re: SaVasku Needle POD

In message <200006161529.IAA18763@soda.csua.Berkeley.edu>
	  "David Reeves" <davidar@nortelnetworks.com> wrote:

[snip my old msg]
> 
> charles,
> 
> how about not necessarily around a ship, but as an obstacle similar to
a frightened squid 
> squirting out black ink to escape, or some tholian web-like thing to
reduce/stop weapon 
> hits....
> 
> this has some possiblilties!
> 
> dave
> 
Actually I had considered just letting it be dropped at any one location
on the board, creating a 1 MU wide cloud that lasts until the end of the
turn.

Possible uses - use on enemy ships - they're harder to hurt (with some
weapons) - but can't fire back :-)

use on own ship thats about to come under heavy attack

use as Dave describes - create a ephemerial cloud.

Now the question I must ask:

Is this thing balanced?

(I used standard pod biomass and power costs, and a wild guess for the
range - 18 MU)

Now another idea (also B5 inspired)

FTL scrambler pod

This pod only has effect if fired at a ship attempting to FTL away from
the battle, on the turn that the player of the FTLing ship announced an
FTL warm-up (see FT2 p23-24).

The scrambler pod has the same chance to hit as a lance pod (3+ at 0-6
MU, 4+ at 7-12 MU, 5+ at 13-18 MU and 6 at 19-24 MU) (notice how lance
pods are like old-style pulse torps - yep, me too)

If it hits, the ship attempting to FTL must add +2 to its dice roll for
FTL (but a '1' still counts as a '1')
so the chances are: 1: FTL fails, 2: ship jumps out, 3-6: ship blows up

Now this could be pretty nasty, is it to nasty for the standard 1
biomass, 3 power of a pod?

(personally, I think all pods should be the same size, ie. 1 biomass,
but some pods could have bigger energy requirements)

Charles
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