Apologies for the long delay in replying to this. First I got swamped by
RL 
issues, and when those dried up the list server went down instead...

John Tailby wrote:

 >>>Salvo missiles, plasma bolts and AMTs automatically gain
 >>>a -3 DRM. So essentially you can't shoot these weapons with
 >>>beam weapons at all.
 >>
 >>Not true, because the target's DRMs do not affect rerolls
 >>(analogous with the reroll-screen interaction; screens are
 >>effectively a kind of target's DRM). A Beam Die will hit a
 >>Plasma Bolt on an initial die roll of 6 (which scores zero
 >>damage but allows a reroll) followed by a reroll of 4+.
 >
 >Again makes much more sense now. We went the otherway and
 >clarified things so that all DRM apply to rerolls as well.
 >There were cases when sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't
 >and we went one way for consistency.

The official Full Thrust rules themselves aren't consistent in this 
respect: Fleet Book 1 specifies that screens do *not* apply to rerolls,
but 
in various Q&As GZG has stated that the +1 DRM for Interceptors and
Attack 
Fighters *do* apply to rerolls. The UFR makes these inconsistencies
obvious 
by collecting all the beam-die rules and official clarifications in once

place, but it didn't introduce them :-/

 >>>>AMTs must declare an attack against all ships within 3 mu.
 >>>
 >>>How does this work? The missile can't physically move
 >>>into contact with all ships within 3mu.
 >>
 >>NO missile, fighter group, plasma bolt or whatever moves
 >>during the attack declaration or attack resolution phases.
 >>They are all left right where they ended their primary move,
 >>launch or secondary move (whichever came last), just like in
 >>the Fleet Book 2 rules.
 >
 >I know the missile does not move in the attack declaration phase.

Your objection (quoted above) was that the AMT couldn't declare attacks 
against all targets within 3mu because it "can't physically move into 
contact with all ships within 3mu". What I am saying is that this
objection 
is invalid, because AMTs *never* physically move into contact with *any*

targets. They're area-effect weapons, just like Plasma Bolts are.

 >But the missile has to attack the nearest ship within range. So
 >that should be the ship it attacks.

No, the AMT doesn't "have to attack the nearest ship within range".

It uses its secondary move to *move* towards the nearest "target" (which
is 
supposed to mean "enemy ship or orbital base"). Once it has made that
move, 
it *attacks* EVERYTHING within 3 mu.

The game effect of an AMT declaring attacks against all ships (friendly
as 
well as enemy) within 3mu, is that all those ships become able to use
their 
PD weapons against the AMT without having to use an ADFC or FCS to guide

the point defences.

 >>>>Kra'Vak scatterguns and Sa'Vasku interceptor pods may not
 >>>>use ADFC guidance.
 >>>
 >>>Currently they don't need to because they have ADFC built in.
 >>>Are you proposing to remove this capability from these systems?
 >>
 >>Yes. If you want to fire scatterguns or interceptor pods in
 >>support of some other ship, or at some un-engaged target, you
 >>have to use FCSs to control the fire. (You can do the same with
 >>PDSs too, of course.)
 >
 >So use of a FCS now gives you ADFC capability cool

Not exactly "ADFC capability" in the FB1 sense, but somewhat similar.
The 
FB1 ADFC allows your PD weapons to shoot at *all*
fighters/missiles/bolts 
that attack one other ship within 6mu of the ADFC. In the UFR, an FCS 
allows your PD weapons to shoot at *one* fighter group/missile
(salvo)/bolt 
within the PD weapons' normal range (6mu for PDS and Scatterguns, 12mu
for 
Interceptor Pods) regardless of whether or not that fighter group (etc.)
is 
attacking anything. Note that the normal restrictions on (A) arc fire
apply 
whenever you use an FCS to target anything.

But yes, the overall effect is that you ADFCs drop from "absolutely 
essential for survival" to merely "nice to have ".

 >>>>Scattergun   6mu	1d3 1
 >>>
 >>>When did you change this weapon from 1D6 to 1D3 and no ADFC.
 >>>This nerfs KV anti ordinance.

No, it brings the scatterguns' capabilities into line with their cost 
against all types of small targets, instead of making them slightly 
overpowered against missiles and massively overpowered against fighters.

Against *fighters*, scatterguns with ADFC capability are really worth 
somewhere around 12 pts apiece - but since that cost would make KV and 
similar scattergun-users unable to defend themselves against any
*missiles* 
they couldn't dodge, the FB scatterguns were instead priced according to

their anti-missile capabilities. Unfortunately I failed to factor in the

value of their ADFC capability during the FB2 playtesting, so that 
capability was effectively free of charge in FB2... Bringing the 
scatterguns down to 1D3 hits and removing their inherent ADFC capability

brings their anti-fighter capabilities down into line with their cost,
ie. 
5 pts apiece.

Against *missiles*, the scatterguns usually waste much of their
firepower 
anyway. You don't need 1D6 hits to kill a Heavy Missile (even 1D3 is on 
average a 100% overkill); and against an SM salvo a single D6-rolling 
scattergun is too unpredictable so most players I've listened to use 2 
scatterguns against each SM salvo... with the result that the salvo will
be 
stopped completely four times out of five, but on average half the 
scatterguns' hits are wasted. Because of this, cutting the scatterguns
back 
from 1D6 hits to 1D3 hits has a surprisingly small impact on their 
anti-missile capabilities - the D3's smaller range of possible results 
allows the players to use their scattergun more effectively, wasting
fewer 
hits.

Finally, against *plasma bolts* the scattergun goes from "1 beam die 
without rerolls" (average 0.67 hits) to 1D3-1 (average 1 hit), which is
a 
50% *increase* in firepower :-/

 >>>You do not list stinger nodes as anti ship able to attack
 >>>ordinance is this deliberate or did it get left out in error?
 >>
 >>It is deliberate. The core point of the UFR is to allow ships to
 >>use most of the points and Mass they've invested in weapons for
 >>anti-fighter defence (though not all of that Mass will be equally
 >>good at the job). On SV ships most of the "weapon Mass" consists
 >>of power generators... so if a SV ship wants to use most of its
 >>"weapon Mass" to shoot at fighters, all it has to do is route
 >>the power through its spicules or pod launchers.
 >
 >I don't understand this, this reads a bit like alien tech
discrimination.
 >Why should SV tech be disadvantaged compared to human tech or have
 >you changed spicules and pod launchers so that they can make multiple
 >shots dependent on how much power is allocated to them?

Pod Launchers still only fire one shot per turn, but under the playtest
SV 
rules spicules fire one PDS die per Power Point (with the same burn-out 
restrictions as stingers). Each spicule can still only engage one single

Small Target per turn, but with a potentially very large number of PDS
dice.

 >>>These fighter rules heavily favour one shot fighters like
 >>>torpedo bombers. They can only make one attack run and so
 >>>can burn 3 CEF to be unhittable then attack survive and
 >>>fly back to rearm for another go.
 >>
 >>It hasn't quite turned out that way in the playtests to date -
 >>partly because torpedo fighters are so much more expensive than
 >>other fighter types, but also because 1 CEF spent on a clever
 >>secondary move can often give your fighters better protection
 >>than 3 CEF spent on unthinking evasive manoeuvres.
 >
 >Agreed but fighters launched from more than 36 Mu infront of the enemy

fleet >are likely to spend one turn in front of the enmy fleet before
they 
can move >behind them to get out of the fleets arc of fire.

If your fighters launch at long range and then rush straight towards the

enemy, then they're likely to end up in the enemy's (F) arcs at
relatively 
short ranges. That's distinctly unhealty, certainly.

If OTOH the fighters end the turn before their attack outside range 36mu
of 
the enemy and then use the combination of their own primary+secondary
move 
distances and the enemy's closing velocity to get from range >36mu to 
attack range in a single turn, they're unlikely to take much damage from

long-range anti-ship fire. (Unless, of course, your group follows the 
"optimized Vector"-style design strategy "let's load up on (F)-arc only 
Class-4 and larger beam batteries", but in that case your ships won't
have 
very strong broadside armaments which drastically reduces the fighters' 
need for evasive manoeuvres when they close the range on the next turn.)

(This is the very same tactic as you are already using with heavy
missiles 
- with the differences that 1) the fighters can stay an extra beam range

band away from the enemy fleet, thus reducing the amount of long-range 
anti-ship fire they have to weather to half or less of what the missiles

face, and 2) the fighters have far more CEF available for evasive 
manoeuvres than the heavy missiles do... in the absence of a fixed -2
DRM, 
that is.)

 >Nothing like massed topedo bombers to ruin a capital ships
 >day.

Nothing like massed torpedo bombers to *make* an interceptor squadron's 
day, either :-)

[On defending against Heavy Missiles]

 >Having used a similar version of these rules it doesn't make
 >a significant difference if the fleet uses its anti ship
 >weapons to try and stop a missile wave. You might force the
 >missile barges to get a bit closer to say 48" before they
 >fire but you won't have enough firecontrols to target the
 >missiles even if they don't bother to defend.
 >
 >With each missile burning endurance to dodge incomming fire,
 >the book keeping becomes much harder as you have to track
 >different endurance states for each missile rather than just
 >being able to calcualte the endurance for each wave.
 >
 >Even if the missiles are launched from long range, they will spend
 >a turn at more than 24mu away before being able to close in and make
 >their attack runs. Only big ships have class 3 or above beams and only
 >then in small numbers so you might kill one missile per capital ship
 >then they burn to attack.

The fixed -2 DRM your group applies would make a pretty big difference
here 
- to borrow your description, it "nerfs" the long-range defensive fires 
quite thoroughly. Under the UFR, a heavy missile that needs 2 turns to 
reach its target has a total of 1 CEF to spend on either evasive
manoeuvers 
or a final secondary move to pick a target (so if it doesn't make that 
secondary move, it can get a -1 DRM on *one* of its two turns of flight
but 
not on both). IOW, by applying that fixed -2 DRM you are in effect
giving 
the heavy missiles an extra 3-4 CEF points to burn on evasive
manoeuvres.

And yes, those "free" CEF points do matter. With the -2 DRM each beam
dice 
only hits a heavy missile on a '6' - so at long range, a capital ship
with 
3-4 Class-3s will be rather lucky to kill more than 1 missile while a
heavy 
cruiser probably won't kill even a single one. Using the UFR rules OTOH 
even heavy cruisers bag on average one heavy missile each with long
range 
fire, while capitals will probably pick off multiple missiles each. In
the 
missile-swarm games I've played, those extra missiles destroyed at long 
range reduce the load on the defenders' FCSs quite a bit when the
surviving 
missiles reach attack range on the next turn.

 >>Also, if I understood your variant correctly you gave the Heavy
 >>Missiles a flat -*2* DRM against anti-ship fire? That would reduce
 >>the usefulness of long-ranged beam fire against an incoming missile
 >>swarm quite a lot... under the UFR heavy missiles usually can't
 >>afford any DRM at all until the turn they actually attack, and even
 >>then they can usually only manage a -1 DRM.
 >
 >Yes but we also reduced the maximum range of all direct ship fire to
48 
mu so >that people can't just start lobbing missiles at 54 mu range.

In my experience, if the targets are mobile the only difference between 
launching heavy missiles from range 48mu and launching them from range
54mu 
is that the 54mu-range launch gives the enemy an extra game turn in
which 
to either shoot the missiles down or out-manoeuvre them. (Against 
*immobile* targets those extra 6mu can be an advantage, though they
still 
give the target's defences - including PDSs - one extra turn to shoot at

the missiles.)

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@rixmail.se

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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