RE: Combat Effectivness

Brendan Robertson wrote in reply to Damond Walker:

 >>I was wondering if anyone had done any work with determining
 >>a combat effectivness value for ships in FT. I've been toying
 >>with the idea over the last couple of days and I'm trying to come
 >>up with values for systems to measure their effectivness in
 >>combat. Point Total != Combat Effectivness.

To answer Damond's question first: yes, someone has done some work on
this. 
Unfortunately the issue is much too complex for a single number to tell
you 
how the ship will perform against every potential opponent - eg., what's

the value of strong point defences if the enemy doesn't have any
fighters 
or missiles? What's the value of level-2 screens when fighting Kra'Vak?
In 
both these cases the correct answer is "zero"... yet when fighting
enemies 
who do use fighters/missiles or beams respectively, the values of those 
systems are quite high instead. Since a single value can't be both zero
and 
non-zero at the same time, a single value can't tell you the entire
story - 
the best you can get is a reasonable average, and that's pretty much
what 
the NPV is.

The big problem with the NPV system is that it underprices large ships 
compared to small ones - big ships have a number of advantages due to
their 
size, and since the NPV system only makes you pay for the actual systems

and hull/armour boxes installed the larger ships don't get to pay points

for these advantages. As long as there's no serious mis-match in
equipment 
and ship sizes between the opposing sides these advantages average out,
but 
if one side uses significantly fewer and larger ships than the other it 
will have a distinct advantage.

As to your example - "I'm looking for a range of numbers which will show

that a Petrograd BC is three times more effective in combat than say a 
single Warsaw DD. ", well... assuming that you mean the Manchuria-class
BC 
(the Petrograd is the ESU BB, not the BC), then you already have the
NPVs 
which suggests that the Manchuria is 312/93 = 3.35 times more effective 
than one Warsaw. However, in my experience you need four Warsaws to get
an 
even match against a single Manchuria rather than three :-/

Now to Brendan's post:

 >Here's some stuff I wound up accidentily doing last year:
 >http://home.pacific.net.au/~southernskies/ft/abstract.htm
 >It should give you an idea of the factors involved. There were
 >some surprises about ship effectiveness.

All in all a good start, and below I assume that you've all visited 
Brendan's page. Some comments to this stuff based on my playtest data:

OV comments:

- Assuming Cinematic movement, I'd make the Arc multiples increase a bit
more steeply. IME 5-6 arcs are somewhere between 33% and 66% more
powerful
than 3 arcs, rather than the 20-30% Brendan suggests. (With the "no
rear-arc
fire if main engine is used" rule in use, there's very little difference
between 5 and 6 arcs.)

- In Cinematic the Arc multiples for 1- (and to a lesser degree 2-) arc
weapons depends on the range band as well as on the ship's engine
rating.
Eg., in the L band (24-36mu) Brendan's value of 0.6 for single-arc
weapons
agrees with my data for "human" (capable of 3-point turns or less)
ships,
but I'd put it at 0.75 for very maneuverable ships (capable of 4-point
turns
or more); in the S band (0-12mu) I'd only rate single-arc weapons at
0.25
for "human" ships and around 0.4-0.5 for maneuverable ships (though that
last figure is uncertain - I don't have enough recorded data on such
engine/weapon combinations).

- Assuming Vector movement instead I'd set the Arc multiples to 1 for
1-arc,
and to 1.1 for 2 or more arcs :-7

- I'm a bit curious about Brendan's OV values for P-torps - in
comparison to
the B3 I'd rate it as 4/2/0.4 rather than 4/3/2.

- SubPacs are single-shot weapons, just like missiles.

- I'd treat fighters and missiles as "separate units" rather than as
weapons
"fired" by the mothership. How fast the fighters degrade depends
entirely on
how strong anti-fighter defences they face.
DV comments:

- As long as the enemy weapons can't inflict the first threshold check
before your ship has lost all its armour, each armour box is worth
approx.
1.5x as much as a hull box. The point where you have "too much" armour
depends on what weapons your enemies use, of course :-7

- Only a 1.4 multiplier for lvl-2 screens? I would've said 1.5 :-/

- I'd lift the anti-fighter/missile capabilities of PDSs and B1s out of
DV.
Otherwise ships like David Griffin's "Furies"-class will cause anomalies
-
this class has 16 hull, 2 armour, 16 PDSs and thrust-4, so using
Brendan's
formula it gets a DV of 34 even when fighting an enemy armed with
nothing
but beams :-/

General comment:

Minor issues with the exact figures aside, this system should work well
in 
Vector. In Cinematic OTOH it runs into problems with maneuvers, though -

eg., using Brendan's system there's no way a pair of NSL
Richthofen-class 
BCs can ever defeat a lone ESU Komarov (they'll maul it badly before
they 
die, but die they will), but in a real game they can take it out if one
of 
the BCs manage to get onto the Komarov's tail (ie., in the (A) arc and
with 
roughly the same course and speed). With a thrust rating of only 2, the 
only way the Komarov can shake them off in Cinematic is to slow down to 
speed 0 and spin in place :-/

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com
"Life is like a sewer.
What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."-Hen3ry

oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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