Re: S'V Seekers

On Tuesday, December 11, 2001, at 03:06 PM, Jaime Tiampo wrote:

>> The Lance Pod, which costs the same amount of bio-mass and three
times 
>> as
>> much energy to launch, gets a 50% or better chance to hit out to
range
>> *12mu* - provided, of course, that you managed to point its
single-arc
>> launcher in the right direction to begin with.
>
> Which I think is underpowered. Why you would ever use a lance pod
> escapes me.

I've seen them used in games effectively, used like pulse torps but 
usually used in the closer two range bands.  They give an extra punch, 
especially since they penetrate armor well.

>>> It takes 2 mass to use a MT missile, It takes 3 mass for the drone 
>>> womb, 1
>>> mass for the seeker, and whatever energy is finalised on. That's 
>>> already
>>> more mass.
>>
>> Six MTMs = 12 Mass, 36 pts
>> Six "seekers" + 1 Drone Womb = 9 Mass, 21 pts
> + 6 mass for the generators if you go with 1 power, which won't
probably
> be the final one. This makes it a minimum of 15 mass to get off 6
> seekers.

I'd trim the consideration of the mass of the power generators down to 
1/2 or 1/4 of the full value as the generators are useful elsewhere when

not applied to the seeker creation.  The SV *carrier* demonstrates this 
issue with being able to create a large number of drone squadrons, 
depleting itself of a large amount of it's mass only to hang around at 
longer ranges using it's large amount of now available power to do some 
heavy or long range shooting.

>> Unless you attempt to grow the "seekers" when the enemy is already 
>> within
>> weapons range, the energy cost is virtually irrelevant. You don't
have 
>> much
>> else to spend the energy on anyway - no need for radical maneuvers 
>> that far
>> away from the enemy, no need for defences, and even vast amounts of 
>> energy
>> put into Stinger nodes won't produce much effect.
>
> Yes but you need so many power points to produce something. You can
only
> put so many generators on at once, so you're strike capabilities per
> salvo is limited to how much power you have.

With SV balance issues usually rear up with the larger ships, those that

tend to have a large number of generators.  The FB2 SV Mothership could 
generate over 18 seekers in a turn (assuming 2 mass and 2 power per) and

has enough mass for nearly double this amount over the space of the 
battle.  Once this much mass is used up all the ship commander has to do

is keep out of serious harm using the hordes of power now used for 
little else to shoot the enemy, usually at long range.

If growing seekers is done via the same method (not costs) as drones 
then womb space is the major limitation.  A ship that cannot generate 
enough or spare enough energy to do the maximum seeker growth in a turn 
just combines two or more turns in generating the full swarms, waiting 
to launch them until the full strike is ready.

>>> Current SV problems?I'm not sure what they are. The [Official]
changes
>>> that were made to the SV fixed what I considered the unbalancing
>>> aspects.
>>
>> Your "seekers" would put the unbalances right back.
>
> I don't think they will once the final stats are hammered out. What I
> consider the SV's problem is that tactically, they're limited to their
> stingers. They can't produce drones in enough quantities, fast enough
to
> keep pace with human launches, and they don't have any long range
> weapons, and their heavy ordinance weapons are only good at suicide
> range. All this leaves you with nothing but sitting back and sniping
> with stingers. SV can't afford to get in close since once they take
one
> row of damamge they're working at a loss of 25%, 50% if they try and
fix
> the generator. SV have a lot of punch at the begining but they cripple
> quickly and easily.

The more I think about it the more I don't like the secondary move 
principal for seekers (or MT missiles).  It allows them to dodge out of 
the way of defensive ship networks and area weapons like Phalon PBs.  
Some may like this but if they can dodge like this it makes defense a 
lot more difficult.  I'd prefer that fighters be the only users of 
secondary movement, hence my earlier objections to a weapon system that 
had an area effect that had a limited movement in the secondary movement

segment...oh...I probably shouldn't mention that...  ;-)  Part of the 
challenge to SMLs, PBs, and MTMs is the need to guess what the enemy is 
up to - the secondary move makes it three times easier to guess unless 
you're typically playing at the speed Oerjan is use to while using 
Cinematic movement.

Kevin Walker
Horizon Concepts, Inc.
Macintosh & Windows Development
Miniature Painting & Sculpting