Re: Fire Control lock-on (was: Re: [FT] squadron suggestions)

>As one of the requested quiet lurkers I guess I'll weigh in.
>
>At first I was like, oh boy, yet another crazy newcomer with bright
>ideas that involve adding more rules.	But as I read on, I was thought,
>"This is pretty reasonable, and doesn't complicate things too much".
>Then I then I got to the end and realized the crazy newcomer was Jon.
>Oops.

Thanks (I think....)  <GRIN>

>
>That said, I like it.	It's an extra roll, but that one new roll adds a
>whole lot of new territory to add into the game play.	And it doesn't
>necessarily invalidate any of the old designs.  I like that it takes
one
>of the more passive components of the ship design and gives it a more
>active roll in game play.

Yes, that's my feeling about it. I DO like the concept in theory, if 
I didn't then I wouldn't be posting about it, but I'm by no means 
fixed on including it in FT3; that's why I'm interested in getting as 
much feedback as possible at this stage through the list.

>
>One thought, could this new roll also help decomplicate some of the
Beta
>fighter rules?  Instead of having the fighters evasion reduce the
chance
>of taking hits, it just applies to the lockon roll, and thus cuts down
on
>some of the rules for each weapon type against fighters?  Make the
>fighters generally harder to target to begin with and it might balance
out
>okay.

My thoughts exactly. You can fire at fighters with almost anything, 
IF you can get a lock on the little b*ggers....
This could well be a way of keeping in some of the aspects of the 
(IMHO)over-complex beta fighter rules that I've been less than happy 
with, using one new rule to cover everything.

Answering a few points made in other posts, in no particular order.....

Someone suggested a separate to-hit roll for every weapon shot - 
that's something that I really DON'T want to do, as one of the things 
that FT has always had over most of it's competitors is that a lot of 
combat shots are resolved in 1 (or at most 2) roll(s) instead of 3 or 
more.
Now, I know that I'm now suggesting that we add some extra rolls into 
the game with the lock-on concept, but I think we can get away with 
that because the few additional rolls involved are per-ship, rather 
than per-weapon.

Another point brought up was that if we have a lock-on roll, should 
the hit/damage chance of most weapons be increased? Well, I think no. 
Yes, 50% of beam shots against unscreened targets will have no effect 
- but that doesn't necessarily mean they have all been "misses"; that 
50% may be considered to include those shots that hit but do 
negligible damage - the ones that just scorch the paint off the hull 
a bit. Having a lock-on simply means that your sensors and 
fire-control computers have predicted the target's location in space 
accurately enough to place the fire in the close vicinity of the 
target - but whether any individual shot then actually hits that 
target with enough power to do at least 1 box of damage is still up 
to the die roll.

Re the suggestions that we introduce some sort of target-size-based 
modifier, I think someone already answered that one - the problem is 
that it reintroduces artificial break points (which were in original 
FT2 but FB1 then disposed of) , eg: if you say that ships up to 50 
MASS (for the sake or example) are considered "small", then given the 
D6-based granularity of FT you are going to end up with a situation 
where a 51 MASS ship is at least 17% easier to lock-on to than a 50 
MASS ship. Now, this doesn't feel right in many ways - but in real 
gameplay terms, is it actually a problem or not? Yes, such a system 
would mean that munchkin ship designers would always go for ships 
just under the break-point, but in trying to do so they may well be 
compromising other aspects of their designs..... I originally 
dismissed this one out of hand due to the break-point argument, but 
the more I think about it the more I'm wondering whether it could be 
made to work after all...... opinions, anyone?

>
>Alrighty, back into my hidey hole.

Thanks for the input! Please keep following the discussions, and feel 
free to chip in again at any time!  :-)

Jon (GZG)

>
>Randy Wolfmeyer
>Dept. of Physics
>Washington University
>http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~rwwolfme