Re: [FT] Tech Trees

Roger Burton-West wrote:

> >>(1) Don't allow mixed-tech ships (e.g. Stingers on a human ship),
> >>because I find them ugly
> >Is this experience talking, or untested gut feeling?
>
>Experience of MT Kra'Vak/Human hybrids outfighting MT Kra'Vak, mainly.

Which unfortunately has no bearing at all on mixed *FB* tech, since the 
entire design system and most of the tech systems have been redone more
or 
less completely :-/

>But "ugly" was more of an aesthetic comment than a game-balance one.

Those aesthetics only apply in the Tuffleyverse <shrug>

Other backgrounds have other aesthetics - eg., in order to emulate
Renegade 
Legion-universe capital ship combat with Full Thrust you pretty much
*have* 
to mix technologies:
* Crowbars (spinal mount kinetic guns) = big K-guns
* Armour of different thicknesses giving different amounts of protection

against said crowbars = Phalon multi-layered shells
* Long-range beam batteries capable of engaging both starships and
fighters 
= Phalon Pulsers
* Specialized multi-shot anti-fighter/anti-missile systems = Human PDS
* Missiles which damage all ships within the volume of effect = very 
similar to Phalon PBLs
* Shields which allow you to fire while they're active = Human screens

...and virtually all ships combine all of these features :-/ Yet other 
backgrounds have other tech combinations.

> >>and the rules would need to be seriously rewritten to balance them.
> >I agree wrt the Sa'Vasku; they're too different from everything else
to be
> >mixed easily.
> >I strongly disagree wrt Phalon and Kra'Vak tech. It is designed to
mix
> >easily with human tech, and priced accordingly.
>
>That's fair enough; S'V seem to be the first thing to come up in
>most mixed-tech discussions.

>I think, though - and this _is_ untested gut feeling - that part of the

>cost of systems is predicated on the other systems one can use with it.

The Phalon and Kra'Vak *tech systems* were priced to be balanced in 
mixed-tech designs. The Phalon and Kra'Vak *fleet concepts*, OTOH, were 
chosen in such a way that the different tech systems they use support
each 
other. Examples:

* The Phalons get away with using those Fragile/Weak hulls because their

multi-layer armour isn't as vulnerable to penetrating damage as
single-row 
armour is. Ships with stronger hulls don't benefit as much from having 
multi-layer armour, since they're less sensitive to penetrating damage
to 
begin with.

* The Kra'Vaks' heavy use of (F)-arc weapons is only viable in Cinematic

because their Advanced Drives give them high enough maneuverability to 
actually point most of those weapons towards the enemy. If you don't
have 
high maneuverability you need wider-arced secondary weapons to back up
your 
(F)-arc "initial strike" weapons, similar to how the FB1 NAC use
P-torps.

>Kra'Vak don't get attack or torpedo fighters, for example; if they did,

>this would create a new tactical situation unlike that which one meets 
>when facing attack fighters _or_ Kra'Vak.

The Kra'Vak and Sa'Vasku lack specialized fighters mainly due to lack of

playtest time before FB2 was published - the KV Ro'Kah rules mean that 
attack and torpedo/MKP fighters would be worth more for the KV than for 
humans using the standard morale rules and we didn't have time to
determine 
how much more, and each different SV drone type would need its own power

cost which we also didn't have time to work out. (...not that we managed
to 
get very much of the other SV rules right either... :-( )

Phalons don't have any explicit restriction on which specialized fighter

types they can use - FB2 only mentions the standard (Peg), heavy (Pud)
and 
interceptor (Pam) variants as being "the most common" out of "several 
different types", which means that there are other types as well. I 
personally don't think that torpedo fighters fit with the general "all 
weapons stopped by screens" flavour of the other Phalon weaponry, but
again 
that's an aesthetics thing rather than game balance. (A (very expensive)

fighter attacking ships as Attack fighters but with Standard
anti-fighter 
capability would be quite appropriate, OTOH - it'd obviously be armed
with 
a miniature Pulser-C, allowing both devastating anti-ship fire and
decent 
anti-fighter fire <g>)

>Or to put it another way: a Phalon fleet has a distinctive flavour
which
>a human fleet with PBLs and Pulsers would not.

A fleet with PBLs and Pulsers mixed together with FB1 human tech, eg. my

FB/RL conversion, most certainly has a distinct flavour - it just isn't
the 
*same* distinct flavour as the "pure" FB2 Phalons or the "pure" FB1
humans 
have. FWIW the published "pure" FB1 humans manage to get *four*
different 
fleets, each with its own distinct flavour, out of the same shared set
of 
tech toys - and they're by no means the only flavours you can get from
the 
FB1 tech.

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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