Re: FT: Damage Track Sliding Scale Suggestion

Alun Thomas writes:

@:) > [...] gets only two damage points, but since it has to stretch
@:) > the points in 4 tracks, the first track is "empty", the second
@:) > track has one, the third track is empty, and the fourth trach
@:) > has the final damage point.  When skipping over a line due to
@:) > "empty", the ship has to take threshold checks at the worse
@:) > level rather than the missed level. [...]

@:) Wouldn't this clobber escorts?  A 4 hit ship currently gets 2 rows
@:) with 2 hits each. This would give it 4 rows with 1 hit each - 1
@:) threshold check per point of damage taken.

  Yeah - that would kinda suck, huh.  So how about this.  Let's say
that a ship may have as many as four damage rows (threshold checks at
6,5,4 then *boom*).  A "complete" damage row will always have a
multiple of five damage boxes.	Any damage row will have the same or
fewer boxes as the next row and the same or more boxes as the previous
row.  When determining how many rows to put on a ship, complete rows
are created starting at the bottom and working up through the 4, 5 and
6 threshold levels.  Any spare points are assembled into an incomplete
row, also working from the bottom up.  It looks like this:

  (spaces between o's are to help you count and have no game meaning)

Mass 10 ship:
6: ooooo

Mass 18 ship:
6: oooo
5: ooooo

Mass 36 ship:
6: ooo
5: ooooo
4: ooooo
3: ooooo

Mass 46 ship:
6: ooooo
5: ooooo
4: ooooo
3: ooooo ooo

Mass 82 ship:
6: ooooo ooooo 
5: ooooo ooooo 
4: ooooo ooooo 
3: ooooo ooooo o

  This system, like most of those already discussed, has little effect
on heavy capital ships.  It makes escorts tougher but more brittle
since no ship below mass 11 gets a threshold roll.  I think this is
acceptable, though, since escorts typically break down after their
first hit and pop after their second.  This would give them a slightly
higher likelihood of delivering some damage before they die.

  Another possible idea would be to create the damage boxes from the
top to the bottom of this template.  It has always seemed unfortunate
to me that, under the current system, a mass 6 ship is typically less
effective than a mass 4 ship because it takes an often-crippling
threshold roll after only one hit.  If the largest row of the chart
were the first one, bigger ships would always be tougher than their
smaller bretheren - in terms of combat effectiveness and not just
number of hits until destruction.

  Such a system would then give us:

Mass 10 ship:
6: ooooo

Mass 18 ship:
6: ooooo
5: oooo

Mass 36 ship:
6: ooooo
5: ooooo
4: ooooo
3: ooo

 and so forth.

-joachim