Re: [FT] Battle report - Dreadplanet vs KV

Stiltman wrote:

>>With thrust-6A they have several different options to set up their
>>attacks, and if you guess the wrong one they're nimble enough to take
>>advantage of it before you can recover. The downside is of course
>>that they carry less weapons than the thrust-3A ships, but they're
>>much better able to avoid your heavy plasma or missile barrages.
> 
>Yeah.	So in some ways, we sort of have the dilemma:  if you don't
>know whether I'm throwing a DPR or a fleet of direct-fire battleships
at >you, is a fleet of Kra'Vak escort cruisers really what you're going
to >want to throw back at me all the time?

I'd get rather bored flying the same fleet *all* the time <g>

More seriously though: if I'm forced to stick to one single fleet all
the time, and particularly if I have to stick exclusively to the
published designs, the KV cruiser fleet is a quite strong contender for
that one fleet. Its main nemesis is a fleet of highly maneuverable
ships with no screens or armour but lots of B2s or Pulsers (in M/L
configurations), but it is able to put up a very stiff fight against
most other foes.

>>>[snip] So if you had an unarmored ship, the K3 would probably do a
>>>bit more damage, whereas if the enemy was armored, the K5 would 
>>>be better.
>  
>>It's a gradual changeover, though - the higher the target's
armour:hull
>>ratio, the better the K5 is. The changeover armour:hull ratio, where
>>the K5 becomes better than the K3, is somewhere in the 1/6 - 1/5
>>range. With less armour than that the higher raw damage of the K3 is
>>more important; with more armour the K5 wins. The armour:hull ratio
>>of the DPR is roughly 1/33, so in this case the K3 is definitely more
>>effective :-/
>  
>>'Course, if the target has Phalon-style multiple-layer armour, the K5
>>immediately gets better!
> 
>Yeah.	I hadn't considered the damage:mass ratio of the K3 as >opposed
to the K5; my main comparisons were between the K5 and >the K6+.  Those
comparisons, it wins.

There is one situation where the K6 actually beats the K5 (by a very
slim margin, but still), namely when the target has 3 or more armour
layers - ie., when you're fighting Phalon capital ships. The
Yu'Kas-class SDN in FB2 was specifically designed for that role (during
the "several low-intensity border wars" between the Dominion and the
Conglomerate mentioned in the Phalon background blurb), but since the
Tuffleyverse human powers don't know this the Yu'Kas text doesn't
mention it <g>

The provision for K7s and bigger is basically there as an explanation
why the Kra'Vak don't use such weapons, though <g> Same as the
provision for 5+ armour layers - at 10+ points per armour box it isn't
very attractive, but it *is* possible if you really want it.

>Against both the K3 and the one-arc pulse torp, it loses the
>comparison on raw damage:mass and damage:cost ratios, but wins >on
armor penetration.  The margin of loss in raw damage:mass and >what not
is small enough that I'm willing to live with it.

8% loss vs the K3, 5% vs the P-torp...	if your brother-in-law likes
heavy armour, the K5s are definitely better against him. Against most
of your designs described on the list so far the K3 would be better -
the Armour Shrike being the only exception, though no doubt you have
other heavily armoured ships as well that you haven't mentioned yet <g>

>I already knew that the tradeoff existed for pulse torps, though I
hadn't >realized it was also there with the K3.

It isn't very easy to detect... Pity about the K4 though - it can't do
anything that either the K3 or the K5 can't do better... it should've
been Mass 7.7 rather than 8, but fractional mass values are a no-no in
FT :-/

>>>I'd be more inclined to go with the K5 overall.  There's a lot of
>>>different equations one can draw up here for mass to damage 
>>>ratios depending on whether the target's armored, not armored, 
>>>screened, not screened, etc...
>  
>>Indeed. That's the main reason I collect FBx designs - to use them
for
>>weapon evaluation (aka "target practise" <G>). FWIW, of the designs
>>currently in the archive, about 40% are more vulnerable to the K5 and
>>the other 60% more vulnerable to the K3.
> 
>If this isn't the same archive as the Registry, is there a URL where I
>might get hold of it? :)

There's no single URL for the entire archive . I spend far too much in
front of the computer anyway, so I've refused to spend even more time
creating and updating a web page :-/ I can't publish all of it anyway,
because it includes a bunch of designs that I've been asked to control
for competitions and similar. Many of the others are available on the
web though; IIRC about 2/3 of the designs come from the following
sites:

http://www.hicom.net/~teske/sfleet/ftfb.html
http://members.xoom.com/gzg_l/ias/ias-ships.txt
http://members.toast.net/chanfaunce/page3.html
http://www.dirtside.freeserve.co.uk/hegaf/shipsrhn.htm
http://www.iac.net/~crawford/hobbies/miniatures/full_thrust/index.html
http://www.homestead.com/star_ranger/starranger.html
(though many of these are conversions from other backgrounds)

http://www.bcpl.net/~indy/full-thrust/full-thrust.html 
(BTW, Indy, I'm *still* waiting for those updates to the FSE and UNSC
fleet rosters ;-) )

http://www.angelfire.com/va/basileus/Janes.html
http://www.voicenet.com/~johncrim/Fleet.html
http://home.att.net/~ckseale/ft/ft_index.html
http://www.angelfire.com/va/laserlight/fullthrust.html
http://home.nycap.rr.com/davisje/ft/mano/index.html
http://www.sfcmd.com/fullthrust/fleet.htm
http://www.geocities.com/nathan_rolfe/Shipdesigns.html
http://senate.republic.org/~neal/tba/navy.html#ship_head
http://geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/1582/fleet.html
http://members.xoom.com/gzg_l/ni/NIhome.htm
http://www.innotts.co.uk/~paulradford/ft/ft.html
(under "Campaigns - Narrative - Power Projection")

http://www.geocities.com/jigsaw_man_2000/index.html
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~univ0938/gzg/nl/
http://www.tonyfrancis.free-online.co.uk/brigadeframes.htm
(under Gaming Pages - Full Thrust)

http://rwhofrichter.webprovider.com/index.htm

and some of the more recent additions from 
http://hometown.aol.com/gbailey/GBMain.html <g>

and some from Brian Bell's various pages, both the PBeMs and the
Registry itself. Many of the above ships are included in the Registry
too, BTW.

>>When you compare systems with different Cost:Mass ratios (eg.
K->>guns and p-torps, or beams and Pulsers) the "per cost" comparision
>>also needs to include the cost of the weapon's proportion of the
ship's
>>engines and the cost of the basic hull structure holding the weapon
>>and "its" engines.
> 
>To some degree.  However, in custom configurations (which is about
>all that a number crunching like this is pertinent to) that applies
equally >to just about anything.

As long as you're aware that the "best weapon" can depend on your own
chosen engines as well as your target, even when the weapons you choose
between have the same range and fire arc <g>

>>The "hull" damage values assume single-layer armour. A reasonable
>>assumption as long as you don't fight Phalons or start using
>>multi-layer armour in mixed-tech designs, but the numbers change
>>rapidly when you add armour layers.
> 
>True... though the advantage to the K5 gets more pronounced in this
>case, as you say.

Yep. Though it doesn't stop with the K5s: against 3-4 layers the K6 is
best, if the target has (IIRC) 5 layers the K7 overtakes the K6, etc...
4+ armour layers are extremely expensive, of course, so you won't see
them very often <g>

[On table-hugging]

>>>It depends on how much you're hugging it.  If you're a solid 
>>>30" away from the edge we wouldn't eject you.  :)
>  
>>Sitting 31mu away from the edge cut off a full 60-degree sector where
>>the KV couldn't circle the DPR without coming into its PBL range and
>>from which they couldn't attack. This drastically cut down their
>>ability to dance - not drastically enough to let me win the battle,
but
>>it came close. In my gaming group, using the table edge to cut down
>>enemy maneuverability in this way is considered abusive, intentional
>>or not. That's why our own house rules specify floating edges :-/
> 
>*shrug*  I guess our circles just don't abuse it, so it's never become
a
>serious issue.  Basically every sort of circling maneuver that ever
gets
>employed in our games is done by skirmishers armed with needle >beams
that are attached to a larger group of capital ships that are not
>following the same course.

It's more likely that your circles haven't used PBLs much yet; the
"wait-wait-wait-pounce" is very much an anti-PBL tactic. No ship can
maintain a continous missile barrage for more than a few turns, and
waveguns and direct-fire weapons all fire after movement so a ship
which spins in place can always point them in roughly the right
direction, but when fighting PBLs the KV need to attack from positions
the (majority of) the enemy PBLs can't launch at - and they often need
to wait for a considerable time before they get the opportunity to
reach such a position. 

My sitting too close to the wall meant that they *couldn't* wait; the
"safe path" around the DPR was shaped like a horse-shoe instead of a
circle, and whenever the circling KV reached the end of the horse-shoe
they had to either attack at a time not of their choosing, run off the
table, or run into a plasma barrage without being able to shoot back.
If the DPR hadn't been armed with PBLs, the "blocked" sector wouldn't
have been a problem.

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