Large mass adjustments, was Re: [FT] F***ters

[quoted original message omitted]

How about dividing the number of systems into the number of hull boxes. Mark
the hull boxes in a similar way to the way DCPs are marked. Then, as damage
reaches the marked box, roll to see if a single system is damaged. If one is,
roll randomly to determine which system is damaged.

-Bri

[quoted original message omitted]

Stilt said:
> I think the whole idea is just whack-a-ding-hoy, frankly. As you

If you go back and read the whole discussion in the archives, you'll see that
if fighter bays are priced as empty space for these purposes, then the price
of fighters will need to be increased to compensate. this seems only
reasonable--can a carrier without fighters take on an equal mass
dreadnought?

> What I would much prefer would be some form of system where any given
damage, and find a way to make the probability about the same across any size
of ship. The trick would be to find the exact probability of a system loss
that would allow a larger ship with more systems to lose those systems at the
same proportion as a smaller ship with fewer systems, without unduly
complicating either the ship design process or the damage assessment phases of
the game.

One way to do that would be vertical damage. You can either take the damage
across (normal) or down (eg reroll damage might apply vertically). You check
for system loss when you finish a row or column. One difficulty is that small
ships often don't have to check for thresholds, they just die. Another
difficulty if figuring out which systems to check for vertical damage.

> Stiltman wrote:

> >The formula Laserlight gave a link to gives reasonable results up to

I thought you didn't consider some more fighters to be a problem? Just
increase your scattergun loadout by some 20% and you should be fine! <G>

Seriously though, fighter bays and the fighters themselves are also
re-priced which makes your calculation a bit incomplete (Noam's web page

gives you the overall idea of the concept, but I'm not sure if it has the
latest set of figures). These revised fighter and bay costs are still in a bit
of flux, but basically the cost of a fighter bay drops to ~1xMass to

reflect its lack of combat power when empty while the cost of an individual
standard fighter is increased to 6-7 pts or thereabouts.

> What I would much prefer would be some form of system where any given

Apart from the "any given hit" bit, you have just described the current
threshold system - as long as each "hit" takes out one full hull row on
the ship it does everything you're asking for <g>

Unfortunately the "any given hit" bit complicates matters enourmously. While
it isn't particularly difficult to figure out the probabilities you *want*, it
is rather difficult to create a game mechanic which *gives* them
at all - and attempts to do it without adding large numbers of die rolls
to the resolution of every single hit scored has so far proved total failures
:-( (It gets even more difficult if you're restricted to using D6s, of
course, since you need at least two dice to create any probability less
than 16.66%...)

> If that could be done, though, that would be a far superior solution to

Amen to that! That's a pretty massive "if" you're asking for, though :-(

Later,

> --- Oerjan Ohlson <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

Has anyone played with the idea of finding a way to apply FMA dice to FT? Just
curious, I haven't myself.

[quoted original message omitted]

> Perhaps what we ought to do for Full Thrust is, when we're putting

When I want to play StarFire, I play StarFire. When I want to play Full
Thrust, I don't want to play StarFire.

Right on brother...

> Perhaps what we ought to do for Full Thrust is, when we're putting

When I want to play StarFire, I play StarFire. When I want to play Full
Thrust, I don't want to play StarFire.

ias

G'day,

> Has anyone played with the idea of finding a way to

Sort of, the Piquet mesh of FT I did uses opposed FMA-like dice rolls
which takes into account crew quality, weapon size and type etc. Not 100% what
you're after and not well tested as yet, but may provide inspiration.

Cheers

I used to play Starfire a (long) while ago...

One of the minor reasons I stopped, is that the Starfire ship display made all
the ship designs seem similar. (note: I did say "seem") Unless it was labled
"destroyer", or somthing, you didn't know what it was...(ie: little ships all
looked alike, medium ships all looked alike, ect...)

Also players were not given any choice of fire arcs.

One thing I did try, was to layout the systems in a grid, on graph paper. The
few games we tried, this had potential. I added system codes for the core
systems. (ie: sensors, power, control) For the placement of the systems, I
used a few simple rules. Engines towards the back, shields near the middle,
weapons near the side they fired out

of. This allowed damage to be "directional". (ie: fore, aft, left,right) To
deturmine the actual row or column hit, we would roll an

properly sized die. Armor was layed out with the same number of armor hits, on
each side.

Donald Hosford

> Imre A. Szabo wrote:

> Perhaps what we ought to do for Full Thrust is, when we're putting

You don't have to utterly destroy something to render it useless. Indeed,
one lucky hit - although not in and of it self fatal - is often enough
to bring a very large machine to a screeching halt. Mass does not provide that
much of a defense when the weapons are of extreme leathality. That is why we
really like the critical systems hits. So far the system does well as far as
the movies and TV show is concerned.

Note that we even roll for Critical systems like any other system on the ship.
Makes tha game very interesting.

> --- Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:

I had not even given any thought to actually trying a FMA system until after I
asked, other than wondering if it could be done, and I'm still a long way from
having any concrete ideas, and I'm not saying it SHOULD be done, but just as a
mental exercize, could you send me said mesh?