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

Jon,

> My thoughts exactly. You can fire at fighters with almost anything,
> IF you can get a lock on the little b*ggers....

Err, well... I'd say the tracking speed of a weapon mount is pretty
relevant too. E.g. if you got an excellent lock on a fighter, getting
your
spinal mount onto the target at the right time is still difficult. Same
for larger turrets etc.

> 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.

And a failed lock on actually reduces the nbumber of dice rolled that
turn...

> 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.

So this means in general the lethality will go down.

> 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?

I'm personally not too worried about those break points. In real life
there's plenty such break points as well; e.g. the amount of weight most
bridges will stand, the maximum depth most harbours/channels are
navigable
at, etc. Space equivalents could well be the maximum size that will fit
through a warp-gate/in a docking cradle etc. Yes, the break points will
be
for all the wrong reasosn in this case (munchkinism), but the fact that
ship designs will lean towards the limits of those breakpoints is not by
itself a very bad thing(tm). IMNHO.

Cheers,

    Derk