From: Charles N. Choukalos <chuckc@b...>
Date: Fri, 05 Nov 1999 09:07:25 -0500
Subject: Re: Wave Guns, Nova Cannons, & Mines
Beth, Actually I like your revised Wave cannon rules... ( range 36" template 4"/6"/8", hit based upon centerpoint, centerline fire arc ) However, currently when you fire the wave gun, you drop your fore shield, and you can not fire any other weapon (I believe PDS and screens other then fore arc are still active.). However, you already had to wait to charge the cannon ( roll d6 per turn until 6 pts is stored in capacitor). Also I would say that ships hits till destruction have roughly doubled since FT2. So I would say all you have above but: . When firing wave gun, can fire other weapons same turn. . either double the template (2/3/4 to 4/6/8) or keep same template but double the damage (4dice instead). Also allow rerolls on 6. Just some thoughts in making them more useful. I believe in FB they are mass 10, cost 30. I feel that this would make them "effective" again, but not overly soo. Nova Cannons... I played around with them in FT2 and never really liked them, in FB now they seem totally useless. Why not do the following for them: Dis. Drop shields. No other weapons fire. Centerline fire . Template 3/6/9 ( I think this is old ) -> (goes to) 6/9/12 [ Wider Swath ] . Damage (6d6,4d6,2d6) = same as always (But add rerolls on 6). No turn breaks anymore (aka all templates go down in 1 turn) . Also keep the range in 18" brackets (18"/36"/48") . do roll d6/turn charge to 6 pts to fire rule I would think that this would be useful. I don't have my fleet book handy, but I think its mass 15, cost 45 ( or is it mass 20, cost 60). If its the later cost, I would look hard at doubling the damage too. This way a close Nova Cannon shot is viscious to really big ships and as it spreads out a nice way to damage little ships/fighters. The reason I'm pointing this out is that most battleships can fire ~20 dice of beam damage... if you drop p-torps on them you're still talking 4-5 p-torps + so class-2's/1's beams too. We're talking a major downer to invest all the mass in a nova or wave cannon and then give up most of your ships fire power to fire them. Anyway, what do you think of the revisions, does it make them too powerful? Also Beth, you said you had worked out the EFSB Beam battery's. What did you finally cost/mass them and their capacitors out to be? Also I did a mine scenerio and had an NSL force attack a base station through a mine field. Thier minesweeper was wasted pretty early on (aka don't stick it in a destroyer sized ship) and the NSL forces waded through a pretty big minefield ( ~60-80 mines or so... I think they must have gotten about 40 or 50 of them. The damage they did was pretty lame. I was wondering if anyone had done some point balancing with sfb style captor mines and sml based mines. Aka, a mine that is expendable and lunches an SML at a target within 6" ( double the standard mines 3") I was thinking mass 1, cost 5 for this mine. Also what about a captor mine (Treat as a 6 dice of beam damage spread over as many targets are within 6" of the mine, fires every turn until sweept). I was going to give it mass 2, cost 6. I would think this would enforce a minesweepers involvement rather then let the big ships just wade through/clear the minefield. Also, we argued about weither the "standard" mine attacks fighters too. We ruled for that particular argument that the fighters would not get hit by mines (I argued that it made them too powerful). However after the battle I feel that the standard mine is really lame, but not quite sure if the 2 points/mine justifies 2dice of pds vs every fighter group within 3". So I propose an (pds) mine. Same mass/cost as standard mine but attack eligible pds targets within 3" range. Aka all fighter/sml groups. SO if any fighter/sml group moves through a mine 3" radius they get attacked by a (pds) mine with 2dice worth of pds for each mine they pass through, until destroyed or out of the mine field. Resolve SML attacks as roll for missle lock-on then subtract out the destroyed missles. Does this make sense? Anyone else play with minefields/minesweepers? Thanks, chuck