Re: Vertical Damage

Laserlight wrote:

>I have been thinking more about the Vertical Damage Weapon--you
>may have heard the gears grinding

No, but I saw the smoke rising <g>

>--and I've come up with two options: 
>a) a cutter beam does 1d6 like a PTorp, but vertically.  If you
>get to the end of a column with one shot, you do 1 threshold at
>5+; if you knock out two columns in one shot, you do a 4+
>threshold, etc.

With the least-damage check at a 5+, it needs to be rather big - having
a 50% chance of inflicting a "2nd-row" threshold on, say, a Komarov or
Yu'Kas each it is *extremely* powerful. If it is taken at a 6+ instead,
it is merely *very* powerful :-/ Of course, it all depends on what
range and hit probabilities you're thinking of!
 
>b) Roll as Beam dice but also roll 1d6 for location.  1-3 is
>first track (ie armor, if the ship has it), 4-5 is 2nd, 6 is
>reroll; reroll 1-3 is 3rd track, 4-5 is 4th track, 6 is 5th track
>(last hull row for an armored ship).

First, as Beth pointed out - that's three *consecutive* dice to
evaluate a single weapon's fire. That's as many as in Warhammer :-(

Second, what happens if you destroy the entire 4th row without having
destroyed the upper rows? If this damage destroys the ship, never
*EVER* let Aaron use this weapon - three sixes in a row lets him take
out any heavy cruiser with a single hit. OK, he can take out a heavy
cruiser with a single Class-1 battery as well, but at least he has to
work a bit to do it that way...

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