Re: Points balance on K-guns vs Beams

Tim Bancroft wrote:

 >Thanks for your comments, Oerjan especially. If I can summarise:
 >
 >1. Yes, there is a disparity in points/effectiveness on the low-level
Beams
 >vs K-Guns.

Yes - but the big disparity in points/effectiveness is between the 
single-arc HIGH-level beams (B3 and larger) and the K-guns, and there's 
also a disparity between the small SHIP DESIGNS in FB1 and FB2 (the FB1 
small ships being designed more for independent operations than the FB2
KV 
small ships are).

Furthermore, if you're facing mostly LOW-level beams (B1s and B2s) in 
Vector, then you have the range advantage - and in Vector, you can 
accellerate backwards at least as fast as they can accellerate forwards 
(unless they've spent a lot of points to buy thrust-8, but in that case 
you're likely to outgun them anyway). Don't let them close the range, 
particularly not to range 12 or less.

 >This is more likely to show up at the low-level, small-ship
 >"vanilla" FB2 squadrons I am using, hence wiped-out KV squadrons
(almost
 >irrespective of tactics).

In Vector the disparity is more likely to show up with *high*-level, 
*large*-ship fleets; especially if the non-KV side uses custom-built
Vector 
ships instead of using the FB1 designs.

If your enemies use light *custom-built Vector* ships - frigates and 
destroyers armed mostly or exclusively with single-arc P-torps and B3s,
and 
things like that - then you are in trouble... but that's not the type of

enemies your previous posts seemed to suggest.

If you're constantly losing with FB2 KV ships against the light *FB1*
human 
designs in Vector, which is the impression I get from your previous
posts, 
then you're letting the humans get much too close much too fast - thanks
to 
their many B1s and B2s, and the wide arcs on the B3s, you have a serious

firepower advantage at range 24-30 and are reasonably well off at range 
12-24 too - and you have the thrust ratings you need to take full
advantage 
of this.

 >2. ...the points do not necessarily work out well when using vector
 >movement anyway (which, as you correctly guessed, in some guise or
another
 >is the only movement system I use).
 >
 >I think I have a partial answer: just playtest and work out a relative
 >points factor for the smaller ships.	As I like the movement
prediction, I
 >am loathe to move back to cinematic.

<chuckle> "Just playtest", he says <g> The FB1 weapon masses and costs
were 
based on six years of gaming experience with FT2 and variants thereof; 
we've only had the Vector movement system for four years so far... :-)

 >btw, Whilst this is probably acedemic now but as you asked I uploaded
the
 >work-spreadsheet with the simple range functions I used (which just
prove
 >the above).  It now has a link, which helps.

Thanks :-)

I haven't had time to look very closely at it yet, but even after a
quick 
glance I can confirm that your calculations aren't very similar at all
to 
the original FB calcs :-/

There are some oddities in particular which stand out:

* You round fractions much too early in your calculations. Rounding the 
armour-weighted damage down from 0.40 to 0.00 and then using that 0.00 
value to calculate what the weapon should cost... can give somewhat
strange 
results at times, like :-/

* You seem to have completely ignored that B4 batteries can inflict
damage 
outside range 36? IOW, you've set the range weight of the 36-48 range
band 
to zero for all your range functions. This is directly opposite to my 
experience with Vector, where battles are almost invariably opened by
shots 
in the outermost range bands - no matter how far out those range bands
go. 
(And as you note in one of the annotations, damage inflicted at long
range 
can mean that shorter-ranged enemy weapons never get to fire at all...)

* The alternative mass ratings you gave for the human beams in the 
HumanShipCalc spreadsheet seem to have used different range weight 
functions for different beam sizes, or is this because of how you've
priced 
extra fire arcs and/or point defence capabilities? (The evaluations of 
these features don't seem to be in the spreadsheet, though.)

* Your way of evaluating armour penetration appears to treat the armour
as 
unchanging throughout the entire battle, which the result that the B1 in

particular is valued to "zero" by three of your five range weight
functions 
as it only rarely is able to penetrate *intact* armour.
However, the amount of armour on a ship *isn't* constant as the ship
takes 
damage...  beam weapons in particular tend to strip it away quite fast 
indeed :-/

* You don't seem to have taken the K-guns' ability to ignore screens
(or, 
conversely, the fact that beam weapons are degraded by screens) into 
account in any way? (Probably because you don't use larger battles much,

but it is quite significant even against the level-1 screens on the NAC
and 
ESU cruisers.)

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry