In message <3.0.1.32.19980524011914.00721b54@ozemail.com.au>
> Tony Wilkinson <twilko@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> >
Yanks? Yanks?!? YANKS?!?! I think you'll find that 'pom' is a better
description...:)
> I know there has been a brief review of two of the Fleet Book on the
Effectively
> there is no limit but the bigger your ship the more Mass you have to
As long as they sale linearly with mass (says he of the big ship=fast school
of thinking)...
I did manage to browse the FB in my game shop today, and a question that did
come to mind was whether armour (spelt the British way, please note) was
balanced in relation to shields. From my quick reading, two levels of shields
costs 10% of ship mass, and halves damage from beam weapons. A mass 100 ship
with 30 damage points is effectively
getting +30 DPs.
10% of armour on the same ship only gives you +10 DPs. Shields would
seem to be 3x as effective. Now I know shields don't protect against
everything (I presume armour does), but unless I've overlooked something, my
gut reaction is that armour isn't good enough.
> You also have to give mass over to the hull. You can make hulls
I couldn't see any real difference between 'hull' and 'armour'. Both take one
mass and give one damage point. The only difference is that use of armour
delays threshold rolls.
Anyway, thanks for the info. I'll be able to give things a more careful
reading (and a few games) once I actually get a copy.
> Samuel Penn <sam@bifrost.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 10% of armour on the same ship only gives you +10 DPs. Shields would
I think that this brings armor about where it should be, NOT because of its
effectiveness in the above situation...
> I couldn't see any real difference between 'hull' and 'armour'. Both
Ah, here's the rub. Delaying a threshold roll can be gold. While I was
experimenting with my disruptor rules (in a nutshell they damage collumns from
left to right instead of rows from top to bottom), I found that delaying those
threshold rolls, particularly on larger ships, keeps them combat effective for
a much longer period of time.
For example, assume that a ship has been damaged past its first threshold
roll - it looses 1/6th of its weaponry and other systems.
Take another ship which has taken the same amount of damage, but due to armor
it has not passed the first threshold.
As the ships go toe to toe at closer range, who's going to inflict more
damage, thus causing additional threshold rolls. Add to that the possibility
that there may be impaired mobility as well... You can't hit what you can't
get into arc.
> --
Well I don't know what you yanks are complaining about, us Aussies have got FB
on this side of the puddle!:) I know there has been a brief review of two of
the Fleet Book on the list already but here's a couple of things that struck
me.
> Fleet Book has finally got rid of the (effective) 100 mass limit?
Yes the old 100 Mass limit is gone under the new design rules. Effectively
there is no limit but the bigger your ship the more Mass you have to have for
drives which will bring some people back to earth a bit. The biggest ship in
the book has a Mass of 280 but on the whole 2 FBMass points equals 1 FTMass
point. The small ships don't seem to vary greatly from their capabilities and
size in FT, when you do see variation it is in the larger
ships from about a traditional heavy cruiser up (about 64-66 FB Mass
points). You also have to give mass over to the hull. You can make hulls with
damage boxes equal to half the mass but that will cost you half the mass of
the ship. Overall I think the design system is good even if a bit more
difficult than FT. Grab Schoon's Excel design sheet! The revised Mass points
have meant some other changes. Less of your mass is turned into damage boxes,
usually 'bout 30%. Most of the smaller ships seem to have about the same
amount of damage as before but some of the big ships really get a bonus,
particularly the NSL which favours heavier hulls and armour. The thing about
the damage boxes now though is that in FB all ships have 4 rows where at all
possible and you still take threshold rolls at the end of each row. To me it
seems that escorts will die just as quick as before but now their weapons will
die even quicker. Damage to escorts will effect their systems in a major way.
Also with the new design system Jon has changed the fire arcs from 4 in
number to 6. I remember last year getting into an debate/arguement with
another list member (I don't remember who) about having 6 fire arcs. I know
that myself and someone else out there didn't like the idea and I only
remember one person who did. Anyway my first impression was that this was a
bad move making things more complicated. I now of the opion that it will be
worth trying as the design system makes heavy use of the 3 arc idea. I don't
know how you'll go using FB 6 arc system to introduce the game to new players
(particularlly the kids brain washed by the Evil Empire which is about half my
club). Personally I'd stick to the FT 4 arc system for participation and
perhaps demo games. Once I've played a couple of times with the 6 arcs I let
you know what I think. The SML. This looks interesting. Salvos are of 6
missiles they have a range of 24" and are fired before ship movement. They may
attack any target that ends it's move within 6" of the salvo. The defender
then allocates his defences (how many PDS to use) then the attacker rolls a d6
to see how many missiles are on target. The defenders shots are then resolved
against these missiles only. Now if you roll a 6 on the PDS shots you destroy
2 missiles and get a reroll. This reroll also works against fighters and it
seems to me that a few of the big ships are carring PDS than the same sort of
ships in the FT and MT books were. Also ADFs work differently, they now allow
a ship with the system to use its PDS to defender another ship within 6".
Thats usually (if escort crusier) another 3 shots at your salvo/fighter
group. So the SML looks to be a bit variable in terms of what it will do, but
if you can place 2 or 3 salvos to attack the same target serious damage is
possible. Finally many of the changes look decidedly familiar from either this
list or from some of the websites (which may well mean that it was seen here
first anyway). I must point out that I haven't played using the FB rules as
yet (none of my mates have it yet) so I don't know how exactly it will work. I
think most people (I know I am) will be interested to hear from anyone that
has actually played using the FB rules. If you're out there, let us know.
In message <v04003a02b18d01642833@[207.21.142.173]>
> Sean Bayan Schoonmaker <schoon@aimnet.com> wrote:
> Samuel Penn <sam@bifrost.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I agree with everything you've said about the importance of avoiding
thresholds, but with the added point that shields delay thresholds as well.
Taking my above example, and assuming 4 damage rows, armour
delays the first threshold by 10, while shields delay it by 7 - not
a huge difference. Assuming you then don't loose both your shields,
you still get the bonus from shields until the _next_ threshold
roll, whereas all benefits of armour have now been lost.
A small change which would make armour a bit better, and also a lot more
interesting (IMO) is if the armour value applied to each facing of the ship
individually. So 10 points of armour gives you 10 points on the fore, 10
points on port etc.
Then you can have all the fun of ships rotating to bring their still armoured
sides to face the enemy.
> At 14:57 24/05/98 +0200, you wrote:
Have a look at Leviathan for this kind of system. You can rotate the ship to
bring a different facing to bear if you take heavy damage on one side. It
would require adding somewhat more complexity to FT so I wouldn't recommend it
as an addition. Not to mention tilting that NSL Superdreadnought minuature
might just be problematic.
> Samuel Penn wrote:
> A small change which would make armour a bit better, and also a lot
I've tried this using the FB vector movement rules. Two effects were
noticable:
1) Screens were virtually redundant. It is very easy to protect your damaged
sides using the vector movement, so each Mass spent on armour gave you at
least 3 extra damage points (making armour *MUCH* more efficient than the same
Mass used for screens). If you use the cinematic movement system instead, it
is much harder to turn away (though the "Roll ship" maneuver helps a lot
here!) thus reducing the impact of this change.
2) Since ships were twirling like merry-go-rounds, the only useful
weapons were multi-arc (preferrable 5- or 6-arc weapons).
I liked neither effect very much :-/
Later,
> Samuel Penn wrote:
> > Yes the old 100 Mass limit is gone under the new design rules.
Effectively
> > there is no limit but the bigger your ship the more Mass you have to
Yup. Spending 64 out of 160 Mass on engines for a thrust 6 Battledreadnought
seems to balk more people than spending 8 of 20 Mass for the engines of a
thrust 6 frigate, though <g>
> I did manage to browse the FB in my game shop today, and a question
You forget a few things:
First, if you use the re-roll option (which is what at least I did the
playtesting with), level 2 screens are only going to stop 42% of the incoming
fire (cutting your "bonus" damage points from 30 to 21 in one fell swoop).
Second, the chance that both your screen generators will survive through all
three treshold checks without going down at one point or another is less than
8%, which reduces your "bonus" damage even further.
Looking at these two taken together, the average damage absorbed by this
30 DP, screen-2 ship if it is fired on by beam weapons *only* and it
fails all its repair rolls - both assumptions are rather unlikely IMO,
but it makes the calculations much easier - is about 43 points (give or
take some decimals), which is only 3 DP more than what the armour gives (and
the armour protects delays the first treshold check, protecting your weapons
longer than the screens would). The 10 higher points value of the
screens for the 3.2 extra DP is pretty much on target - one DP of armour
or hull structure costs 3 points (1 for the Mass, 2 for the
hull/armour).
If you don't use the re-roll option, the ship instead absorbs on average
47.5 DP rather than the 60 you was looking for. In this case the screens are
clearly better than the armour.
However:
Third, screens give no protection whatsoever from pulse torps, SMBs and needle
beams; armour doesn't stop the needle effect, but at least absorbs half or
more of the structural damage inflicted from all these weapons. If your enemy
likes these weapons (note that both the pulse torp and the
needle beam have been improved from FT/MT to FB), armour starts looking
like a good buy indeed :-)
At some points during the playtesting, I was worried that armour was
*too* effective. I don't think it is now - or, at least, it isn't the
best choice for all ship designs. For weak hulls or small ships, it definitely
is better than mounting a screen or two (since those ships won't survive long
enough to make the screen pay for itself), but for large ships (especially
with Strong or better hulls) screens are a better buy.
[snip]
> I couldn't see any real difference between 'hull' and 'armour'. Both
This is a *very* important difference.
Later,
> Samuel Penn <sam@bifrost.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I agree with everything you've said about the importance of avoiding
Good points, but it does seem to indicate that armor is currently roughly on
par with shields, even if not exactly equal.
> A small change which would make armour a bit better, and also a lot
I think that if armor is to be changed in some manner to make it more
effective, this may not be the way. This thinking would make armor 6 times
as effective - at least in the hands of someone who could take advantage
of all the "new" facings. As an old SFB player, I'm familiar with the shield
rotation game, and I would rather not inflict that same method on a system as
elegantly simple as FT.
If I HAD to improve armor in some way, I think I would simply adjust the
percentages of hull mass for shields slightly; it affects the rest of the game
mechanics the least and still addresses the difficulty.
In message <199805241308.PAA22781@d1o27.telia.com>
> "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@nacka.mail.telia.com> wrote:
> Samuel Penn wrote:
People obviously don't work with big numbers enough then:)
> > 10% of armour on the same ship only gives you +10 DPs. Shields
Like I said, I've only browsed the FB briefly, so I'm not aware
of _all_ the changes which have been made. I presume you mean
6's roll up.
> Second, the chance that both your screen generators will survive
I talked about this point in another message, so I won't repeat it here except
to say that if you've reached a threshold with armour, then all your armour is
definitely gone. If you reach it with shields, there's a good chance your
shields will survive until the next threshold. Also, shields go some way to
delaying threshold rolls as well.
> Looking at these two taken together, the average damage absorbed by
Reality is going to be somewhere in the middle. Also remember that DCPs can
bring shields back online. Presumably armour can't be repaired.
> However:
I'd noticed PTs have had their range extended now. They always were the weapon
of choice v screened ships. But yes, I was aware I was only taking beam
weapons into account, and that other methods of mass destruction are much less
effective against armour than they are against screens.
You've obviously played around with the new rules a lot more than me, and what
you've said does make about as much sense as it can before I get a chance to
fiddle myself.
I will of course be using armour rather than screens on my own ships -
it's the principle of the thing, if nothing else.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to set my mind at rest. I'm still
not entirely convinced - that will have to wait until I perform some
field trials with my NSL...
> At 17:15 23/05/98 +0100, you wrote:
Ah I thought all you blokes would have got it by now.
> As long as they sale linearly with mass (says he of the big ship=fast
Close but not quite. Usually the mass is double plus 10% but with the FSE
ships you're looking double plus 25% once you get into Dreadnought size.
> I did manage to browse the FB in my game shop today, and a question
Screens still work the same way but you cant have more than 2 and must use at
least 3 Mass to mount them (or 5% whichever is greater). Remember that 6's now
allow you to reroll (you apply the damage and then see what else happens).
With 2 screens you will cut down the amount of incoming damage by a 3rd but
you still have to take threshold checks as normal.
> 10% of armour on the same ship only gives you +10 DPs. Shields would
2 screens will soak up 1/3 of incoming hits for the same mass as
10 armour boxes. But those ten armour boxes means that you opponent has to do
an extra 10 damage to your ship before it needs to make even its first
threshold check (assuming no rereolls which are always applied to the hull
directly). That means that your ship will stay operational longer than if it
had no armour. You now have the choice of one the other or both. I'd prefer
both.
> I couldn't see any real difference between 'hull' and 'armour'. Both
You get roughly the same number of boxes of armour and hull for each Mass used
on them. The real advatage with armour is that it all goes into 1 row which
your opponent has to get through before he can do any damage to your ship and
that row of armour can be lost without needing to take a threshold check. See
what I said about escorts. They have the same number of hull boxes as before
but now have to have them in 4 rows. Destroyers will survive battles just the
same but their systems won't as they will have to take a lot more threshold
checks.
> Anyway, thanks for the info. I'll be able to give things a more
Have fun. Now all I have to do is get my regular crowd to all by a copy from
Nic at SAGA next week and see how the whole thing actually plays.
> Samuel Penn wrote:
> > > 10% of armour on the same ship only gives you +10 DPs. Shields
Yes. Natural rolls of '6' allow an extra damage die to be rolled, for certain
weapons (beams in particular). This extra die ignores both screens and armour,
so it is quite important against heavily protected units.
> > Second, the chance that both your screen generators will survive
Oh, certainly. They just aren't nearly as far ahead of the armour as you
indicated - a realistic estimate is that they give about 1.5x more
"bonus" DP than the armour would rather than the 3x you thought
initially, if you're fighting a beam-heavy force.
In your example (the NSL Maximilian-class battlecruiser, although I
don't
think you were aware of that), level-2 screens only give about 5 extra
DP
before the first treshold check if you use the re-roll rule, whereas the
armour give the full 10 points. If you don't use the re-roll option, the
screens give 7 extra DPs just like you wrote.
> Also remember that
No, neither armour nor hull boxes can be repaired during a game. DCPs have
been improved somewhat too, and if you don't take damage too fast they might
be able to patch the failed systems up. DCPs are lost in proportion to your
hull damage, though (which means that some of them will be lost before the
first treshold check for large units!).
[snip]
> I'd noticed PTs have had their range extended now. They always were
That's the least of the PT changes! They also have had their basic Mass
reduced to 4, and are allowed up to a 180 arc of fire (though extra arcs cost
extra Mass, just like for the beams).
> But yes, I was aware I was
Yes. Note that the NSL ships seem to be very much designed as anti-FSE
units - the FSE depend very heavily on SML (which ignore screens), so
the
NSL ships have heavy point defence suits and strong armour and/or strong
hulls.
> You've obviously played around with the new rules a lot more than me,
Yes... I was one of the FB playtesters (and the primary FB/FTIII
number-cruncher, too <g>).
Later,
In message <199805250134.DAA16378@d1o27.telia.com>
> "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@nacka.mail.telia.com> wrote:
> Samuel Penn wrote:
Wow. That's, um, nasty. I'd assumed the roll up would still be affected by
screens. Can the second die roll up as well?
Thinking about it though, I quite like it (says he who only ever rolls 6's on
threshold checks:().
> > I'd noticed PTs have had their range extended now. They always were
Oh goody, says I, looking at the rows and rows of PTs in my NSL designs:)
----------
> Från: Samuel Penn <sam@bifrost.demon.co.uk>
Yes, keep rolling extra dice until you don't roll a '6'. The average
extra damage inflicted in this way is 2/15 (ie, 0.1333333...) damage
points per beam die, straight through any protection.
> Thinking about it though, I quite like it (says he who only
You're not the only one :-/ (Uh, no. I *can* roll 6's when I roll for
the distance my artillery deviates too...)