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[FT] Wave Guns Redux (again!) [long]

From: Charles Taylor <nerik@m...>
Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 23:04:58 GMT
Subject: [FT] Wave Guns Redux (again!) [long]

Well, last night me and Adam tried out his EDF designs.

He had the Yamato and the Mogami, I used one of Allan Goodall's
tournament fleet (the NAC SDN fleet).

Game parameters were:

Simple meeting engagement
1mu=1cm
Cinematic movement
no Core Systems
no Fighter Morale (we forgot! - but there were only 4 flights in play
anyway)
the Wave Gun stated uncharged

In the end Adam won, largely because I still have problems in;
a) getting my ships to go where I wanted them to go
b) have a mental scale failure combined with paranoia about the Wave
Guns area of effect
c) Didn't take out the Mogami first, it had a lot of Adam's firepower
but not that many hull boxes (put that down to bad fleet intelligence)
d) towards the end having a set of bad thresholds combined with worse
damage control rolls (compensated for my damage rolls earlier in the
game, I guess :-)

Initial evaluation of the Wave Gun - It got used once, then Adam got
paranoid about it blowing up on him.
As has been observed on the list many times, its a lot less useful on a
design like Adam's Yamato, which has a lot of other weapons etc. all of
which are unusable at the same time as the wave gun.
On a custom 'Wave Destroyer' (A destroyer with a wave gun, and perhaps a
couple of B-1s & PDS for when its charging the Wave Gun) it would be a
lot nastier - a factor I will address below.

In use, using the FB2 turn sequence, a couple of questions came up that
we would like to put to the list...

Firstly, when fired, the Wave Gun disables the firing ships screens
through their forward arc - does the list think that...

a) Wave Gun fire should be declared at the beginning of the Phase 9)
Ships Fire, and the forward arc screens are down for the entire firing
phase?

b) Wave Gun fire is declared when the firing ship is activated, and the
forward arc screen are only considered down from that point onwards?

c) like a), but Wave Gun fire is declared before Phase 8) Resolve
Missile, Plasma Bolt and Fighter Attacks, to allow for Plasma Bolts,
fighters, etc. attacks to take advantage of the vulnerability - or maybe
it should be declared even earlier, at the star of Phase 4) Launch
Ordnance, to allow the opposing player to plan on taking advantage of
the vulnerability?

We used b) - which made a slight difference - not much (IIRC the Yamato
fired its Wave Gun just after the Valley Forge fired everything at it
through the fore arc - but I think I rolled very few '4's that time).
But what does the list think?

Secondly, Should Wave Gun fire be partially penetrating (like pulse
torpedoes - half damage on armour, half goes through to hull, or the
next layer of armour on Phalons), or not. We played not, but I don't
think it would make any difference. The statement in More Thrust that
Wave Guns ignore armour we took to apply to the More Thrust Kra'Vak
armour, not the more recent Fleet Book 1 armour.

Ok, here  are a few revisions of the Wave Gun rules me & Adam have
thought up:

1) Wave Gun Capacitor Charging Rate.
Instead of this being a straight 1d6 per turn, we think it should depend
on the size of the ship carrying the wave gun (this would reduce the
effectiveness of the 'wave destroyer' I mentioned above, without
limiting
the bigger ships - It would also help for designing ships like the
EDF Andromeda.

So, each ship would have a 'Maximum Charge Rate' on each round that the
Wave Gun is charged, 1d6 is rolled, as per More Thrust, but the
_maximum_ charge per round is the 'Maximum Charge Rate'.
For example, if the Max. Charge Rate is 4, each round, the player of the
Wave Gun ship rolls 1d6, but the capacitors cannot be charged by more
than 4 points each round.

I'd actually base the charge rate on the mass of the FTL drive, for a
number of reasons...
1) In Space Battlecruiser Yamato/Starblazers, the Wave Motion Gun is
based on the same tech as the FTL drive
2) In Full Thrust, the FTL drive Mass is usually in direct proportion to
the hull mass.
3) You can, if you desire, get a faster re-charge rate by buying extra
FTL drive (which may, or may not, be useable as a 'tug' FTL)
4) You cannot build a System Defence Wave Cruiser :-)

As a starting value, I suggest that the Maximum Charge Rate be 1 for
every 5 MASS of FTL drive.

2) More Wave Gun Charging Rules.
A Wave Gun cannot begin a scenario charged. Wave Guns are charged at the
same time initiative is rolled for.

3) Clarifications (bit obvious really).
If a partially, or fully charged wave gun fails a threshold check or is
hit by a needle beam attack, the energy charge is released, inflicting
1d6 points of damage for each charge in the weapon. This _does_ ignore
armour, as it goes off inside the armour. :-) With regards to ships
'touched' by the template - this means that the template passes through
the designated centre point of the ship.

Options (largely for Adam's EDF designs)

1) Multiple Wave Guns.
A ship can have more than one Wave Gun, each rolls its own d6 for
charging, but the total amount of power recharged in a turn cannot
exceed the Maximum Charge Rate (q.v.) More than one Wave Gun can be
fired in a turn, but they are the only weapons that can be fired.

2) Turreted Wave Guns.
A Wave Gun can be turret-mounted, this increases its MASS and cost by
25% for each arc, including the first. As a standard Wave Gun is MASS
12, Cost 36, each arc is +3 MASS, +9 COST, so a 1-arc Wave Gun would be
MASS 15, Cost 45.

Well, thats probably enough for now :-)

Our next game, I get the EDF ships - so we'll see what happens then.

Charles

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