Re: What makes a Capital ship Capital?

----------
Mikko wrote:

> > Especially since it is much
> > more comfortable (and thus convenient) to win with your designs
rather
than
> > your tactics! ;-) 
> 
> Hee hee hee. Just the attitude I love to see encouraged.

It's the attitude that made sure I'll never play WHFB or WH40K any
more...
and an attitude I've seen far too many times in other games too,
including
FT. The smiley at the end should've been :-/ (cynic) rather than ;-)
(joking), though...

> > Sure - but I'll have to measure in mm to do it :-)
>  
> Yeah, and your C-batts wouldn't even reach the edge of your ship's
base...

No :-)

> > More seriously, I _have_ played a battle where the speeds eventually
> > approached 100 even for the battle-wagons. (Starting speeds were in
the
> > 10-20 range.) It used the vector movement rules though, and the
general
> > direction of travel was the same for most of the ships - so after a
while
> > we did a Galileic coordinate transformation and made the table move
with
> > the ships... Great fun, that was. Had we used the standard movement
rules
> > we'd have been in trouble <g>
> 
> I should have said *relative* speeds. I should have made it expressly 
> clear that I meant the FT rules as printed. Silly me.
 
Not at all; I understood that very well (which is why I mentioned that I
didn't use them in the battle in question). I haven't played really
high-speed battles with the normal movement rules due to restricted
floor
space (no place to put the furniture).

> > How much info do you give on the size of the various ships? (This is
not
> > defined anywhere in the rules... 
> 
> Errmm... there's an extensive scanning table in MT. 

Ah, yes. Sorry.

> Even a few ships with 
> improved sensors brought the game to a halt. I never bothered with
spray 
> painting ping pong balls.
 
So both fleets hover at range 50 or so until they know what they're
facing?
With home-built ships, the need for bogey markers disappears - you can't
be
sure what the target is anyway <shrug>

> > But this is IMO the same thing as your other examples above - an
> > optimization stemming from a bad rule (in this case, the too-low
mass
of
> > the A). And thus, IMO, a bad optimization.
> 
> Erm. it's a bad rule, but not an unrealistic one (I should have made
this
> distinction).

> The situation may very well be that A-beams are the cutting
> edge of technology and B's and C's are simply obsolete (which is the 
> situation in vanilla rules). Massless armor is a bit harder to
swallow. 


> > The problem as I see it, or at least part of it, is that FT lacks
the
kind
> > of "tech development" which forces new designs. This means that in
order to
> > encourage design variety, all weapons present in the game need one
area
> > where they are better than the others. As the A was without a shadow
of
> > doubt the best of the beam batteries prior to the mass change (to
4),
the
> > other beam sizes simply weren't needed.
> 
> Agreed. So it's 4 now? 

As suggested by both Jon T. and Mike E. on this list, yes.

> How about the "3 arcs is the only thing that makes sense" problem?

No quick patch for FTII, no.

> > No. However, if he gave all his troops bolt-action ones instead of
> > breach-loaders in a mid-19th century skirmish I might, though.
> 
> You mean *repeating* bolt-action rifles, don't you?

Yes, true. [snip]

> I sincerely hope the new design system in FB will be better without
added
> complexity, instead of simply throwing anoraks at anyone who finds a
flaw
> in it. 

We're working on it...

Oerjan Ohlson

"Life is like a sewer.
What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry