Re: Sa'Vasku Lance Pod Effectiveness

Imre A. Szabo wrote:

>I multilplied the Probability of a hit by 3.5 (average roll on 1d6) to
>get this table.
> 
>Range	  Average Damage
>0-6	       2.33
>7-12	     1.75
>13-18	      1.17
>19-24	      0.583
> 
>The table below is average damage for Sa'Vasku strenght 3 beam >shots.

Unless you're only ever shooting at very fragile targets, you've
underestimated the contribution of the re-rolls. Correct table follows
below.

>Note that the actual average damage is a little bit higher then listed
>because I only included the probablity of one re-roll...  Note this
>means average damage for a 1.5 d6 at 13 to 24 mu range...
> 
>Range	      No Screens	Level 1        Level 2
>0-12		     2.22		 1.83		 1.33
>13-24		    1.17		0.917		0.67

Correct table is:

Range	     No Screens        Level 1	      Level 2
0-12		    2.4 		1.9		   1.4
13-24		   1.2			0.95		0.7
 
>I'm not too impressed by what it says about lance pods...

It says "Only use them against heavily screened targets at range 18 or
less" <g> It doesn't hurt if the targets are armoured as well as
screened, of course.

Brian K. Bell wrote:

>I also was not overly impressed with Lance Pods. They are a poor
>man's K-Gun:

No, they're the *Sa'Vasku's* K-gun equivalent.

>		Class-1 K-Gun	  Lance Pod
>Damage:     1d6	     1d6

Um? Brian, re-read the K-gun rules. The K1 has a base damage of *1*,
not 1d6. Its average damage per hit is 1.17 pts, ie. 1/3 the average
damage of a Lance Pod hit, so for the same damage you need to compare 3
K1s to a single Lance Pod:

Mass		6	6+1 per pod fired
Cost:		30	  21 + 3 per pod fired

since you also need 3 Mass of power generators to power the Pod
Launcher. The cost also includes the base cost of the hull, since that
gets important as soon as the systems aren't exactly the same size, but
doesn't include the cost of engines.

A simpler comparison is with the single-arc K2, since this has the same
fire arc as the Lance Pod (the values in brackets below are the K2
values adjusted to the same average damage per hit, ie. multiplied by
2.67/3.5 = 1.3125):
:
			K2		Lance Pod
Average damage	2.67		     3.5
Mass			3 (3.94)	     6+1 per pod fired
Cost			15 (19.69)	     21 + 3 per pod fired

The K2 is quite a bit a more cost-effective than the Pod Launcher in
its anti-ship mode, which is appropriate since it is much less flexible
than the Pod Launcher.

>Range: 	30"		24"
>To Hit: 6" RB start at 2+   6" RB start at 3+

Correct.

>Dmg to Firer: None	     1

The last bit is, I believe, caused by people thinking of all of the
biomass as equivalent to "hull boxes" only. IMO a more appropriate way
is to think of part of the biomass - about 3 boxes per Pod Launcher -
as a scattergun battery or a salvo missile magazine which happens to be
capable of absorbing hull damage in an emergency :-/

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