Re: [FT] Hardened Systems

On 15 Jan 99, at 0:45, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> If the mass penalty for hardening is only 25%, you'll still be
outgunned
> until the enemy takes his 2nd treshold check (though you won't be far
> behind after the first) and you'll still take *your* 2nd treshold
check
> before he takes his, but you'll have so much more firepower left (in
> absolute terms, not relative) than he does after the 2nd and 3rd
checks
> that you'll be able to mutually annihilate each other <g> If the mass
> penalty is 50%, you won't catch up - unless you're lucky early on, of
> course, but you'll lose far more battles than you win.

You seem to assume a ship where /everything/ is hardened. I 
wouldn't harden many systems, not drives, shields etc, just critical 
systems, firecon, perhaps a weapon or some weapons... sml's 
being not a bad option... losing a launcher with unfired missiles is 
so annoying. So the ship won't have 2/3 of the firepower, it will have 
nearly the same, but some critical systems whose loss stops your 
entire ship being useful.

> Since the *hardened* systems won't fail until *more* than half the
DCPs
> have already bought it, they have a smaller chance of repairing them
> early. They can repair some, but they'll have on average less time to
do
> it in and fewer DCPs to use, so the the DCP's impact will be less than
> for the unhardened systems. The "hardened" loss percentages are a bit
too
> high as well, but not as much too high as the unhardened ones.

So just before your ship is destroyed you won't be able to repair 
systems.. uhm, so? as if you were going to do anything other than 
bail out of the shattered husk at this point.

> But yes, the FC is one of the systems that benefit most from being
> hardened. Depending on what you envision the FCs as it can even be
> realistic - if they're the targetting sensors and scanners they'll be
> pretty difficult to protect, but if they represent the Tactical
officer
> and his staff, well... in military SF tend to be located on the Bridge
-
> which is a Core system, and thus hardened already! <G>

Localised intense shields for the sensors, a bit more redundancy, 
multiple routing of data lines back to the bridge and weapons 
directors... and you get 25% more availability (your numbers ;), 
doesn't seem too unbeleivable.

> > So, to summarise... REALLY good early in a battle, you can't lose 
> > them except to needle beams/missiles (and emp missiles 
> > perhaps?). 
> 
> Quite the contrary, in fact. Hardened systems are really BAD early in
a
> battle, since by then the enemy hasn't yet lost any systems to
treshold
> checks and therefore outguns the hardened ships by a rather wide
margin.

Systems that you cannot lose early in a battle is bad.... uhm, there 
is a new form of logic. You are fixated (wink) on a whole ship 
having every system on board it upgraded, where yup, you will be 
horribly outgunned, and die under a hail of fire, while I would go for 
only critical systems and keep almost the same firepower, and 
keep direction of it for longer, or actually manage to fire off all your

sml's. Ships that don't fire off all of their sml's in a non campaign 
game engagement wasted the points they spent on them. 
(Probably also true in a campaign unless you didn't make provision 
for reloading.. oops)

> Hardened systems are good *LATE* in the battle, when enough unhardened
> systems have faild their tresholds while the hardened ones hopefully
> haven't.

Well, two beam armed fleets, one with some hardened firecon, the 
other without, will do almost the same damage to each other, 
assuming capitol ships on either side are much the same, except 
for the use of hardened firecons... The hardened firecon ships ought 
to have more ability to direct their remaining weapons.

> I tend to use 1 FC only on ships of Mass 40 or less - usually only on
> Mass 30 or less. The minimum penalty you'll pay for hardening is 1
Mass
> (which, if you adopt my idea of adding all hardened systems together
> before rounding, covers 4 Mass of assorted systems), which is
typically
> 10-20% of the total weapons payload of the ship. Sure, it buys the
> hardened systems more time to be used - but the price you pay is a
> significant fraction of your firepower early in the battle... indeed,
> buying a point of armour has nearly the same effect for ships this
small
> (and the armour is slightly cheaper).
>  
> > I'd not consider hardening everything on a ship en masse, keeping 
> > the same points per ship means your firepower vanishes, but for 
> > critical systems it seems like a good idea, and a good price.
> 
> For those ships where a little hardening is most likely to make a big
> difference, the price tends to be higher than it seems :-/ 
> 

Ok... hmm. For 25% cost/mass increase, it seems too cheap, and 
always worth doing for certain systems, and probably for almost all 
systems. An extra game mechanic that is always worth employing 
isn't worth having as an option, as everyone will use them, might as 
well not have the option and reduce the potential complexity.

For 50% it seems too expensive for almost all systems other than 
some really critical ones.

.. You see a bigger benefit for hardening some systems than 
others, which opens the question whether the hardening should 
always cost the same... and if it should be different for different 
systems.. which is too complicated for FT.

So a compromise? 25% and 50% are good simple numbers, 
halving or quartering is easy for most people... all the percentages 
between will have people scratching their heads.. including 33.3%
(then again perhaps everyone uses calculator or spreadsheets, but 
simplicity is the FT way, so I'd prefer to keep it simple.)

So the other option is a slightly different hardening mechanic... but 
the suggested one is so simple, and already in use for core 
systems, it's difficult to reject it.

So, I'd perhaps suggest... 25% more mass, 50% more cost as a 
compromise.. (so you don't have so much extra mass to push 
about with drives or protect with shields). or perhaps even no mass 
increase, but 50% more cost?

Stats? ;)

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't understand the appeal of Spuds McKenzie. He's always surrounded
by beautiful women. Now, I'm single, and I know
the pickin's can be mighty slim, but you have to be really desperate to
date out of your own species. 
     Susan Norfleet
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