RE: FT-Number crunching required (HELP)

G'day Brian,

 >4mu engagement envelope (probably should be 3mu).
 >No secondary movement.

OK that would cut down the problem a bit, but at the speeds you say you 
play I'd be surprised if you didn't have a high hit rate.

 >We also limit launch to Active Sensor Range (54mu).

Then why have such large CEF? Do people usually need that much?

 >Our group does use ships with beefed up with ADFC/PDS nets.

Most people we've come across do too... the ship books are a little
light ;)

 >The most missiles on the table at a time
 >that I can remember is about 6.

So you have no players that tend to play in the FSE mould or do you play

small-moderate sized games (i.e. few cruisers etc)?

 >We also do not use markers indicating
 >where the ship will be in the next turn or allow
 >measurement from opposition ship
 >in the missile/fighter placement/movement
 >phases (these makes it too easy for
 >any missile of fighter to be on target
 >every round).

Allowing measuring can be a big aid, but I'd still be surprised if the 
missile users didn't get their eye in though ;)

 >I will concede that they are unbalanced
 >in large numbers (but no more so
 >than fighters).

I obviously haven't played your missiles out, but my gut feel would be
that 
your proposed MTMs may tend to get overwhelming faster than Alan's 18"
version.

 >I am curious, do you think that Fast Fighters
 >(move 36mu, 2nd move 12mu,
 >range 6mu) is a bit much also?
 >I know that the mass/cost, damage/mass and
 >damage/cost is different. But they do get to
 >make more than one attack.

Assuming your morale rolls are good. MTMs don't make morale rolls ;)

 >Missiles are like fighters the more
 >you use, the more effective they are.

True, though how and why and when is a bit different in each case.

 >Fighter groups seem balanced at about
 >1 group per 3 friendly ships ( with a
 >balanced, mixed mass fleet),

Do you mean unopposed? And do you mean total ratio (so carrier with 9 
groups say is bringing the fighters for 27 ships)? Either way I wouldn't

have found that ratio of fighters to be overwhelming in our games -
unless 
maybe if the firing side also had a lot of disposable munitions (PBs or 
missiles) and the other side had only few fighters and/or a PDS net
about 
the same scale as in the ship books.

 >where no more than 2 groups attack a single
 >target in a single turn (playtesters can
 >correct this perception if I am wrong and
 >indicate the correct balance point).

What sized target are we talking about? I'd rarely through less than two

fighter groups on to a ship cruiser size or above, but that could be
just 
the way I play (overwhelm and whittle down one at a time, ADFC ships
first).

 >In MT, MT missiles seemed balanced at
 >about 1 per 2 ships (where no more than
 >2 attacked a given target in a given turn).

I'm not good at looking at it in such an abstract way, I have a better
feel 
for numbers in an entire fleet. However, based on the games we've played

where you can have 10s of missiles (SMs/MTMs or a mix) on the board at 
once, 1 per 2 ships seems awful low even vs ship books (especially say
the 
NSL or ESU).

Cheers

Beth

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Elizabeth Fulton
CSIRO Division of Marine Research
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