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

> >  
> > 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?
> 

yeah, the same as in MT - d6 fighters destroyed

> > Cannon Charge
> > > 
> 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).
> 

First, you are correct, the cannon should hit armor first (like systems
should always behave in like ways).  This is a very good example of what
can happen when you send something off without having *someone else*
proof
it for you.  As I said, this is basically a re-write of an original set
that was based on ft/mt - actually it is a generation after that
(started
using armor instead of screens for Kra'Vak).  Now, since the original
there
have been changes (a couple of 'generations') and those changes didn't
always make it fully into the written rules.  You see this sort of thing
all the time, the writer _knows_ what the rules are supposed to say and
because of that when he proofs it there is sort of an 'auto' edit and it
is
very easy to skip over things like this.  That is why I think it is so
important to have someone who _wasn't_ involved in the design and
playtest
go over the rules before they are published.  It takes someone from the
outside to really catch this sort of thing (the other example is the
'missed' text from the scattergun).  By the way, it was this function
that
I often looked to the list to provide for me back when I used to put up
alternate rules.  Anybody who does programming knows what I am talking
about, better than I can explain it anyhow  :)	A good example of a
company
that doesn't use true outside (or at least didn't in the past) play test
IMHO is GW.  Their games have always be screwed with 'but we don't play
that way' problems.

> > 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. 

That was actually the original concept.  It got dropped because it made
the
caster too useful (one shot at long range and you had protection for
several 'closing' turns) and was a bit of a pain to keep track of.  I
like
LARGE fleets so even minor things (re-rolls, etc) become a bit of a pain
and I try to get rid of them.  

The PSB was that the cloud would be expanding as it moved and thus would
only provide protection for a limited amount of time.  

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

If the caster is too useful then yes, if not then no.  If you go with
the
above - protection for several turns - I would say a good way to balance
it
is to have it affect the ship's own fire.  Kind of like SFB erratic
maneuvers.

> > 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?

<g> I know I know, it is a problem - I'm just not comfortable with the
solution yet.  The idea was the ship was 'reinforced' to stand the extra
stress rather than the engines being better.  It is all in how you look
at
it.  I would rather go with increased engine cost, but see below.

> 
> > ##################################################################
> > 
> > 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.
> 

remember, that number was only for the ft/mt rules.  I came up with that
number by going through a set of ship/mass/screen calculations.  I
believe
it was mass: 20, 40, 60, 80, 100.  I then figured out how much damage a
screen would absorb before the ship was destroyed at each mass/screen
level
(1,2,3) and then divided the whole to get an average of how much
protection
a screen mass gave.  I think that was the way I did it, anyhow, the
number
I got was huge.  I cut that down to 6 since I hadn't allowed for screens
being taken out by threshold checks.  What you got was the reverse of
the
screens, small ships benefit from armor far more than large ships.  I
was
never comfortable with it, and since I play the Kra'Vak and I never
abused
the situation....................

> > 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.

I think for this you will need a higher cost than 6, maybe 9.

They need, IMHO, some kind of 'different' defense system from the
terrans. 
Maybe ecm that adds virtual range to the kra'vak ship when it is
targeted. 
each level makes the range count as being 6" longer.  Something.  Then,
make the railgun ignore screens/armor and just do internals - thus the
reason the Kra'Vak never developed such technology and instead went with
ecm.  Just a thought.

> 
> > Rail Guns
> > The Rail Gun is 

> There are two differences: 
> 
snip

I remember this argument from before.  I was never strongly swayed in
either direction and that is the problem.  I want a strong reason to
take
one and another strong reason to take the other.  I don't want just one
strong reason for one choice, because then I just take that one system.

> 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.)
> 

You could get by with this (railgun v pulse torp) if you allowed the
railgun to ignore screens and armor both.  I'm afraid that if I had to
choose between two R1 and one R3 I would take the R3 every time - unless
I
ended up with two extra mass and nothing to spend it on.  What is needed
is
a special effect for each class that will drive you to select one class
for
one 'mission' and another class for a second 'mission'.  

Perhaps a different approach.  What if we dropped the idea of 'three
versions of the same system'?  After all, the humans do this and we want
these guys to be different.  Instead, lets design three different
systems
that perform each of the class 1,2,3 batt functions.

First off, you want a long range ship killer - something like the class
1
human batt.  I would call that the class 3 rail gun and stay with that
system as described.

Next I want something short ranged and deadly for an escort weapon,
something like the class 1 batt.  Make it a 'gattling' gun.  Maybe it
fires
more than one time (multiple dice of damage) and it can target more than
one ship (spreading its dice).	It would also need to have arcs of
course. 
Give it good damage and very close range and have it drop off sharply -
but
never going beyond say 12".  Given the high maneuver Kra'Vak ships I
could
see them designing such a system with the idea being that such a ship
would
drive into the heart of an enemy fleet and then stay there for several
turns dishing out damage to multiple ships.  Such a system would work
well
with the ecm concept from above, or it would also work well with the
mass
caster.

You still need something to perform the 'middle' mission of the class 2
battery of course.  Maybe, instead we keep the class 2 railgun for this
mission and mess with the class 3 above changing it so that it has poor
accuracy at close range and better at long range.  The two systems still
don't feel different enough though.

Kind of like the class 1 becomes a submachine gun, the class 2 an
assault
rifle, and the class 3 a recoilless rifle.  I don't know, just rambling
off
the top of my head.

Thing is, you could still retain the over all 'same tech' feel if the
above
used 'fixed' damage (doing 1, 2, 3, or whatever points of damage), used
a
to hit roll and interacted with screens and armor the same way.  

Just a few more thoughts.

> > 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).

again the problem of knowing what the rules are _supposed_ to include
because you always play that way, we just resolved the fighter attacks
ignoring the flak.  No, it doesn't make any sense - but it was a balance
and effect issue.  I'm sure there is a good PSB reason for it someplace 
:)
 Really, I think it just comes down to if you think the caster doesn't
give
you enough bang for your buck since you can PSB your way out of most
anything.

> 
> [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.)
> 

either of these would probably be better.  In fact I had also considered
increasing the cost of thrust points for the high maneuver engines.  To
be
honest, I'm a little timid about doing that sort of thing since FB came
out.  Most things, by and large, are balanced by mass and that seems to
be
the preferred method.  I would rather use a more expensive thrust though
-
just cleaner and easier to calculate.  I had it figured at cost 3 per
engine mass (going with the concept that they are 50% more effective),
but
cost five would probably be better now that I think about it.  I just
have
balance concerns because mass isn't part of the cost.  It wouldn't be
hard
to get me to change my mind though  :)

> 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
> 

Thanks for the reply.  This is the sort of thing that helps out an
enormous
amount.

Chad