Re: FT: 6-arc weapons (was Graser...)

Glen Bailey wrote:

>For the secondaries, he [Steve] should
>actually have twice the number he does but each at 3-arcs
>(all Port or all Starboard); but, does not half the number
>of  6-arc weapons comes close enough?

Half the number of 6-arc weapons is OK as long as the enemy stays 
concentrated on one side of your ships. The drawbacks become obvious
when 
he doesn't :-/

>That "no rear firing" rule is more of a background/universe optional
rule.

It is more of a "incite players to manoeuvre more" rule than a 
background/optional rule, really - cf. the comment about it on FT2 p.2,
and 
also your own comments some years ago about how hard it is to
outmanoeuvre 
Steve's battlewagons :-/ More importantly though it is a rule which has 
pretty large effects on the game balance, and the ship design system 
(particularly the engine costs, but also the fire arc costs) assumes
that 
it is in use.

>I also wonder if some of those designs you have from other people are 
>variations of the FB designs?

A few are, certainly. Most aren't. Exactly how many are or are not
depends 
on how liberal you are with the definition of "variant" :-/

>1/3rd of all the B2-6s?

At the moment, yes. This will most likely go down a bit when the next
few 
beta-test fleets are added to the archive, but I have surprisingly few 
player-created custom designs with B2-6s.

>Aren't there quite a few of those in FB1?

In FB1, yes; but they're more common in FB1 than they are among the 
archived custom designs even when you exclude the obvious
Vector-optimized 
designs (low thrust ratings, lots of big single- or two-arc weapons)
from 
the mix. If it hadn't been for the fact that min/maxers like Steve *do*
use 
the B2-6s, I would've started worrying that the 5- and 6-arc weapons
were 
overpriced years ago :-/

>I wonder what percentage of FT players play only vector or cinematic. 
Has 
>anyone done a poll?

There have been several, eg. on this mailing list and at TMP 
(<http://theminiaturespage.com/polls/?id=1282800800>). All the ones I've

seen so far point at around 40% Vector, 50-60% Cinematic and the rest 
undecided, but they all have had rather small sample bases (less than
two 
hundred replies) compared to the number of copies of FT and FB1 sold
(many 
thousand) so it is hard to say how accurate they are.

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