Re: [GZG] Screens versus Advanced Screens in Cross Dimensions?

-----Original Message-----
>From: J L Hilal <jlhilal@yahoo.com>
>--- On Wed, 5/20/09, Eric Foley <stiltman@teleport.com> wrote:
>> The advanced screens aren't just
>> energy screens that are more expensive, they're also half
>> again the mass.

>I am NOT talking about the cost of the screen.  I am talking about the
relative value of K-guns (and P-torps, etc.)
>vs. basic beam batteries.  The FB stats (range, damage, MASS, and
PV/MASS) for K-guns, P-Torps, etc. are balanced
>vs basic beam batteries on the assumption that there is no defense
against the screen-skippers other than hull
>and/or ablative armor.

Yes, I understood this concern the first time.	My response to it, when
weighed against the expense of the screens themselves, is somewhere
between "don't agree" and "don't care".  As Hugh observed, the energy
screen-penetrating weapons even just in the FB designs were sufficiently
more effective that the ships carrying them were more popular in his
circles than the beam armed ones.  In my own experience, which runs more
to going away from the fleet book canon altogether and playing in
universes where every single ship is custom-designed, these weapons were
prevalent enough that energy screens completely fell out of use as an
all-purpose defense system.  The only designs in my group where they
were ever used that had any success at all were only situationally or
marginally useful.  Between that and the fact that Full Thrust is
intended to be able to model most any sort of genre, and the "energy
weapons only" defense of screens is rather restrictive on their real
usefulness either competitively or as a way to model things like Star
Trek shields, I'm perfectly happy having a new, but expensive system
available for a hypothetical high-tech starfaring power to be able to
use that are better than energy screens.

>If the reduction is per HIT, then that implies after doubling, not
before, which means that a doubled K1 will still
>do 1 damage to defense 1, and a doubled k2 will do 2 damage a defense
2.

Against these shield levels, under the model that Hugh and I arrived at,
they will never double.  Other than that, yeah, you're right.

>> Subtract from the target number, and the initial damage
>> (or, if you wish, the total damage, it's the same
>> thing).

>No it isn't the same thing.  There is a big difference between (K-D)x2
and Kx2)-D where K is weapon class and
>D is defense level.  Plug in some numbers and see for yourself.

Now I'm somewhere in "mildly outraged" territory, because the very next
sentence I wrote after this one you quoted was the following:

>>So a K-6 would do 4 points of damage base, would need to roll a 1-3 to
get the extra, and gets the full 6 points
>>of extra damage for 10 total points of damage.

This produces the identical result to totaling the damage (by whatever
doubling method) and then subtracting 2 at the end.  Thus, why I was
referring to these things as "initial" damage and "extra" damage and was
deliberately no longer using the word "double", because the end damage
after getting the extra is no longer double the base damage.

I really would appreciate it if you wouldn't delete the details like
this and then use the rest of my statement without them to imply that
I'm too stupid to do math, it makes me kinda grumpy when you do that.

>> I like the armor system in the fleet books much
>> better.  There's more cost to it than simply making the
>> hull more expensive, and it accounts for the idea that armor
>> actually gets destroyed to a point of no longer being
>> effective when it's hit often enough.

>I said it was "based on", not exactly the same.  The concept is that of
belt armor, the game mechanics are 5% TMF
>per level (min 4 MASS/level) and 5 pts/MASS.  it was drawn from, but
not exactly the same in effect as, the beta FB KV.
>http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Station/3565/kravak/kv-fb-design.html

I still don't like it.	This particular design suggests to me that
somebody wants the Kra'Vak even more buffed up than they already are
when they don't really need to be, with double hull integrities and
threshold-indestructible screens that happen to work against K-guns as
well for the same mass costs of human hulls and energy screens -- the
latter of which is cheaper than the advanced screens that are depicted
in Cross Dimensions.  None of these things look to me like they're
terribly game-balanced at all, and they frankly just don't pass my smell
test.  Every defensive system should fail somewhere short of total
destruction of the ship -- if you pound on _anything_ hard enough, it'll
start to break before it fails altogether.

The rest of this didn't really express points I wanted to address or
already has been addressed elsewhere.

E/Stilt Man
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