Re: [FT-AAR] comment NAC/NI AAR

First: I misremembered the Mass required for stealth - thought it was
the
same as Screens when it should be twice that. Of course it isn't - that
would make it rather powerful :-/ Sorry 'bout that.

John Leary wrote:

> > OK, I'll bite. What would "stealth" mean for you? Obviously
something
> > else than making the ship harder to aquire (which is what this
stealth
> > version represents, with a very simple mechanic), but I can't figure
out
> > what...?
> XXX
>      Stealth is an attempt to reduce of eliminate the return from the
> target (the stealth ship) so that the enemy cannot find the stealth
> ship or prevent the enemy from acquiring a target lock for thier fire
> control.   In FT/MT/FB terms, stealth reduces the sensor range on the 
> ship so that it cannot acquire and therefore cannot fire.  

Bingo. You have just described *exactly* how I envision Noam's stealth
system. The additional assumption it makes is that the stealth isn't
perfect - get close enough, and the enemy no longer has enough
difficulties to target your ship - and the weapon damage mechanism
described in my next paragraph.

>      In the game the stealth appears to have blocked all effective 
> sensors on the affected ships and placed the weapons systems in 
> a 'local'  fire control mode as all beam weapons were reduced by
> the same percentage. 

Depends on how you consider weapon fire to occur.

 My view - biased by Starfire, but that's rather unavoidable in my case
-
is that a weapon's effect is gradually attenuated over range. This
attenuatioin is partially offset by accurate enough targetting. "1 point
of damage" isn't necessarily a *single* hit - it may just as well be
several minor hits, combining to make up 1 point... and if your
targetting is poor enough that you can't get enough hits on target to
inflict that single point, the weapon is no longer able to inflict
damage. A larger weapon with better focussing systems (which is one of
the reasons why a Class-3 inflicts less damage per Mass than a Class-2
at
close range - the focussing systems take up a bigger percentage of the
weapon's mass) and more juice in each sub-shot to begin with suffers a
lower attenuation rate, and is thus able to inflict damage at longer
ranges.

This explanationi also helps explain how the NAC could see the NI ships
at all when they were outside maximum weapons range - they just couldn't
get a good enough fix on them to hit them with enough shots to make it
count :-/

>  (I am fully aware that PSB may be used to 
> justify a great deal, but lets try for a reasonable extension of
> reality.  (Well, Mostly!)  

See above.

> > Screens affects all enemy beam fire directed at the screened ship.
This
> > is accomplished without a 'to hit' for the ship using screens.
Armour
> > affects all enemy weapon fire except needles directed at the ship.
This,
> > too, is accomplished without a 'to hit' for the armoured ship.
> XXX
>      Nobody bothers to roll the 'to hit' for screens and armor on
thier
> own ship because to miss you need a zero on 1D6.  :-)  JTL

There are games where you need to roll to see if the enemy fire strikes
an area where your armour is already damaged - FASA's Renegade Legion
series, for example. This is in effect a "to-hit" roll for your own
armour - with a very real chance to fail, I might add :-/ 

How realistic it is? Well... apart from mile-long starships not being
very realistic to begin with, the thought that the armour integrity
would
fail all over a mile-long starship all at once strikes me as rather
ridiculous .-)

>      'Area affect systems', I can accept that.   If you fire at one 
> of my ships that has a screen and roll a four, did you fail to hit?
> or did you hit and fail to damage?   In either case the screen did
> not affect your weapons or you ability to fire them.	 

Wrong. It didn't affect my ability to fire the weapon, but it most
certainly affected the weapon's ability to inflict damage. Same as the
stealth does in my description above - as I see it it, too, affects the
weapon's ability to inflict damage, but not the enemy's ability to fire
the weapon. (You can *always* fire your weapons - but if the enemy is
outside the range at which the weapons can inflict meaningful damage (at
least 1 DP), there's no point in rolling the dice!)

> The stealth actually changes the performance of the weapons on all >
enemy ships.

So does the screen - unless you exclude the ability of your weapon to
inflict damage on enemy ships from its performance, which I don't. Each
level of screening reduces the average damage per dice from enemy beam
weapons by 20.8%, and therefore affects the performance of the beam
weapons on all enemy ships which fire on the screened ship.

>      I am looking forward to the next edition of stealth ships, the
> thrust 6, 2 stealth, 2 screen and all weapons in the AS or AP area.
> These should be lots of fun.	 JTL

Thrust 6, 2 levels of stealth, 2 levels of screen... that's 60% of the
total Mass before you include the hull structure. I hope you don't want
any weapons on this ship, 'cuz if you take a strong enough hull to make
those screens pay for themselves (ie, Average or better - Weak and
Fragile hulls prefer armour instead) you won't be able to mount very
many... especially since you need long-ranged weapons (Class-3 or
higher)
to benefit fully from the stealth :-/

Now let's bring on those thrust-8 pulse-torp-armed DDs. You can't run
fast enough, you don't have enough weapons to take them out fast enough,
and I'm not Indy so they'll probably hit you OK once I get within
range... :-)

(OK, OK, Indy - I *know* you've hit with pulse torps at least four times
during the Showdown battle ;-)

Noam wrote:

> Stealth Tech
> 
> 1)	Stealth Hull - comes in 2 levels and makes a ship harder to hit.
> Mass is same as partial and full streamlining., cost 50% more
(3/mass).

Yep, my wrong.

> Stealth level 1 reduces enemy  range bands by 1/4.  Stealth level 2
> (Super Stealth) reduces range bands by 1/3. Includes vs. Fighter ,
SML,
> and PDS (i.e. fighters bust be within 5" or 4" to attack, SMLs must be
> within 5 "or	4" to acquire target,  

To answer John's argument here: In Vector movement Stealth-1 and
Stealth-2 both reduce the SM aquisition ranges to 2". 

> PDS anti-ship at 5" or 4").
> Enhanced sensors tied with Firecon reduce stealth level by 1, Special
> sensors by 2. 

Makes sense, yes.

>	PSB: Special hull construction and materials, sacrificing hull
> integrity for reduced sensor profile. 

Well... put it like this: A stealthed ship needs at least Thrust-6 to be
able to keep the range open (unless you're fighting the NSL, and IMO/E,
of course). If it has lower Thrust, it won't get many free shots before
being overtaken by enemy cruisers and light units, or even by capital
ships.

A Strong hull with Thrust-6 and Stealth-1 has used up 80% of its Mass
before putting on FTL and weapons. A Strong hull with Thrust-6 and
Stealth-2, or a Super hull with Thrust-6 and Stealth-1,  has to choose
between weapons and FTL drive. Somehow I think the restriction isn't
really necessary even though the PSB makes sense.

> 2)	Stealth Fighter - Stealth fighters are +12pts/group and are the
> same as Heavy fighters except for PSB (stealthy hull
> design/shape/materials rather than an active jamming or screening
> system). Super-Stealth (Stealth level 2) fighters cost +24pts/group
and
> act as having Screen 2 vs. PDS/ADFC/other fighters. 

Hm. See below for my thoughts on the fighter costs. 'Course, I think the
standard *heavy* fighters are a bit too cheap as it is :-/ I fully agree
with John's comment about the Super-Stealth not being balanced.

> This is more
> balanced than forcing PDS/ADFC to have reduced range, IMHO, as the
> latter way would give a range for fighters to be immune to ship-based
> defenses.

Yep.

> 3)	Stealth System (not tested). ECM version of stealth with same
> levels and effects, but damageable via needle attack or threshold.
Mass
> similar to screen, cost ~ 2x screen or more.

I'll take a look at it tomorrow.

> Ships with stealth system
> can't use screens or enhanced sensors. PSB - more like the Minbari
> stealth system in the B5 universe.

Other PSB: It's no point trying to hide if your own scanner and screen
emissions allow the enemy to pin-point you <g>

[snip]
 
> As for fighter-rerolls, I always thought of PDS fire as abstracting a
> close firefight where a bunch of small guns were blasting at a bunch
of
> small ships. If all the fighters are 'heavy' than each is protected by
> their own armor, and one being destryed makes it no easier to destroy
> another, so rerolls should be the same as initial rolls. Stealth would
> use the same justification. Ican also see it the other way around, but
> that much weaker protection would make it harder, IMHO to justify the
> additional 12 points per fighter group for heavy fighters.

[Statistics alert - the figures below aren't that influenced by my
opinions, but the interpretations of them certainly are. Jon, I'm sorry
I
didn't look into this for the FB1 - it seems I should have :-/ ]

Not at all. A carrier-based standard fighter squadron costs effectively
63 pts (if you assume a Fragile-hulled, Thrust-1, FTL-capable carrier;
the cost rises fast if you make the carrier tougher) to bring to the
battle. A heavy fighter squadron costs another 12 points - ie, a cost
penalty of at most 19% (and often a lot less, depending on the carrier
design).

The squadron takes on average ~21% less damage from PDS if the re-roll
isn't reduced by the Heavy status. 21% less casualties means that just
above 25% more of them survive to attack the enemy - ie, on average
heavy
fighters inflict ~25% more damage on the enemy *in their first attack*.
They also usually survive to make more attacks than standard fighters
do,
so the total damage inflicted by those heavies will on average be more
than 25% higher than that done by the standards.

If the re-roll *is* reduced, the Heavy squadron takes 25% less
casualties
from PDS than a standard squadron does (ie, inflict on average 33% more
damage), for a cost which is definitely less than 25% (not to mention
33%) higher than that of a standard squadron. Again, this doesn't
include
the subsequent attacks where the heavies will improve further on this
damage ratio.

In other words, the Heavy squadron costs  more, but it takes so much
smaller losses that on average it is a better buy - a much better buy
than the standard one.

A Super-Stealth fighter pays an additional 24 pts (at most +38%, but
usually less depending on carrier design) but take 42% less casualties
(or 50% less, with reduced re-rolls), which means 70-100% more damage
inflicted in that initial attack.

Assuming that the standard fighters are close to correctly priced, I
don't see any difficulty at all to justify the +12 pts cost for heavy
fighters if you use unmodified PDS re-rolls - indeed, I think it is too
cheap and should be closer to +21 pts per squadron instead.

 If you let the "heavy" modification apply to the re-rolls, I'd up the
cost to at least +36 pts per heavy squadron. That's a lot, but it is
*less* than the damage bonus they give you against starships and
non-interceptor fighters - their real value would be somewhere above 44
pts; I've given them a rebate to compensate for enemy interceptors and
Class-1 batteries. The Super-Stealth squadron... well, ignoring those
Class-1s and Interceptors they'd be worth somewhere above 63 pts more
than a normal fighter squadron.

I don't expect Noam to agree with this analysis, but I wouldn't be
surprised if Indy does ;-)

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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