Re: Why big ships are too good...

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On Fri, 6 Dec 1996, lojeck wrote:

> > >Some things in life just aint fair <grin>.
> 
> as much as I agree with you, I think this is the wrong attitude to
take
> when designing a game. Life isn't fair, but the idea behind a game is
to
> spend some time having fun, trying new things,etc... that gets ruined
if
> the game mechanic isn't balanced (to some degree).
> 
> Mind you, this isn't a bash on scenario gaming (which i do almost
> exclusively nowadays), I'm just saying that I think a game where 1000
> points of 100 ton ships is more or less equal to 1000 pts of 4 ton
ships
> is a "better" game then one where they are vastly unequal.
> 
>

I just don't know, I'm not all that sure that the
1000-point-100-ton-fleet
is going to stomp on the 1000-point-cruiser-fleet.  They may win, but I
don't think it will be one sided.  Taken without screens and a thrust of
two a 100 mass ship costs 5 points per mass while a 36 mass cruiser
costs
4 points per mass.  Now granted you are only buying screens one time for
a
100 mass ship while you are buying them (sort of) three times with an
equal amount of cruiser mass.  I guess part of the problem I am having
blindly accepting the big ships are too good argument is that in the
campaign we are running one of the players (Mike) chose to build two 200
mass ships in his starting fleet.  They haven't seen combat yet (he is
holding them back as a surprise, his racial "bonus" was that he could
build super ships while others could not), but just looking at the
points
that were spent I don't think they were that good of a deal.  I would
have
rather had cruisers.  I just don't see it being that simple: large ships
are too good.

Chad Taylor