Re: Critical hits (was Limits on armour?)

Calculating critical hits is a continum - at one extreme you ignore
critical
hits, at the other you calculate the probability of thousands of
individual
systems failing on a given hit.  FT has decided to add a few critical
hit
checks (at each threshold) rather than checking at each hit.  In
addition it
has bundled the hit locations into a generic space rather than try to
determing direction of shots etc.

In short I think that FT has done a reasonable job of adding detail
without
too much additional work - for instance if you had to roll addtional
critical hit checks every time your ship was hit, you'd have tons more
dice
rolling for little additional result.

For example - if a cruiser loses its SML to a hit, does it matter that
it
was hit from the port side with a Mk.XXXI energy torpedo that penetrated
the
second missile outer hull door as a salvo was being fired which
prematurely
detonated the fusion igniter detonation booster in the missile and the
blast
travelled back down the tube, but the blast doors deflected most of the
force outward through the blow out panels, but the high magenetic field
generated an EMP that fried the fire control station at that weapon and
the
back-up circuits failed to kick in vs. the SML is out of action?

If you're argument is that it's too predictable as to when critical hits
happen (i.e. only a threshold checks vs.not every time you're hit) again
that comes down how much detail you want.  In theory each system should
roll
for a critical constantly, not just when hit - i.e. parts wear out under
normal use.  If we wanted to simulate that, then each ship would roll
for
some small chance of critical hit every turn, but again, diminishing
returns
as you'd have a lot of effort for very little result, especially if the
chance of any particular system failing is very low.

Other possibilities - special critical check cards - these would be a
deck
of cards with one drawn at the beginning of the turn by each player
which would  force the drawing player to roll for a critical hit against
a
card specified ship class and system (i.e. check for a FTL on a carrier,
or
one beam battery or one missile system on a cruiser) if the player
doesn't
have that particular class, the card is ignored.  To balance the deck,
it
would also include some free DCP cards to repair damage that would be
immediately used to repair a system.

--Binhan

On 7/7/06, Allan Goodall <agoodall@hyperbear.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/7/06, Hugh Fisher <laranzu@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>
> > I really like the Full Thrust threshold checks as opposed
> > to just about every other critical hit system I've ever
> > seen because they don't occur very often.
>
> I prefer the system in _Silent Death_, myself. It's major failing is
> that critical hits are very predictable.
>
> One thing that bugs me about Full Thrust is the fact that you can be
> attacked primarily from one direction and lose the weapons on the
> other side of the ship. I know people have PSB to cover it, and I know
> there is no easy fix to the problem.
>
> (Funny enough, I don't have that much of a problem with it in Full
> Steam, but beams don't "plunge" into a specific part of a ship.)
>
> I've never been crazy about the break point idea. A ship takes a
> pounding but is fully functional until it loses that one point on a
> hull row... and then, bang!, it loses all its weapons. Again, no easy
> way to fix it, and it is a big part of FT. It just bugs me.
>
> --
> Allan Goodall 	   http://www.hyperbear.com
> agoodall@hyperbear.com
> awgoodall@gmail.com
>
>