RE: [FT] Tech Trees

From: ~ On Behalf Of Thomas Barclay
Sent: 05 February 2002 09:51
Subject: [FT] Tech Trees

Tb> ...what if you're trying to simulate different 
Tb> tech progressions? You have (as I see it) two
Tb> areas you can approach this from: Limiting system
Tb> types by "tech level" and affecting the costs and
Tb> or masses by the same degree.

Tb> I'd like to get something that lets different
Tb> nations progress at a very slightly different
Tb> rate in different tech areas, but not enough so
Tb> as to throw the whole shebang so far off balance
Tb> that one nation is UberStrong.

If you get the NPV right, a very low tech force can
take on a very high-tech force and still have a
balanced game. Easy to say...

From: ~ On Behalf Of Oerjan Ohlson
Sent: 05 February 2002 18:43
Subject: Re: [FT] Tech Trees

Tb> I've seen some people simulate older FT
Tb> designs (Dean G?) using waste space. This is
Tb> fine if all you are simulating is dated tech
Tb> across the board. 

Tb> ... it would have been nice to see some %
Tb> quantification on how much more space you should
Tb> use per year or whatever..

Or> In order to provide an exact percentage, I'd
Or> like you to specify:
Or>
Or> 1) Which specific power you're talking about
Or>
Or> 2) Which specific tech systems you're talking
Or>    about

Flipping through FB1 there doesn't seem to be much
of a pattern. The NAC were putting PTs and SMs on
their heavies in the early '60s. A lot of NSL
designs are from the early '70s but we see a PT as
early as '68, with the SM appearing in the early '70s.
Most FSE designs are from after this date so we can't
prove their use of SMs before 2169. The ESU were using
armour, B3s and SMRs in the mid '50s, but this isn't
because they are more advanced; on the contrary we
know this simply because they don't update their
designs as frequently as other powers do.

In short, there ain't enough canonical information to
say who gets what when, so you need a generic tree in
keeping with the generic construction system of FB1.

Or> 3) Depending on how good metallurgists the
Or>    builders were, the ship's hull integrity is
Or>    likely to go down as well as the ship ages.

Will that apply equally to vessels that never enter
an atmosphere?

From: ~ On Behalf Of laserlight@quixnet.net
Sent: 05 February 2002 19:13
Subject: RE: [FT] Tech Trees

Ll> For weapons, you can also adjust the range- e.g.
Ll> obsolete beams have 4" range bands, 2nd line
Ll> have 5", bleeding edge have 8", etc.  

Another game attribute to play with would be the
number of threshold checks a system needs to take.
The points reckoning on this though, would be..
tricky.

From: ~ On Behalf Of Robertson, Brendan
Sent: 05 February 2002 23:10
Subject: RE: [FT] Tech Trees

Tb> So, anyone want to offer up some URLs...

Rb> home.pacific.net.au/~southernskies/ft/ftcamp1.htm

For those who haven't checked this out, it includes
research for a campaign game by taking the limits
approach. Simple and elegant (but what happens to the
player who only buys four dice of weapons research
then rolls quadruple one?)

Because it is designed for a campaign, it won't let
you set up a one-off scenario involving disparate
technologies. I suspect that the general problem with
the limits approach is that the NPV system will
break down given a big difference in technology. That
in turn could be down to simple granularity, or it
could mean that the FB1 construction system still
isn't quite perfect.

From: ~ On Behalf Of B Lin
Sent: 06 February 2002 00:17
Subject: RE: [FT] Tech Trees

Bl> You can use tech levels say 1 to 15. Each
Bl> increase in tech level allows you to improve one
Bl> area of the device. For instance in weapons there 
Bl> would be factors of range, damage, weight and
Bl> power consumption.	Each tech level gives a 10%
Bl> reduction from the previous amount fractions
Bl> rounded

I like the idea of altering these (though I would have
thought that most players don't bother with Mcr cost),
see my reply to laserlight above.

However, it's important to remember that FT is a very
simple system that wouldn't work half as well if we
all added on extra verbiage (and Jon would have to 
drop down the alphabet and become GWG instead.)

To keep the combat working as quickly as possible,
forget my earlier suggestion and concentrate on
differences that can be built in during the ship
construction step. This means altering mass 
requirements so that all nations can use the same
standard systems, but for some nations there is a
mass multiplier for a particular system that makes
it attractively light or punitively heavy.

Yes, this means scrapping granularity in favour of
fractional masses, as Karl and Oerjan expected. I'm
trying to envision how the NPVs should change on a
lighter / heavier system. Should a system twice normal
weight cost half the NPV, or is it more subtle?

From: ~ On Behalf Of Roger Burton West
Sent: 05 February 2002 20:29
Subject: Re: [FT] Tech Trees

Rbw> A Phalon fleet has a distinctive flavour which a
Rbw> human fleet with PBLs and Pulsers would not.

Surely hu'man tastes the same no matter what it was
armed with. Do the exploding PBLs overcook it?

========================================================
The above is the personal blah-blah of the author and
does not reflect the opinions of his employers,
legal representatives or pet cat.