-ECM=# of missiles that
hit, Max:6). I'll try and remember to take pictures and make a batrep this
time.
> If someone thinks missile homing is adequate the way it is, I'm
ROTFL! Pardon me for existing...
> Right. What I'd like is to replace the current lock-on roll with
*Shrug* Like I said, this is really a PSB taste issue. Suppose the
missiles home passively on the infra-red emissions of the target. The
warship would probably have better decoys etc. but the freighter might have a
much smaller basic signature because of its lower
thrust, smaller crew, lack of power-guzzling weapons and smaller
fusion reactors to power it all. For some good stuff about infra-red
detection and anti-ship "heat seekers":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infra-red_homing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_missile
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Strike_Missile
From a game point of view, I'd make the following comments about these
proposed Revised Salvo Missiles (RSM). In all the various posts, I've lost
track of who precisely advocated what, so I apologise in advance if any of my
comments refer to proposals from someone other than the listee I'm quoting
above.
1. The placed marker mechanism dilutes the effect of missiles in two ways. One
is obviously that if the target zigs instead of zagging, the attack may miss
completely. The second is that the attacker may have to spread the markers for
multiple salvos to cover more than one possible target trajectory. The effect
of both is to give benefit to
high-thrust ships by making them more difficult and expensive to hit,
and conversely to impose risks on choosing low-thrust ships. I don't
think that imposing these sorts of trade-offs is a bad thing.
2. Replacing the placed marker "dilution" with a move-after-the-ships-
guaranteed-successful attack mechanism seems to make RSM a
*decisively* more powerful weapon system than the existing SM. Fine, if that's
what you want in your universe, but make it a house rule. If it's to be part
of FT3 core, I think the RSM may need work for game balance.
3. In an admittedly rough and ready way, the FT2.5 missile system carries with
it the assumption that more manoeuvrable targets should be more difficult to
hit. Unless you're prepared to say that this assumption is false (against all
evidence of history), replacing the placed marker mechanism with an "attack
guaranteed" system for RSMs should provide some other means of reflecting the
target's manoeuvrability. That *could* be achieved with Yet Another Dice
Modifier (YADM), based on a sliding scale of target engine thrust, but I think
I prefer to see ships actually zigzagging on the table,
and captains trying to out-guess their opponents.
4. I must admit up front that I'm not a big fan of ECM rules. Of course
Electronic Warfare (EW) is a big deal in the Real World, but
rules to deal with it in war-games usually seem to be fiddly, with
lots of YADMs to reflect ECM, ECCM, etc. FT2.5's sensor and EW rules have
never worked for me because they're based on the barmy idea that active
sensors should have longer range than passive, when the opposite is true for
radar, sonar, optical systems etc. The
suggestion quoted above that ECM be factored in to the RSM "lock-on"
roll seems a reasonable idea as an *optional* rule for EW fans.
If people are unhappy about the homing missile issue why are not people
picking on the turn sequence that lets two ships fly past each other with a
closest approach 3MU away but not fire until the end of the movement phase
when the enemy is out of arc and or range.
I can imagine that the salvo missiles are pretty small and they don't have the
fuel for the kind of continuous course change that a "homing missile" would
need. Its quite possible that the salvo missiles only carry fuel for the
interception attack and are launched by magnetic acceleration by the
mother ship.
If you want some simple suggestions to make issiles more "homing" allow them
to make endurance burs after ship moves. In case of Salvo missiles reduce the
initial placement range to 24" and allow a 12" move after the enemy fleet has
moved. To balance out the increased chance of a hit reduce the
number of missiles that hit by 1 for each level of EM on the target ship. As
an option allow positive DM to the number of missiles that hit for each level
of improved sensors that the mother ship has.
PDS fire can then take place as normal.
The problem I can see with this is that it makes the ordnance / non
ordnance fleet design more pronounced. If you come up against a fleet with
advanced sensors and you are a low thrust beam fleet with not much ECM then
you get hit very hard.
If the enemy does not use ordnance attacks and you take lots of ordnance
defences then you are at a disadvantage.
FWIW my group allows ordance not making attack runs to be fired upon with
anti ship weapons but with a -2DRM.
We also invented homing variations of the heavy missile that have 3 endurace
but do 1D6 damage They can burn endurance after ships move.
We also invented rockets that hit using the pulse torpedo mechanism and can
then be attacked by the ships PDS before they attack in the missile homing
phase. They are fired in the ordnance phase but use a direct fire mechanism.
This was pimarily introduced to give an ordnance attack to people that can't
guess.
We use robot fighters. These are cheaper than normal but dumb. They must
make any endurance burn moves before ships move.
There are plenty of options for simple rule mechanisms for improving the
accuracy of ordnance weapons if you want to. The risk is that you increase
their effectiveness and force ships to invest in more and more specialised
anti missile defences.
I expect that by now, every playing group is using their own version of the
rules. So all these arguments are in the spirit of whether your group wants to
adopt them or not.
> If people are unhappy about the homing missile issue why are not people
We ARE unhappy about that but haven't found a viable solution (except turn
segments, but when we suggest that, people tend to turn pale, claw at their
eyes, and moaning "No! No! Make it go away! No S F B, please
please please aaaahh!!"-- I guess, based on the reaction, that S F B
must be Sheep Fleet Battles).
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lFunny, phased
actions are pretty simple in Car Wars and Champions.
Roger
> On 6/29/06, laserlight@verizon.net <laserlight@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 29, 2006 at 09:46:16AM -0400, Roger Books wrote:
One man's "pretty simple"...
Car Wars is famously the game that can take an entire evening to play
out a ten-second duel. I know a _lot_ of people who regard detailed
Champions combat as far too hard-core.
What phasing really accomplishes, in effect, is to reduce the distance each
ship moves in a "turn" by redefining a turn (and usually introducing some sort
of "megaturn" so that you can't do the full array of turn activities each
phase). Limiting ship speeds on the board has exactly the same effect, but
it's called "unrealistic"...
R
> >If people are unhappy about the homing missile issue why are not
Agreed, this is always going to be problem artifact of having a
non-segmented turn (which, as Laserlight so eloquently put it above,
we REALLY don't want....). While there seems to be no easy or foolproof way
around it, there was an interesting rule option suggested by discussions on
the test list a while back, along these lines:
In simple terms, if two ships "cross" during a turn in such a away that they
would have been within 6mu of each other at and point of the movement, then
either or both players have the option of declaring "CLOSE PASS" fire; in this
event, the fire is resolved as
if it occurred at 6mu range or less, effectively point-blank fire as
the ships pass each other. This is a rather vague concept, and unfortunately
would be open to severe munchkinism; it could probably
only be made to work in strictly non-competitive games between
friendly and reasonable players! But, the concept is interesting, and if it
can be worded in such a way as to define things tightly enough without it
taking up 17 pages, then it may be worth looking at if only as a very optional
rule!
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lWe routinely do 6
player CW duels in two hours or less. This includes time for mentoring as one
or two newbies are not unusual. It also includes time for fetching beer and
laughing as the individual that plays hovercrafts spins out of control and his
gas engine bursts into flames.
Of course the group battlecry is "WAY OF THE WARRIOR!" and if you take too
long we go "Chaos Marauders" and you move straight with no fire, so dawdling
and not being aggressive are rare.
Roger
> On 6/29/06, Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org> wrote:
Various wrote on 06/29/2006 08:46:16 AM:
> Funny, phased actions are pretty simple in Car Wars and Champions.
Nope, don't find that funny at all. Not amused, or particularly interested.
> >If people are unhappy about the homing missile issue why
You've already broken the movement turn into parts in your mind. I tend to put
the fiddly down to granularity. YMMV, obviously.
In the case of SM's, I already think of them as direct fire weapons, as they
exist for only a single turn, with a somewhat different mechanism.
Unfortunately, they use static MU's in a varying MU movement system. *shrug*
> We ARE unhappy about that but haven't found a viable
I was rather amused with it with the first minigame; quickly got fiddly about
the grain of the hex page. Fortunately, those players on this list who have to
get to picking nits tend to be obsessive with their TOE's instead.
The_Beast
On 6/29/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> <gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 20:12:07 +1200
> If people are unhappy about the homing missile issue why are not
Oh, rest assured that they have been picked on.
I first tried to fix this issue in my Full Steam rules (rules for
Russo-Japanese War battles based on FT). The only way that I could do
it was to change movement such that it was phased.
Now, phased movement _did_ work in that context. It also allowed me to
do away with written orders. I tried two different methods:
METHOD 1 1. Roll for initiative. Winner chooses to move first or second. 2.
1st player moves all of his ships up to half their movement allowance. 3. Both
players choose whether or not to fire. They mark fired ships as having been
activated. 4. 2nd player moves all of his ships up to their full movement. 5.
Both players choose whether or not to fire. They mark fired ships as having
been activated. 6. 1st player moves all of his ships up to half their
movement. 7. Both players choose whether or not to fire. They mark fired ships
as having been activated. 8. Damage control rolls are made.
This method actually works well with written orders, but it is slower than
regular FT.
METHOD 2 1. Roll for initiative. Winner chooses to move first or second.
2. 1st player moves all of his ships up to 1/4 their movement allowance.
3. Both players choose whether or not to fire. They mark fired ships as having
been activated. 4. 2nd player moves all of his ships up to half their full
movement. 5. Both players choose whether or not to fire. They mark fired ships
as having been activated. 6. 1st player moves all of his ships up to half
their movement. 7. Both players choose whether or not to fire. They mark fired
ships as having been activated. 8. 2nd player moves all of his ships up to
half their full movement. 9. Both players choose whether or not to fire. They
mark fired ships as having been activated.
10. 1st player moves all of his ships up to 1/4 their movement
allowance. 11. Both players choose whether or not to fire. They mark fired
ships as having been activated. 12. Damage control rolls are made.
This method doesn't work well with written orders as it is too slow.
Without written orders, you have to completely rewrite the salvo missile
rules. Method 1, therefore, is the only one of the two that
really works for FT. Since I was doing pre-dreadnoughts I didn't have
that problem.
Noam posted a suggested solution to this problem on the playtest list. I have
not tested it.
> If you want some simple suggestions to make issiles more "homing"
allow them
> to make endurance burs after ship moves.
As Jon pointed out, he's working on rules that could fix this problem. Folks
just need to hang tight a little bit.
On 6/29/06, gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
> <gzg-l-request@lists.csua.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 09:41:55 -0500
> Oh, rest assured that they have been picked on.
Just getting the digest means you are always late for the party.
One thing I didn't mention, if phased play floats your boat, go for it. It
will fix the "ships passing" problem. Most players don't like it because it
slows down play. The simple fact is that moving a ship 12 inches at once is
faster than moving a ship 6 inches twice.
Now, there is a natural break point in the cinematic rules: the halfway mark.
You could move all your ships to the halfway mark and then allow a round of
combat. This will be a little bit slower than regular play (you have to read
movement orders twice, unless you have a good memory; you have to drop the
dice and grab the tape measure twice; you have to move activation markers).
This will not fix the problem entirely, it will just reduce the most egregious
aspects of it.
I keep wondering if there is some sort of "empirical" method of determining if
a ship should have been able to fire out of a particular arc when passing. Is
there an easy way of indicating when a target was in the front arc at the
beginning of the turn and the aft arc at the end? Or in the starboard arc at
the beginning of the turn and the port arc at the end? Then you'd have the
problem of deciding range, and what arc was actually passed (port or
starboard? in the first example; fore or aft? in the second example).
It's not an easy problem to fix without slowing things down. The method Jon
mentioned was Noam's, which I alluded to. It's the best compromise anyone has
come up with.