Re: [DS] Points system was [DS] Hidden Units...

Beth wrote:

 >>does anyone have any suggestions as
 >>to what would need to be fixed to make the DS point system
 >> work?
 >
 >Off the top of my head:
 >Make it so armour takes up capacity (thus there is a reason to have
less
 >than full possible armour)
 >Recost movement schemes and make it so you can have different rates of
 >many different types (so you can have monster slow trucks through to
 >speedy Ferrari's)
 >Recost stealth/miniaturisation
 >Make at least some of the defensive systems use up capacity.

Well, PDS and APFC already do that <g>

 >I don't doubt Oerjan may have more.

FCS costs need to be re-set.

Taking a close look at the various weapon types, making GMSs use ammo
(adds
tracking)

Ryan Gill wrote:

 >There has to be a cost to building a heavy vehicle vs a light one.

Correct. There has to be a COST to building a heavy vehicle. That cost
does
NOT have to be a movement penalty - on the contrary, in fact; in the
game,
the appropriate cost is a POINTS cost.

 >Armor should lower speed. Not capacity.

If you're talking about steel armour exclusively, you're right. If OTOH
you
include all kinds of light-weight armour materials - which are lighter
but
considerably bulkier than steel for the same level of protection -
you're
wrong.

 >>If you slope armor, you
 >>reduce the amount of internal space/volume, which is part of
 >>what the capacity rating of a vehicle is, no?
 >
 >To a degree. I think that the amount you loose is made up for in part
by
 >the lengthening of the volume.

If you lengthen the volume (or widen it, if you're talking about sloping
the
side armour), it gets longer (wider). While the actual *volume* doesn't
change, its external dimensions *do* increase. The sloped-armour vehicle
will "look bigger" than the vertical-sided one; in DS2 terms, "looking
bigger" translates directly as "having a larger signature".

 >Hmm. The thing I'm trying to hit here is the ability to get a large,
 >heavy, slow vehicle that is now slower because it has more armor on it
 >than it did at the start of the design phase.

If you change the armour *in the game*, you start the *game* vehicle
design
procedure from scratch.

 >Points are the final means of gauging something, we're looking at
things
 >before that.

No, we aren't. Points are the *only* means of gauging combat
effectiveness
IN THE GAME - which is what we are talking about here.

 >If I take a given vehicle that is size 2, and armor 1 and then add
more
 >armor to it without changing anything else, it ought to go slower.

If armour and mobility both costs internal capacity, what you actually
do IN
THE GAME is this:

1) You have a size/2 vehicle with armour/1, mobility X and payload Y.

2) You create a new size/2 vehicle design with payload Y and armour/2.
Since
armour/2 takes up more capacity than armour/1, this new vehicle design
doesn't have as much capacity left to spend on mobility - which means
that
the "uparmoured" vehicle will be slower than the original one (unless
you
spend extra points to get a higher BMF out of the same internal capacity
-
aka "up-engining").

The end result is still that your up-armoured vehicle is slower (unless
you
also up-engine it), but unlike your suggestion it also assigns the
(hopefully) appropriate points cost to the up-armoured design.

Regards,

Oerjan

oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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