As I mentioned yesterday, I have whipped up some quickly conceived ship
designs for the Japanese fleet.
I based them off of the NAC designs, adjusting so that the FT Japanese would
compare to the NAC ships in a similar way to how WWII-era ships compared
to
WWII-era US and British ships.
This approach to designing them made them heavier as well as faster for the
most part, fitting in well with the trial-and-error design approach the
Japanese had from 1922-ish onward after they stopped co-operating with
the West as far as naval design and technology went, at least according to the
single resource I've referred to (no bibliographical information available
right now, I'm afraid). I am not 100% happy with the designs right now, as I
found myself maxing out the MASS for the classification of the models more
often than not.
I used Eric's java ship builder program and saved the designs out as text. (At
this point, I'd like to thank Eric again for his effort in writing the
shipbuilder program.) All of the files have been zipped up and uploaded to my
usual site for sharing things. I figured if you wanted to look at one design,
you're likely to have an interest in all of them:
http://geocities.com/flakmagnet72/JapaneseFleet_FlakMagnet.zip
The naming convention used for the files is pretty intuitive, I THINK:
JAP-[Class Abbreviation]_[Name of model per GZG].txt
If you have trouble reading the file in windows, rename it to a.rtf file and
open it in word or MSWriter.
Though I'm the resident FT-guru when it comes to my local gaming group,
I am a relative newbie to the game compared to most of you on this list, so
constructive criticism is welcome, even invited. If my designs apply
hard-vacuum (as opposed to floating in it) please let me know how you'd
change them.
I have an appreciation for Pulse Torpedoes, so I have concentrated on those
more than SML/R, though I'm likely to revisit the designs to see where I
can
add some ER-SMRs to reflect the "Long Lance" torpedoes that surprised
the Western naval commanders so much.
--Tim
Well, my design for the Yamato is 1 MASS higher than it should have been. I've
narrowed the arcs of two of the Class 3's to make up the different plus some
extra savings besides.
> On Friday 06 February 2004 10:36 am, FlakMagnet72 wrote:
> FlakMagnet72 wrote:
> Though I'm the resident FT-guru when it comes to my local gaming
Haven't had time for any deeper tactical analyses, only to check if the
designs are legal :-(
***
Bakemono CT: OK, but could equally well be TMF 14/NPV 48. (A classic
example of how rounding of fractions introduces unintended breakpoints in a
design system, BTW - cf. our off-list discussions <g>)
***
Soyokaze DD: Legal design - but you are aware that FB1 and later only
allows ships with thrust-5 engines to make 2-point turns, no? In
Cinematic,
this ship will probably have problems bringing its P-torp to bear.
***
> Well, my design for the Yamato is 1 MASS higher than it should have
That leaves the ship with quite a lot of unused mass, allowing you to shrink
the design further. What does the new design look like?
***
Musashi BDN: The points value given includes a Standard fighter group; the
ship itself only costs 485 pts. It is generally more useful to give the
carrier's own NPV separately from the cost of its fighters, since not all
fighter types cost the same amount of points.
***
Hiryu CVL:
Mass Cost
Mass = 166 (DN) - 166
Cost = 665 Thrust = 4 33 66 FTL = Normal 17 34 Hull = Weak, Military
CrewFactors = 9 Armour = 10 10 20 DP = 32 32 64 Shields = 2 17 51
Weapons and Such
--------------------------------
Standard Fighter Bay x5 45 135 PDS x4 4 12 Class 2 Battery (all) x2 6 18 Fire
Control x3 3 12
------------------------------------------------------------------
Total: 167 (578)
Uses 1 Mass too many. Dumping 1 FCS (it's not necessary to have more FCSs than
weapon batteries!) makes the ship legal; the ship's own NPV (ie., not counting
the fighters) then becomes 574. (If you want to optimize the
design further you can make it TMF 164/NPV 567 instead.)
***
Shogun SDN:
Mass Cost
Mass = 233 (SDN) - 233
Cost = 857 Thrust = 2 23 46 FTL = Normal 23 46 Hull = Average, Military
CrewFactors = 12 Armour = 18 18 36 DP = 70 70 140 Shields = 2 23 69
Weapons and Such
--------------------------------
Class 3 Battery (F/AP/FP) x2 12 36
Class 3 Battery (F/FS/AS) x2 12 36
Class 2 Battery (F/AP/FP) 2 6
Class 2 Battery (F/FS/AS) 2 6
Fire Control x3 3 12 PDS x3 3 9 Standard Fighter Bay x3 27 81
Pulse Torpedo (F/FS/FP) x2 12 36
ADFC 2 8
> On Tuesday 10 February 2004 12:23 pm, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
Thanks for that!
> ***
I'll check that out and amend it. Saving mass and points is good.
> ***
We've never played cinematic, and I don't think we intend to, so probably not
a problem.
> ***
I'll try to remember to share that. I think it's on my PDA's CF card here at
the office...
> ***
the
> ship itself only costs 485 pts. It is generally more useful to give
I designed it "as played" but when I make up "pretty" SSD's for it, I'll
definitely consider that suggestion. It could save me some
time/explaining.
> ***
Excellent...
***Snipped some other analysis***
Thanks for the feedback on those designs. I'm probably still going to tweak a
few here and there, but I will definitely sit down with your commentary in
hand and make those mass/points - saving questions you suggested.
Thanks a bunch for spending that time.