Re: [GZG] [FT] Graser-1s again

Hugh Fisher wrote:

 >>The compound advantage effect also works *against* the G1, [...]
 >>
 >>However, if you are consistently able to close the range before the
 >>enemy's long-ranged weapons have built up any significant advantage
 >>then you will find the shorter-ranged weapons correspondingly more
 >>powerful since they have little or no catching-up to do.
 >
 >Which I believe is what graser armed escorts and lighter
 >cruisers can consistently do. It's my experience that
 >most opponents can't cripple the graser ships before they
 >get within range.

Fair enough. My experience is quite different (even when we've used 
"Canberra-style" restricted, fixed tables), but like I said in the
previous 
post I'm stumped as to *why* it is so different :-(

 >Other escorts or light cruisers carry beam-1s or beam-2s, and 6 MU is
not
 >enough to work with.

In my experience this narrow margin *is* enough to work with - not
"enough" 
in the sense "guarantees that the shorter-ranged weapon will always be 
defeated", but sufficient to make up for the shorter-ranged weapons'
higher 
firepower once they gets into range and allow both sides a roughly even 
chance to win given equal player skill (or if the players *don't* have
the 
same skill level, allowing a player roughly the same chance to win 
regardless of whether he plays the long- or the short-ranged side of the

battle).

 >The chance of thresholding or destroying just with beams
 >or P-torps is too low to build up a significant compound
 >advantage of your own before they get in range.

That depends a lot on what you're shooting at. If the enemy is an
armoured 
cruiser it'll take a while to wear it down; if OTOH it is an unarmoured 
destroyer (eg. the UNSC ones) it doesn't take many beam dice to
threshold it.

 >>Some FT gaming groups, eg. the Canberra group, appear to be better
 >>at closing the range quickly than others are - even other groups
 >>which play with the same or very similar table sizes and initial
 >>velocities. Exactly how you do this I don't know, which is why I
 >>keep asking you guys for detailed AARs :-/
 >
 >Yeah, I'm sorry, but it was a public participation game and I
 >didn't want to give potential new players the impression that
 >they had to write down everything that happened. Pity I don't
 >have a video camera.

No worries. The AAR comment wasn't intended as a critizism (though with 
hindsight I realize it looks like one) - even without a full report
you've 
already provided more details than most people who report imbalances do!
It 
was merely a reflection of my own frustration over repeated failures to 
replicate the "Canberra-style" on-table results :-/

 >>Increasing the G1's Mass (or cost) without changing its damage
 >>mechanics is essentially the same as saying that you *must* score
 >>mega-hits to have a chance to win the battle. [...]
 >
 >No I am not saying that. My impression from the earlier
 >responses was that the graser-1 mass and points cost had
 >been calculated solely on average damage, and therefore
 >it was under-priced because the potential for megahits
 >had not been taken into account.

You don't *intend* to say that, but it is the outcome of the change you 
propose. If you apply an extra cost to a weapon (ie., above the cost 
warranted by its range-weighted average damage) to compensate for the
fact 
that it *can* score mega-hits, the other side of the coin is that if it 
*doesn't* score any mega-hits during the battle it will be outgunned by
its 
own points cost of more consistently-performing weapons (which only pay
for 
their range-weighted average damage values). OK, it can still win if the

ship it is mounted on decisively outmanoeuvres the enemy, but that's
true 
for all weapons.

 >I still think 1 more mass point is needed. If you compare
 >a G1 to a P-torp on *average* damage, yes it's less, but
 >not on *maximum* damage.

If you compare a G1 to a P-torp on *maximum* damage, you're comparing 
infinity to a finite number. Increasing the mass of the G1 by a single
mass 
point, or even doubling it, won't change that comparison noticably -
you'll 
still get battle-winning mega-hits every now and then, and if you've
weaken 
the *non*-mega-hits which on average provide two-thirds or more of the 
damage the weapon inflicts during a battle the occasional mega-hits will

stand out even more than they do now.

If the problem is the players' perception of the mega-hits, then the
best 
solution is to remove the potential for mega-hits - which in the Graser 
case means removing the to-hit die rerolls (and adjust their points cost

accordingly). This limits the maximum possible damage inflicted by a
single 
Graser die to 12 (which is of course still quite a lot - but the 
probability that a single Graser die will score 12 pts is *less* than
the 
probability that two (rerolling) standard beam dice combined will score
12 
*or more* points!). At the same time removing the rerolls doesn't change

the *low* end (0-8 pts or so) of the Graser's damage profile noticably,
so 
it is still distinctly different from the standard beam batteries.

 >To repeat a comment I made last
 >year, anyone with NAC Vandenburg/T heavy cruisers would
 >sell his or her soul to get double hits on 6 and a reroll.

In most gaming groups I've listened in on Vandenburg/T captains would
find 
wider fire arcs for his/her P-torps rather more useful than an
occasional 
P-torp reroll, since those wider fire arcs greatly increase the ship's 
chances to get in more than one attack :-/ (Cf. my shooting stats post -

Vandenburg/Ts were quite prominent among those P-torp-1 armed ships that

died during/after their first P-torp attack run because they couldn't
turn 
away quickly enough to avoid a close-range brawl.)

 >And there's still the reality that human beings are very
 >bad at statistics and perceive extreme events as being
 >more likely to occur than they really are.

Indeed - which is precisely why I believe that removing the Graser
to-hit 
rerolls is a more effective way to solve your problem with it than 
increasing the G1's Mass would be.

 >Hey, ECC organisers: could you find someone willing to
 >play their standard human fleet but re-equipped all with
 >the same mass of grasers for your big battle? Maybe not
 >a full AAR, but get their impression as to whether the
 >extra cost was worth it or not.)

Weren't there battles like that at the ECC 2004 or 2005? Not that it 
matters, of course - more playtests are always useful! :-)

If possible it would be more useful to run the test battle twice, though
- 
once with the normal armament, and once re-armed (and with a somewhat 
smaller fleet, or facing a somewhat bigger enemy fleet, to account for
the 
increased cost of the Grasers compared to "normal" human weapons).

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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