Re: Disruptors (Upgraded to FB rules)

I'm not sure if I'm in favor of your description.  The way you mark 
damage off is intreaging, however there's enough similarity to the 
present beam systems that I'm wondering how disruptors would add to the 
game system.  Please don't take that as an insult, I tend to be one of 
those KISS types.  Now on to the specific comments...

At approximately 5/10/98 8:35 PM,  Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote:

>The following are my disruptor rules, now up to FB standards:
>
>Disruptor Cannons
>Mass: 2/4/8 + 0/2/2	Point Cost: Mass x 2

I'd move the cost up to mass x3 to keep them in line with normal beam 
batteries.

>	Disruptors damage their targets by an alternating gravitic
pulse. Though 
>they are capable of inflicting more damage than comparable beam
weapons, 
>they rarely cause system failures. The synchronization of the pulses
must 
>be finely tuned, resulting in damage that decreases rapidly with range.

>The three basic types of disruptor cannon batteries are:
>3	0-12" - 6 dice	12-24" - 4 dice 24-36" - 2 dice
>2	0-12" - 4 dice	12-24" - 2 dice
>1 0-12" - 2 dice

(Stating the obvious here)  They're equivalent in dice to the same mass 
amount of equivalent sized beams.  However, one puts more of the 
proverbial eggs in one basket as far as threshold checks against them.	
Of course it's easier to repair one disruptor than two normal beams
after 
they've been damaged.

>	Damage is marked off in a slightly different manner for
disruptor 
>cannons. Instead of marking the top row of boxes, from left to right, 
>damage is applied to the left-most column of boxes, from top to bottom.

>Armor is marked off as it appears at the top of each column. Damage
will 
>almost never cause threshold rolls without also destroying the vessel. 
>However, the vessel may be forced to take a more severe threshold roll
as 
>it's first check if the last box of the second or third row happens to
be 
>the first marked off before the last box of the first or second row,
which 
>could be one box "longer." A ship could, in theory, even be destroyed 
>while it still had a box or two of hull remaining in one of the upper 
>rows. For example, if an NAC Minerva Class frigate took two hits from 
>disruptor fire, assuming she had not taken any other damage previously,

>she would be forced to make a level 2 threshold check. The last box of
her 
>second row of hull had been marked off, but not the last box of the
first 
>row.

The skipping of armor is quite and advantage vs. armor only ships.  I'm 
not sure that the virtually no threshold checks is enough of a 
disadvantage vs. the skipping of armor.  With the new ship construction 
system from the FB, I believe we'll see a number of ships that depend 
mainly on armor or screens, but not both.  The disruptor as you've 
presented it would put the strong armor philosophy at a big
disadvantage, 
an idea that I'm not in favor of.

How are re-rolls (of sixes) handled?  Like normal beam batteries?

>Please provide comments and criticisms,

Hope you find this somewhat constructive.

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Kevin Walker			 Mac Developer / Software Engineer
sage@millcomm.com		 sage@wamnet.com
Rochester  MN  USA		 WAM!NET
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