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

 Samuel Penn <sam@bifrost.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>I agree with everything you've said about the importance of avoiding
>thresholds, but with the added point that shields delay thresholds
>as well. Taking my above example, and assuming 4 damage rows, armour
>delays the first threshold by 10, while shields delay it by 7 - not
>a huge difference. Assuming you then don't loose both your shields,
>you still get the bonus from shields until the _next_ threshold
>roll, whereas all benefits of armour have now been lost.

Good points, but it does seem to indicate that armor is currently
roughly
on par with shields, even if not exactly equal.

>A small change which would make armour a bit better, and also a lot
>more interesting (IMO) is if the armour value applied to each facing
>of the ship individually. So 10 points of armour gives you 10 points
>on the fore, 10 points on port etc.

I think that if armor is to be changed in some manner to make it more
effective, this may not be the way. This thinking would make armor 6
times
as effective - at least in the hands of someone who could take advantage
of
all the "new" facings. As an old SFB player, I'm familiar with the
shield
rotation game, and I would rather not inflict that same method on a
system
as elegantly simple as FT.

If I HAD to improve armor in some way, I think I would simply adjust the
percentages of hull mass for shields slightly; it affects the rest of
the
game mechanics the least and still addresses the difficulty.

Schoon