Re: [VV] Gate defence

Samuel Penn wrote:

 >>Very much so. However, relying on fixed defences means that you're
 >>voluntarily handing over the initiative (on that front, at
 >>least - you could of course be on the offensive along some other warp
 >>chain).
 >
 >Fixed defences doesn't mean only fixed defences. You could
 >have a mobile fleet on the other side.

If the mobile fleet on the far side of the warp point is strong enough
to 
prevent the enemy  from attacking the warp point, the points you've
spent 
on the fixed defences were essentially wasted since they didn't
participate 
in the fight. If the mobile fleet isn't strong enough to keep the enemy 
away from the warp point, you have set yourself up for a defeat in
detail.

 >If it acts like a doorway (which I have been assuming) and attacks can
 >only come along a limited vector, then fixed defences can hide to
 >the side or behind where they are difficult to target
 >directly from the 'away' side.

Limiting warp transits to specific vectors only protects you against
purely 
ballistic projectiles (eg. rocks). It won't help much, if at all,
against 
more advanced units unless your physics assumptions also put limits on
what 
facing transiting units must have (rather than merely what *vector* they

have to use - remember that Vector-moving ships in Full Thrust don't
have 
to face in the direction they're moving), how the transiting units are 
allowed to manoeuvre after making transit, and what arcs their weapons
are 
allowed to fire into after making transit.

 >This is the problem planetary defences have - just ramp up an
 >asteroid to high velocity and the planet is toast (since the
 >FT universe has reactionless thrusters, this is pretty cheap to do).
 >
 >This is probably the important issue with fixed defences -
 >how do you stop someone destroying your homeworld if they can
 >jump in at the Oort Cloud and hurl rocks at you?

If you don't have time to intercept someone who jumps into the system 
between two and twenty times as far out as the average orbital radius of

Pluto (or more) and then starts accellerating towards your planet at a 
rather slow rate compared to what normal-sized spaceships can pull
before 
he can reach your planet, then you are also completely unable to
intercept 
an enemy warfleet which jumps in anywhere *closer* than the Oort cloud
and 
accellerates at *higher* rates (ie., normal starship thrust ratings)
before 
it gets into weapons range of your planet. If this is indeed the case,
then 
I'd suggest that the Oort cloud rock-hurling is the *smallest* of all
your 
defence problems :-/ If I were you I'd be a lot more worried about
kinetic 
bombardments from *short* distances - like eg. half the distance between

Earth and Luna.

 >>>...any game system is going to be (vaguely) balanced.
 >>
 >>No, it won't. Most game systems can be completely
 >>*un*balanced; some game systems are even deliberately *designed* to
 >>be unbalanced - Monopoly being the best-known one.
 >
 >What's your definition of balanced?

That all players with the same skill level have the same chance of
winning 
the game.

 >In Monopoloy everyone
 >starts the game exactly the same, and have exactly the same
 >chance of landing on any particular square. The only
 >difference is who starts first, which gives a small advantage
 >at the start.

This seemingly small initial advantage can rapidly snowball into a *big*

advantage: the earlier you move the more areas are available for you to 
purchase; and the more areas you purchase the more likely it is that
other 
players will have to pay you rents and the less likely it is that *you* 
will need to pay *them* rents (because you're more likely to land on
your 
own areas). The player that goes first has a distinct advantage, the
player 
that goes last has a distinct disadvantage: the game is not balanced -
and 
there's no moderating mechanism to rein in the leader; much gets more.

Like Doug says, multi-player campaigns where players can gang up on the 
leader have an inherent moderating mechanism - but it requires the other

players to actually *do* gang up on the leader, and to do so in a 
coordinated fashion which doesn't allow the leader to defeat them in 
detail. In my experience a more common scenario is a smaller alliance 
between those players that are directly threatened by the leader's 
expansion, with those players who *don't* share borders with the leader 
backstabbing the anti-leader allies in order to grab as much of their 
territory for themselves while the allied forces are off fighting the 
campaign leader :-/

 >But, going back to wargames, most will try for some form of
 >balance. Even if the 'balance' is in the fact that the guy
 >with a single corvette only has to destroy a single ship from
 >the enemy fleet in order to win, that's a sort of balance.

This sort of balance based on pre-determined victory conditions exists
in 
one-off battles and scenarios, and also in carefully controlled campaign

games where the "historical" outcome is known (eg. US Civil War games).
It 
does not exist in open-ended campaigns like the VVerse - open-ended and 
pre-determined are mutually exclusive.

 >I haven't seen a wargame along the lines of the Earth-Minbari
 >war, where humans get 1000pts, the Minbari get 100,000pts,
 >and both have a goal of wiping out the other (humans don't
 >'win' by surviving for three turns, or defeating the Black
 >Star - they have to win by defeating the entire enemy fleet).

Then you haven't seen any open-ended campaigns, much less participated
in 
any <shrug>

 >>>A game system which
 >>>costs according to hull strength (as FT does) is going to break as
 >>>soon as you bring in fixed defences like this.
 >>
 >>No, the *game system* won't break. The *points system*
 >>might break if you're trying to use it for some purpose it wasn't
meant
 >>to be used for -
 >
 >Yes, that's what I meant. You just wrote it better :-)

Other parts of your posts very strongly suggest that it *wasn't* quite
what 
you meant. More on this below.

 >>Eg., you're assuming that an enemy faced with a 1,000,000 Mass
 >>asteroid armed with a few PDSs and fighter bays will have
 >>to inflict a million damage points on it in order to destroy the
base.
 >
 >That's my point - those 1,000,0000 hull points are worthless
 >unless they're backed up with serious firepower (it was in
 >response to the point that in FT, you pay for weapons not hull).

No, they aren't "worthless". If the base has 1,000,000 hull points, its 
PDSs are *extremely* well protected. They'll keep inflicting attrition
on 
the enemy for a very long time indeed - about as long as it takes the
enemy 
to inflict 1,000,000 damage points on the base, in fact. Depending on
what 
kind of enemy force you're fighting, that can be very valuable indeed.

 >>In game terms, the *base* built on the asteroid has a far lower "hull
 >>integrity" than the *asteroid* - and you only pay battle-balancing
 >>points for the *base's* "hull integrity", since that's the only thing
 >>that matters for the game balance. To take an extreme example, if
your
 >>enemy builds a ground base on Earth you don't need to blow up the
 >>entire planet in order to destroy the base!
 >
 >Very true. But a lot of the hardware (reactors, heat sinks,
 >computers, crew, fighter repair bays etc) can be hidden deep
 >in the asteroid behind millions of tonnes of rock.

Sure, but in "real-world" terms the fighter bays need bay doors or
launch 
tunnels which transport the fighters to the outside of the asteroid,
beam 
weapons need emitters on the asteroid surface, and so on. Those surface 
systems and sub-systems are *not* hidden behind millions of tonnes of
rock, 
but they are nevertheless necessary to allow the asteroid base to affect

any tactical battle in its vicinity.

All that matters in the tactical battle, ie. all that the
battle-balancing 
points system is concerned with, is whether or not the fighter bays can 
launch or recover fighters (which they can't do if the bay doors/launch 
tunnels have been destroyed, even if the actual bays themselves buried
deep 
inside the asteroid are still intact), whether or not the weapons can
fire 
(which they can't do if their emitters have been turned into space dust,

even if the main parts of the weapons buried deep inside the asteroid
are 
still intact), and whether or not these systems can be put back into
action 
by damage control parties during the time frame of the battle. Exactly 
*why* they can't launch or fire or be repaired is irrelevant from the 
tactical rules' point of view; the important question is *whether*.

If the answer to all of these questions is "no" - the fighter bays can't

launch/recover, the weapons can't fire, and they can't be restored by 
damage control parties during the battle - then the Full Thrust tactical

rules count the asteroid base as being "destroyed". It doesn't matter
*why* 
the systems can't perform; the base hasn't automatically been utterly 
vapourized any more than a ship with all hull boxes crossed out has 
automatically been vapourized, and just like the ship hulk it can - 
provided of course that your *campaign* rules allow it - be recovered
and 
repaired *after* the battle, but it can no longer affect the tactical 
battle in any way whatsoever. In game terms, this is represented by all
of 
its hull boxes being crossed out. 'Course, if you use the "Battle
Debris" 
rules from MT you probably want to adjust the amount of damage it takes
to 
turn a fortress on a big asteroid from "destroyed" to "debris" - if
nothing 
else you want to do this to protect your home planet from being blown up
by 
accident when an enemy ship overkills a small ground base...

Expressed in a different way, what you are actually saying (as opposed
to 
what you believe that you're saying) when you give your asteroid base 
1,000,000 hit points is not just that its *internal* systems (fighter
bays, 
fire control computers, plasma generators or whatever) are protected by
a 
million hit points of rock, but that all the *surface* systems (bay
doors, 
target tracking sensor antennae, beam emitters etc.) that are necessary
to 
allow the base to affect the tactical battle are ALSO protected by the
same 
1,000,000 hit points. If you really want to armour the *surface* systems
of 
your asteroid base enough to survive damage that would destroy ten
thousand 
superdreadnoughts or more, then it shouldn't come as a big surprise to
you 
that the asteroid base will be extremely expensive in in economic terms
(as 
well as in battle-balancing points, of course).

 >The point is, it's cheaper to hide stuff in a rock than it is to hide
 >it in a spaceship, especially if it's cheaper to build bigger
 >versions of things because you don't have the same
 >mass/volume constraints as you do in a spaceship.

Not exactly. It *might be* cheaper to hide stuff in a rock than to hide
it 
in a spaceship, provided among other things that you don't have to pay
any 
significant costs to first transport your construction materials and 
workforce to the rock (or vice versa) and then transport the rock with 
installed systems to whereever you want it. Also, unless you hide ALL
the 
base's equipment deep inside the rock (or else armour the surface
systems 
and sub-systems *extremely* well), then the base will have far fewer
damage 
points than the asteroid it is built on.

 >I'm not talking points value - I'm talking real world economic costs.

No, you're mixing the two up. Let's look again at what you wrote:

 >A game system which costs according to hull strength (as FT does) is
 >going to break as soon as you bring in fixed defences like this.

Here you most definitely *are* talking about the FTFB battle-balancing 
points value, because FT doesn't give any real-world costs outside the 
GZGverse, and the VVerse is explicitly different from the GZGverse. Note

that even in the GZGverse, the link between battle-balancing points
value 
and economic cost is quite tentative; it will be severed entirely when
the 
CPV system goes official). Your next sentence from that post,

 >For example, are big long ranged weapons expensive because they
 >have to fit into a spaceship?

makes it eminently clear that you thought that the FTFB points values
would 
be used to determine what forces the players could field - ie., that
they 
would take the place of the economic costs in the campaign. While you 
called this "to balance forces according to this points system" instead
of 
"declaring that the points system DOES reflect economic reality", the
fact 
is that any system used to regulate new construction, repairs,
maintenance 
etc. of forces in a campaign game BECOMES that campaign game's economic 
reality. You don't have to SAY this explicitly anywhere; the mere fact
that 
you USE it that way is the same as declaring it to be the campaign's 
economic reality.

 >>(...'course, if the asteroid is on a collision course with
 >>your home planet you *will* need to inflict a million points of
 >>damage on it to vapourize it before it hits
 >
 >And get hit by billions of tonnes of superheated plasma
 >instead. Yay! :-)

Depends entirely on how far away from the planet you destroyed the 
asteroid. Even ignoring the changes in momentum caused by the
translation 
from solid rock to superheated plasma, the plasma will disperse *much* 
faster than solid rock does.

 >>So, you have to ask yourself: why do you plan to use a
 >>battle-balancing points system for a campaign game, instead of
 >>designing a campaign-economic points system?
 >
 >Hey, I don't :-)

Then you must've stopped doing that since your last few posts, because
in 
them you certainly were <shrug>

 >>>>Point Five:
 >>>>If you havn't read at least two of the Starfire novels AND/OR
 >>>>played a dozen warp point assaults in the Starfire game system,
 >>>>please shut the hell up because you're rehashing points that are
 >>>>made in those places with a good deal more coherency.
 >>>
 >>>Irrelevent. Those places aren't this place. Different rules and
 >>>different physics.
 >>
 >>No, *extremely* relevant
 >
 >As I said elsewhere, regardless of rules and physics,
 >irrelevant if half the people discussing them are unaware of
 >those points.

Bullshit. If a car runs over you from behind, it'll maim or kill you
when 
it strikes you regardless of whether or not you were aware of it coming.

You can't dodge it by calling it "irrelevant", and if others try to warn

you about it you ignore their warnings and pointers at your own peril.
The 
only way to save yourself from being overrun is to become aware that the

car is coming and leap out of its path.

Same with the StarFire system and this discussion. Since StarFire 
thoroughly discusses many of the problems and potential solutions
related 
to warp point assaults, it is extremely relevant for this discussion
about 
warp point assaults completely regardless of whether or not you or
others 
are aware of it. This is precisly why I, John and several others have
told 
the rest of you to go and read those books/play that game before pushing

this discussion much further - ie., to MAKE you aware of them.

Since we have pointed you and the rest at the Starfire novels and game, 
your attempt to claim that "it is irrelevant because I and many others
are 
not aware of them" is just as truthful as saying "I am be unhurt because
I 
was unaware of the approaching car" after you've already been maimed by
it.

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