Re: Beam Batteries

Dave Lewis wrote:

>This is my first message to the Full Thrust mail group, so forgive me
if I 
>am covering already hashed over ground.  I just bought the game and
it's 
>More Thrust last night and I am having a problem with Beam Batteries.

Hi! Welcome to the list

>Unless you only have 1-2 mass left on your ship, I can't see a time
where 
>you would want to buy anything *but* A batteries.  A Batteries are
clearly 
>superior in a cost/benefit analysis which I show below using the lowest

>common denominator for mass (6):

°table snipped§
    
>As you can see A Batteries are always cheaper and always do as much or 
>more damage out to much greater range.  I feel that this should be 
>rectified and the More Thrust tried to do this, but fell short.  I am 
>thinking of amending Battery point costs to be "A:4+4/arc B:2+2/arc 
>C:1+1/arc".  This would change the above chart to look like the one
below:

°second table snipped§  

>With this new scheme A Batteries would still be clearly better, but
would 
>cost between 33% and 50% more that B/C batteries (depending on the arc
>of fire).  I feel that B & C batteries costing the same per mass is OK
>as More Thrust allows C batteries to act in point defense and I feel
that 
>this balances B batteries advantage at ranges 13-24.

Yeah, dead right. We have been discussing this subject here for some
time. 
The best solution so far was supplied by Dave Brewer:

There are two "problems" here:
Firstly,  A-batteries are better than B-batteries. 
The problem doesn't lie with the *points cost* of the batteries.  It
lies 
with the *mass* of A-batteries. You can play with the points cost all
day 
long, the equivalent  mass of A's will be superior to B's. Either you
set 
the cost of  A's so ruinous you drive them from the game, or you accept 
that  big ships will be stuffed with A's.

The alternative is to set the mass of an A from 3 to 4. Heresy.  Now you

have to re-do all those ship designs.

Now the equivalent mass of B's is not better/worse than A's...	It's 
*different*. A's have long range, B's have short range. Call it a 
calibre/ROF distinction.  Mass is also the reason why non-FTL ships will

comfortably thrash FTL designs. They have more room AND they save points

not  having FTL drives. Those points go into weapons.

Secondly,  3-arc weapons are better than 1- or 2-arc weapons. 
Again, this is because there is no difference in mass, just in	points 
cost. I don't think that bumping up the mass numbers will  work here.

A straight mass increase will not work, but a mass charge per arc will 
achieve the desired effect (i.e. give people a reason to use 1 arc
weapons) 
For instance
C batteries 1 mass includes 3 arcs.
B batteries 2 mass includes 2 arcs + 1 for third arc
A batteries 3 mass includes 1 arc  + 1 for each additional arc.
The rationale being that larger guns require increasing amounts of
hardware 
to pivot through the larger arcs.

Hope that helps,

Mike Elliott, GZG