Here's an idea for allowing Sa'Vasku ships to start with drone wombs
pre-loaded with fighter drones. This means they start the game with
fighters already in their drone wombs and with all of their normal hull. The
cost per fighter, however, is expensive. 6 points per fighter, so each flight
of 6 fighters cost 36 points. Why the high
cost? 3 points per fighter plus 2 points per bio-mass those fighters
could add to a ship plus 1 point for extranious charges.
Does this sound like a just price? Any comments?
This could be extended to pod launcher nodes, at a rate of 3 points per
pre-loaded pod. The Sa'Vasku would still have to pay the energy for the
first shot of any pre-loaded drone launcher nodes, but not bio-mass.
This bio-mass could not be re-absorbed.
I would also strongly suggest that the Sa'Vasku would only do this when they
were at war and with only with ships in the front line.
G'day,
> Here's an idea for allowing Sa'Vasku ships to start with drone wombs
Sounds reasonable. I haven't had a chance to look at the price etc, but the
logic seems OK... maybe they were created long enough in the past that the
'wound has healed' or they actually came from another (off-board)
vessel.... My first concern though (and something I'd have to think more
about) would be if this means some bright spark could bring on a womb heavy
vessel full of drones but not be paying the biomass penalty (and thus isn't
taking the disadvantage) of so many drones. Guess that's why the cost would
be so critical - as there's sort of a double/hidden cost to drone launch
beyond the physical biomass cost and womb space, there's also the loss of
PGs which often/always happens when you launch even a few grown drone
groups - coming already prepared would remove that cost/constraint and
I'm not sure that's a good thing.
> This could be extended to pod launcher nodes, at a rate of 3 points
Nope don't like that one, drones I can see but not the pods. OK
technically/theoretically its the same process different scale, mostly,
but
I think this one could be far too easily exploited/twisted so I'd just
say
that pods have too short a lifetime to be 'pre-grown' and stored. They
don't suffer the time constraints drones do so the only gain you'd get from
coming ready loaded would be biomass wise and I think that's actually a
dangerous thing to let the SV have as loss of biomass and the carry on
effects is a crucial SV constraint/weakness.
> This bio-mass could not be re-absorbed.
Do you mean pod/drone or both? So you can't leave pre-loaded pods full
and then use them as a biomass resource once you've been damaged? Yep OK can
see that one, but keeping track of which drone group you can/can't have
back mid-battle could be a bit of a chore and a bit weird given our
previous discussions on cannibalism;)
> I would also strongly suggest that the Sa'Vasku would only do this
Sounds reasonable, but from a gaming point of view how would that be
defined.... scenario specific only and not for 'out of the box games'? I
know what you mean, I can just see it being something that's hard to
actually govern/nail down generally game-wise.
Keep these good thoughts coming.
Cheers
Beth
> Here's an idea for allowing Sa'Vasku ships to start with drone wombs
I would say 5 points per fighter would be more balanced on the surface of
things. However some playtesting would probably be required to get a better
value.
Obviously, having wombs full of fighters at the outset is more of an advantage
than the "pure" 5 point value.
> on 6/29/00 23:07, Beth Fulton at beth.fulton@marine.csiro.au wrote:
> Here's an idea for allowing Sa'Vasku ships to start with drone wombs
Interesting idea. I'm a bit against this idea (not that it doesn't have merit)
because there's more to the cost of mass on a ship other than it's base cost.
There's the cost of the engines (thrust and FTL) and shielding nodes as well
as Beth pointed out. I believe the overall fit was how the SV were viewed when
the point costs were balanced. Just my personal feelings
on matters such - I'll have to wait till sometime next week to run a
little numbers comparison though...
BTW, I don't believe SV ships loose PGs from biomass consumption. However,
I've been known to be wrong before. ;-)
> This could be extended to pod launcher nodes, at a rate of 3 points
The more I think of it the more I'm incline to say no to prepaying for the
biomass. It's a bit more difficult but the same effect can be gained by
building the same ship with a little more biomass (and you possibly get a
little longer threshold rows to boot).
--->8--- (snip)
> I would also strongly suggest that the Sa'Vasku would only do this
I
> know what you mean, I can just see it being something that's hard to
Nice background reasoning. I have to agree with Beth on this though.
> Keep these good thoughts coming.
Most definitely keep these ideas flowing.
G'day Kevin,
> BTW, I don't believe SV ships loose PGs from biomass consumption.
However,
> I've been known to be wrong before. ;-)
Oops no you're right, the loss due to consumed biomass was something I was
playing around with sorry.
Cheers
Beth
> -----Original Message-----
[Bri] I don't care for this. You are adding mass to the ship without
having to adjust engines, screens, etc. based on ship mass. I would, however,
allow Sa'Vasku to start with drone groups generated in the womb if the mass is
marked off before the game.
> This could be extended to pod launcher nodes, at a rate of 3 points
[Bri] Again, you are adding mass without adjusting engines, screens,
etc. based on ship mass.
> I would also strongly suggest that the Sa'Vasku would only do this
My comments marked by [Bri]
A mass 100 SV ship with two "pre-loaded" wombs would be mass 112 until
the drones were launched, and have consummately higher movement cost, IMO.
Normally fighter launches don't affect thrust levels of carriers. Even though
I think they should in general (I.e. a carrier with all fighter groups
launched is carrying less mass, therefore the engines may beable to
supply more thrust), they _certainly_ should in the case of "overloaded"
SVs.
Cost per extra group would have to be higher than 5 or 6 per fighter, because
tha game advantage of being able to launch and extra flight of drones and use
the energy for other purposes (manuever, weapons, defense) is worth a
significant sum for the SV. How much I'm still not sure, but
25/30
pts per group seems way low. Perhaps consider them as "loose" groups with FTL
packs. Cost would be 18 plus minimum required to get a single Fighter group
FTL'ed into a combat = 30 more points.
> Kevin Walker wrote:
> Interesting idea. I'm a bit against this idea (not that it doesn't
Yep. However, at 36 points per squadron (which IIRC what Imre
suggested) the cost for the extra engine mass etc. should be covered -
SV engines use up rather little mass compared to those of the other races.
Later,
> --- "Izenberg, Noam" <Noam.Izenberg@jhuapl.edu> wrote:
...Snip...JTL
I would tend to disagree here! The 'S' ship
would still be mass 100, and would have used 12
hull boxes to generate the fighters. I don't
know about you, but I have no desire to recalculate
the mass/thrust relationship for each time I
launch/recover a fighter group. For the mass
100 'S' ship I would have to carry 99 mass/thrust
charts for any game. Not fun.
Bye for now,
The reason I suggested 36 points per flight (6 per fighter) was to cover
both the cost of the bio-mass and the cost of all associated systems
(drives, etc). The hight cost for average fighters was so that the you would
not have to recalculate thrust costs, etc. If you would like to get technical,
some of the carriers should gain about 0.5 thrust if all of their fighters are
launched (I figured it out some time ago and don't
remember which ones...) I would allow pre-loaded drones to be
reabsorbed
as bio-mass. This consideration was included in their cost.
For pre-loaded drone launcher nodes, I would not allow that bio-mass to
be reabsorbed.
IAS
> Yep. However, at 36 points per squadron (which IIRC what Imre
> --- "Imre A. Szabo" <ias@sprintmail.com> wrote:
XXX
> For pre-loaded drone launcher nodes, I would not
It also sets a precident that a carrier can be overloaded, thereby defeating
the reason to provide the 'S' with more fighters.
Bye for now,
> John Leary wrote:
> --- "Imre A. Szabo" <ias@sprintmail.com> wrote:
> > For pre-loaded drone launcher nodes, I would not
I know, I was referring to pre-loaded Sa'Vasku drone launchers, not
drone wombs.
> It is not a wise idea to start making
The Sa'Vasku are much different then standard carriers. Their drone wombs are
normally empty, while hangers are normally full. If you want to overload
carriers, that could be done. Overloaded carreirs can carry 50% more fighters,
but with the following restrictions. They can only launch OR land one flight
per turn while overloaded (this is for the entire ship). Each overloaded
hanger makes all threshold rolls with a
+1 modifier, and each hanger that fails a threshold check causes 1d6
additional points of hull damage for the duration of the game (This means even
if all the fighters have launched... Nasty thing all that dangerous munitions,
and fuel laying arround...). In addition, each extra fighter flight costs an
additional 12 points... (possibly less, say 6 points). Points cost is for game
balance and could be described as representing the cost of extra crew,
equipment, munitions, replacements due higher accident rates, etc.
This would not be much of a limitation in set piece battles, but combined
could be catastrophic in ambushes. Is this what happened to the FSE at the
Battle of Neu Bremen???
> For pre-loaded drone launcher nodes, I would not
Sure there is. Absorbing the fighters would make the ship's MASS greater than
the design MASS.
THAT is much more a violation of KISS than not allowing the ship to
reabsorb the fighters. The ship is "size-x" and though it can hold
fighters in its wombs, it cannot spontaneously grow more MASS any than you or
I could spontaneously grow 20" biceps.
> Imre A. Szabo wrote:
> There is no way to prevent the fighters from
Which is what caused the confusion, because there is no such thing as a "drone
launcher" in FB2. There are "pod launchers" and "drone wombs"; what you
*meant* to refer to but didn't was the "pod launcher".
Regards,
> --- "Imre A. Szabo" <ias@sprintmail.com> wrote:
...
> > XXX
...
> I know, I was referring to pre-loaded Sa'Vasku drone
XXX I acknowledge misunderstanding your intent and quite likely missing the
initial message about
'drone launchers'. My current thought is that
this translates to 'parasite fighters' attached to the ship. I can see this
happening in a tactical sense,
where the 'S-1' carrier absorbes the fighters of
another 'S-2' carrier' prior to battle being
joined. I can also see this being abused by adding the fighter to an 'S'
capital ship and using the mass to make (damage contol) rolls to produce more
power generators. Note: All the 'over mass' ships cannot make a jump into
combat, they are the 'S' equal to a system defence boat. XXX
> The Sa'Vasku are much different then standard
The carriers can offload all fighters prior to start of combat, so overloading
is not any penalty.
A higher rate of consumption for air, food, ect. is not a tacitical
consideration, it is stratigic and cannot trigger any sort of
tacitical effects. (Unless one wishes to
create a scenario around an out of supply ship.)
I have a problem with the 'ambush in space'
concept. Like how can it happen?
(A convoy raider equipped with stealth and jamming, sneaking up on a poorly
defended convoy, I can handle under my house rules.)
Bye for now,
> Note: All the 'over mass' ships cannot make a
I'm not interested in system defense boats. That was not my intent. At 6
points per fighter, the game should be balanced. If there is an enbalance, I
suspect that it would be against the Sa'Vasku. (Or overloaded carrier).
> The overloaded ships lack of jump also
That's what the points surcharge per fighter represents... And more
importantly, the accident rate...
> I have a problem with the 'ambush in space'
I disagree here. You are planning an assault on a major, heavily defended
planet. You jump your fleet in system, rendevous with frieghters before making
the final short range jump to the planet. Unknown to you, you were betrayed,
and the enemy defending fleet pounces your fleet while you are replenishing...