Re: FT-Starfire conversions

Hm. Thought I had posted this already, but appearently not :-( Sorry for

the delay.

Coming mainly from the Starfire game direction here:

>Comercial drives (as used in bug SD`s)- I was thinking of 7% mass per
>thrust, and a 0.5 cost per mass (yes, a half).

I'd make it 7.5% mass per thrust to make a it little easier to calculate

(7.5% mass per thrust is exactly 1.5x the mass of normal drives), but it

should be OK. Feels a bit odd to make the engines cheaper than the hull 
plating though <g>

However... considering that none of these battles are even close to
being 
cost-balanced (it is all in the victory conditions), you only need to
take 
the difference between military and commercial drives into account if
you 
run a campaign where both strategic mobility and production cost are 
accounted for.

>Missiles-SML`s for the bugs at the start, ER SML`s later, and MT
missiles as
>SBM`s, using the MT launcher as given in the WDA, with AM missiles
having
>double dammage, but will detonate if hit (threshold roll).

The Bugs had CMs (corresponding to ER SMs) with first-generation 
anti-matter warheads in the very first battle of IDG; it was the 
2nd-generation AM warheads they didn't develop until some way into the 
Sarasota campaign.

Standard-range salvo missiles correspond better to the shorter-ranged 
missiles (Starfire "Standard Missiles") used by close-range combattants
of 
all sizes (including virtually all light Allied units).

>Plasma guns-C mode only pulsars (my acid design has about 10 of them,
ouch!)

Yes.

>Force beams-Cl.3 bats (for capts), 2`s for lighter units.

On the Allied side, virtually all units smaller than a BC had pure
missile 
armaments - there were some heavy cruisers which carried beams, but they

used the same size beams as the capitals.

Virtually no light Bug units used force beams at all - the exception are

the Cataphracts which have a force beam for minesweeping in the game 
module, but they don't have it in the novels.

(The reason for this was that the rules for Starfire minefields had been

extensively reworked between the time Weber wrote the draft for the
novel 
and the time the game module was published - had we retained Weber's 
original Cataphract minesweeper design, it would've been completely
useless 
for the role it was explicitly designed for :-/ )

>Needle beams-Heavy, long ranged needle beams as given in the WDA, with
multi
>arc option, but only 1 critical even at close range.

You mean "Primary beams" (Starfire has Needle beams as well, but they
don't 
feature in the IDG/TSO battles). The capital primaries carried on the 
Augers etc. are long-ranged enough to correspond to FT "Heavy needles",
but 
the expendable Cleavers used short-ranged (basic) primary beams instead
(FT 
normal needles, or normal needles with multi-arc option).

>HET lasers (terran only)-See above

The Orions used bomb-pumped lasers (derived from those used by the
Thebans 
in "Crusade", but very much improved esp. regarding safety) which had 
similar prestanda to the terran HETs.

>Standard datalink-Using ADFC rules

For defensive fire, yes. For offensive fire, see below.

>Advanced armour-PH armour rules

Both sides had the same armour types though.

>There is one or two things that I need help on. These I will list
below.
>
>COMMAND DATALINK-I was thinking along the lines as the C3 used in
>battletech, with each ship in the group using a slave computer (M=1,
C=6?),
>and the mother ship a master computer (M=5, C=30?). Can function as a
ADFC
>for the equipted ships in the group (max of 6). Max range from mother
ship
>is 6 MU(same as ADFC)

>Some of my ideas for this are-
>
>For incoming missiles, you roll the total number of missiles to hit,
and
>then roll PDS against the missiles, counting the incoming missiles as
one
>salvo, so not wasting any rolls. The number of PDS each ship has
allocated
>to it out of the group has to be decided before the number of missiles
to
>hit is rolled, but after you know how many salvo`s are going to hit
>(IE-Allows you to allocate the PDS at the last minute against incoming
fire,
>using the groups entire PDS, as long as they`re within 6MU sphere of
the
>mother ship).

This could work OK.

>For offensive fire, this is more difficult, due to the differences in
the
>PDS of the two games. The offensive advantages work by timing the
salvo`s on
>target a the same time from different ships, and overloading the PDS of
the
>target, so allowing more missiles to get through. For FT, my idea is
that
>for every ship in the group firing on a target, said target has a PDS
>reduced in effectiveness to that of a Cl.1 bat in PDS mode. The number
of
>PDS effected is equal to the number of ships in the group firing (6
ships, 6
>PDS as Cl.1 bats). If firing on a command datalink equipted group, this
>advantage is nullified.

Argh. With just about every ship being missile-armed, how do you keep
track 
of which ship fired which missile/missile salvo? If a datagroup of six 
ships fires (say) six missile salvoes and those salvoes hit one target 
each, do the targets still suffer the penalty?

>I know the above sounds complicated, and will require play testing to
see
>how it works, but the defensive systems FEEL OK, just not sure of the
>offensive bit (also, will have to get my coppies of starfire out to see
if
>you get any advantages for direct fire weapons, don`t think you do, but
this
>is from memory only).

You most certainly do. In Starfire, just as in Full Thrust, you normally

fire one unit at a time and records damage as soon as it is inflicted. 
Starfire datalink gives the same effect as FT fire-per-squadron, ie. all

ships in the same datagroup fire at the same time.

Normal ("basic") datalink can link up to 3 units, but is very fragile -
it 
is lost when the *first* hull box (not armour) is crossed out, and
cannot 
be repaired afterwards. Command (or "capital") datalink can link up to 6

units and is treated as a normal system for threshold checks.

In Starfire point defences can shoot at any fighter within range, but
they 
can only fire at missiles which attack either the unit mounting the
point 
defence itself or another unit in the same datagroup. This is quite 
different from FT, where a single ADFC can protect *any* friendly unit 
within 6mu.

>Forts-Use ship construction rules, with them having a drive of 2% mass
for
>station keeping only (not thrust).

Why bother with engines at all?

>Gunboats-This I am trying to go along the lines of a heavy/interceptor
>fighter that can be targetted by ship to ship weapons, but can carry
more
>missiles than a fighter (2 fighter missiles, or 1 SML missile each) and
has
>no endurance (but is slower, 18 MU per turn ). If rearming, must be
rearmed
>by a shutdown ship, and if shutdown ship is hit by weapons fire, takes
>doubble dammage.

Gunboats generally get slaughtered by an equal number of fighters, so 
Heavy/Interceptor doesn't sound all that likely. I'd make them
Heavy/Attack 
or just plain Heavy, in either case assuming that the "fighter missile" 
above refers to AFHAWK (not sure, it could refer to a torpedo
fighter-style 
weapon as well).

>Must be carried on external racks (10 mass for a squadren),
>and if hit by enemy fire while onboard their racks, are considered
>destroyed.

The reason to carry the gunboats on external racks was that they *don't*

take up much internal Mass aboard the mothership...

Good luck with the battles,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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