RE: MT missiles

Missiles appear to be one of those hard to balance items (similar to
fighters IMHO). Make them too strong and the game becomes a boring fire
and
leave game. Make them a little weaker, and they become too weak.

Unlike Oerjan, I use vector (not for missiles or fighters), inch scale,
and
usually fixed table edges (because of lack of room to do floating
edges).

Someone (Mikko, I believe) said that when systems are tested, the
extremes
should be tested. I agree with this. In FT as it now stands, a system
would
need to be tested under the following systems/conditions:
1) Cinematic
2) Vector
3) vs. Std. Human ships (each nation and mixed)
4) vs. Std. Alien ships (each species and mixed)
5) vs. Optimized Human ships (each nation and mixed)
6) vs. Optimized Alien ships (each nation and mixed)
7) With new system as one system of many
9) With new system as primary weapon
10) Against fleets of small ships
11) Against fleets of large ships
12) Fixed table
13) Floating table
14) One off game
15) Campaign (limited reloads/repair)
17) Games based on points
18) Games based on mass
19) Players who wrote the rules
20) New players to make sure that the notes on the systems are easy to
understand.

There are probably others that I missed, but just the above leads to a
LOT
of play testing to ensure balance. It may be that making it balanced for
all
of the above is impossible <shrug>.

Oerjan, Jon, and other play testers, it would be interesting to see
write
ups of the test games (fleets, results, and
analysis/observations/conclusions). If anyone has notes of this kind, I
would gladly provide web space (on xoom) to house it.

---
Brian Bell
bkb@beol.net <mailto:bkb@beol.net>
http://members.xoom.com/rlyehable/ft/
ICQ: 12848051
AIM: Rlyehable
---

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
[mailto:owner-gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU]On Behalf Of Oerjan Ohlson
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 16:18
To: gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Re: MT missiles

[snip]

Oh ye of little faith...

We *)  fixed the "nothing but A-batts". We tried to fix the level-3
screens but found it impossible, so we banned them instead. Now we're
trying to fix the MTMs; if we can that's good, if we can't they'll get
banned too.

[snip]

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry