variable hulls

I like the concept of the variable hull rows, except now I have more decisions
to make when designing a ship (weak, strong, now how many rows? oh, what do I
choose!).

But I have a question: What are the hull costs of ships with only one hull? Or
any other ship where the number of hulls is less then the number of rows
chosen? They now can pretend to have 6 rows and have their hull boxes cost 1
each?

Glen

> Glen Bailey wrote:

> But I have a question: What are the hull costs of ships with

3 pts, unless they're Sa'Vasku. In order to pay for anything else than a

3-row hull, non-SV ships must put at least one hull box in each row.
(Due
to their several peculiarities Sa'Vasku ships are restricted to 4-row
hulls only, and therefore pay 2pts per biomass box even if they have 3 or
fewer such boxes.)

Yes, this means that the smallest FB1 and FB2 ships should be 1-3 pts
more expensive than they currently are. If some variant of the CPV system is
officially adopted we'll need to publish updated points values for all the
Fleet Book ships anyway; if it isn't we'll revise the hull rows rule
slightly instead :-/

Later,

Now that we're on the subject of variable hulls anyway, what about
2-row hulls? I did some calculations on effective hull and system
usage and came up with: hull eff. system eff. 2 rows 1.917 3 rows.944.796 4
rows.847.667 5 rows.733.551 6 rows.627.462

For 4 rows hull efficiency is 1/4*(1+1+5/6+5/6*4/6),
and system efficiency is 1/4*(1+5/6+5/6*4/6+5/6*4/6*3/6).
Efficiency is expected usage before hull/system goes kablooeey.
And yes, the 2-row hull efficiency of 1 means that the hull simply
does 'pling!' until all boxes have gone.

I did some more voodoo in a spreadsheet with hull vs. weapon system
balance, and it seems that a cost of 4 for 2-row hull boxes would be
ok. Anybody do any serious simulation on this? I suspect finding a balance for
bigger ships is easier as the rounding effects are less severe.

Examples. The following hull box masses should give the same effective use: 2
rows 85 3 rows 90 4 rows 100 Of course, the ships with less rows are much more
expensive. This is balanced by less need for weapon systems, as these are also
more
effectivily used. And necessary drive/shield systems, but these saved
costs are marginal.
The following weapons masses (at 3 points/mass) are equally effective
and result in ships with equal costs, if combined with the above hull boxes. 3
rows 75 4 rows 90 or: 2 rows 84 4 rows 115 Using more weapon systems would tip
the balance in favor of the hull with less rows.

Another thing that is hidden somewhere in these numbers is that it is
more attractive for a low-row hull design to trade hull boxes for
weapon systems than it is for a high-row design. This is because you
get more weapon systems for the same costs as your hull boxes, and the
weapons will survive relatively longer. No numbers on this yet though:-)

> On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 11:17:29PM +0100, Frits Kuijlman wrote:

> I did some more voodoo in a spreadsheet with hull vs. weapon system

I played with it a little while ago, and the cost seemed to be
excessively non-linear as ship mass changed. I know Oerjan's gone into
more detail.

> Frits Kuijlman wrote:

> Now that we're on the subject of variable hulls anyway, what about

They have too large synergy effects with screens and similar systems to use a
single cost. Can't remember the values offhand (and it is too late to dig
the files up now), but IIRC the "proper" cost for 2-row hulls range from
4 per box on unscreened ships (or when fighting Kra'Vak or similar enemies

with screen-skipping weapons) up to 8 or 9 per box on ships with level-2

screens if the enemy used mostly beams or similar screen-degraded
weapons.

The other hull types also have this kind of synergy effects, but on a far
smaller scale.

> For 4 rows hull efficiency is 1/4*(1+1+5/6+5/6*4/6),

These formulae are only correct if your ship is unarmoured, has no screens
(or the enemy uses screen-ignoring weapons, eg. K-guns) and is equipped
with an "infinite" number of Fire Control Systems (in reality 5-6 FCSs
is enough to count as "effectively infinite", but most FT ships don't even
have that many FCSs).

(BTW, your "hull efficiency" looks like the probability that one specific
Core System - ie. the Bridge, since that's the only one which knocks the

ship out cold - will remain intact. Is that a correct interpretation?)

If OTOH your ship has screens then each hull row has to be weighted by the
protection given by the screen times the probability that the screen is still
intact; and if the ship ha a finite number of FCSs each hull row in the system
efficiency formula also has to be weighted by the probability

that at the ship has at least one intact FCS left (because if it has no FCSs
left it can't use any of its surviving weapons). Armour adds to the

first hull row unless the ship has so much armour that
armour-penetrating
damage causes it to reach the 1st threshold before it has lost all the armour.

Putting these extra factors will probably mess your numbers up a bit :-/

> Anybody do any serious simulation on this?

Yep. Four or five years ago :-/

Regards,

> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
Right. I was looking at similar ships with just different numbers of rows.
I'll have to see what the synergy effects of shields are. Didn't think about
that. However, it seemed that the relative efficiency increase from 4 rows to
3 rows was bigger than from 3 rows to 2 rows. But maybe shields much this up
as well.

> >For 4 rows hull efficiency is 1/4*(1+1+5/6+5/6*4/6),
Yup. Other factors, like damage control parties didn't seem significant.
> Putting these extra factors will probably mess your numbers up a bit

All in all, this, together with the quadratic CPV stuff, seems to indicate
that simple linear functions for costing don't seem to work. At least, when
you go to extremes. Of course, using the rules
with lots of non-linear functions would make them a bit unwieldy,
unless you are using a computer. Which, for a miniatures games, might not be
the right way to go. So, how do you go about avoiding design extremes without
using complicated formulae or articicial limitations? Things I found when
going through the archives:
- big vs small ships
- the recent fighter discussion
- some reference to Sa'vasku design extremes
- this variable hull stuff
Or just use a scenario, as was also mentioned recently.

Cheers,

> Frits Kuijlman wrote:

> >The other hull types also have this kind of synergy effects, but on a

Don't feel bad. I didn't either at first :-7

> However, it seemed that the relative efficiency increase from 4 rows to

They and the FCSs. You need to factor in both of these to get it right.

> >(BTW, your "hull efficiency" looks like the probability that one

When you calculate the impact one extra FCS can have, damage control parties
suddenly start looking very important indeed (and yes, it is a pain to try and
take them into account)... the bridge hits OTOH have a smaller impact than
expected because the weapons availability is so poor at the lower hull rows
anyway.

> >Putting these extra factors will probably mess your numbers up a bit

Which is why it took me over a year before I even mentioned the
variable-row concept to the rest of the playtesters, longer still before
it went into Noam's Weapons&Defences Archive, and another couple years or
three before Jon was confident enough about it to allow it into the official
game... Calculations can cut down the amount of playtesting you

need to do by giving you a reasonable starting point, but that's all they can
do.

> All in all, this, together with the quadratic CPV stuff, seems to

You can limit the non-linearities by thinking very carefully about your
game mechanics, but the easiest way to handle the extremes is to
deliberately make them overpriced - that way the powergamers will tend
to
stay away from those areas :-/ Some FT examples are very high thrust
ratings, large Beam Batteries, and of course the CPV system - it seems
to work OK for the Fleet Book size range and a bit beyond, but above TMF
350-400 or so the ships get increasingly overpriced as they grow larger.

Later,

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