Re: General EMP Thoughts

In message <200102192028.VAA17781@d1o960.telia.com>
	  "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com> wrote:

> Charles Taylor wrote:
> 
> >>>1) They should affect a set number of systems - not a ship-wide 
> >>>blanket. This is for balance.
> >> 
> >>The ship-wide blanket effect of the MTM-EMP (and its proposed
> >>direct-fire relatives) is one of the very few FT game mechanisms (as
> >>opposed to arbitrary scenario restrictions or tournament rules)
which
> >>*can* reduce this particular imbalance, [ie. the one between few big
> >>and many small ships] which is why I'm not prepared to accept
> >>Schoon's first point for all EMP weapons. 
> > 
> >Hmm... good point, so we could balance a 'blanket threshold' weapon
> >against an 'average sized' ship, this would make it over expensive
vs.
> >smaller ships (but if you _must_ use a sledgehammer to crack a
>nut...
> :-), and underpriced vs. larger ships - which _could_ be an >incentive
> to create fleets with a proper distribution of ship sizes - if we
> >handle it right.
> 
> Exactly. *If* we can handle it right, and also *if* we can agree on
> what is a "proper distribution of ship sizes :-/ Unfortunately those
> two are pretty big "if"s <sigh>
> 
> Later,
> 
> 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
> 
Well, if we come up with a cost for EMP weapons that is 'balanced' for
a particular range of ship sizes (say we use FB1/FB2 for the
distribution) we would tend to 'lock' players into using that size
distribution - _if_ they use EMP weapons - as those that tend to use
lots of small ships would tend find EMP weapons to pricey, while those
that field lots of big ships tend to find then cheap.

Well, it looks like these are always a problem - we could give a range
of costs for a range of size distributions (if you & your opponent use
different distributions - negotiate). But in general, it looks like a
nice idea that is very hard to implement in a generally accepted way -
oh well!

Maybe Needle Beam type weapons (nominated as next WotW) will be easier
:-)