Re: [GZG] FT: Modern Naval

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 11:52 PM, Richard Bell <rlbell.nsuid@gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 5:11 PM, Thomas Pope <tpope@cs.cmu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> 2) The pulse combat model.  FT models WWI dreadnought battles
decently well.
>> It models WWII battles with carriers and screens quite well for a
space
>> game.  In both of those models the combat model is similar.	Ships
can take
>> a number of hits from almost any weapon and keep fighting.  In
contrast, a
>> modern warship can maybe take two missile hits before it is a mission
kill,
>> but I wouldn¹t count on it.
>>
>
> I am not entirely sure that FT models WWI naval battles very well.
> The dreadnought era has too many really big guns with huge arcs and FT
> lacks a mechanism for modelling plunging fire.  It is really suited
> for predreadnought naval battles.  The vessels even had similar
> designs to FT ships-- some big guns for long range plinking, some
> medium guns for when the range closes, and a light battery to fend off
> torpedo boats.  Even better, most of the guns only fired in two, or
> three arcs.

And just like dreadnaughts would munch pre-dreads, a more specialized
all-big-gun ship is going to be bad news for the "take one of
everything" designs.

For examples, see FB1 - the NSL's Maria von B. BB has a *higher* throw
weight (beam dice rolled) than a Von Teg. SDN, which has to be the
epitome of the "take one of everything" school of design.

A Von T SDN gutted and re-gunned with the MvB's philosophy would be a
scary beast indeed, especially if you allowed the design to be
vector-specialized (ie narrower firing arcs than most FB ships).

There's a similar issue with the NAC's FB1 designs - the Victoria BB
outguns everything bigger than it in the NAC line...

The ESU's Komarov SDN is the only "all big gun" design there, really.
Beam 4 means being able to reach out and touch someone...

Pre-dread "take a few of everything" design philosophy does seem to be
rampant in the Fleet Books.

Somewhere in my FT notes I have a set of designs where everything down
to heavy cruisers has B4s jammed into it. Only ran a few of the
designs, but they're *fun* - "OK, I have a dozen dice at 48"... yes, I
know you have nothing that can respond, and your fighters just got
eaten by my integrated PDS..."

Brian
...who is suddenly thinking he should paint that NSL squadron that's
be half-assembled for about four years...
http://www.warbard.ca/games.html

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
http://vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu:1337/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l