Re: Core hits and striking the colours (LONG!)

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Hugh,

Your analysis was in a bit more depth than I would have went, but it
seemed
more or less sound.

The only points I'd critique are whether effects from cores or general
shooting beyond 2-3 rounds after the initial shot matter. My experience
has
been most FT games have no more than about 1 or 2 more rounds of combat
after ships start taking threshold #2. Often, with smaller ships,
threshold
#2 and #4 fall in the same firing....

I am convinced from what you've shown that the impact of cores is worse
on
smaller ships and lesser on larger ones (but as you say, we knew that it
sucked to be small). I'd say CPV vs. NPV would be sufficient since the
difference is a few percent and probably obscured by the natural
skewness
of the D6 based system we've got with the number of rolls that can play
out
heavily one way or the other as the average is not a very strong
indicator
(from experience at the table).

Now, you have proven pretty conclusively that striking the colours
should
have a significant change to valuation *assuming only one side was using
it*. If both sides are using it, perhaps it comes out in the wash.

That didn't quite get to my point of curiosity or I missed if it did: If
you have 3 row ships under strike the colours, 4 row, and 5 row, is
there a
suggestion that strike the colours hits 5 row disproportionately hard
and 3
row disproportionately easy based on the minor difference in hull costs?
I'm thinking if everyone is on 4 row and everyone is using STC, there's
no
great difference assuming somewhat equal fleet size distributions. IF
you've got some folk using 3 row and others using 5, I'm not sure that
the
5 row guys don't get the shaft harder than their slightly cheaper hull
cost
would suggest (or the 3 row get a benefit beyond what their slightly
cheaper hull cost would provide). Off the top of my head, if you have
STC,
I'm betting you need to up the cost for the 3 row hull and drop the cost
for the 5 row hull.

Thanks for poking at the issue. :)

Tom