FT III

Mike Elliott wrote:
>Jon and I were chatting the other day and one of the things that came
up 
>was this beam weapon thing for FTIII (as you may know, we are thinking 
>about producing a new version of FT). Jon is quite keen on the idea of 
>getting rid of the points system (shock, horror!, what will the
tabloids 
>say?) in favour of a single parameter for ship design, i.e. MASS.

IMHO I would really miss the points system.  It is very useful when
converting from other game systems, creating tech levels(lower costs as
tech
rises), maintaining economies in campaign settings, as well as balance
out
alien forces such as the Kra'Vak.

>Secondly, we have recognised the problem with beam weapons inbalance
and 
>the latest idea is to distinguish between "casemate" weapons (i.e.
single 
>arc) and "turreted" (i.e. 2 or 3 arc):
>
>				MASS
>C battery (turretted only)	 1
>B battery (casemate)		 2
>B battery (turret)		 4
>A battery (casemate)		 4
>A battery (turret)		 8
>
>
>What do you all think??

Interesting.  I do like the way batteries and arcs work right now with
the
exception of the cost\mass of A batteries.  If A batts were a little
more
costly and maybe more massive, we might see more variation in ship
designs
instead of almost exclusive use of A's.

I do like the idea of either declaring a battery as turreted or as a
single
arc casemate\pivot mount.  If C-batts are always turreted, this might
make
conversions difficult when some low power systems might be single arc
and
best represented by C-batt's effectiveness.  Also, if a ship had a
turreted
battery that was mounted such that only two opposing arcs were
available(like some old wet-navy ships) there would be no way to
represent
this.  I guess you could build them the same as turreted with one arc
missing on the design(just cheating yourself for accuracy).  This is
probably realistic, since the battery is essentially the same as one
mounted
elsewhere with a better "view".

>As fas a "fix" for FT II is concerned, I think the simplicity of the A 
>battery is MASS 4 is fine, and would recommend its adoption as a house 
>rule. That's probably as "official" as you're going to get.

Mike Miserendino