Re: Thoughts on FT

In message <Pine.LNX.3.91.970407101516.15216B-100000@swob.dna.fi> Mikko
Kurki-Suonio writes:
> On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, David Brewer wrote:
> 
> > I don't know how to say this without being rude, but perhaps you'd
> > raise more debate if you weren't flogging horses that were dead or, 
> > at the very least, exceedingly lame.
> 
> Gee, aren't we touchy? If you don't want to hear about it, hit the
"next 
> message" button.

Well, I did... and it reappeared when you answered your own 
questions.

> > Why don't thrusters with different ratings have different mass? 
> 
> I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding.
> 
> > It just isn't that important, really. 
> 
> I guess it is, as it's among the proposed rules amendments for FTIII.

Not one I like, frankly. 

I dislike the tendency to view ship (or tank) construction as 
plonking together so many lego bricks. Isn't it plausible that the 
exact same set of system specs instantiated in a ship might have a 
varying number of DP depending on which yard (meaning also 
architect, contractor, nation, culture, race, whatever) it comes 
from, and in which year? Not to mention the dozens of little tedious 
RL factors that are of no consequence to a tactical game?

Should we specify, say, a varying mass for fuel/supplies varying on
the ship's required endurance? (Or FTL-range, or whatever). I think 
it wise to subsume all this crap into a flat 50%. I would be 
happiest to see DP-quantity be independent of which systems are
specified.

> > A simple rule might be to make beams ignore armour, and to 
> > generally make all weapons ignore one or the other. This would
> > also work towards balancing the Kra'Vak... a little. Just a 
> > random thought.
> 
> It would be a logical explanation why humans have quit using armor...

Perhaps armour fell out of favour with the military-industrial
complex. Screen manufacturers paid bigger bribes, or were cheaper,
or required the mining of rare minerals that the ruling class had
a monopoly in...

> > This is not ambiguous. C-batts do not inflict kills on a four,
> > heavy fighters do not count them either. Discounting a four twice
> > is the same as discounting it once.
> 
> By your logic, screen-1 stacked with armor-1 offers no extra
protection 
> against beams, since both systems discount 4's. It is one way to look
at 
> it, but not the only one.

No, not at all. Both the C-battery text and the heavy fighter text
specifically refer to discouting 4's. In the case of armour/screens
armour is refered to as counting as screening, and the effects of
layering screens are well enough described in the basic rules. 

There's a maximum protection of three screens BTW...

> Finding the proper balance between wildly dissimilar systems is hard. 
> Therefore it is IMHO very useful to note the similarity between PTTs
and 
> railguns. Analysing this relation will give us a much better idea what

> the RG's should cost.
> 
> To cure the "masses of RG-1's" I propose the following amendment:

Ah... now you're actually proposing amendments as a stimulus to 
discussion, rather that asking rhetorical questions. You should do
this in a seperate message. Here it is buried in our rhetorical 
crap above, so less people will actually bother to read it.

> Scrap the different railgun classes. Instead buy RG-batteries. One 
> battery is equal to the standard RG-1.

It's not a bad idea.

> When firing, count all batteries. Roll to hit once. You either hit or
> miss. Roll the damage die if you hit. On 1-3 you inflict damage equal
to
> the number of batteries, on 4-6 twice that. 

Hmmmm... well, if I have two Kra'Vak shooting two targets, I might
split the fire of each of my ships between each target and thereby
obtain more consistant results. Likewise the fire from many small
ships will strike more consistantly than that of one large ship.
This could be seen as a bug or a feature... how microsoft do you
feel today?

I don't think it would be to time-consuming to have each RG-1 roll
seperately it's attack and damage.

> Take threshold rolls separately for each battery.
> 
> If you're interested in point balance, up the battery cost to 7
points.

So low?... try running the numbers between a PTT and an RG-2 (not 
RG-3). Band-for-band the RG-2 has a greater mean damage (and all 
the other advantages you quote for an RG-3). Throw in the greater 
resilience to threshold checks when broken into two RG-1's...

Or compare an RG-1 and a 1-arc C-battery. I'd put an RG-1 in at 
least 10 points... if not 15.

-- 
David Brewer