Re: Fighters and Hangers

Jared Hilal wrote:

 >>If all the ship's surface systems are shot away, it turns into a
 >>drifting hulk rather than a cloud of debris - but it is nevertheless
 >>"destroyed" in FT terms, since it can no longer manoeuvre or fire
 >>weapons and has no hopes of repairing any of the damage within the
 >>time frame of the battle.
 >
 >And if you give it its proper size and hull integrity, then in game
 >terms, it does have the crew (DCPs) to repair systems and continue the
 >engagement, barring heavy use of needle-type attacks.

*In game terms*, yes. In FT game terms, a single DCP can, given enough 
time, repair EVERY SINGLE damaged system aboard a ship - even if it is a

large superdreadnought one hull box away from destruction. There is no 
chance whatsoever that any system has been so badly damaged that it can
no 
longer be repaired by the ship's own resources.

Compare that to what we see in the movies and TV shows, where entire
weapon 
turrets and screen generators get blown to scrap. The only way - in the 
movies, and also in reality - to "repair" such damage is to replace the 
entire system... so unless the ship has spare turrets lying around in
its 
cargo holds, it shouldn't be able to repair it. For ships which haven't 
blown up, the "no hull boxes left" is a good game representation of the 
stage where all surface systems have been so badly damaged that they can
no 
longer be repaired from ship-board resources.

 >RE: relationship between fighters and ships
 >>>OO responded:
 >>>>In Star Wars the smallest FTL-capable ships are single-person
 >>>>fighters (eg. X-wings), not Corellian Corvettes.
 >>>
 >>>They may be the smallest FTL *craft*, but I would not count them as
 >>>*ships*.
 >>
 >>And why not? Merely because they're called "fighters" in the SW
 >>canon, or because you need a distinction between them and the
 >>Corellian ships to have a reason to claim that mass scale is too low
 >>to allow SSDs to be playable, or for some other reason?
 >
 >None of the above.  I see the differences as paralleling wet navy
 >distinctions:

To me this looks like a very elaborate way of saying "because you need a

distinction between them and the Corellian ships", because:

 >Ships have large crews and are equipped for extended voyages.
 >
 >Boats have smaller crews and are equipped for shorter voyages.
 >
 >Craft have minimal crew and are equipped for very brief voyages.

Ah. Like, say, the very brief voyages from Hoth to Dagobah and Dagobah
to 
Bespin; or why not the similarly brief voyages from Coruscant to Kamino?
Or 
Earth to B5, in that other background?

But more importantly, what impact do these differences in endurance have

*in Full Thrust game terms*? None at all, unless your FT battles take 
several days (in-game time, not player real-world times) to fight out - 
which again is not what we see in the movies; there the battles tend to
be 
much shorter than that.

 >>Looking at another of your example SF backgrounds B5 StarFuries and
 >>other single-person fighters are explicitly called "ships" in that
 >>background.	If the B5 StarFuries qualify as "ships", why don't SW
 >>X-wings and similar do so?
 >
 >1) I don't remember them being called "ships".  Can you refer me to an
 >episode so I can check?

Just about all of them? OK, they're usually called "warships", not just 
"ships" (as in "we'll send some warships to investigate", "jumpgate 
activating - it's a warship", etc.).

 >>I'm sorry, Jared, but I get the impression that you have already
 >>decided that SDDs and similar huge craft are unplayable and that you
 >>are now actively searching for arguments to keep them that way. What
 >>I don't understand is *why* you do this.
 >
 >No, I have decided that massive super-vessels cannot be used
 >*simultaneously with small craft*.

You yourself wrote, and I quote your post verbatim:

"I specifically excluded the SSD in my original post as I feel it is
beyond 
the scale of the game. Anything much larger than a 1600m ISD or 1800m 
battlestar is beyond playability."

That's a pretty definite statement, and I can't find any qualifier about

"simultaneously with small craft" anywhere else in that message 
(http://lists.firedrake.org/gzg/200403/msg00171.html).

 >>You have just listed three of the six main reasons why large ships
 >>cost so much in the CPV system, and thus also why breaking them up
 >>into sections would reduce their total CPVs.
 >
 >As I have no experience with CPV, that is a meaningless referent for
me.

The reasons why large ships cost more in the CPV system are identical to

the reasons why large ships are consistently too powerful for their NPV 
cost compared to smaller ships - so unless you also have no experience
with 
the current NPV system used in the Fleet Books, this reference is quite 
meaningful indeed to you.

(Of course, if your group is as scenario-oriented as it seems to be it
is 
perfectly possible that you actually don't have any experience with the 
current NPV system - but in that case I don't quite understand why you'd

worry about the *C*PV system making large ships overpriced, since you 
wouldn't be very likely to use it any more than you use the NPV one?)

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