> Maybe this is in the archives, but why do all weapon systems have the
> Class-1 battery: 3 points
> I'm afraid don't quite see how you can say that "all weapon systems
I meant they all have the same cost per a given mass (i.e. massx3), but the
weapons don't seem equal for a given amount of mass. I guess I'll have to be
more specific in the future.
With vector (at least in my experience), it's a rare day that 2 6-arc
Class-2 batteries are worth the same points as 3 3-arc Class-2
batteries.
> Also, has anyone ever come up with a point cost for the special
> MT and FB1 both say that they cost 6 points per missile...
I noticed the point costs given for MT missiles, but since the EMP missiles
are vastly more potent than nuclear missiles (at least against anything bigger
than a DD) it seems they should have a hirer point cost.
> Remember that PDS shoot down MT missiles on rolls of 4-6 in FB1 (and
> Oerjan Ohlson
On 6-Apr-00 at 14:13, Reen-Shuler Adrian (reen-shuler.a@mellon.com)
wrote:
> I noticed the point costs given for MT missiles, but since the EMP
It's really temporary, those big ships tend to fix things very rapidly
as they have tons of DC parties. Really, 1/6th of the systems broken
on a big ship isn't that much of a problem. I think most of us would prefer
2d6 damage to a threshold check. Heck, I'm leaning towards 1d6 and a needle
attack. Pop the drives on those big boys and they becoming DD fodder.:)
Not all the EMP results are just 1 in 6 chance of system failure. I don't have
the book in front of me, but I think chance of failure may go as high as 50%.
Granted the missile only has a 1 in 6 chance of causing that result, but
still, it's bad news.
On 6-Apr-00 at 16:03, Reen-Shuler Adrian (reen-shuler.a@mellon.com)
wrote:
> Not all the EMP results are just 1 in 6 chance of system failure. I
The EMP missile causes a threshold check. If you use it on uninjured
ships it has a 1/6 chance of thresholding it. You can get a 50% chance
by hitting a ship that has 3 damage tracks gone, but usually by that point the
ship is a mission kill and not worth wasting a missile on.
Time for some descriptive statistics of the kind The Beast abhors <g> again:
> Reen-Shuler Adrian wrote:
[BTW - if you write your reply below the text you're replying to, and
snip irrelevant parts like most of the header of the replied-to post,
your posts will be a lot easier to read...]
> Not all the EMP results are just 1 in 6 chance of system failure. I
If the EMP missile makes it past the target's point defence, it rolls
1d6 - (target's screen level):
1-2 No damage
3-4 Check for every system on board: 5+ to damage
5-6 Check for every system on board: 6+ to damage
IOW:
If the target has no screens, it will lose on average 28% (5/18) of its
systems.
If it has level-1 screens, it will lose on average 19% (7/36) of its
systems.
If it has level-2 screens, it will lose on average 11% (1/9) of its
systems.
The case you describe is the level-1 screen target.
As Roger says, capital ships usually have enough DCPs to repair any critical
systems downed by the EMP pulse PDQ, unless you can follow the
EMP strike up immediately with other (ie, non-missile) weapons. And I
mean *immediately* - ie, the same turn.
OK, if you fight NSL-style ships (very slow = can't dodge at all, and
no screens) the EMP missile might be worth as much as 6.5 or even 7 points...
Regards,
I think it is quite simple:
Our leader--Jon Tuffley--simply likes all his ship things in
threes...8-D!
Donald Hosford
> Reen-Shuler Adrian wrote:
> >>Maybe this is in the archives, but why do all weapon systems have
(stuff snipped)
> Adrian
> Reen-Shuler Adrian <reen-shuler.a@mellon.com> wrote:
[Much easier to see what you're commenting with this format. Thanks!]
> I'm afraid don't quite see how you can say that "all weapon systems
Quite a different thing, that is :-/
> I guess I'll have to be more specific in the future.
Yes please. English isn't my first language, so I sometimes have a tendency to
interpret what people write literally (just ask Laserlight
about that...) :-/
> With vector (at least in my experience), it's a rare day that 2
That's mainly because the weapons are balanced for the standard (ie,
Cinematic) movement rules rather than the very optional Vector rules. The two
systems have rather different balance requirements; *all*
multi-arc weapons are somewhat overmassed in Vector due to the relative
ease of keeping the enemy in the fire arcs of your choice.
> Also, has anyone ever come up with a point cost for the special
Please define "vastly more potent" somewhat more exactly, since it is a very
vague expression and we seem to put rather different meanings into it. To try
to show what I want to know, here's an example with a couple of attached
questions:
A missile (EMP or nuke) hits a previously undamaged ship of a particular
design (published in FB1, BTW). If the missile carries a nuclear warhead, it
will on average knock out 14% of the target's systems through standard
threshold checks (and inflict quite a bit of armour and hull damage as well,
usually starting on the 2nd row of hull boxes), while an EMP warhead would
knock out on average 19% of the systems but leave the armour and hull
undamaged.
1) Which of the two missiles would you consider to be "more potent" against
this ship design? Would you consider that missile to be "vastly more potent"
than the other?
2) Roughly how big would you think the "particular design" in question is to
get the above results (on average 14% of the systems knocked down by one
nuclear MT missile, 19% by an EMP missile)?
Curious,
> On 10-Apr-00 at 12:00, Oerjan Ohlson (oerjan.ohlson@telia.com) wrote:
Stastics pop quiz.:)
> Roger Books wrote:
> 2) Roughly how big would you think the "particular design" in
<g> If I had wanted to start a pop quiz, I would've asked for the exact
design I'm thinking of - though the above data isn't enough to
determine that, since there are two ships in FB1 which satisfies it :-7
Later,
> On 10-Apr-00 at 15:27, Oerjan Ohlson (oerjan.ohlson@telia.com) wrote:
Only two with the same hull+armour that meet your requirements? I would
have expected more.
I am a bit surpised though about how you pull a 19% for an EMP missile, you
have to assume a distribution of ships with varying levels of shields. Even if
you use only fleetbook ships nobody is going to choose exactly one of each.
> Roger Books wrote:
> Stastics pop quiz. :)
Only two which fit both the percentages, yes :-)
> I am a bit surpised though about how you pull a 19% for an EMP
19% (OK, 19.444444....%) is the average percentage of systems knocked out by
an EMP hit against one specific screen level. I've already posted which one
<g>
Regards,
> On 10-Apr-00 at 23:29, Oerjan Ohlson (oerjan.ohlson@telia.com) wrote:
I'm not fishing boss. It is pretty obvious to anyone who has had a statistics
class (or gamed enough to know how to deal with dice)
that you are talking one level of shields. (1/3 chance of a 1/3 chance
of a failure + 1/6 chance of a 1/2 chance of a failure).
> On 10-Apr-00 at 23:29, Oerjan Ohlson (oerjan.ohlson@telia.com) wrote:
I'm not fishing for answers, the fact that this is one shield is fairly
obvious to anyone who has had a statistics class or gamed enough to need to
understand statistics.
I'd work through the other one but my rules are at home. That is a fairly
obvious (chance of getting the threshold)*(chance of thresholding a system).
You are rolling two dice for damage.
I personally think the winner in the MT systems is the needle torp. Not only
do I get a d6 damage but I have a significant chance of toasting an important
system. (I like my opponents to be thrust 3 or less.:)
> That's mainly because the weapons are balanced for
Then has anyone come up with a suggested revised point cost for Vector ships?
Or just a revised mass cost for arcs?
I find it interesting you view the Vector rules as "very optional". I loved it
when they came out, they give the game a very "spacey" (as in outer space, not
empty headed) feel, that had previously only been imparted by the miniatures
we played with.
Ships in the cinematic rules always seemed more like armed speedboats than
spaceships.
Is vector going to become "official" and standard at any point?
> A missile (EMP or nuke) hits a previously undamaged
your quite correct, vs. ships with less than 30 or so DP the nuclear missles
are going to be more effective.
I was really speaking vs. large SD's (200-300 DP).
The 2d6 damage isn't going to get you a threshold check versus a ship this
large.
MT missiles are only something we've deployed on large ships for use en mass,
as they never seemed very effective employed in small numbers (kinda like SM's
in that respect).
> Is vector going to become "official" and standard at
I think its "up to you" is more the spirit of FT and the "official" line.
YMMV but playing ST games, cinematic has the *right* feel.
> Roger Books wrote:
> 19% (OK, 19.444444....%) is the average percentage of systems
<g> This time you got it right. But what caused your initial comment about my
having to "assume a distribution of ships with varying levels
of shields"? ;-)
> I personally think the winner in the MT systems is the needle
Agreed. I find it quite fascinating that the needle *beam* only has a 1:6
chance to kill the system it aims for in spite of being supported by the
ship's sensor suite, whereas the needle *torp* has a 1:2 chance to do the same
in spite of being at most as large as the beam, and probably smaller since
part of the 2 Mass for an MT missile is taken up by the hardpoint... and much
of the missile is taken up by its engine,
too :-/
> (I like my opponents to be thrust 3 or less. :)
As long as they use human-style drives and you play Cinematic I agree
:-/
Regards,
> Adrian Reen-Shuler wrote:
> That's mainly because the weapons are balanced for the standard (ie,
Nothing successful that I know of. I've tried but given it up as far too much
complexity for far too little gain; most players seem to simply accept that
you get different designs styles in Cinematic and Vector <shrug>
> I find it interesting you view the Vector rules as "very optional".
Sorry, my fault. I should of course have called it "completely optional"
rather than "very optional", to make the quote from the first sentence in the
Vector Movement rule on page 3 in FB1 verbatim:
"This is a completely OPTIONAL alternative movement system,..."
A few lines further down, in the next sentence, it says:
"...while the standard FT movement rules are termed CINEMATIC MOVEMENT
.."
(Jon T.'s emphasis in both quotes.)
> Is vector going to become "official" and standard at any point?
"Official" and "optional" are not mutually exclusive. Vector movement became
*official* when it was included in FB1.
As for Vector replacing Cinematic as the *standard* FT movement system, I
think the two quotes above makes it seem somewhat unlikely...
> A missile (EMP or nuke) hits a previously undamaged ship of a
> 1) Which of the two missiles would you consider to be "more potent"
2-300 *DAMAGE POINTS*?
That puts their TMF somewhere in the 600-2000 range, assuming Fragile
to Average hull integrities. You could get as low as 400 by using Super hulls,
but your comments about how fast your ships die makes it seem unlikely.
With ships this big I understand your problems with rolling many dice, but IMO
you ought to have realised that trying to play a battle with
the FT equivalent of 10+ Star Wars Death Stars or Star Trek Borg Cubes
on each side just might become a wee bit cumbersome <shrug>
If you meant "Mass" (or "TMF") rather than "DP", well... you were the
one who brought up the subject of fragile-hulled SDs with minimal
armour. Look at this one, based on your descriptions of slow SMR platforms:
TMF 209 NPV 767 Thrust 3 FTL Fragile hull (21 DP) No armour
Level-1 screens
2 FCs 1 ADFC 10 PDS 28 SMR
By a sheer coincidence <g>, this ship will lose on average 19% of its systems
if the first missile to hit it is an EMP missile, or 14% of its
systems if it is nuclear - in addition to the hull damage caused by the
nuke, of course.
The ship I had in mind when I designed the (snipped) example was a bit smaller
than this missile barge, though <g>
Regards,
> On 12-Apr-00 at 11:50, Oerjan Ohlson (oerjan.ohlson@telia.com) wrote:
Not liking to make assumptions. The assumption that you have an average
shielding level doesn't make sense to me. You might get me to agree with an
average shield level versus NAC I could probably get along with. Sometimes
when you abstract statistics out to far they cease to have any real meaning.
Of course, your call as to where that point is would probably be different
than my point. I have noticed that people who are heavily into number
crunching tend to number crunch way past the point where there is no point.
> >(I like my opponents to be thrust 3 or less. :)
Thrust 3 in vector versus SMs isn't much of a win either.
> >I was really speaking vs. large SD's (200-300 DP).
> If you meant "Mass" (or "TMF") rather than "DP",
Yes, of course I meant mass. My mistake (I do seem to be making a lot of
them).
I can't say I have much experience with the MT missiles except in a mass
setting (and no real experience with the needle missiles), so if for more
playably scaled games the various missiles are relatively balanced that's
sufficient for me.
Mostly I ask because I'm trying to balance a scenerio I'm running at a
convention at the end of the month. I thought the EMP missiles would give the
smaller side a better chance, but in play testing it's been hard to tell their
effect (players keep using them poorly, if at all). I guess I'l just have to
play test some more.
> Roger Books wrote:
> <g> This time you got it right. But what caused your initial comment
You confuse me here. I haven't made any such assumption that I'm aware
of...
In order to try to explain what I was asking Adrian about, I gave him an
example explicitly based on one specific ship design from FB1, stating that it
was undamaged when the missile struck. I deliberately did not tell *which* one
FB1 design it was, but that doesn't change the fact that it was one *specific*
design.
In the example, I calculated the average effects of an EMP hit and a nuclear
hit *on*this*particular*design*. Both of these are
straight-forward; you just did the EMP calculation for that ship -
well, for any ship with level-1 screens - yourself. The nuke effect
calculation is more of the same, but nothing difficult.
I then asked Adrian (and the rest of you) roughly how big he (and you) thought
*that*particular*design* was.
What I very carefully did *not* say was whether or not this ship was
"average" in any way. The SD-sized missile barge I posted today
certainly isn't "average", but it wasn't the ship used in the example... it
was just designed to suffer the same system loss%s as the FB1 ship I used in
the example.
Where in all this did I give an impression of assuming "an average level of
screens"? Why would I want to calculate the "average" of one single sample
anyway...?
> You might get me to agree with an average shield level versus NAC I
I can give you a pretty good estimate of the average screen level of a
Tuffleyverse NSL fleet as well <shrug>
> Sometimes when you abstract statistics out to far they cease to have
This is exactly why I compiled, and add keep adding to, my FB design
database - currently 617 FB1 and 35 FB2 designs (no SV at the moment),
by some 40-50 different players - ie, all the legal FBx designs I've
come across during the past year and a half.
Calculating the average effect of whatever weapon I'm studying on each of
these designs (isn't Excel wonderful at times?) gives a reasonably good
indication of how powerful that weapon is against a multitude of different
design styles such as "heavy screens, strong hulls", "weak hulls with lots of
armour" etc, and against the entire spectrum of ship sizes from TMF 3 to TMF
~300 (and then there's one ship with TMF 800 and one with TMF 1300 as well
<g>). It doesn't become very abstract unless I clump all of these together in
one average...
FWIW, the "screen level vs TMF" plot hasn't changed noticeably over the
past 300 or so new entries - there are more dots now, but they all go
into the same places so the overall distribution stays the same <shrug>
> (I like my opponents to be thrust 3 or less. :)
It isn't nearly as bad as thrust 3 vs SMs in Cinematic... in Vector, you can
at least spin to bring your weapons to bear; in Cinematic the
SM-using fleet will undoubtedly sit in the (A) arc of as many of your
ships as possible unless you happened to move very slowly when you were
hit so you're able to slow down to a standstill :-/
Fortunately, my own ships tend to have thrust-4 even when they've taken
some engine damage... and if you somehow manage to hit them with enough
Needles to ensure that you take their engines out completely, they
usually explode anyway :-)
> Adrian Reen-Shuler wrote:
> I was really speaking vs. large SD's (200-300 DP).
It wasn't entirely obvious, because mistake or not your comment that nukes are
more effective ships with less than 30 or so damage points was spot on as you
wrote it...
The point where the EMP missile starts overtaking the nuke seems to be around
30 damage points (not Mass), give or take some depending on how many of those
damage points are armour, and whether or not the target has screens and if so
how many.
At this point the average difference between the two in knocked-down
systems starts becoming significant (for most target designs... as
always there are some extreme counter-examples), while the nuke is no
longer able to regularly rip a quarter or more of the target's hull,
and DCPs, to shreds :-/
BTW, the ship I used in the example is the ESU Gorshkov CH (TMF 70); the other
FB1 ship with the same system loss%s is the ESU Tibet CL (TMF 48). The biggest
archived ship with these particular system loss
%s is a TMF 112 carrier, etc - and no, I haven't archived my
recently-posted SD-sized missile barge :-/
Having repeated these calculations for the other archived designs, I'd say
that the EMP missile is definitely superior to the nuke against anything
bigger than about TMF 170, the nuke superior against anything smaller than TMF
80 (even if the target doesn't lose that many systems, it has lost a third or
more of its hull... and the EMP missile won't knock down that much either due
to a lack of things to knock down in the first place). For ships between those
limits it depends on the exact design of the ship.
Anyway, that's why I thought that you meant damage points about the SDs
as well :-/
> My mistake (I do seem to be making a lot of them).
I'm probably oversensitive to details at the moment, too -
proof-reading large rule texts tends to do that to me :-(
> I can't say I have much experience with the MT missiles except in a
EMP and nuclear missiles have different tactical roles, with the nuke being
better against light and medium combattants (up to roughly
speaking BC-BB size), and the EMP better against the super-heavies
(assuming that you can follow the EMP strike up with other weapons before the
target can repair too much...) and anything you want to capture intact. If you
usually play with SDs only, you don't have much
use for nukes - just like PDS systems are useless if the enemy has no
fighters or missiles, or like how P-torps aren't particularly
worthwhile if your enemy doesn't use any screens.
Needle missiles are equally capable against all targets - take out the
FC on a small ship (DD and down) since it usually only has one, or take out
engines and/or screens on a larger ship. They may a bit overpowered,
but since my dislike for them is a PSB one raised by comparison with the
needle beam (see my reply to Roger) I haven't been able to do an
unbiased analysis of them yet :-/
> Mostly I ask because I'm trying to balance a scenerio I'm running at a
Depends both on the enemy designs (if they have too heavy screens the EMP
missiles lose most of their sting) and on player skill (if you don't hit, or
attack the wrong target, the missiles won't do very much either).
Regards,