Re: [GZG] Tinkering with weapons

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony wrote:

>Fusion Beam
>Envisaged as an earlier ship mounted weapon system before the standard beam
>became common.

If it is "earlier", then shouldn't it be less Mass-effective but cheaper 
than the standard beams? If it is *as* Mass-effective, there's little or no 
clear in-background incentive for everyone to change to the current 
"standard" beams (which they obviously have done, since none of the FB 
powers use it any longer)... To me this fusion beam looks more like a 
contemporary alternative to the standard beam, not like an obsolecent or 
obsolete weapon.

>Mass and cost as Beam
>Range 8mu brackets per weapon class
>Damage as per standard beam x2 (die result 4-5= 2hits, 6=4hits)
>Screens- as beams
>Armour- as beams

In theory this should balance OK, but as with all modified-range beam 
weapons it runs into the problem that the standard class-2 battery is 
somewhat overpowered/underpriced compared to the standard class-1 and 
class-3 batteries. Because of this, a 6-arc "class-2 fusion beam" (max 
range 16, Mass 3) will be overpowered compared to 3x class-1 standard beam 
batteries while a 3-arc "class-3 fusion beam" (max range 24, Mass 6) will 
be *under*powered compared to 3x class-2 standard beam batteries.

(Note to Steve Pugh: The value of a weapon's range is *almost* proportional 
to the area within range and arc, but since the weapon can only fire at one 
target per turn even when it has multiple targets to choose between it 
isn't an exact match. In math terms the area itself is proportional to 
range^2, but for the weapon's value the exponent slightly less than 2.)

>Helical Beam
>Helical adjusted wave guide carrier particle beam, sometimes called the Hell
>beam more commonly H beam
>Mass and cost as Graser
>Range 27mu brackets per weapon class
>Damage d3 per hit
>Screens- as Graser
>Armour- as Graser

Overpowered compared to Grasers - the average result of 1D3 is 2.0 whereas 
the average result of 1D6 is 3.5 (ie. less than twice as much), so reducing 
the damage per hit from 1D6 to 1D3 does not fully compensate for the 50% 
longer range bands.

>Salvo Missile Variants
>SM variants have probably been done to death, but here goes

[mechanics snipped]

>I think the cost for the 2 variants should be the same as standard SM but 
any
>thoughts please.

Here are the average damages for 1 salvo of standard SMs and the two SM 
variants, each opposed by 0 - 6 PDSs:

#PDS:   Standard SM:    Kinetic:        BPL:
0       12.25           7.50    5.83
1       9.75            6.33    5.12
2       7.62            5.21    4.46
3       5.84            4.18    3.86
4       4.39            3.27    3.32
5       3.24            2.48    2.84
6       2.34            1.84    2.41

Both the Kinetic and the BPL values depend somewhat on how their respective 
DRMs are applied to the PDS rerolls. Here I've treated the +1 as applying 
to all rerolls (as for Attack fighters) while the -1 doesn't apply to 
rerolls (as per beams vs. lvl-2 screens), but even eliminating the rerolls 
entirely has very little effect on the overall result due to the low 
per-missile damages.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the readers to determine appropriate costs 
for the variant SMs
:-)

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxxx

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

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