RE:[FT] Wave Guns Redux (again!)

In message <002001c1c774$fa752700$36179fd4@kitsune>
	  "Adam Benedict Canning" <dahak@dahak.free-online.co.uk> wrote:

> 
> > From: Charles Taylor <nerik@monkslode.fsnet.co.uk>
[snip]
> >
> > 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.
> 
> Or requiring more points to charge for small ships, but that would
> cause WG Destroyers to disappear on loosing a charge Wave Gun. The
> problem with a charge cap is charging becomes more certain.
>
Hmm... don't think I like having the required charge to fire being
inversely proportional to the ship size, for several reasons, one of
which you mentioned.

I'm not sure that there is a problem with charging becoming more certain
(but I need to think about multi-wave gun designs a bit more I think),
as the more certainty you have, the longer it will take to charge. A
lot of people would quite prefer that there is no uncertainty at all
:-).
An alternative would be for the charging to still be random, but with a
range based on the ship size (a bit problematic if we stick to d6's, but
do-able:

a) Have a negative modifier based on ship size (or FTL size) applied to
the charge dice (i.e. 1d6-4, 1d6-1, etc.) The fastest charge rate would
be 1d6.

b) Replace the 1d6 charge rate with a number of beam dice based on the
ship size (but no re-rolls). The number of charge dice rolled is based
on the ship size.

[snip]
>
> > Well, thats probably enough for now :-)
> 
> Until i can work out how to simmply describe the actions of Drill
> missiles. Or the wave motion cartridges and missiles.
> 
> Adam
> 
Yes, I saw some of these on the Starblazers ship sheets - I'm almost
afraid to ask!

Charles