Re: Kra'Vak 'house' rules for FB, long

Chad wrote:

[Note: I've snipped most of the actual rules, since the concept
discussion at the end is more interesting and include most of the points
anyway. Also note that, due to my Starfire background, I'm a bit
allergic
to weapons which seem to work in the same way physically but have
different characteristics in the rules - in Starfire, they all too often
lead to serious balance problems :-( In FT, where the weapon
descriptions
are a lot hazier anyway, it usually doesn't - but the Kra'Vak weapons
aren't nearly as hazy as the standard beam weapons.]
  
> 'Charge' Weapons.  
>  
> Scattergun Charge
> 
> Mass: 1	Cost: 10
[snip]
> The Scattergun may only engage one target (missile or fighter) and is
> expanded and marked off the sheet after it is fired.	The Scattergun
may
> not damage ships.  Against a missile the Shotgun charge has the effect
of
> destroying the missile on a roll of 4,5, or 6.  Against Salvo Missiles
a d6
> is rolled and that number of missiles are destroyed.	The Scattergun
> chooses its targets during its fire turn and is not limited to those
> missiles targeting the ship itself. 

Hm - you seem to have left out how the scattergun works against
fighters.
Same as in MT (ie, same as against salvo missiles above), or as MT
missiles?

> Cannon Charge
> 
> Mass: 1	Cost:  10
> 
> The Cannon round is a one shot type weapon that fires a single (or
> fewer and bigger projectile than the Shotgun) larger caliber
projectile
> designed to damage ships.  Any ship within 6" may be targeted, but 
> only one ship per Cannon Charge.  Roll a d6 and the result is the 
> amount of damage inflicted on the target.  Shields have no effect, but

> the Mass Caster below has the result of subtracting one point of
damage

> from the dice roll.  Damage is sustained with half going to armor (if
any) 
> and half to internals. The Cannon Charge has no effect on missiles and
fighters. 

If the Cannon Charge (which is described pretty much as one-shot railgun
round) penetrates armour, why doesn't the other railgun rounds (esp. the
Class 10) do this? (I see why game-balance-wise, but not in-game-wise -
this is an allergic reaction as per my note at the top of this post).

> Mass Caster Charge
> 
> Mass:  1	  Cost:  10
> 
> The Mass Caster Charge is designed to give a ship suffering heavy fire
a
> short term means of defense.	When used it blows a large quantity of
> small/fine mass (sand, ice crystals, etc) into one arc.  For the
remainder
> of the turn (until the ship moves) 

[snip]

Given how vulnerable a ship which doesn't maneuver - ie, uses its
thrusters or main engines to change its course and/or heading - is to
missiles, salvo missiles and fighters, I don't mind letting the ship
keep
its mass cloud for as long as it doesn't spend any thrust. The cloud has
the same velocity as the ship when it is launched; if the ship doesn't
change its velocity, it'll stay close to the ship. 

However, the cloud would seem to affect the ship's own fire as well as
incoming, no?

> High Maneuverability
> 
> Cost is 5% of ship's MASS.

Ouch. This means that it doesn't cost any more to give a Thrust 8 ship
High Maneuverability than to give it to a Thrust 2 ship, no?

> ##################################################################
> 
> Armoured Hulls
> We had actually dropped this and gone to an armor concept prior to
seeing
> the Fleet Book.  We were using 1 mass gives 6 points of protection to
> balance it against the mass 3 ft/mt shields.	

*6* points? Ouch... The most I've gone was 2 armour points per Mass, and
that proved quite a lot better than the screens except for very large
vessels. Replacing one Mass 3 screen generator with your armour would
give a ship *18* extra damage boxes, and only large capitals commonly
get
that much use out of their screen generators. This has become even more
true with the re-rolls introduced in FB, since the re-roll damage can
inflict treshold checks surprisingly early.

> I was kind of disappointed
> that FB gave armor rules.  The idea that the Kra'Vak were the only
ones
> that used this form of protection helped give them a different feel
and
> reinforced their 'we got to do it now' feel that other fleets didn't
> have.

My thoughts are more along the Theban vs Federation lines from Weber's
Crusade
- ie, the humans use armour, but the Kra'Vak have had far longer to
develop efficient armour materials than we. OTOH, the Kra'Vak/Theban
armour is more expensive - a *lot* more expensive - than the human
version. I've experimented with 2 armour boxes per Mass at a cost of 6
per Mass (ie, 3 per damage box), but this points cost may well be a bit
too low.

> Rail Guns
> The Rail Gun is slightly more effective than the similar pulse torp. 
> However, this is balanced by having all of the damage from the Rail
Gun
> effect against armor first and then internals and limiting the RG to
one arc. 
> For my money the Rail Gun still has concept problems.  The Class 1 is
> no different from the Class 3. 

There are two differences: 

First, if you have 3 Class 1 instead of 1 Class 3, the risk of losing
*some* of your armament to treshold checks go up but the risk of losing
*all* your firepower in a single go goes down dramatically. You're also
a
lot less vulnerable to needle beam fire (...though I've only seen one
successful use of needle beams against Kra'Vak so far <g>).

Second, 3 Class 1 inflict the same *average* damage per Mass as 1 Class
3
Railgun, but the Class 3 is more "all or nothing". Eg, at range 30 the
*average* total damage per turn for both weapon configurations is 0.5,
but the Class 3 has only a 16.7% chance to inflict *any* damage (in
which
case it'll be 3 pts) while 3 Class 1 have a 42% chance to inflict *at
least* 1 point (including the chance to infict 2 or 3 points), but only
a
0.5% chance to actually inflict the maximum 3 points possible. (Unless
it's Indy who rolls the dice, of course, in which case none of the
railguns hit ;-)

> This problem was well handled with Beams by
> giving the class 1 the pd ability and restricting/costing arcs of fire
for
> all batteries. Something along these lines needs to be added to the
> Kra'Vak Rail Guns so there is a reason, beyond limited mass, to take a
> class 1 over a class 3.

I'd rather think it is the other way around - right now 3 Class 1 cost
as
much and inflict (on average) just as much damage as 1 Class 3 railgun,
but they're less vulnerable to damage themselves - and inflict a
constant
dribble of damage rather than the all-or-nothing hits of the Class 3
(not
very important against capital ships or at ranges of 12 or less, but it
is important against cruisers and escorts and at longer ranges IME).

For me, that's a strong reason not to use the bigger weapons - and so I
think the bigger railguns need a boost compared to the smaller ones,
rather than the other way around.

What I've done so far is to give the Railguns a Mass of (Class + 1), but
allow them re-rolls just like the beam weapons (ie, if you roll a 6 you
get to roll again). This forces me to choose between the (significantly)
lower damage of 2 R1 and the higher damage but (significantly) higher
risk of being completely disarmed of the R3 (or bigger). I've also toyed
with a restriction on how small a ship can mount a railgun: no ship can
carry a spinal-mount (F or A arcs) railgun bigger than the ship Mass/10,
nor can it mount any railguns firing through any *other* arc bigger than
the ship Mass/20. A Mass 50 ship could therefore carry R2s firing
forward
or aft, and R1s firing through the side arcs.

The problem with this Mass scheme is that it makes the R1 and R2 weaker
than the Pulse Torp, which is clearly a Bad Thing :-( (They are also
weaker than the short-ranged beams against unscreened targets, but they
beat them in range and against screened targets.)

> Charge Weapons

[snip]

> The Mass Caster should probably have an effect on missiles/fighters, 

It already *has* an effect on (most) fighters. Their weapons count as
beams (except Kra'Vak fighters, but they should suffer the penalty as
well since normal railgun fire is weakened).

[snip]
 
> High maneuver
> An alternate method would be to cost it as an additional cost to
thrust,
> making each point of thrust cost 6% or 7% of MASS instead of 5%.  This
> would probably be best, but just prefer working with multiples of 
'5',
> call me a math wimp.

<g> I've used 7.5% Mass per Thrust point for Kra'Vak/Centauri drives. As
long as you only use even thrust values, you end up with multiples of
"5"
anyway (OK, multiples of 15, really). It seems to work OK, but it makes
the Kra'Vak ships feel rather undergunned. 

However, I more and more lean towards using the points system instead,
using the same Mass% value for the Kra'Vak drives but costing them at 5
points or so per Mass rather than the 2 human drives cost. I haven't had
time enough to test it thoroughly, but so far it looks as if it might
work. (And it makes the points system more useful - instead of just
being
a 3.4x multiplier of the ship Mass <g> The FB NPV/TMF varies between
3.28
and 3.5, IIRC.)

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