Re: B vs K was Re: Classed Weapons

Jared Hilal wrote:

>>The math involved in play balance includes the arc of fire and the
range.
>>As a rough example, if you double the range, you have quadruple the
target
>>area where you can inflict damage against an opponent.  A weapon that
can't
>>be brought to bear on a target has a mass/points total of zero.
>
>However, it is still a single weapon and cannot hit * everything * in
that 
>extended area * simultaneously *.  The combat value increase is
actually 
>only by a factor of square root of 2 ( that is : x2^0.5 ).

Only if targets are scattered completely at random and the ship
manoeuvres 
completely at random :-/ Let's look at it in a bit more detail:

If the *firepower* is doubled (eg. you go from 1 die to 2 dice), then
the 
combat value increases by the square root of 2. That's straight out of 
Lanchester.

However, the area covered only affects the probability that there will
be 
*at least one* target for the weapon to shoot at. If there isn't
anything 
to shoot at, the target can't shoot and its effective firepower is zero
(at 
least for the moment).

So, when you say that "doubling the area increases the combat value by 
sqrt(2)", you're  effectively saying that doubling the area doubles the 
chance that there will be at least one target in its range and arc. 
However, this is only true if the targets are randomly distributed 
throughout the combat area and the ship doesn't deliberately manoeuvre
to 
get them into its sight.

Since the targets usually aren't scattered at random (in FT they tend to
be 
flying in formations, for example) and the ship itself usually doesn't 
manoeuvre at random either, doubling the area usually increases the 
probability of having a target by more than a factor 2.

There's another factor to keep in mind as well: the longer-ranged weapon

can usually fire one or more shots before the shorter-ranged weapon gets

into range - which means that by the time the shorter-ranged weapon
*does* 
get into range, it has already taken damage. In Full Thrust, this means 
that a short-ranged fleet attacking a long-ranged one will usually have 
taken some thresholds and thus lost some weapons (or even lost some
ships 
entirely) before they get to return fire. Of course this increases the 
combat value of the longer-ranged weapons further still :-/

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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