Re: Thoughts on FB .....was Re: Bogey Classes FB

Samuel Penn wrote:

> > Yes the old 100 Mass limit is gone under the new design rules.
Effectively
> > there is no limit but the bigger your ship the more Mass you have to
have
> > for drives which will bring some people back to earth a bit.
> 
> As long as they sale linearly with mass (says he of the big ship=fast
> school of thinking)...

Yup. Spending 64 out of 160 Mass on engines for a thrust 6
Battledreadnought seems to balk more people than spending 8 of 20 Mass
for the engines of a thrust 6 frigate, though <g>

> I did manage to browse the FB in my game shop today, and a question
> that did come to mind was whether armour (spelt the British way,
please
> note) was balanced in relation to shields. From my quick reading,
> two levels of shields costs 10% of ship mass, and halves damage from
> beam weapons. A mass 100 ship with 30 damage points is effectively
> getting +30 DPs.
>
> 10% of armour on  the same ship only gives you +10 DPs. Shields would
> seem to be 3x as effective. Now I know shields don't protect against
> everything (I presume armour does), but unless I've overlooked
> something, my gut reaction is that armour isn't good enough.

You forget a few things:

First, if you use the re-roll option (which is what at least I did the
playtesting with), level 2 screens are only going to stop 42% of the
incoming fire (cutting your "bonus" damage points from 30 to 21 in one
fell swoop). 

Second, the chance that both your screen generators will survive through
all three treshold checks without going down at one point or another is
less than 8%, which reduces your "bonus" damage even further.

Looking at these two taken together, the average damage absorbed by this
30 DP, screen-2 ship if it is fired on by beam weapons *only* and it
fails all its repair rolls - both assumptions are rather unlikely IMO,
but it makes the calculations much easier - is about 43 points (give or
take some decimals), which is only 3 DP more than what the armour gives
(and the armour protects delays the first treshold check, protecting
your
weapons longer than the screens would). The 10 higher points value of
the
screens for the 3.2 extra DP is pretty much on target - one DP of armour
or hull structure costs 3 points (1 for the Mass, 2 for the
hull/armour).

If you don't use the re-roll option, the ship instead absorbs on average
47.5 DP rather than the 60 you was looking for. In this case the screens
are clearly better than the armour.

However:

Third, screens give no protection whatsoever from pulse torps, SMBs and
needle beams; armour doesn't stop the needle effect, but at least
absorbs
half or more of the structural damage inflicted from all these weapons.
If your enemy likes these weapons (note that both the pulse torp and the
needle beam have been improved from FT/MT to FB), armour starts looking
like a good buy indeed :-) 

At some points during the playtesting, I was worried that armour was
*too* effective. I don't think it is now - or, at least, it isn't the
best choice for all ship designs. For weak hulls or small ships, it
definitely is better than mounting a screen or two (since those ships
won't survive long enough to make the screen pay for itself), but for
large ships (especially with Strong or better hulls) screens are a
better
buy.

[snip]
 
> I couldn't see any real difference between 'hull' and 'armour'. Both
> take one mass and give one damage point. The only difference is that
> use of armour delays threshold rolls.

This is a *very* important difference.

Later,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@nacka.mail.telia.com

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