Small Alien Empires

As mentioned, I've pulled the bits'n'bobs together on the "sideline" aliens
and put them up. There is also (yet another, I guess) basic
shipcalc spreadsheet - which also includes alternate Beam weapon costs
and MASS based on calculations similar to those done for KV railguns in
FB2 (I did it to balance forces a bit).  Let me know if you like it (e-

TimB
> As mentioned, I've pulled the bits'n'bobs together on the "sideline"

> From the political/social and ship-refit point of view they are quite

The FTL Torps are a very interesting idea; however, not everyone ascribes to
the "FTL Bomb" approach on the theory that it can lead to chesesy tactics.

I think their Disruptor weapon looks very much lilke a needle
beam--you may want to add a weapon which is capable of more damage and
longer range. Look through the Weapons and Defenses archive, you'll probably
find something interesting.
http://nift.firedrake.org/Weap-Def_Archive.htm -- see the Needle Beam
Extended, for instance.

> Laserlight: Machine People...
I looked to see how they overlapped: Nicely implemented - it caught the
frustrating flexibility of the Motie-types quite well (potential
infestation problems from recovered ships???:)). I am looking for slower
flexibility: if prepared, ships have some time to assemble and scavenge or
detach a piece of habitat; otherwise you meet a standard ship for that system.
The concept is to try and make all their weaponry and ships actually reused
from something else which
had a different purpose: non-war/ research/mining/investigation/ capture
/communications.  Maybe that didn't come across strongly enough.

> Disruptors = Enhanced Needle Beams

> FTL Bomb "Implosion" and "cheesy tactics
I certainly intend to limit "suicide jumps" (alright, FTL engagement).

Are there any other house rules for this already? (I've had a quick look
around)? My own feeling here is that ships which are free of others, are badly
damaged (down to their last track), and still have FTL will jump off table to
safety if outside the "interference radius". Within
such a radius they'd need a morale/desperation check, or could be banned
as it is tantamount to a suicide attempt ("Engage FTL." "The crew willna taek
it, Captin."!). Perhaps the difference between the number
of enemy-friendly ships within the radius on a D6?  DM: -2 per complete
hull track?

TimB said:
> I looked to see how they overlapped: Nicely implemented

(snort) *barely* implemented...

> meet a standard ship for that system. The concept is to try and

it did come across, but the basic concept (rebuild your ships) is what caught
our eye

> Tim Bancroft wrote:

> As mentioned, I've pulled the bits'n'bobs together on the "sideline"

That doesn't stop me from commenting the rest of the page as well though
<g>

Interesting briefing on the Kra'Vak. Sounds very much like something the

military intelligence community could come up with... then again, whether or
not it has any connection to the *real* GZGverse situation is another

question entirely, of course ;-)

The .gifs showing the VOC ships seem to have been re-sized a bit too
harshly - eg., all the 'f's show up as indistinguishable from 'l's, and
the '5's in the "P" space boxes on the Utrecht look like '1's as well.

> There is also (yet another, I guess) basic shipcalc spreadsheet -

Which unfortunately doesn't allow you to recreate all of the FB1 ships,
since it doesn't allow for 2-arc B4s :-( Not quite sure why you consider

single-arc P-torps to be "non-standard" equipment, either?

> which also includes alternate Beam weapon costs

I'd be quite interested in seeing these calculations, both on the K-guns

and on the human beams. (The "appears to..." phrasing you use on your web page
suggest that you haven't actually seen the calculations which were
made for the K-guns during the FB2 development; I'm a bit curious about
what you think they looked like <g>)

(BTW, "railgun" is the original More Thrust weapon type, "K-gun" is the
FB2 one. The only place where the word "railgun" is used in FB2 is where Jon

explains why the weapon's name was changed :-/)

> **Warning** the alien ships and costs are still being tested. The

Hard to say if the points costs for the individual systems are OK or not,
since I can't find any such costs specified except for Streamlining :-/
Depending on exactly how the FTL torps work (see below) the ships could be
anything from very powerful to complete wimps.

The FTL torpedo rules are not clear exactly when in the turn sequence the FTL
torpedo *jumps* are done. I suppose that they're *launched* (ie., dumped out
of the ship) after order writing but before ship movement, just like other
missiles are, but do they (attempt to) jump immediately (ie. *prior* to ship
movement), or do they wait until after all ships have moved? (If the latter
they'd be fairly similar in overall effect to
single-shot PBL2s; if the former - or if both jump and launch are done
in
the *ship's fire* phase - they'd be very powerful indeed, since the risk
of missing with them is very small.)

Regards,

> Laserlight wrote:

> >Interesting briefing on the Kra'Vak. Sounds very much like something

I meant it more as in "the way the GZGverse Kra'Vak actually behave" than
"what one NAC analyst actually thinks". Let's just hope that the NAC don't
take too many casualties when they plan operations based on these theories...

Oerjan said
> Interesting briefing on the Kra'Vak. Sounds very much like something

<grin> it could be an exact description of the real GZGverse situation...if
you consider it as a description of what one NAC analyst thinks.