> On Thu, 14 Nov 1996, Tom Granvold wrote:
> > On Wed, 13 Nov 1996, Tom Granvold wrote:
Ah, but the Manty equipment was far, far superior to the PN units. Someone on
the net has an FT variant where most equipment is graded, and
you compare the grade of opposing things - eg, missile ECM vs
point-defence targetting - to modify the success chances.
> The Fearless only won because Honor Harrington
First of all, a missile in the HH universe is far less powerful than a FT
missile. Even a destroyer usually survives the first few missile hits (at
least from laser warheads)... On the other hand, a ship can have lots of
them, leading to long missile engagements (which FT currently isn't very
good at modelling:()
Second, although the captain of the Q-ship made a fatal blunder in
closing the range, his ship had taken a severe pounding. In FT terms it had
taken at least one, and quite probably two, treshold rolls, judging from the
terms a DN-sized Q-ship would need to suffer about 7 points of damage to
take those two rolls!)
Third, the Manties' tech superiority was considerable in the Basilisk
incident. It grew during the next five or so years - at the outbreak of
the war, the PN admiralty considered Manty ships to be equal to about 130%
of their own hull mass in PN capital units - but the Basilisk incident
was the first substantial proof of it.
Finally, in FT the Fearless would have been in the rear arc of the
Q-ship, so it couldn't have been shot at ;)
In FT, the difference in damage points would be 11 for the RMNS Fearless
to somewhere between 15 and 20 (ie, DN- to SD- sized Q-ship) for the PNS
ship; not too great a difference.
In the HH universe, ship size grown much, much faster from class to class than
in FT. The Fearless was a light cruiser massing a mere 90.000 tons, while an
average heavy cruiser massed 300.000 tons and a superdreadnought
masses about 8.000.000 tons. The Q-ship massed about 10.000.000 tons,
but
it didn't use very much of that space for weapons - it operated as a
merchant ship, and had huge store-rooms. In FT I would model this as a
huge commercial super-ship packed with (lower-grade) weapons rather than
a
Q-ship.
Having said all this: You shouldn't have to be lucky to win this battle
-
you need a dumb opponent...
Regards,
> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
It always helps, it always helps....:)
Oerjan made some excellent points about the Basilisk battle and the
foolishness of the Q-ship captain. The story is quite well written
and very entertaining.
Any Full Thrust implementation of the Honor Harrington world would have to
take into account missile ammo, technology variations, ECM, sensor rules,
missile pods (towed missile broadsides), short range energy weapons and the
special grav wedge drives and sidewalls.
It could be done, but it wouldn't look like anything that you could drop into
a Core rules Full Thrust game.
> On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, Robert A. Crawford wrote:
> > Any Full Thrust implementation of the Honor Harrington world would
Much of the tech is very similar (not surprising, since David Weber wrote the
current edition of Starfire!), but the drive (and related effects, including
the grav lance) won't work in SF. A combination of SF tech (and tech
progression) with Mike's and Jon's realistic movement rules, plus some
additions for the drive, would work pretty well. Make the 'Fearless'
an Elite CL with ECM and Plasma Guns (from Communique/ISW4), and the
'Perseus' a huge armed FT...
Later,
> On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
That sounds rather like my set of rules at
http://meta.physics.ox.ac.uk/~ptolemy/full_thrust/ft.html
I haven't posted them here yet because a) they're long and b) I'm not very
happy with the way I've written them. The basic idea is that each ship has a
systems rating representing how advanced that ship's technology. The rating is
not
an absolute scale. Which means that a value of +3 may be good or bad
depending on whether your opponent has a rating of +5 or -2. The
difference in ratings is applied as a modifier to various die rolls. The
system works well under different circumstances. In a Star Trek game (with
little or no EW) it allows for the steady upgrading of technology without
inventing lots of new systems. At the other extreme, in EW heavy games it
(when coupled with some minor modifications to the sensor and firing rules)
makes for a game with some very different tactics but it does slow things down
quite a bit. I'll get round to writing a decent explanation and posting it.
> Finally, in FT the Fearless would have been in the rear arc of the
They were using missiles right? By the More Thrust rules you don't need to
specify a target when you launch a missile. Logically, you can launch a
missile, it flies away from you on a preprogrammed course that takes it away
from your engine wash, turns to face the chasing ship, goes active anf homes
in. Of course, if you're using a realistic movement system the missile will
inherit the launching ship's velocity and initial heading. In my universe most
missiles (and fighters) are luanched from stationary or near stationary ships
in order to give them some chance of hitting a target before they fly off the
table.