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