Re: Thoughts on FT

On Tue, 8 Apr 1997, David Brewer wrote:

> Well, I did... and it reappeared when you answered your own 
> questions.

How about "kill thread"?

> I dislike the tendency to view ship (or tank) construction as 
> plonking together so many lego bricks. Isn't it plausible that the 
> exact same set of system specs instantiated in a ship might have a 
> varying number of DP depending on which yard (meaning also 
> architect, contractor, nation, culture, race, whatever) it comes 
> from, and in which year? Not to mention the dozens of little tedious 
> RL factors that are of no consequence to a tactical game?

Sure. But IMHO, it should be optional flavor.

> Perhaps armour fell out of favour with the military-industrial
> complex. Screen manufacturers paid bigger bribes, or were cheaper,
> or required the mining of rare minerals that the ruling class had
> a monopoly in...

I'd buy that for one nation, but all of them? 
 
> Ah... now you're actually proposing amendments as a stimulus to 
> discussion, rather that asking rhetorical questions. You should do
> this in a seperate message. Here it is buried in our rhetorical 
> crap above, so less people will actually bother to read it.

Life's hard and then you die. You can't have one without the other, 
sorry. 
 
> Hmmmm... well, if I have two Kra'Vak shooting two targets, I might
> split the fire of each of my ships between each target and thereby
> obtain more consistant results. Likewise the fire from many small
> ships will strike more consistantly than that of one large ship.
> This could be seen as a bug or a feature... how microsoft do you
> feel today?
 
Some people would like the edge it gives scores of little ships, but 
you're right, it opens an alley for cheap optimization.

> I don't think it would be to time-consuming to have each RG-1 roll
> seperately it's attack and damage.

Well, I do. I really like the single-roll beam resolution. It's a nice, 
simple and clean design. All this "to-hit then damage" stuff clutters up

the basic design.
 
How about this: Roll to-hit once per battery. Roll damage multiplier
once 
for all batteries.

Or better yet, scrap the damage multiplier. RGs inflict just the base 
damage. Yeah, I like that.

> So low?... try running the numbers between a PTT and an RG-2 (not 
> RG-3). 

You're right. I was perhaps a bit too conservative. 10 pts per
RG-battery 
and no damage multiplier should bring them in line better.

> Or compare an RG-1 and a 1-arc C-battery. I'd put an RG-1 in at 
> least 10 points... if not 15.

That's a bit far fetched. The C sucks anyway, and its abilities are 
somewhat different.

Let's redo the calculations:

Only changes shown:
	      PTT   RG-1 RG-2 RG-3
Cost	      15    10	 20   30
Mass	      5     1	 2    3
Avg. Damage   3.5   1	 2    3
 at range - includes accuracy
 6"	      2.33  0.83 1.66 2.5
 12"	      1.75  0.66 1.33 2.0
 18"	      1.16  0.5  1.0  1.5
 24"	      0.58  0.33 0.66 1.0
 30"	      0     0.16 0.33 0.5

Hmmm... the PTT is still way heavy, but even counting the cost of the 
extra mass required it has some advantages. The low mass of RG's lets 
the kravvies retain their edge pound-for-pound (which is a "real life" 
consideration) while giving them a more fair points cost (which is an 
"in-game" consideration).

Argh... I guess I should punch all the weapons up in a spreadsheet.

Next: Scatterguns vs. Submunitions packs.

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