RE: Vertical Damage (was: [FT] nasty idea for spinal mounts)

Yes. As I said:
  2) It is a little of an odds changer for smaller (Cruiser) ships as
they
can
  force a large ship to threshold checks sooner. And...
  3) It has little value against smaller ships (regular Class-3s are
more
  effective).

However, it actually brings some balance back between equal mass of
large and small ships. Take 1 large ship with 80 hull and 4 smaller
ships with 20 hull. The 4 smaller ships take 4x the number of 
threshold checks as the large ships. However, I grant that each
threshold check on the small ships may only effect 1/4 of the systems
(only those of the ship that takes the treshold); but the smaller ships
can only put 1/4 as many DCP to repairing the damage from any one
given threshold loss.

In play test, you still had to get through the first damage row of a 
large ship before the Cutter Beams started to become effective. On
the larger ships this is quite a task.

Massed cutter beams against a single target became very effective
late in the game, but regular Class-3s actually forced threshold 
checks sooner on small and medium size ships.

-----
Brian Bell
bkb@beol.net	  
-----

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Bayan Schoonmaker [SMTP:s_schoon@pacbell.net]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2000 10:32 AM
> To:	gzg-l@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
> Subject:	RE: Vertical Damage (was:  [FT] nasty idea for spinal
> mounts)
> 
> >Unless they force a threshold check at the end of the column as well
as
> the
> >end of the row.
> 
> This would unjustly penalize larger ships.
> 
> >1) The Cutter Beam must be used in combination with more standard
style
> >weapons (that damage horizontally) to be truely effective. The reason
is
> >that even with 3 dice of damage, the 4th row is usually not damaged
until
> >both armor and the 1st row is removed. As the ship looses hull, the
> weapon
> >becomes more and more effective.
> 
> I'd question this, particularly in the case of larger ships. With only
16
> points of damage, you get four threshold checks. Granted they're only
the
> 1-in-6 variety, but that still adds up to a sizable percentage that
any
> given system will go bye-bye.
> 
> 
> Schoon
>