OT: Alien Legion/X-Men images saught

	Anyone on list who used to collect these in the 80's - Alien
Legion,
early issues, X-Men (Vs the hellfire club).
	Why am I looking ?

	I have the urge to try my hand at scuplting some 15mm stuff,
specifically, the Legions arch enemies (horrible,nasty multi limbed
types
IIRC), and The Hellfire Club mercenaries in veru cool  powered armour.
	Reply off list to Neomatrix@btinternet.com

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From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: New Conversion of Babylon 5 for FT
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 19:16:21 +0100
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Peter Mancini wrote:

>It's been done at least 4 times before, but in each case prior to FB1
>and 2. 

Um, well... A quick web search gives the following more or less
complete B5 conversions for FTFB (in addition to upwards of a dozen
different pre-FB FT2 adaptions):

Samuel Penn's version:
http://www.bifrost.demon.co.uk/games/ft/b5/index.html

Andrew Watkins's B5W/FTFB crossbreed:
http://www.gpa63.dial.pipex.com/wargames/babylon5/babylon5rules2.htm

Richard Bax's version (only SSDs with appropriate special rules on at
the moment, design rules pending update):
http://bax.nobigdeal.net/tbp/index.htm

Some comments on your own version; quotes are from your web page.
(Possibly a rude question, but... you haven't actually *used* any of
these in battle, have you?)

>New Rule: Armor Blocks
>In the canon rules armor is represented by extra structure blocks that
>don't contribute towards threshold breakpoints. Basically all the
armor >gets stripped off and then the ship becomes damaged as normal.
>What this does is simply delay when the ship starts taking checks.
>That means that a small ship can penetrate the armor of a large ship
>easily just given time. This ablative approach doesn't seem to really
fit >in well in the B5 universe.

It doesn't sit very well in *any* universe I'm aware of, but it's a lot
more interesting from the game perspective than the WW1 naval style
where a large ship with enough armour is literally invulnerable to the
best efforts of small ships :-/

>Preface: Armor Blocks represent armor facings placed on the outer
>hull. They are meant to stop beam weapons, missiles, kinetic >weapons
and the like. They are useless against Neutron and Meson >weapons
(Minbari and Vorlon beam weapons).

Certain armour materials should be pretty good at stopping neutrons,
though :-/

>They are useless against Pulse "Torpedoes" (misnomer since it is
>really an EM lance).

I assume that you mean "it is really an EM lance in your B5
background"?

>Shadow Horrifying Beam weapons consider armor to be
>much like delicious Ritz Crackers.
>
>1. Armor is arranged in blocks around the hull of the ship. Divide it
>among the 4 quadrants. It costs the same as armor in the core rules

You're a brave man who decide on the system's cost before you've
decided exactly what it does :-/ If it only absorbs one point per turn
it may be worth as little as 2 pts per box; if it absorbs one point per
enemy ship firing it is worth considerably more (particularly for
larger ships).

>2. During the combat phase, damage will come from >ships/mines/PDSs in
the 4 quadrants. If the total of damage* is >greater than or equal to
number of armor blocks then the armor has >been penetrated. Subtract
the number of armor blocks from the >damage points and apply the
remainder to the internal structure of the >ship. 

[snip]

>*Question: Should this be for ALL damage dealt or per weapon or per
>class of weapon? I think it should be for ALL damage. Not that it
>makes sense but because there is no way of dealing with the effects
>of armor that is less than 1 damage point strong. For example we
>can't say X armor stops 1 damage point 20% of the time without >making
things overly complicated. So this abstraction works well in an >easily
playable system.

Counter-question: Are you talking about all damage dealt *by each ship*
(or by each class of weapon on each individual ship), or do you keep
track of how much damage each ship has taken and then apply all of it
(less the armour value of that side) at the end of the combat phase, or
<shudder> keep track of how much damage the ship has taken from each
type of weapon during the the turn, deduct the armour value from each
of these totals and then inflict it on the ship?

>New Rule: Meson Beams (Minbari only)
>1. They come in size classes and operate much like normal beams >(i.e.
size 1-4).

"Beams" include EFSB's pulse batteries but not EFSB's "Heavy Beams"?

>2. Range bands are the same. Example: Size 3 Meson Beam gets 3 >dice
at 1-12mu, 2 dice at 13-24mu, 1 die at 25-36mu

Minor point here: What happens if you're *closer* than 1mu?

>3. They ignore armor.
>4. They only do damage on a 6 with no re-roll and the damage only
>goes against structure boxes with crew. Once the ship is depopulated
>it becomes a drifting hulk.
>5. Each level of screen reduces a like number of hits. Thus a level
two
>screened ship needs to be hit with 3 damage points in order for 1 to
>get through.

AFAIK very few of the B5 races use energy screens - the only one I can
think off are the Ipsha, and AOG don't have any models for them yet. I
don't know enough about the Ipsha to tell if they're virtually immune
to the Minbari and Shadow (but not to the Vorlon) beam weapons, though.

>6. They cost 3x the cost of a similar sized beam weapon.
>7. Only one per ship.

Interesting weapon, since it effectively inflicts damage on the ship's
TMF rather than on the hull integrity. However...

I can't easily evaluate this weapon without the Mass ratings you're
thinking of, but it seems to have a problem: In order to get the most
out of this weapon, you need to *kill* with it. If you *fail* to kill
the target with the Meson Beam and instead have to finish it off with
normal-damage weapons, you lose almost all of the "bypassing" effect
(only the target's reduced DCP numbers remain), which turns the Meson
Beam into a *very* under-powered beam weapon. Unfortunately the
restriction of max 1 per ship and no larger than size 4 means that
you'll very rarely be able to kill an enemy ship with this weapon,
unless the ship was very small and/or badly damaged already. 

With the above Mass and Cost assumption, and evaluating it against
normal armour rather than your one (since it isn't complete yet), it
seems that the Meson Beam is indeed worth 9xMass... IF the Meson Beam
delivers the killing blow, and the target uses at least 40% of its Mass
on damage boxes and 5+% of its Mass for (FB-style) armour.

If OTOH the target is unarmoured (and unscreened), and has a Weak (20%)
weapon - which means that it takes on average 6 Meson dice to destroy 1
crew box, but it only takes 5 *normal* beam dice to reach and destroy
the same crew box - then the Meson Beam is only worth about 1.5xMass -
ie, *half* the cost of normal beams... again assuming that the Meson
Beam gets to inflict the killing blow.

If the target has screens, the value of the Meson Beam drops like a
rock.

>New Rule: Neutron Beams (Vorlon only)

Identical to the Meson Beam, except that it ignores screens and costs
5x as much as similar-sized beam weapons. The Meson Beam comments
comments apply to this weapon as well, except for the ones relating to
screens.

>New Rule: Horrifying Beams (Shadow Only)
>1. They come in size classes and operate much like normal beams >(i.e.
size 1-4).
>2. Range bands are the same. Example: Size 3 Horrifying Beam gets >3
dice at 1-12mu, 2 dice at 13-24mu, 1 die at 25-36mu
>3. They ablate armor, no armor threshold check needed. Damage is
>directly applied.

Applied to hull boxes, or to hull/crew boxes only? Since you don't
specify hull/crew boxes only I assume all hull boxes below, but it
makes the weapon seem rather weak.

>4. They do damage as follows: 1-3 crew shits pants, 4 1 damage >point,
5 2 damage points, 6 2 damage points and a re-roll.
>5. Screens reduce the damage done per die by 1 per level. Thus level
>2 screens will stop the beam cold excepts in the case where a 6 is
re->rolled and produces more than 2 points of damage. Example - >Shadow
fire HB 3 at White Star with Shield 2 at a range of 7mu. The >die rolls
are 2,5,6. The shields stop the 2 and 5 cold. The 6 re-rolls to >a 5
for a total of 4 damage points, 2 of which are stopped, the rest >pass
into the White Star.

The "2" won't do any damage anyway, other than stains on the crews'
underwear :-/

>6. They cost 8x the cost of a similar sized beam weapon.
>7. Only one per ship. They are banned by all "good" races. Just
>seeing one of these go off gives you bad luck for life.

Um... is this the weapon which on several occasions took out Narn
G'Quan-class heavy cruisers with a single shot...? That's pretty
impressive with a maximum of 4 dice - sure, the maximum damage is
infinite with all the re-rolls, but the Shadow player in the show
must've had a Teske field cubed to roll that well that consistently (or
else the G'Quans must have no more than maybe 4-5 hull boxes each,
rather than the 44 they have in EFSB)!

Let's take a closer look. Again I assume that the Mass is identical to
a standard weapon of the same class but the cost is 8x higher (ie., 24x
Mass). The beam ignores armour and have a base damage per die of 1
rather than 0.8, but it is *extremely* vulnerable to screens - lvl-1
screen stops 50% of the damage, lvl-2 stops 83% (rather than 21% and
42% of normal beam damage). 

Evaluation with the same assumptions as for the Meson Beam gives the
following rough values:

Target has:		"Horrible beam" value:
No armour, no screen		4xMass
5% armour, no screen	5xMass
10% armour, no screen	5-6xMass

No armour, lvl-1 screen 2xMass
5% armour, lvl-1 screen 3xMass
10% armour, lvl-1 screen	4xMass

No armour, lvl-2 screen 0 *)
5% armour, lvl-2 screen 0
10% armour, lvl-2 screen	1xMass

*) Actually around -0.5xMass, but I refuse to give the weapon a
negative
points value...

IOW, in a B5 setting where (almost) no ships have screens I'd be
prepared to pay as much as 5xMass for it, but definitely not 24xMass.
In a background where screens are commonplace - eg. the GZGverse - I'd
no more than 3xMass for it, and even then only if I can combine it with
some screen-skipping weapons like P-torps or K-guns.

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
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From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <oerjan.ohlson@telia.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Re: Re[FT}FTSR alterations
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 19:32:50 +0100
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bif smith wrote:

>The almity and great errorchecker wrote <g>
> 
>>Clarification: when BIF says "plasma guns", he means FB1's pulse
>>torps rather than the Starfire plasma guns. The Starfire (3rd
edition)
>>plasma guns are short-ranged but *extremely* nasty within that
>>range, and also have a very significant anti-fighter firepower.
> 
>Oerjan Ohlson, I humbally appologise for my transgression, and >thanks
for spotting it (note to self, engage brain before typing & read >what
you have wrote).

No need to apologize. I'm just clarifying for those who hadn't seen the
current FTSR Acid design yet <g>

>Also, the acid would be a effective close range platform like it`s
>intended in the proposed format,

It would indeed, and rightly so. The Bugs "historically" used it as
some sort of area-denial unit (even in WP assaults - no sane defender
will deploy close to a WP an Acid might assault through...)

>the archer I would redesign with no energy weapons, but would the
>Cl.3 armed SD be a good representation of the primarry armed SD?.

Not very, I'm afraid. The B3-armed SD is right on target for the
Avalanche-class (the one with capital force beams), but FT currently
doesn't have any official weapon like the capital primary beams on the
Auger class. 

The long-range Needle beam Noam Izenberg uses on his pirate ships
(posted here last week) comes close, though IIRC he doesn't allow more
than one arc. The Auger needs wide-arc beams since it is only thrust-2.

>I know this may seam irrelivant to FT, but a battlegroup of these is
>a very goood way to teach about the necessity of maneuver and
>fighters (using a group of SD`s and cruisers at a ratio of 50/50,
equal >in numbers to the total enemy numbers of ships (i.e.-you just
cannot >close and slug it out)).

Yep. Though this sounds like very low odds for the Bugs -
"historically" they should have 2-5 times as many SDNs as their
opponents have ships of all classes ;-) (...no, I don't recommend that
you actually *use* historical odds...)

Later,

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
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Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 13:33:55 -0500
From: Donald Hosford <Hosford.Donald@acd.net>
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I finally got my copy of the FB2!   (Life was interfering with my
ordering it...)

Now that I can see what the Phalon ships look like...they look like
exotic snails to me...What were you peaple thinking...wait we allready
know that...:-)

Very cool book!

Donald Hosford