Re: Beams and size classes

At 08:21 PM 11/28/96 +0000, you wrote:
>'Lo, folks,
>	     here's a modification of an idea I (and I'm sure lots of
others,
>eg Allan Goodall) have had concerning ship classes and beam weapons. 
The
>basic idea is that Cs are "appropriate" for Escorts, Bs are
"appropriate"
>for Cruisers, As are "appropriate" for Capitals, and AAs are
appropriate for
>Capitals and Superships, especially the latter.  An "appropriate" beam
>weapon requires the usual number of Mass points.  An "inappropriate"
>single-arc weapon requires double Mass allowance, a 2- or 3-arc weapon
needs
>triple.  It is therefore just possible to shoehorn a 3-arc A-Battery
into a
>superdestroyer FTL hull, perhaps as a monitor, but only just.
>Cheers,
>Rob
>
>Rob Paul

	Here's a thought to get C-bats used more: Extend this
appropriateness idea in the other direction. If you're building a
cruiser or
a capital ship, maybe give a guy a break on mass points if he buys
C-bats in
a group. They might be limited in range but if you could get them at two
for
a single point of mass I for one would have to consider their use
seriously.
It makes sense--depending on your background universe. Traveller and
Leviathan and Star Wars are all universes where the dominant weapons
appear
to be bays or arrays of lots of little guns. If on a supership you could
get
B-bats at a mass discount--that would be something to think about. It
would
also be a good way to represent those Star Trek movie era phaser
banks--you
know the ones, where two weapons are always fired together. Maybe a rule
where you can get grouped weapons at a mass discount but a single
threshold
roll would damage both weapons or something like that. That way you
could
explain the mass discount as the grouped weapons sharing components
(maybe a
single capacitor or a single connection to the ship's fire control
systems)
and so damage to one is effectively damage to the other. I dunno.

	James
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