Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [GZG] Revised Salvo Missiles Update

[John K Lerchey <lerchey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I normally stay out of the FT design discussions because I simply don't 
get to play FT very often.  Like, maybe once a year (twice this year at 
the ECC!).  The various discussions on missiles have me thinking though.

One camp appears to want to do SRMs as a "select your target; roll some 
dice with modifiers for ECM/Range/whatever, apply defenses (PDS) and then 
score hits" system.

The other camp appears to want to place missile markers down, and have the 
player guess/estimate where the target ship is going to be, and hope that 
some target ship (not necessarily the intended target) moves to within the 
effect range of the missiles, and gets attacked.

Given that for most weapon systems, you move your SHIP into position to 
have an enemy within firing arc and then roll dice to hit/damage a target, 
why does the player having to additionally guess where the target will be 
as he drops a missile salvo onto the table make any sense?  If the player 
was a gunnery officer, wouldn't he also have to do more to fire his beam 
weapons?  Like lead the target?  The direct fire weapons are ALL 
abstracted into a die roll resolution.  Why are *homing missiles* harder 
to use?

Also, there is the fact that they are PSB'd as HOMING missiles.  Missiles 
today can be directed at a specific target, and for the most part, don't 
zip off and hit something that's kind of nearby if the target happens to 
move.  They *home* on the target that they are directed towards.

I agree with the folks (sorry, I don't remember who) that stated that 
current Salvo Missiles do seem more like mines.

I think that ECM, Range and PDS should be major factors in how many 
missiles lock on and how many get through, but it seems to me that if you 
have homing missiles, you should not have to guess where the enemy is 
going and drop them onto the table in the hopes that he'll essentially run 
into their target envelope.

I'll go back to DS now... :)

Thanks!

J

John K. Lerchey
Assistant Director for Incident Response
Information Security Office
Carnegie Mellon University

On Thu, 22 Jun 2006 laserlight@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> JohnT said:
> > > We also invented rockets, these hit like pulse torpedos, modified by the ECM level do 2D6 damage and can be stopped by PDS fire. This is the missile system for people that can't guess.
>
> I said:
> > What's  the group response been? How many times have y'all tried them?
>
> I should clarify--"Hey, I'd be interested in trying that and passing it along to the Test List".  I don't like the "Hits as PTorp" mechanism simply because it doesnt sound to me like a seeking weapon--but if you said "Locks on target on a 2+ out to 24mu, with DRM -1 per 2mu after", or something along those lines, I could go for that.
>
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