RE: [FT] Enabling "Defense" Scenarios: Eclipsing ships

From: Beth.Fulton@csiro.au

> G'day Noam,

Hey Beth,

> I like the basic idea (and I know one little boy who has been asking 
> why you
> can't do this for ages), but (there's always one of those darn it)....

Always.

>>	Weapons targeting Eclipsed ship divide (total) damage
>> between the Eclipsing and Eclipsed ships:
>>		Base Damage Intercepted = [Hull+Armor
>> (Eclipser)/Hull+Armor (Eclipser+Eclipsed)] (round down) taken by 
>> Eclipsing ship and applied
>> normally.
>>		Mods = +10 for each point of thrust dedicated to 
>> Eclipsing
>>				-20 per clock-facing of heading 
>> difference (i.e. -120 for head on)
>>			       -50 for Plasma Bolts or other area effect

>> weapons.....
>
> Is there any simpler way of working this out? for instance (Off the 
> top of
> my head of it's probably $^@!), thinking of the escort, cruiser, 
> capital
> classification scheme...

I originally broke it down by mass: +25% if Eclipser was 2x Eclipsed, 
+50% for 4x, -25% for 0.5x -50% for 0.25x, but that replaces the 
equation with a lookup table. Granted it involves no math, but it does 
get  more complex if you want to avoid breakpoints, which I'd like to. 
The classification scheme way of doing it leads to all the fuzziness of 
when a heavy DD becomes a Light cruiser etc, and I still worry about 
breakpoints. However, to keep things as simple as possible, then mass 
would be the way to go, and the simple 4-part lookup table like above 
should be fine.

OTOH, if we went back to the equation and replaced hull+armor with mass 
it would also get much simpler: BDI = Mass of Eclipser / Total Mass of 
Eclipser+Eclipsed.

> The % are probably way off sorry, but it was more the framework I was 
> asking
> about - i.e. general rules of thumb possible or do we really have to 
> go the
> path of a formula?

Binhan talked about extending screens and Aegis systems. This is OK to 
a point, but 1) not all ships have screens to extend, and 2), some 
weapons ignore screens, so it's insufficient. The Aegis cruiser groups 
described would be meat against a P-torp or K-gun armed fleet.
I do think that an Eclipsing ship with screens should be able to use 
them, which adds some complexity to the system. And there's a general 
problem if Eclipser and Eclipsed have different amount of screening. 
The way I'd solve it would be: Roll all damage against screening ships 
as v. unscreened. Reduce damage for any screened ship in the Eclipsing 
arangement by 1/6 for screen 1 (round net damage up), and 1/4 for 
screen 2.

>
Help! - or an amazing beer.    (What Noam Raphael Izenberg is in 
desperate need of right now)