Re: [VV] Gate defence

Sorry for the delay; things have been a bit hectic over here :-(

Samuel Penn wrote:

 >>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.
 >
 >It can be enough to prevent some of the attack scenarios suggested
(the
 >one ship with a nova cannon,

AFAIK the only one who has suggested using *one* ship with a nova cannon
is 
you yourself, in the sentence above. Grant Ladue's original suggestion
was 
to *lead* the assault with a nova cannon shot, but he said nothing at
all 
about what *other* ships the attacker might have nearby both to escort
the 
nova ship to the WP (defeating any mobile defenders encountered along
the 
way) and to exploit any breach it can make in the fixed defences once it

gets there. IOW, splitting your defence force up on both sides of the WP

won't do squat to prevent a Nova Cannon attack on the fixed defences
unless 
the mobile force is strong enough to beat the attackers.

 >or a fleet just armed with an infinite supply of missiles),

If the enemy fleet has an infinite supply of missiles, it'll be quite
able 
to smother your mobile force in missiles in a deep-space battle before
ever 
moving near the WP.

 >but can used for intelligence gathering, harassment or threatening
their
 >worm hole or supply chain.

Intelligence gathering is of little use once the enemy has blocked the
far 
side of the WP, because then the now cut-off mobile defenders have no
means 
of getting the intelligence to those who need it (ie., the fixed
defences 
on the other end of the WP) while it is still relevant. (Or at all, if
the 
WPs are the only means of FTL travel.)

Harassment and threatening the attackers' supply chain works fine as
long 
as the cut-off mobile defenders' own supplies last - but if they aren't 
strong enough to stand up to the attacker's fleet, the amount of
harassment 
they can inflict is usually quite limited.

 >If it can't do anything useful, it can pull back to the home side. At
this
 >point you have given over the initiative.

Precisely. And since its chances for doing anything useful on the far
side 
of the WP are quite limited unless it is strong enough to actually stand
up 
to the attacker's force, this is by far the most common option for an 
outnumbered mobile defence force to take.

 >>>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
 >
 >It cuts down on many of the cheap options for attacking the gate, such
 >as mass drivers or long range beams. More intelligent bombardment
 >attacks (such as missiles) are more expensive,

Than a rock? Sure. More expensive than sending crewed starships through 
instead? Hardly.

Unfortunately, if ballistic attacks through WPs are possible at all -
ie., 
if transiting units are able to carry over a significant velocity to the

far side of the WP - then you're going to need some sort of physical 
obstacles  "in front of" the WP in order to prevent attacking starships 
from going through so fast that they'll coast outside the range of fixed

defences deployed "behind" or "beside" the WP before the defences can 
destroy them... and any such physical obstacles are at risk eg. from 
ballistically-launched nukes or nova rounds.

 >and will have to spend time accelerating once they come through the
 >gate in order to reach any targets,

Are you thinking "campaign reality" or FT game mechanics here? In FT
small 
units like fighters or missiles can move in any direction they like,
with 
no worries about how long it ought to take to change course.

 >giving more time for defences to shoot them down.

Provided of course that the defences have long enough range to actually 
*use* that extra time - which FT's anti-missile defences currently don't

have. (Depends on which fighter rules the VVerse is going to use, though
- 
the Fleet Book ones or the beta-test ones. Laserlight?)

 >Wide area defences (such as nukes) against missiles which are
 >clustered together because they've all had to come through the same
 >gate might work as well.

Wide-area defences *can* work against trans-WP missile barrages -
provided 
that they're able to reach their targets before said targets disperse, 
which isn't entirely certain. If you deploy your nukes too close to the 
warp point, you either have to harden them enough not to fratricide one 
another (in which case you're basically saying that it would also be 
possible to harden the incoming *missiles* to the same extent, thus
making 
them invulnerable to the nukes); and if you deploy your back-up nukes 
further away from the warp point they have to get to the WP in time to 
destroy the *second* wave of incoming missiles - the one timed to arrive

immediately *after* your first defensive nuke has detonated and killed 
everything on the WP.

 >Yes, it won't protect a great deal against ships, but then the enemy
 >has to commit their ships to coming in range of the defenders own
 >weapons.

If transiting units can carry over a significant velocity from one side
of 
the WP to the other it will give virtually no protection against ships.
If 
OTOH they don't do that (ie., units lose most or all of their velocity
in 
transit), then the cheapest ballistic attacks are impossible anyway and
all 
you achieve by deploying the fixed defences "behind" or "beside" the WP
is 
to weaken the defences "in front" of the WP.

 >Most of the original discussion was that this was not
 >necessary, that an attacking fleet would just sit a long way off and
 >bombard the defenders with infinite supplies of missiles.

And deploying the defences off to one side of the WP doesn't change this

significantly, since FT missiles can manoeuvre against their targets. 
Unless, of course, you deploy your defences so far away from the WP that

the missiles can't reach them in a single turn's worth of movement - but

then the defences are also so far from the WP that the firepower they
can 
throw at any attacking ships is severely reduced.

 >>>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 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.
 >
 >Aren't any big rocks between Earth and Luna. Much easier to set up
 >relativistic kinetic kill weapons from a long way away.

Are big SHIPS between Earth and Luna. No NEED to set up kinetic kill 
weapons from a long way away since lunar orbit allows plenty distance
for 
acceleration. (Ship without asteroid accelerates much faster than ship
with 
asteroid, too.) Much easier to INTERCEPT kinetic kill weapons (either to

deflect them or to destroy them) if launched from a long way away since 
defenders get lots more time to react than if attack run starts long 
long 
way off.

Like I said in the previous post, if you can't intercept someone who
starts 
accellerating at a slow rate (due to having a huge asteroid to push) 
somewhere way out in the Oort cloud, you're not bloody likely to be able
to 
intercept anyone who starts from a much closer starting point and 
accellerates at a much higher rate either - which basically means that
you 
can't intercept *any* enemy fleet away from your planet if it arrived by

other means than a WP, and that the only possible planetary defence
action 
against such a fleet consists of one single round of fire just before
(or 
possibly at the same time as) the enemy gets to shoot at the planet.

 >>>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>
 >
 >What, so there are games where one person *starts* with 100x the
 >resources of the other, but both have the same victory conditions?

Maybe not two orders of magnitude (other than the one Nyrath posted, of 
course <g>), but I've seen upwards of 10x several times and 2x many
times. 
When the victory conditions are "last man standing" or "first to collect
X 
money/civilization advances/whatever wins", even a 2x advantage
initially 
will escalate very rapidly unless there are campaign mechanics which 
actively mitigate it (cf. my discussion with Binhan Lin on this
subject).

 >I've played in open-ended campaigns where everyone starts more or less
 >the same. The fact that one person is able to build up resources
 >quicker than another, and therefore gain an overwhelming advantage is
 >common.

And when this happens too fast, particularly when it happens because of 
luck (eg. you happen to encounter and ally with an advanced and rich 
non-player race), this too is a very effective way to kill the other 
players' interest in the campaign.

 >*I* don't see this as being unbalanced, as long as everyone
 >has the same chance to be the one who builds up resources the
 >quickest (assuming all are of the same skill).

So you'd consider the campaign balanced if one side starts with 2x or
10x 
or 100x the resources of another, as long as they drew lots about who
would 
take which side? That would give everyone the same chance to be the one
who 
gets the most resources... but it wouldn't be particularly fun for the
others.

 >>>>>A game system which
 >>>>>costs according to hull strength (as FT does) is going to break
 >>>>>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.
 >
 >I believe all this stemmed from someone's comment that FT is pointed
 >on weapon systems, not mass. The million point asteroid was an
 >example of why this isn't true. I think.

Think again, or better still use the mailing list archive to check. The
"FT 
is pointed on weapon systems" comment was made by John A. *in reply* to 
your above statement, which in its entirety read:

 >An asteroid
 >with a base built into the middle of it is going to be relatively
 >cheap from a physics standpoint, but will have thousands of points
 >of armour/hull (possibly millions). 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.

- which as you can see above was also the starting point for our current

discussion.

IOW, you introduced the million-hull asteroid base into the discussion 
*before* John made his "FT is pointed on weapon systems" comment. I
haven't 
discussed John's reply to your statement at all in this thread (not
least 
because I disagree with it); instead I have been discussing your above 
statement *itself*. More specifically, I have been discussing what a 
"million-hull" asteroid base actually represents when you translate it
from 
game mechanic terms to "campaign reality" - and why interpreting it the
way 
you do (ie., that you have to vapourize the entire asteroid in order to 
silence all the base's weapons) actually makes it quite reasonable that
an 
asteroid base with a million hull points is horrendously expensive
compared 
to spaceships even economically.

The archive also shows that you made the above statement ("An
asteroid... 
...defences like this.") as a *counter-argument* to John's admonition to

stop thinking in terms of equal-points battles - which regardless of
your 
actual intentions with it very strongly implies that you either yourself

planned to use the points system to represent campaign economics in
spite 
of its known flaws (and thus turn it into the campaign's economic
reality 
even though it isn't suitable for that purpose), or else at least
expected 
the campaign to use it as such in spite of your opinion.

OO:
 >>>>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.
SP:
 >>>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, what I wrote above is *not* your point. Your point is that the base 
MUST pay for those 1,000,000 hull points even when it has no use for
them 
simply because the *asteroid* will absorb that much damage before being 
vapourized - but that point is false. The only connection between the 
*asteroid's* "hull integrity" and the hull integrity of any *base* built

into said asteroid is that the base's hull integrity can't *exceed* the 
asteroid's - but it can very easily be *less* than the asteroid's.

And that's the point *I* am making: those 1,000,000 hull points are only

relevant to the game if you want to annihilate the *asteroid*. If all
you 
want to do is to inflict enough damage on the *base* built into that 
asteroid to put it permanently out of the battle (ie., reduce it to what
FT 
calls "destroyed"), then the asteroid's 1,000,000 hull points are NOT 
relevant, they NOT appear on the base's SSD, and thus you NOT have to
pay 
anything for them in the points system even in a one-off battle.

All that is relevant for the game, all that appears on the base's SSD,
and 
thus all that you'd pay FT points for in a one-off battle is how many
hull 
boxes you have built into the *base* - and if you really *do* build a
base 
with 1,000,000 hull points on its SSD (ie., a unit whose *surface* 
sub-systems are protected by a million hull boxes), then of course
you'll 
have to pay through the nose for it.

 >>No, they aren't "worthless". If the base has 1,000,000 hull points,
 >>its PDSs are *extremely* well protected.
 >
 >PDS aren't very useful against a fleet that sits at 7" and bombards
the
 >base with beam weapons.

So? It *is* useful against, say, missile bombardments from the other
side 
of a warp point. Being able to soak up eighty thousand SM salvoes (more
if 
the PDSs are able degrade some of them) before being silenced isn't 
"worthless", and if it sits right on top of a warp point you need to get

through you can't ignore it either. If it is worth this much *in any 
situation* and you can deploy it in precisely that situation, then you 
can't claim any points rebates.

But that's beside the point. The point, to re-iterate it for the
umpteenth 
time, is that if you build a unit with 1,000,000 hull points this 
represents a unit where the *surface* sub-systems baked into any
individual 
non-Core system icon on the unit's SSD can survive up to 1,000,000
damage 
points before being irrepairably destroyed. That the same system icon 
*also* represents some sub-systems which are safely buried in the heart
of 
the unit is irrelevant as long as the entire system (ie., the entire 
collection of sub-systems, buried as well as surface, which together are

represented by the one single SSD icon) is dependent of one or more
surface 
sub-systems to keep operating. If it takes *less* than 1,000,000 damage 
points to permanently silence all the unit's systems (which is most
easily 
done by destroying all their surface sub-systems), then the *base* has
less 
than 1,000,000 damage points no matter how big the *asteroid* it is
built 
into is.

 >>>>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",
 >>>
 >>>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
 >[snip]
 >
 >Which was why I didn't mention them in the list of things which are
 >hidden.

You didn't mention them EXPLICITLY. Since however any non-Core system in

Full Thrust consists of both surface and "hidden" sub-systems - eg., the

fighter bay doors and launch tunnels are represented by the same fighter

bay icon as the hangar itself, and the (surface) targetting sensors and 
(buried) fire control computers are represented on the SSD as a single
Fire 
Control System icon - your statement that these systems "can be hidden
deep 
in the asteroid behind millions of tonnes of rock" by default also
includes 
the *surface* components that go together with "hidden" components you 
thought you described.

 >>>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,
 >
 >You're misunderstanding entirely. What I'm saying is:
 >
 >1) It's cheaper (economically) to hollow out an asteroid than it is
 >    to build a ship hull out of the latest composite materials where
 >    you have to worry about mass and volume limits.

And what I'm saying is that you *don't* get a base with a million hull 
boxes on the SSD just because you have sunk *some parts* of it deep
inside 
a million-ton asteroid while leaving other parts which are just as 
necessary to its active operation on the asteroid's surface.

If you want a million hull boxes on your base's SSD, what you have to do
in 
"campaign reality" terms is to harden all those *surface* components to
the 
same extreme degree of protection as their buried collegues get from
being 
buried - and in order to make the *surface* components that durable,
you'll 
have to use materials far in advance of anything you put into an 
80-hull-box superdreadnought (or else you have to use the same materials
as 
in the SDN but some twelve thousand times more of it). And to do that, 
you'll have to pay through the nose - economically as well as in 
points-cost terms.

OK, you haven't confused the *FT points value* with the campaign
reality's 
*economic* value. Instead you have confused the FT *hull integrity* with

the *asteroid's mass* in the campaign reality and treat them as if they 
were identical, which is just as bad - you're still confusing game 
mechanics on one hand with an unrelated piece of campaign reality.

 >2) FT charges the same whether it's an asteroid or a spaceship.

For the same number of *hull points*, yes. But that's not the same thing
as 
"for the same Mass regardless of material or geometry".

 >3) Therefore FT doesn't work if you want to model real world
economics.

Nope. While 3) is certainly true for other reasons it does not follow
from 
1) and 2) alone. In order to derive 3) from 1) and 2) you also need to 
introduce some sort of *explicit* link between the number of hull points

the asteroid base has and the mass of the asteroid itself.

The rules don't have any such link - and for good reason, too. Due to
the 
nature of the FT tactical rules' representation of structural and
systems 
damage (including the facts that FT's "destroyed" does not equate 
"annihilated", and that the non-core systems on an FT SSD consist of
both 
surface and buried components *all* of which need to be reasonably
intact 
for the system as a whole to keep working), any such direct link between
a 
space body's mass and the hull integrity of anything built on or in it
will 
automatically give ridiculous results for any ground base. Even if the
link 
works in the asteroid base case (which yours doesn't), it'll inevitably 
break down the instant anyone uses the same rule for building a base on
a 
planet: if a base built on a million-tonne asteroid gets a million hull 
points, how many hull points do you assign to a base built into an 
Earth-sized planet?

You also have to make some highly unrealistic assumptions to PSB this 
direct and explicit link; among other things you need to assume that a 
million tonnes of rock will give the same amount of protection to a 
sub-system on the *outside* of said rock as it does to a sub-systems in
the 
*middle* of it...

...which means that the "million tonnes of rock gives a million hull 
points" example you're using to show why the FT points system (which
once 
again is not the same thing as FT) doesn't work for campaigns is based
on 
premises which are themselves highly unrealistic.

That you made this argument *in opposition* to a post which said to 
*ignore* the points system (and thus *in defence* of using the points 
system) makes it even more absurd :-/

 >>>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.
 >
 >Um, what has this got to do with anything?

You explicitly claimed that the StarFire information was irrelevant
because 
not everyone in the discussion was aware of it: "...irrelevant if half
the 
people discussing them are unaware of those points." and "...if 90%+ of 
people here haven't read them either, then they're irrelevent until
someone 
provides the info."

Those statements of yours are 100% false: the relevance of the
information 
is completely *independent* of whether or not people are aware of it; it

would be just as relevant even if *no one* is aware of it, and it could
be 
of great benefit to those it is relevant for if they were only aware of
it. 
I used the car accident as more obvious example of how information can
be 
highly relevant - vitally important, in fact - even for those who are
not 
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.
 >
 >There is a big difference between adding to the discussion based on
 >your prior experience (and pointing out where that experience came
from
 >so that people can follow it up if they have the time and resources),
 >and telling everyone to shut up because you know more than they do.
 >
 >The latter is what John did, and that is what I objected to.

John was telling everybody to shut up UNLESS they had acquired the
relevant 
information about WP assaults available in the StarFire game and novels
- 
with the unstated implication that AFTER aquiring said relevant
information 
the discussion could continue (and rather more fruitfully too, since
then 
people wouldn't be re-hashing stuff that has already thoroughly worked
out 
twenty years ago).

I was telling people to study the StarFire information about WP assaults

before continuing the discussion much further, which effectively amounts
to 
exactly the same thing as John was saying. The only real difference
between 
what John said and what I said is that he expressed himself somewhat
more 
emphatically than I did.

What *you* were saying OTOH was that the *information itself* is
irrelevant 
if some people are ignorant about it. That's simply not true. Now go and

read those books (or better still, play that game) before we continue
this 
discussion any further.

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