Nova Cannons

On Monday, June 08, 1998 11:54 PM, John Leary
[SMTP:realjtl@sj.bigger.net]
wrote: nto a cold sweat with just the thought of facing
> a large number of mass 44 (Nova and 2 screens, thrust 3, positioned

Hence the Fleet Book, sort of deprecates them as they upset play balance too
much. They were only ever included as a sort of joke and should be used with a
pinch of salt, not as the main course.

> Tim Jones wrote:

> Hence the Fleet Book, sort of deprecates them as they

The Fleet Book doesn't depreciate the Nova Cannon and Wave Cannon very
much, at least not compared to the standard beam weapons. The all-arc B
battery (ie, Class 2) has increased from Mass 2 to Mass 3 (+50%), and
the
(former 3, now 5)-arc A/Class 3 battery has risen from Mass 3 to Mass 8
(+167%), and even the single-arc A/Class 3 has had its Mass increased by
33%.

 In comparision, the 20-25% Mass increase of both Waveguns and Nova
Cannon (10 to 12 and 16 to 20, respectively) are an *improvement*, not a
depreciation. None of the FTFB designs use them, but none of the FTFB designs
use needle beams or cloaks or reflex fields either.

> They were only ever included as a sort of joke and should be used with

At least the Wavegun was specifically included for Anime-style battles
(some of the Anime series, at least).

Later,

On Wednesday, June 10, 1998 12:10 AM, Oerjan Ohlson
> [SMTP:oerjan.ohlson@nacka.mail.telia.com] wrote:

Deprecate isn't the same as depreciate, it wasn't a typo ;-)

The meaning is to play down or disapprove of something

What I meant was that FB1 still has them but there is an editorial saying that
they upset balance, are genre specific and should be used with caution if at
all. I'm afraid you got the wrong end of the stick.

> At least the Wavegun was specifically included for Anime-style battles

Yes, exactly, the idea is not include them in general fleet designs, in the FT
universe say, as they are very genre specific.

> Tim Jones wrote:

Personally, I can only think of two ways to balance the
super-uber
weapons of doom: 1. Increase the mass and points cost... A lot. 2. Increase
the amount of energy it would take to charge the weapon. Perhaps we should
adopt a similar charging system to that of the HBW in the EFSB and which will
appear (after we work the bugs out) in FTIII.
The nova cannon should have the most power-hungry, demanding several
turns of recharging before I can be fired, on top of the current restrictions
(i.e. no other weapons fire, shields down, no vector changes.) Ditto for the
wave gun, only just less so.

Craig Mitchell
> On Monday, June 08, 1998 11:54 PM, John Leary

Why even bother with the screens! I toyed with the idea some time ago but when
you use cm scale on the floor you need a lot of ships to create an
effective screen :-(