Re: Size Class Escalation -- How high in Mass?

--- Roger Books <books@jumpspace.net> wrote:
...
> If I can barely threshold a mass 100 ship with a
> mass
> 200 ship (these ships will have equivalent weapons
> loads) the two smaller ships will _not_ threshold
> the big ship.  Second turn, you have a thresholded
> ship, I do not.  You set off 1/2 your firepower,
> still no threshold.  I set off all of mine.  The
> thresholded ship has another threshold, maybe two
> and is a mission kill.
> 

Ok, 260 mass vs. two 130 battleships, or thereabouts.
My 260 has 6 type 4's and 4 pulse torpedoes (if I
remember right). My Battleship has 2 type 4's, 2
type 3's and 2 pulse torpedoes. At band 4 the
battleships fire 2 dice apiece (1.6 pts) and
the SDN fires off 6 dice (4.8 points). At band 3,
the BB's fire 6 dice apiece (4.8 points) and the
SDN gets 12. Once their in 30, it goes to 4.8 +
1/6(3.5) = 5.38 vs. about 6.

Now since these totals are relatively small 
relative to hull, it's not so bad yet. As soon
as they come into close range though, the effect
you talk about gets a lot worse. Battleships 
fire off 14 dice of beams and 2 pulse torpedoes 
apiece while the SDN has 24 dice and 4 pulse 
torpedoes. Each BB has about 34 hull and about
5 points of armor. The SDN has about 68 hull and
about 8 points of armor.

14 dice do an average of 11.2 points of damage.
24 dice do about 19. At close range, the torpedoes
probably all hit, so you add 7 to the BB's and 14 
to the SDN.

So, the effect is worse up close where the damage
is more severe. It's worse with smaller classes
of ships (60 vs. 30 is worse than 200 vs. 100). It's
worse if there are fewer ships in the engagement.
All these things seem to amplify the advantage of
a big ship.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail