Re: [FT] CPV vs. NPV

Stiltman wrote:

[snip my post on manoeuvrability and armament being able to outweigh 
large-ship advantages given good tactical skill]

 >Yes, I agree on basically all of this.  Which is one major reason why
I was
 >suggesting that another fix for the size advantage would be to make
the
 >maneuverability costs directly proportional to the size, as they were
in FT2
 >but not in FT2.5.

Er... "directly proportional to the size" means that you pay a fixed 
percentage of the size (same percentage for all sizes) to get a given 
manoeuvrability rating. This is exactly what the FB (aka FT2.5) design 
system does :-/

The original FT2 system had a *progressive* manoeuvrability cost, so
larger 
ships had to pay a larger percentage of their size to get a given 
manoeuvrability than ships in a smaller size class. (Within each of the 
three size classes the FT2 manoeuvrabilty cost was still directly 
proportional to the ship's size, though.)

While a progressive manoeuvrability cost is one way to balance large
ships 
(though it'd have to be a sliding scale, since FT2-style breakpoints
only 
result in optimized custom designs clustering at the better side of each

breakpoint), it effectively forces small ships to be fast and large
ships 
to be slow in order to use their points well. For a game system which
wants to
be generic, that's not a good thing.

(PSB is quite background-specific, so going down that road to justify a 
progressive manoeuvrability cost also hurts the generic nature of the
game; 
what's worse, PSB which makes large engines cost more than small ones is

quite counter-factual compared to today's technology - large rocket
engines 
generally give more force per pound than small ones, large wet-navy
ships 
cost proportionally less to move at high speeds than smaller ones (with
the 
same general hull shape, that is), and so on...)

Because of this, while mass-progressive manoeuvrability costs have been 
considered as a solution to the large-ship advantages I very much prefer
to 
charge the large ships for the root cause of their large-ship advantages
- 
ie. their larger size itself :-/ The end result is essentially the same
as 
the progressive manoeuvrability costs - large ships cost more than the
same 
total Mass of smaller ships with similar thrust ratings and weapon mixes
- 
but it doesn't hurt the generic nature of the game nearly as much.

 >While we're at it, the fact that FT2 restricted fighter carrying to
capital
 >ships also had a tendency to mitigate massed fighters, too, but I
don't know
 >how you'd mimic that in FT2.5 or FT3.

If you introduce a restriction on how small a ship must be in order to 
carry fighters, the only real effect you get is to increase the size of
the 
soap bubble carriers. A TMF 108, thrust-1 carrier with 9 fighter bays
costs 
405 pts - ie. 45 pts per bay, the same as the TMF 12 thrust-2
minimum-sized 
bubble and only marginally more than the TMF 23 thrust-1
"super-optimized" 
2-bay model
(at 43.5 pts/bay).

The main reason why soap bubbles were harder to build in FT2 was that
all 
military ships were restricted to what the FB system would call "Average

hulls", with roughly the same amount of Mass spent on weapons and damage

boxes. Soap bubble carriers almost by definition require Fragile hulls -

otherwise they wouldn't be soap bubbles, like <g>

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry