Re: Points balance on K-guns vs Beams

John Atkinson wrote:

 >>That's because you aren't nearly radical enough. B2s are one of the
best
 >>all-round weapon in *Cinematic*, but in Vector they are relegated to
fourth
 >>place after B3-1s, P-torps and B4-1s; B1s are relatively weak in
Cinematic
 >> (unless their PD capability is needed) and weaker
 >
 >It generally is. Remember, I slug it out with IFed and FSE on a
regular 
basis.

If you need point defence firepower and plan to keep the range longer
than 
12mu until after you've crippled the enemy with your concentrated 
long-range firepower (and this is how fleets with massed single-arc
beams 
should plan), use PDS instead. It has twice the point-defence firepower
of 
the B1, and its lack of anti-ship firepower only matters if you fail to 
keep the enemy at arm's length.

B1s are only really worthwhile if you need both the PD capability *and*
the 
close-range wide-arc anti-ship firepower.

 >>Belisarius, Maniakes, Cimbalongus, Constantine
 >>Isoapostolis (FF, FH, DD, CE): Replace 2xB2-3 with 1xB3-1.
 >
 >The function of these small ships includes escort.
 >They focus on the clouds of small ships that
 >frequently hang about enemy capital ships.

So? Your small ships only have 1 FCS each, so they can only shoot at 1
ship 
per turn. Decide which part of the enemy formation you want to shoot at 
when you write your orders.

 >>Then you're letting them get too close to you - which isn't terribly
 >> surprising, since you probably want to bring all your own B1s and
 >>especially B2s into play and those only come into their own at close
 >>ranges. Outside 12mu range, each firing arc is so wide that a ship
only
 >> rarely is able end up in more than one of your arcs.
 >
 >Ah, but a formation can.

So you have to decide early which part of the enemy formation you want
each 
of your ships to shoot at.

 >And as for letting them get close, maybe I'm doing something wrong,
but a
 >thrust-4 ship can easily hop range bands unless you know what
 >he's going to be doing each turn. Thrust 6, it's even easier.
Especially 
if they
 >spend the first couple turns kicking their speed up to 12-20.

Each turn, a thrust-4A ship (ie., Advanced drives) has a circle with a 
diameter of 8 mu in which it can end up. A thrust-4 ship (ie., human 
drives) has a circle with a diameter of 6 mu plus one point 1 mu outside

this circle (the "full thrust ahead" point) where it could end up; and
if 
it moves to some of those points it'll have its (A) arc facing you so
you 
can probably discount them. For thrust-6A and thrust-6 ships the
diameter 
of the circle is 12 and 10 mu, respectively.

This means that in order to "hop" an entire 12-mu range band against
your 
wishes, the enemy needs converging vectors or an initial overtake speed.

Without either of those advantages thrust-6 ships can "jump" a 6mu band;

for thrust-4 ships even that is a challenge.

As you noted in an earlier post these converging vectors is part of your

standard game set-up - so the question is, why did your admiral allow
the 
enemy to build up that initial overtake speed (and thus gain an
advantage 
over your ships) before the battle proper commenced? Over-eager to
fight, 
or something?

 >>The St. Andrews and St. Theodores are only vulnerable to Human beam
 >>weapons *once those beam weapons get into range*. But the
 >>important thing isn't their defences (or lack thereof); it is their
 >>offensive armament.
 >
 >Those beam weapons have more range than the PTorps
 >those are armed with.

If the second "those" refer exclusively to your KV hunters without any 
modifications to their armament, yes. As you may have noted in my
previous 
post, I mentioned replacing a few (not all!) of their P-torps with B3-1s
to 
rectify this very deficiency.

 >>Have you ever tried to pit, say, a St.Andrew against a Virgin Mary?
 >>
 >>If you have done this, you already know that the *only* range at
which your
 >>Virgin Mary-class DNL can inflict more damage on average than a
St.Andrew
 >>DNLK can hit it back with is range 30-36. At range
 >
 >Yes. The Andrew carries considerably more tonnage of
 >weapons than the Mary does.

Exactly. The Mary carries level-2 screens; the Andrew spends the 
corresponding Mass on extra weapons and some extra damage boxes instead.

My point here is that the Marys' screens stop on average less incoming 
damage than the corresponding Mass of weapons would inflict on the enemy
- 
so in an evenly matched battle (or a battle where the NRE force is 
inferior), the Andrews' weapons are a better buy than the Marys'
screens. 
Being able to destroy enemy weapons early on and thus prevent them from 
firing at all for the rest of the fight is a rather more effective
defence 
than being able to deflect some of their shots throughout the battle :-/

 >No protective measures are worthwhile against Kra'Vak. Only a moron
goes
 >into combat against KV with shields, and armor is only marginally more

useful.

Armour is quite useful to keep Kra'Vak fighters and light K-guns (K2s
and 
K1s) from supporting their heavier weapons. However, the best passive 
"protective measure" against them is a high hull integrity (like the
Andrew 
has), and the best *active* "protective measure" is to do unto them
first 
(which the Andrew is quite good at) :-/

 >>The only way (barring extreme luck with the dice) a Virgin Mary-class
ship
 >>has to defeat a St. Andrew modified as above (ie.,
 >
 >But the Mary class is not intended to hunt St. Andrews.

The Mary class is intended to hunt *other human-tech ships*... and she 
isn't all that well optimized for that task in Vector.

My point is that the *St. Andrews* - which is a human-tech ship - would,

after a minor modification to their armaments (ie., changing a few of
the 
P-torps for B3-1s to allow them to outgun Marys at *all* ranges), be
quite 
well suited to hunting ships of the *Mary* class in Vector.

Furthermore, after that slight modification the Andrew would also be
better 
suited to take down other types of human-tech ships (eg. Arabia-class
SDNs 
or FSE capital) in Vector than the Mary is; and its Vector anti-KV 
performance would improve as well.

So, sure - the Mary does the NRE more good in space than it does in 
drydock... but if she runs into an Andrew-style human opponent, she's
bound 
for the drydock anyway (assuming that she survives the experience at
all, 
that is) :-/

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