Re: [GZG] FT:XD changes, part 1

1. Long range missiles have to be expensive. Otherwise you can build a
high thrust ship with several of these and, on any floating board, it
becomes untouchable. It can engage, maintain separation, and the enemy
can do very little about it. There is a reason the game doesn't
provide too many weapons with > 36" range and those are massive and
expensive.

2. I think you underprice your fighter gradations. If you are able to
avoid dogfights without a roll, then I think +/- 1 NPV is too weak of
a pricing change.

3. Movement: If we were moving odd numbers, we always just moved half
the distance. Not sure why measuring 1/2" or 5mm is so much of a
challenge... if you use a tape, it isn't much harder than measuring to
even values and avoids rounding altogether.

4. For turns and thrust:
An artifact of the turn system being based on a six point rotation (or
any granular value) is that you'll have breakpoints. Whether, in the
existing system, you choose to make them at even numbers or odd,
that's kind of an academic distinction. You'll have them and you
either get a thrust 3 turning 1 or a thrust 3 turning 2. In the latter
case, thrust 4 becomes less important as it won't be a turning
breakpoint. So I think whichever way you go with rounding for turns is
just a matter of preference.

5. Fighter/PDS/Ship fire model

The only model I've seen that seems to not encourage soapies, that
seems to make fighter endurance matter, and that seems to make FT ship
designs (with small to moderate sized fighter compliments by mass,
with 2-4 PDS) make ANY viable sense is the playtest rules that were
bandied about with fighters burning endurance to avoid PDS fire and to
attack and where PDSes and ship batteries could engage fighters, the
PDS any within range and all PDS groups on a sihp attacked *each*
incoming fighter group. It was more book-keeping intensive, but it
made the existing SSDs make sense.

If the construction system allows soapies, if fighters can form large
masses, if fighter advantage of only a few groups becomes crushing,
and if ships with 2-4 PDS just are *not* a sensible design, then the
existing mechanics are broken. The only fix that I've seen address
these issues has been more complicated, but deals with all of the
major aspects of the broken-ness of the existing FT fighter model.

PDS attack all fighter groups: Makes lower PDS per ship make sense.
Also makes super massive fighter waves a super source of fighter
casualties. Soapies make less sense. Some fighters can be effective
(even 1-4 groups) but a pile of fighters is not dominating vs. a pile
of equivalent CPV of ships.

Fighters burn endurance to attack and to avoid PDS fire: Limits the
amount of times fighters can effectively attack new ships without
being cut apart with PDS.

Batteries can fire at fighters: Not very effective, but every bit of
counter-fighter fire helps.

Fire at loitering fighters: Encourages fighters to stay further away.
If they want to make secondary moves, burns their precious endurance.

Tom
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