Re: S'V Seekers

Jaime Tiampo wrote:

> >Jaime Tiempo wrote:
>
>It's tiAmpo.

Sorry 'bout that :-(

> >I know that you've upped the bio-mass requirement, but let's stay
with the
> >original version for a while longer in order to see why I got so
agitated:
>
>Ah constructive criticism. I've been waiting for you to give this.
>Sorry. But I've come to expect useful critisism from you and I had
hoped
>for something more then, "You're a moron."

That's the drawback of being too reasonable too often. People get
unnatural 
expectations...

> >If you include the +6 Mass for the generators, you must also include
parts
> >of the engines (everything above thrust-2) and a bunch of beam
weapons on
> >the *human* missile boat into the Mass devoted to the MTMs - because
> >that's what these SV power generators can do when they're *not* used 
> to >power missile growth: they generate extra thrust and/or beam 
> firepower. >(Spicules and Screen nodes are the same Mass as PDSs and 
> human >screens.)
>
>And you have to take into account that SV can really only do one thing
>at a time well, 2 moderately well.

Sure. But this particular thing - growing "seekers" - is something they 
can, should, and in 90% of the cases will, do *before the enemy gets so 
close that the SV has anything else to spend the energy on*. You don't
have 
to launch the "seekers" immediately after growing them any more than you

have to launch Drones immediately after growing them.

> >BTW, this is why MT missiles will never get the same high mobility as
> >fighters unless their cost and/or Mass increase by a near-astronomic
amount
> >- with that much mobility each missile is worth roughly 3 times as
much as
> >one Torpedo fighter with launch bay...  ie., around 30 points (not
> >including hull and engines of the launch platform). At the moment, MT
> >missiles cost 6 points each. With fighters currently being one of the
two
> >main balance problems in FT/FB (the other being large ships), it
really
> >doesn't look like a good idea to introduce a system which is not only
head
> >and shoulders, but also body and tail ahead of the fighters...
>
>To me fighters are only partially unbalanced. If you don't have a good
>PDS defence or interceptor wing, and you allow the other player to have
>a huge fighter superiority then they'll win everytime. If you have a
>solid, dispersed PDS system, fast ships to take you to the carriers
>(assuming a carrier fleet) and at least some fighters for defence
>they're not too bad.

I know all this. The problem is that the MTMs both inflict rather more 
damage per point, *and* are harder to stop with the type of defences you

describe above.

Unfortunately I was wrong about the missile cost above. I hadn't looked 
closely enough at the effect of massed point defences - three times
times 
the cost of torp fighters was far too low a cost for fighter-movement MT

missiles :-( (I wouldn't've minded being wrong in the *other*
direction!)

Correct figures:

MTMs with fighter movement and no other changes inflict between five and

twenty times as much damage as the same cost of torpedo fighters against

the same defence, or between ten and fifty times as much damage as the
same 
cost of standard fighters can inflict in one attack against that
defence, 
in both cases assuming that the fighters use the morale rules. (Of
course 
the standard fighters have a theoretical possibility to attack more than

once, but against heavy point defences... the chance isn't all that big
:-/ )

Without the morale rules the MTMs "only" inflict 4-8 times more damage
than 
the torp fighters, and 10-15 times more damage than 1 strike by normal 
fighters.

The heavier the point defences are, the better the MTMs become compared
to 
the fighters (since you never get re-rolls against MTMs, but you *do*
get 
them against fighters). Even defending fighters don't work very well 
against MTMs, since each fighter squadron can only engage one target per

turn - and each MTM is one target.

Even if the fighters were *perfectly* balanced, a weapon system which 
inflicts five times as much damage or more for the same cost would be 
horribly overpowered. MTMs with fighter movement but no other changes
are 
such an overpowered system.

>The balance problem with size is only solvable by some sort of
>exponential cost system.

Yep. In the tests I've done to date, replacing the "basic hull cost =
TMF" 
with "basic hull cost = TMF^2/100" seems to work reasonably OK up to
around 
TMF ~400... it makes ships bigger than this overpriced though :-/

> >As long as you have enough power to grow at least *one* Womb-ful of
> >"seekers" per turn, the strike capabilities per salvo is limted to
how many
> >Drone Wombs you have. There's no requirement to launch the "seekers"
on the
> >turn after they're grown.
>
>Which I believe I commented on, in an ealier reply, which made the 2
>biomass an obvious minimum setting.

Yes. This also reduces the number of "seekers" you can grow in one Drone

Womb to three, which pushes their cost up further still.

> >>I don't think they will once the final stats are hammered out.
> >
> >Keep hammering. The torpedo fighters are the closest official system
to
> >balance your current version of "seekers" against.
>
>I thought the MT missiles were, considering seekers are supposed to be
>the SV equivilant.

The MT missiles are official, though pending a long-overdue update to FB

standard.

But you must remember that the official MT missiles *do not use fighter 
movement*. They still use the old "move up to 18mu per turn and may
change 
facing by up to 1 point at mid-move each turn". If you want to balance
the 
"seekers" against the currently official MTM rules, the "seekers" also
have 
to use the same or a very similar movement system. If instead you want
the 
"seekers" to use fighter movement you have to balance them against 
fighters, and of all fighter types the torpedo fighters are the ones
most 
similar to the "seekers".

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."