I have been a player of sci fi games for quite sometime I just was introduced
to Full Thrust I have a couple of questions if anybody would enlighten me:)
when using the original rules for movement It goes
drift/turn/acceleration
correct?
and if it does then if someone plots revers acceleration do they effect the
drift of THAT turn or is it the next or...something else entirely
why build big ships?? I have been decimating the other players with small 20
and 30 ton vessels armed with SML and ER missles or just loaded with fighter
bays?? at about 100 per ships I get about 8 for every large ship they bring in
so I hit them with either 8 salvos of SML or 16 squadrons of fighters what
gives here is it something we are missing or.....maybe our ships arent
designed well any help would be appreciated
Thanks in advance
Clarence
Is anyone at home yet?
Bye for now,
> On Thu, 05 Nov 1998 20:09:48 -0800, "cgray" writes:
Movement goes as follows:
First, plot your move, 1P+2, 2S-2, whatever. (Cinematic) or whatever
the notation is for vector.
Second, in cinematic, add or subtract the veloctiy change from your current
speed, thats your new speed. The change is immediate and effects this turn.
Then move 1/2 your move, do 1/2 your turn, 1/2 move, 1/2 turn.
For vector again, the orders effect this turns movement. It doesn't mater if
you apply them at the beginning, middle, or end, as you end up in the same
place. The only thing that might matter is if you have things like mines,
planets, etc to avoid. Then its a house rules istuation.
> and if it does then if someone plots revers acceleration do
That turn. If velocity were 6 from previous turn and they
plot -2 this turn, then the ship moves 4 this turn.
Movement acceleration/decceleration orders are applied the
turn they are plotted and before moving the ship.
> why build big ships ?? I have been decimating the other
IMO Sticking fighters on a non captial sized ship is against the spirit of the
fighter bay design rules. None of the FB ships do this.
SML/R's thats legitimate.
They aren't countering your swarm tactics.
They need to evade the
SML wave - after which point you have nothing else.
They need an escort screen and better point defence, and some aegis cruisers
and fighters of their own.
Others far more enlightened than myself will analyze your statements. However:
***when using the original rules for movement It goes
drift/turn/acceleration
correct?
***
Do you mean, move the ship, turn it, move again, add acceleration to speed?
Then, no, the acceleration plotted is applied to the whole new movement. I'm
assuming you are using JUST the Fleet Book, so I'm sure there are a few other
issues you may have missed, but this alone would make your opponents far more
predictable in movement, and easier to tag with salvo missles and fighters.
What are they using for initial speed?
Also, your opposition may be as poor at rolling PDS against, and you at
rolling on target for, as I and my FSE partner are, respectively, concerning
SM's.
Gawd, doncha love a tortured sentence structure? ;->= Least, I use a
fair amount of punctuation!
The reason the Red Scorpions have an escort cruiser in a unit so small is that
no other fleet commander would take such an unlucky ship. Getting an SDN blown
up! REALLY!
I have no doubt that others will have comments on just how you probably
constructed your ships, (a few example ship designs would have helped) but I'm
assuming that even a few mid-sized escorts would do well at sweeping
away what must be snowflake craft.
The_Beast
> cgray wrote:
> when using the original rules for movement It goes
As I understand it, here are examples:
At beginning of turn, speed is 8 (Thrust 4)
Orders are: Accel 2, Left 2. (ie +2 L2).
Speed is now 8+2=10.
So turn left 30' at beginning, move 5", turn another 30' then move another 5".
At beginning of Turn, speed is 10. Thrust is now 2, fue to some damage.
Orders are: Decel 1, Right 1 (ie -1,R1)
Speed is now 10-1=9.
So move forward 4.5", then turn 30', then move another 4.5".
> why build big ships ?? I have been decimating the other players with
1. Wave Guns. They clear away the dross.
2. If you're not into such sillinesses, then try a balanced fleet. One with a
core of SDNs, and then a number of corvettes. With some judicious
manoeuvering, that salvo of 6 SMRs will target the closest ship, a mass 6
corvette rather than a mass 160 SDN.
[quoted original message omitted]
> On Thu, 5 Nov 1998, cgray wrote:
> why build big ships ?? I have been decimating the other players with
i think this is an SM issue, not a ship-size issue. the SM has, i
believe, proven to be a bit of a bugbear. for novices, they are vastly more
powerful than any other weapon system; once you get some experience against
them, and talk to people who have played against the, you figure
out how to beat them - move fast to make his aiming harder, jink like
crazy, fit plenty of PDS and ADFC and surround your capitals with expendable
sponge corvettes to be the "nearest target".
however, they do still take a lot more work to deal with than good old beams
and torps. i'm not sure they were a balanced addition to the FB. but then,
what do i know?
> at about 100 per ships I get about 8 for every large ship
well, the size of the ships doesn't affect the amount of firepower you get
- you may get eight times as many ships, but he gets eight times more
stuff per ship. also bear in mind that his ADFC will be more effective, as
putting one on every ship will only need one-eighth as many.
Tom
> cgray wrote:
> I have been a player of sci fi games for quite sometime I just was
But of course! Welcome here, BTW - it seems more and more of the
Starfire list drifts over here too <g>
> when using the original rules for movement It goes
Um. The "drift/turn/acceleration" description sounds very much like the
(optional and fairly recently introduced) Vector movement system, but isn't
entirely correct. You "drift" first, but the turns and accelerations can be
mixed up.
In the original movement rules (at least from FT2 onwards, I don't have
FT1 <g>) - ie, those called Cinematic nowadays - you calculate your
speed
for the current turn (by adding the accel/decel for this turn to your
speed from the previous turn), then turn 1/2 - move 1/2 - turn 1/2 -
move
1/2. There's no "drifting" step in Cinematic.
> and if it does then if someone plots revers acceleration do they
In Vector, plotting reverse acceleration is handled just as any other
acceleration - drift first, then move in the direction you accelerate.
In Cinematic, reverse thrust means your speed this turn
> why build big ships ?? I have been decimating the other players with
Ah, the classic one-shot missile swarm strikes again :-) Small ships
have
a distinct disadvantage in non-missile firefights... it's the same
problem as in Starfire - once your enemy learns how to deal with your
fighters, you'd better have something more than just carriers to fight with.
Same when your magazines run dry after that first salvo.
And, just as in Starfire, you shouldn't use big ships *only* unless your enemy
does the same <g>
> at about 100 per ships I get about 8 for every large ship
I do hope you mean the other way around - a fighter bay is 9 Mass, an
SMR/ER is 5... BTW, the cheapest possible fighter carrier costs 63 pts
per squadron (including the cost of the fighters) - but it is *very*
slow and blows up as soon as someone breathes on it, so unless its fighters
manage to wipe the enemy out those carriers are rather dead :-)
If you manage to hit with all your SM salvoes, it sounds as if your opponents
don't try to evade at all (or fly very slow ships, making them unable to
evade). There's a suggestion in the SM rules that if you use
Vector movement, the SM engagement radius be only 3mu - that suggestion
is there for a very good reason, and your opponents should insist on that if
you use Vector. If you're using Cinematic movement, OTOH, you should
insist on the full 6mu! :-)
> what gives here is it something we are missing or.....maybe our
I suspect your opponent's ships and/or tactics aren't entirely optimized
for fighting a missile/fighter swarm, but it is a little difficult to
tell without knowing what they use and how they fight :-/
Later,
In a message dated 99-02-04 13:58:29 EST, you write:
<< But of course! Welcome here, BTW - it seems more and more of the
Starfire list drifts over here too <g> >> The reson for that, I think, is that
Starfire started out like full thrust, but then it got more compicated (I'm
seeing this in Fleetbook, altho I could not put my finger on why I did not
like using those rules at first I think that this is why, it is not about a
game being simple it is about being able
to play a game with out looking at a rule book to fire a class-3) and
the people who liked the game for its elegance looked else ware and found the
best starship combat game ever: Full Thrust. You might also want to check out
Starmada
-Stephen
the prob with the small ships ( i'm assuming ave, weak hulls) is that just a
little damage will really ruin its day. For an extreme my Cloaking SDN has 4
FCS and 20 class 2 beams. That means it can take out approx 4 snowflakes a
turn. And if timed right the cloak negates the SML strike. (The fighters hang
around so tend to give a little more trouble since 6 pds is a tad low for a
SDN)
Since you like fighters and SML's you might want to keep you small SML/R
ships and add some heavy to battle cruiser size ships with SML's and either
beams or
p-torp backup.
Since one of my regular opponents is fighter crazy (has a cyclon fighter base,
and enough fighter models to fully equip it 300 fighters!!) i tend to go a
little over on the PDS, ADFC so you need to experiment to the level of your
opposition.
As a tactic note try running the fleet down one/both sides of you oppo
and use
the 180 angle of the launchers to blunt his nose when/if they turn
towards the fleet. And if they dont you genrally have a nice shot at the tail
of the fleet.
Hope it helps Graeme
> Thomas Anderson wrote:
> however, they do still take a lot more work to deal with than good old
but
> then, what do i know?
Considering the snipped remarks, apparently a great deal.
Re the conclusion, it's no accident that at CANCON-99, there was exactly
one ESU fleet, a few NACs (which did very well) and the balance NSL. All
of the "non-GZG model" fleets, including my own, were NSL. None were
FSU, not one.
Being fair, 2 of the NSL Attack fleets had Waldenburg-Ms in them (mine
had 7), but although I scored 1.00 with my defence and patrol fleets, my
attack fleet scored.000. Basically, too many ADAFs ( 20 or so was the usual,
fleet size 2750 pts) and too many banzai jammers.
Of course in the "Convoy Escort" scenarios, both as attackers and defenders,
the SMLs came into their own. The enemy was channelled by the victory
conditions into a certain part of space. Either they had to run the gauntlet
and take the lumps, or put themselves in a tactically disadvantageous
position.
Summary: not unbalanced, just a new set of problems for everyone to deal
with. The New Improved Pulse Torps OTOH _seem_ to be significantly more
effective than type 3 beams of equal value, despite doing approximately the
same damage on average. The reason seems to be the higher likelyhood of
multiple thresholds under torpedo fire. But the problem, if it even exists, is
relatively minor.
(I _LIKE_ this game!!)
> On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Alan E & Carmel J Brain wrote:
> Thomas Anderson wrote:
fair enough. i get the impression ADFC/PDS provides much more effective
area-defence than the old ADAF.
> Summary: not unbalanced, just a new set of problems for everyone to
i appreciate this now; the fact that SMs require a different defensive
approach to beams/torps is not a bad thing; it's a good thing - it means
one shp / fleet / tactic will never work for all enemies.
> (I _LIKE_ this game!!)
me too! every time i think i've seen a flaw, i look again and either it's been
fixed or i realise my assumptions were wrong. still, it's been in development
since 1973, no?
Tom
> Thomas Anderson wrote:
> fair enough. i get the impression ADFC/PDS provides much more
Concur.
> i appreciate this now; the fact that SMs require a different defensive
Agree completely.