RE: Fixing salvo missiles

--- Beth.Fulton@csiro.au wrote:
> One of the compelling things for me in moving to
> missiles that can have different warhead types or a trade-off
> between range and warhead strength (to me they're all just
> different kinds of missiles as I would presume you have to note
> before game what trade-off you chose or did you mean an on the fly
> tradeoff?) is that you can easily grade from something like a classic
> MT to a classic SM without as sharp a discontinuity.	
> 

I mean "select before game" not "on the fly".
So you decide which of the warhead-size/range combination you want and
also which warhead type you want.  It also might not have been clear,
but I meant that these salvoes are 1-to-1 interchangeable in terms of
MASS, which is different from the FB1 ER salvoes.

The next weapon design step would then be to offer SMs in a variety of
Size classes:
E.g. 1, 2, 3, etc..  The Rack, Launcher, and Magazines then are
described with 2 numbers: the size of the missiles fired and the number
of missiles in each salvo.  So the FB1 SMLs are "SML-1/6".  SM systems
firing other size missiles have the same MASS but fire a different
number of missiles, such as MASS 3 = SML-1/6, SML-2/4, SML-3/3, etc.. 
The launcher is determined at the time of ship construction, but allows
a more generic design to be presented in the fleet book, so that
players can fill in which launcher(s) they want on a particular ship. 
Magazines carry only one size SM, but nothing prevents a ship having 2
sizes of launchers with seperate magazines.

The larger sizes of missiles would have the same options for
damage/range trade-offs:
Standard missile has 24 MU range and damage = (Size class)d6
Extend range by 50% per reduction in damage dice, smaller than 1d6 is
1d3 (light), and then 1 pt (mini).
Increase damage dice by +1 level for -33% range, by +2 levels for -50%
range, or +3 levels for -66% range.
Note that the FB1 "ER missile" would be a ER-SM2 in this system as it
does 1d6 and has +50% range.  This then leads to the possiblity of
larger launchers/racks with more missiles

All sizes of missiles and warheads would also have a variety of warhead
types:
Standard Warhead - damage as per FB
Beam Warhead - stand-off weapon that fires Beam Dice at target ship,
affected by screens, lesser chance to shoot with PD/AD/AS
Nova Warhead - Big Boom area affect weapons, lesser chance to shoot
with PD/AD/AS
Hyperspace Warhead - no boom, transists/jumps to FTL/hyperspace instead
of detonating, damaging nearby ship(s)
Interceptors - Mini warheads (and appropriate range) specialized to
attack fighters and missiles.

> > The close second is the "1d6 missiles lock-on".  We feel
> > that missiles should be much smarter than this, and the
> > vast majority of misses should come from PDS or evasive
> > defenses such as Stealth Hull or ECM....
> 
> Given those features weren't covered as standard in the original FB
> couldn't you argue the roll was representing that and that you only
> need to adopt modifications such as the ones you've put forward as
> stealth and ECM become explicit rather than implicit. I'm guessing
> you do have more explicit sensor stuff?
> 

We have Stealth Hull and ECM each in a scale of 0-4.  The basic FT/FB
rules for combat and ship design are assumed to represent ships with
Stealth-2 and ECM-2 (Standard military grade).	Our Level-3 corresponds
to Noam Izenberg's Stealth Hull-1 (WDA/NI test fleet), and our Level-4
to Noam's Stealth Hull-2.  Stealth and ECM cumulative, so Stealth-3 +
ECM-3 on the same ship corresponds to WDA Stealth Hull-2, and Stealth-4
+ ECM-4 = WDA Stealth Hull-4.  If a ship is damaged and degrades
Stealth and/or ECM below level-2, then attacking ships get the benefit
of extended range bands when targeting the ship with less than
Stealth-2 + ECM-2.

 
>
> I am also imaging the chaos of tracking which missile went where if
> you also allow misses to try and re-lock on a new target. I'm not
> saying it's a bad idea, its actually a nice idea, I'm just trying to
> think of the implications for our playing style.
> 

Well, if you normally mark the salvo in some way to indicate how many
missiles have locked on, you can simply add an additional salvo marker
for the missiles locked on to a different target.  E.g. the Salvo locks
3 missiles onto target A and 2 missiles onto target B.	Mark the
initial salvo location as 3 missiles as you normally do, then place an
additional adjacent marker indicating a 2-missile salvo for target B. 
PSB is that as the missiles spread out against seperate targets, they
can no longer be fired upon with a single firing solution.

>
> That takes you down to half mu something I'm not overly keen on. For
> someone who doesn't want to go that route would you think just using
> every other entry you gave would work as well in practice (so 2+, 4+,
> 6+)?

Sure, but you would have to detemine if 2+, 4+, 6+; or 1+, 3+, 5+ works
best.  That might be a matter of taste.  <shrug> 

J