Re: [VV] Gate defence

On Wednesday 02 February 2005 18:33, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
> Ryan Gill wrote:
> >>...but in the end, the advantage still lies with the attacker simply
> >>because he can choose where to strike while any fixed defences have
to be
> >>spread out to cover multiple avenues of attack.
> >
> >In some respects isn't that the very nature of holding the initiative
in
> >any event (Mobile - Mobile or MNobile - Fixed)?
>
> Very much so. However, relying on fixed defences means that you're
> voluntarily handing over the initiative (on that front, at least - you
> could of course be on the offensive along some other warp chain).

Fixed defences doesn't mean only fixed defences. You could have a
mobile fleet on the other side. Fixed defences on the other side
are much harder to defend because an attack can come from any
direction - on the 'home' side attacks can only come from one
direction (the warp gate). If it acts like a doorway (which I
have been assuming) and attacks can only come along a limited
vector, then fixed defences can hide to the side or behind where
they are difficult to target directly from the 'away' side.

This is the problem planetary defences have - just ramp up an
asteroid to high velocity and the planet is toast (since the
FT universe has reactionless thrusters, this is pretty cheap to do).

This is probably the important issue with fixed defences - how
do you stop someone destroying your homeworld if they can jump
in at the Oort Cloud and hurl rocks at you?

> Samuel Penn wrote:
> > >Point Three:
> > >Stop thinking in terms of equal point battles.  Those are
> > >(historically speaking) about as common as two-headed calves.  If
you
> > >are trying to think in terms of a universe's reality, then ignore
the
> > >game convention of equal point battles.
> >
> >...any game system is going to be (vaguely) balanced.
>
> No, it won't. Most game systems can be completely *un*balanced; some
game
> systems are even deliberately *designed* to be unbalanced - Monopoly
being
> the best-known one.

What's your definition of balanced? In Monopoloy everyone starts the
game exactly the same, and have exactly the same chance of landing on
any particular square. The only difference is who starts first, which
gives a small advantage at the start.

But, going back to wargames, most will try for some form of balance.
Even if the 'balance' is in the fact that the guy with a single
corvette only has to destroy a single ship from the enemy fleet in
order to win, that's a sort of balance.

I haven't seen a wargame along the lines of the Earth-Minbari war,
where humans get 1000pts, the Minbari get 100,000pts, and both have
a goal of wiping out the other (humans don't 'win' by surviving
for three turns, or defeating the Black Star - they have to win by
defeating the entire enemy fleet).

> >An asteroid
> >with a base built into the middle of it is going to be relatively
> >cheap from a physics standpoint, but will have thousands of points
> >of armour/hull (possibly millions). A game system which costs
> >according to hull strength (as FT does) is going to break as soon
> >as you bring in fixed defences like this.
>
> No, the *game system* won't break. The *points system* might break if
> you're trying to use it for some purpose it wasn't meant to be used
for -

Yes, that's what I meant. You just wrote it better :-)

> Eg., you're assuming that an enemy faced with a 1,000,000 Mass
asteroid
> armed with a few PDSs and fighter bays will have to inflict a million
> damage points on it in order to destroy the base.

That's my point - those 1,000,0000 hull points are worthless unless
they're backed up with serious firepower (it was in response to the
point that in FT, you pay for weapons not hull).

> In game terms, the *base* built on the asteroid has a far lower
> "hull integrity" than the *asteroid* - and you only pay
battle-balancing
> points for the *base's* "hull integrity", since that's the only thing
that
> matters for the game balance. To take an extreme example, if your
enemy
> builds a ground base on Earth you don't need to blow up the entire
planet
> in order to destroy the base!

Very true. But a lot of the hardware (reactors, heat sinks, computers,
crew,
fighter repair bays etc) can be hidden deep in the asteroid behind
millions of tonnes of rock. The point is, it's cheaper to hide stuff
in a rock than it is to hide it in a spaceship, especially if it's
cheaper to build bigger versions of things because you don't have the
same mass/volume constraints as you do in a spaceship.

I'm not talking points value - I'm talking real world economic costs.

> (...'course, if the asteroid is on a collision course with your home
planet
> you *will* need to inflict a million points of damage on it to
vapourize it
> before it hits 

And get hit by billions of tonnes of superheated plasma instead. Yay!
:-)

> So, you have to ask yourself: why do you plan to use a
battle-balancing
> points system for a campaign game, instead of designing a
campaign-economic
> points system?

Hey, I don't :-)

>
> > >Point Five:
> > >If you havn't read at least two of the Starfire novels AND/OR
played a
> > >dozen warp point assaults in the Starfire game system, please shut
the
> > >hell up because you're rehashing points that are made in those
places
> > >with a good deal more coherency.
> >
> >Irrelevent. Those places aren't this place. Different rules
> >and different physics.
>
> No, *extremely* relevant 

As I said elsewhere, regardless of rules and physics, irrelevant if
half the people discussing them are unaware of those points. Some
people may prefer abuse, but it's generally more productive to say
something constructive instead if you actually want people to stop
rehashing those same points.

-- 
Be seeing you,				   http://www.glendale.org.uk/
Sam.					jabber: samuel.penn@jabber.org