Re: B5-3 Aft

On Thursday, September 4, 2003, at 08:38 PM, Jared Hilal wrote:

> How?	You come to raid my infrastructure and win once.  Once this 
> victory is spread through the fleet, the next time you come to one of 
> my systems, I don't go out to meet you, but rather stay at the 
> objective and wait for you to come to me.  Because you have to enter a

> certain range of the target (for your weapon) and I can detect your 
> STL approach into the system, I can position myself to force you to 
> engage me before reaching the target, at which point my K-guns smash 
> your fragile hull and your stern-chaser armament does squat for you.

If one can out range and out accelerate the defenders and they have to 
stay around to guard a resource, the attacker has a winning situation.	
Either the defender leaves the resource undefended, attempts to engage 
the attacker (which happens at the attackers whim), or the attacker 
simply picks the defender to pieces at range.  Not fun for the defender 
for certain.

> No, it does.	The previous discussion has revealed that the cost 
> balancing is only correct as written for Cinematic play on larger 
> tables.  On average size tables, the costing over-rates the larger 
> batteries, and vector appears to need some more tweaking to balance 
> right.
>
> Holding up examples that work in very specific situations (like this 
> ship) but not in general, common situations, and then extrapolating 
> general conclusions from the results is not correct.	In critical 
> analysis, this is called a "straw man argument".

Average sized tables is a bit of a opinionated factor.	What is 
average?  4 by 6 is common, so is 6 by 8.  There is a big difference in 
area between the two (double).	I've played on 16 by 6 foot surfaces 
and then again on 4 by 4 and many others to boot.

If your primary focus in balancing weapons with vector based movement 
on a 4 by 6 foot surface is your focal issue, then whether big beam 
weapons are worth the cost is not as critical as on a larger playing 
surface.  With limited space, the smaller beam weapons are more likely 
to be in range.  So thus it makes sense to have multiples of them.  
Nothing really lost is there?

In trying to balance point costs, there is always going to be some 
areas where the point costs on different systems (read as ranges and 
arcs) will be more or less significant.  Factoring mainly for the 
smaller playing surfaces leaves the points issue out of sync for larger 
play areas, ones which find more use for long ranged weapons.  Since 
larger batteries have less use on smaller playing areas, it makes sense 
that they'd be more of a focus for those playing under those 
conditions, unless the larger beam weapons were more cost efficient.  
But if the larger ones are more cost efficient in that situation they 
are a give'me on larger battle areas.  I prefer factoring for larger 
surfaces (in this case) since smaller surfaces have less of a reason to 
use the larger beam weapons.  In my past design and play-test 
experiences this is usually a better way to go as it works better in 
general for a wider range of applications.

These examples are not meant to be general conclusions, but 
illustrations of why costs have to be factored the way they were.  This 
type of factoring is not a "straw man" as it is hardly imaginary.  The 
issue of high class beam weapons being king of the battle area came up 
years ago and has been factored into current play-testing.  When the 
costs of larger beam weapons were smaller, I witnessed most designs 
involving beam weapons consisting of cramming as many class A beams was 
the way to go in most cases (if you wanted more arcs then sometimes the 
smaller class B and Cs were okay or 3 class Bs had more dice at 0-12 
MUs than did 2 class As).

I'm a little surprised that with your reference to critical thinking 
that you've determined what is the typical playing area.   Your 
preferred or available space may be for you and your 
friends/associates, but that does not mean it is such for all of us.  I 
realize a number of other game systems typically use a 4 by 6 table.  
IIRC, this playing area has become more popular in the past decade.  
However, that said - a point system for a game meant to be played on 
whatever is available needs to take as many factors as possible into 
consideration.	I feel the system we've had input on has the best 
overall considerations for a variety of playing areas.

>> On Thursday, September 4, 2003, at 05:43 PM, Eric Foley wrote:
>>
>>> In the end, fast sniper vessels such as this only really work in a 
>>> lark where you're assuming a great many things that don't make a lot

>>> of sense, or in special situations such as commerce raiding where 
>>> you're not going to devote any large amount of resources to it, and 
>>> where you're prepared to refit the vessels with more sound armaments

>>> once your enemy stops being stupid and develops a countermeasure. It

>>> wins one-off games where you don't think a little outside the box 
>>> and project a few military objectives that would otherwise rein in 
>>> the impulse to devote precious resources to building such vessels.
>>
> Exactly.

Raiders are a fairly common factor in war.  A high speed (the long 
ranged weapon is a bonus) ship that works in small numbers or alone, 
keeping the enemy forces pinned in protecting valuable resources has 
happened a fair amount in past conflicts.  In fact, bombers during wars 
of the past 70 years took on this role in a round about way.  Raiding 
of this type helps to keep the enemies production lower, make the 
situation more of an unknown for the enemy, and limits the ability of 
the enemy to concentrate their forces into large fleets or into massive 
and ungodly huge vessels.

This type of ship is hardly more specialized than some other ships 
proposed to this list in the pursuit of balancing the cost system.  But 
that is hardly important to the ongoing debate.  Sniper vessels, while 
not a mainline fleet design, do come up in play whether as larger 
ships, or as smaller escort and raider types - used to take out smaller 
ships before they can fire and to destroyed crippled vessels without 
forcing allied line fleet units to break formation to go hunting the 
cripples down.

The examples given of how effective they can be in certain situations 
are important.	By suggesting there main weapons should essentially 
cost less is paramount to supporting them further, or permitting easier 
access to the same systems for less specialized vessels that in turn 
can do some similar things while still accomplishing their primary 
roles.	This leads us dangerously close to the stituation that happened 
with beam weapons orginally.

Kevin Walker