Re: Damn the torpedoes and others (long)

Happy Easter to all!

I'm rolling several subjects into this one post to cut bandwidth.
Please bear with me.

On Wed, 26 Mar 1997, Joachim Heck - SunSoft wrote:
> 
>   Missiles indeed do terminate operations after 54".	The question is
> whether they actually hit their target in the mean time.  I've heard a
> lot of talk about missile boats and the like but given that typical
> fleet speeds in our games are 15", it's not at all uncommon to see the
> ships moving faster than the missiles.  This makes it extremely
> difficult for them to hit.

I did some calculations:

By products:
A ship doing 1pt turn ends up 0.97x vel" 15deg to side
2pts is 0.97x vel and 45deg (You turn much sharper when you
turn before moving)
3pts is 0.87x vel and 60deg
4pts is 0.87x vel and a full 90degs to side.

Interesting to note is that 4-pt turn is sharp enough to effectively
move 
sideways.

Now, a missile moves 18" per turn. It projects a movement cone in the 
following manner:

1 turn: 30 deg cone, 17.39" rad (roughly)
2 turns: 45 deg cone, 29.94"
3 turns: 60 deg cone, 53.38"

It's not really exactly a neat cone, but close enough. Ok, this outlines

the space where the missile can get. In addition, the missile has a 6" 
striking radius. Figure this slice of pie surrounded by an extra 6" in 
every direction. That's the danger zone.

That's where you don't want to be.

What does it take to get out? I did some examples.

Assuming a head-on, down-yer-throat missile at 18", you need following 
minimum velocities for guaranteed escape, *provided* you make the 
detailed turn:

1 -pt. turn: 22"
2pt: 18"
3pt: 13"
4pt: 11"

With longer range 36" case, a 4-pointer is guaranteed to take you out of

trouble. Other cases are a bit more complex to calculate, but the 
velocities needed are still in excess of 10".

If you don't meet the velocity, you're in a guessing game with a missile

swarm. That's not a good place to be.

Another thing to consider: My gaming table's 54" wide. For 130 points, I

can buy enough bathtub launchers to fire a saturation salvo that CAN NOT

MISS. Why? Because it's striking zone covers every inch of the table, 
that's why. I could probably do it with even less points, if I bothered 
to calculate spreads from slightly bigger launcher ships.

Yet another thing to consider: A missile does average damage of 7.
That's 
a kill against a Mass14 ship. A mass 14 ship hull+FTL, no thrust, no 
weapons, no nothing, costs 42 points. I can almost get 2 bathtub 
launchers for that price.

Shooting missiles is a numbers game. If you're missing, you're not using

enough of them.

> when they do hit.  Oh, also we generally restrict FTL disengagement
> enough to prevent ships from dropping out of FTL, launching and then
> immediately retreating into FTL. 

No need for that. A thrust 8 ship can launch, hard turn, never get a
single 
INCH closer to foe and promptly exit table. *Even* if you play with a 
floating map, nothing has thrust over 8. You can never close the 
distance, unless your initial velocity was greater.

> note that in a campaign situation you'll have to pay (big) money for

Assumption. I'd say a missile must cost a mere fraction of what a 
scrapped friendly ship does. I'd even say it's cheaper to get a new 
missile than repair and slagged B-battery. Because if your ammo's more 
expensive than that, you should be using kamikaze ships.

Ok, about points: Yes Jon, I *DO* think that *all* point design systems
are 
either fundamentally flawed, or optimizing is the name of the game.
Don't 
take this personally. I know very well how hard it is, and IMHO you've 
done a pretty good job. So good in fact, that I really don't think 
capital ships are a problem -- missile saturation from scores of 
small ships might be. There are small optimization loopholes, but
nothing 
major in FT.

What next? Ok, bigs vs. smalls. I thought the whole idea was that 
capitals were supposed to be badder than escorts. Yes, a BB will take a 
pounding while killing some DDs. But you can field it with battle
damage, 
your systems are relatively easy to bring back online, so you're 
basically talking about a few lost hit points.

Assume you need 3:1 odds to kill my BB, and even then you suffer twice
my 
points in casualties. So your remaining DDs get away. So what? So did
my XXX whatevers, that were never even present! 

At the end of the day, the thing that *really* matters is who got most 
kills pound-for-pound (or point-for-point).

The real setback of biggies is that they can be in fewer places at once.
But that enters the campaign background again. You don't necessarily
*have* to be all over the place. Simple example: 

Take the Lafayette incident. It's a perfectly viable defense strategy (a

boring one, though) to pool all forces at Lafayette. The attacker just 
can not win without facing a major showdown there. And unless he calls 
your bluff, he'll be chewing up some his fleet against local defenses 
while looking for your "mobile" fleet.

Ok, on to "Harpoon in Space":

Why disallow "C-s as PDAFs"? Because if you don't it becomes a viable 
tactic to stick 50 C-s in a dreddie. That baby shoots down an average of

8.33 missiles per turn in PD mode. That's a major whopper to saturate.

Let's look at history. First we had torpedo boats, then we had torpedo 
boat destroyers to keep them at bay and then we had just plain
destroyers 
(tada), which are so useful mainly because they're expendable.

Apart from their ASW duties, DDs kept enemies at bay through the threat 
of torpedo attack. Torpedoes were, compared to big guns, short range 
weapons -- but the only thing that could halt a dreadnought with a
single 
hit.

In FT missiles are otherwise nice, but they have too great range.  It
doesn't really deter anyone from closing if they can shoot you across
the
board anyway. Sub-packs might be ok, but I'm not sure they're nasty
enough
to keep anyone at bay. Maybe single-arc Kravvie scatterpacks? 

Honor and rules: Jon, IMHO the best option would be to offer 
"tournament" rules for those who want to use them. Ten players are
likely 
to have ten different ideas of what *exactly* is a balanced fleet.
When you know the people, you can get close enough, but when you game 
with strangers, you just need black on white.

Btw: I oppose any suggestion that would mean the Kriegsmarine should 
never have set sail. You can sail capitals without a destroyer screen, 
and some real people did -- sometimes rather successfully.

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