Re: [FT] 3arc B1 and PDS

From: "Oerjan Ohlson" <roger@firedrake.org>

> BTW Alan, did your playtest take into account the benefits paired
3-arc PD
> weapons gain relative to single 6-arc PD weapons when the ship is
> attacked from more than one direction, and if so how?

I only did a few exercises on graphpaper - and with 6 or less PDS on
each ship.
This way I could compare costs of 1/2, 2/3, 3/4 which I thought were the
boundaries of the solution.

Against fighters, a cost of 3/4 is too much, the advantage is low.
Against SMs, it all depends on how lucky/skilful the players are,
it makes it even more of a crap-shoot than before. But I did assume
all-forward arcs vs SMs rather than splitting them left/right.

I used a random-number generator (actually some dice and a GW scatter
die)
to pick the SM target area's difference from the 'optimum' that I'd
picked,
and in one case, everything went behind (just) the target. Oopsie.
I didn't bother rolling for damage, as I was only doing a single run.

As I said, I only did a few playtests to get an approximate solution,
I certainly wouldn't call it a *proper* playtest. Just to confirm or
disprove intuition - was 2/3 or 3/4 closer? The results showed that
extensive playtesting was needed, not just a few bits like I did, and 
the costs for B1/3 should be higher than PDS/3. Due to practical
concerns,
I'd say 3/4 for B1/3 and 2/3 for PDS/3 are 'about right' for costs.