RE: (FT) small vs large ships, was YAFS

First off, it's POINTS, not MASS, which makes a slight difference - as
many high powered weapons systems (torpedoes, needle beams, scatterguns)
are relatively low mass, but are point priced higher to reflect their
greater firepower.  So most 150 point ships are Cruiser sized hulls with
1-2 fire controls.

A 150 MASS ship would be facing a set of MASS 10 ships each armed with
two torpedoes or twin needle beams - 5 hits (60 needle beams, hitting on
6's = on average 10 hits then divided by 2 targets) with a needle beam
will knock out FTL, Engines, and some of the FC's.  Once a ship has no
engines, it's a simple matter to stay out of arc and snipe with needle
beams until all the FC's are destroyed, then all the weapons.

The other scenario is 60 torpedoes at short range (hitting on 1-5, or
83% with an average of 3.5 points per hit for an average of 2.7 points
per torpedo times 60 torpedoes = 162 points of damage the first turn. 
Assuming medium hulls with 75 points of hull per ship both ships are
completely destroyed with 12 points left over.

The original thought was that a perfect point system will generate
perfectly balanced fleets if the exact same point totals are used - 2000
point fleets should win against other 2000 point fleets half the time,
regardless of weapon choice, hull size etc.

The corallary is that a group or ship that is worth more points than
another should win more often.

The problem is that the point system has no bearing on how the weapon is
used in combat.  100 Class 1 beams are completely ineffective if the
opponent keeps further than 12 MU away, but a similar ship equipped with
50 Class 2's could destroy the same opponent if they were within 24 MU. 
The problem with single factor points costs, is that if weapons have
different effectiveness, then there will be break points where some
weapons are useless and others where they are extremely powerful and
trying to combine all those statistics into a single number is very
difficult.

In future editions, points costs might be broken down into range bands,
then an overall "average" effectiveness. So close in "knife-fighting"
designs would have a high rating for slow, close range battles, while
"horse-archer" types would be better rated for long-distanec, fast
moving games. Although both types might have the same "average rating.

--Binhan

> 
> I'm not sure what you're saying, but I'd bet on the 2 x 150 mass
> ships.  They have more than 2 fire controls each (don't have FB books
> here, but don't they average about 3-4 at this mass; and my designs
> tend to have 4-5).  With 4 FCs each there are going to be 8 of the 10m
> ships dead before they fired their weapon (like a beam-2).  That
> leaves 22 and they will probably get a threshold on a m150 ship (say,
> average hull + armor/shield); and that's if they all fire on the same
> target.
> 
> Small ships do need to have some punch.  The Kra'vak MKP weapon is
> pretty potent, but being a one-shot weapon it has really limited
> usefulness.  Now why don't fighters have these?  Hmm, could that be a
> Kar'vak torpedo fighter? hmmm, never thought of that... anyway...
> 
> Glen
> 
>