Opinion on SBMHAWK house rules

[Hawkeye]

The thing is that some of the underlying pseudo-science of 3E apparently assumes that drive fields attenuate beam weapons to some degree ... which is why fighter beam weapons cannot be mounted on starships.  Their beams are designed to work through a much weaker fighter's DF, not a starship's DF.  (Of course, it would be a fair question to ask why couldn't a fighter beam weapon work just as well on a buoy, which should also have a weak drive field.  And I think that the logical answer would be that ftr beams probably should be able to work well enough on buoys since DF attenuation shouldn't be an issue in this case.)  The same thing is true of fighter ordnance, like fR and fighter missiles.  They're designed to function through a fighter's weaker DF rather than a starship's vastly stronger one.

Um, if a starships drive field would prevent a fighter weapon from firing from the inside out, how come, then, that the fighter weapons can hurt a starship trough that drive field from the outside in?

[crucis]

Um, if a starship's drive field would prevent a fighter weapon from firing from the inside out, how come, then, that the fighter weapons can hurt a starship through that drive field from the outside in?

LOL, that's a great question, hawkeye.  I didn't write the pseudo-science stuff for 3rdR.  I'll have to go back and read it more closely to see if that fine point is addressed.  ...

OK, here's what the pseudo-science on this topic says.

Large spacecraft drive fields do affect weapons fire of all types, including beam weapons.  It takes a very powerful weapon to overcome the resistance, and for beam weapons, the diffusing effect of their own drive field.  A fighter or small craft can deliver damage similar to a large spacecraft weapon using much less energy, since its own active drive field produces less interference.  Since drive fields are generated at a distance from the spacecraft, but this distance is usually much less than the distance to the target of the weapon, any interference with the weapon's path or focus while heading away from the firing unit will have more effect on the power of the weapon than such diffusion effects from striking the field just prior to hitting the target.  Thus, any fighter weapon which would be mounted on a large spacecraft would fail to do effective damage.

The key point seems to be what's in bold face.   Seems sort of lame, but in some many words, the interference seems to be worse going out than coming in.

[Erik L]

LOL, that's a great question, hawkeye.  I didn't write the pseudo-science stuff for 3rdR.  I'll have to go back and read it more closely to see if that fine point is addressed.  ...

OK, here's what the pseudo-science on this topic says.

The key point seems to be what's in bold face.   Seems sort of lame, but in some many words, the interference seems to be worse going out than coming in.

Why not just say the weapons are calibrated to the field's harmonics?

[crucis]

Hawkeye (and everyone else), it took a while but it finally sunk in as to what I think was meant in the pseudo-science quote.  So let's try this again.

Large spacecraft drive fields do affect weapons fire of all types, including beam weapons.  It takes a very powerful weapon to overcome the resistance, and for beam weapons, the diffusing effect of their own drive field.  A fighter or small craft can deliver damage similar to a large spacecraft weapon using much less energy, since its own active drive field produces less interference.  Since drive fields are generated at a distance from the spacecraft, but this distance is usually much less than the distance to the target of the weapon, any interference with the weapon's path or focus while heading away from the firing unit will have more effect on the power of the weapon than such diffusion effects from striking the field just prior to hitting the target. Thus, any fighter weapon which would be mounted on a large spacecraft would fail to do effective damage.

When the quote refers to "interference" it should be read as "attenuate".  If the drive field attenuates a beam on the way in, the distance left before the beam hits the target is minimal and the attenuation will also be minimal.  But a beam that is attenuated on the way out (from the ship where the beam was fired), the distance from the firing unit to the target unit is vastly greater and the beam will have had all that distance to have its effects reduced by attenuation.

Thus, it is entirely logical that a less powerful beam weapon fired from a unit with a less powerful drive field attenuating the beam can still produce damage that's in a somewhat similar scale to a more powerful weapon fired from a unit with a starship grade drive field.  By this same logic, if you could fire a starship grade beam weapon from a fighter, it might arguably be even more powerful and destructive than when fired from the starship because the fighter's far weaker DF would have caused less attenuation of the beam's effects.  Furthermore, this is probably also why the beam weapons fired from buoys may be as destructive as starship grade weapons but at a far less size ... because the buoy's own tiny station-keeping drive causes far less attenuation than a starship's own DF.

All that gobbledy-gook said (which does now seem quite logical to me), I think that one could still question whether beam buoys and their beams are too small for their effect, or alternatively whether beam buoys should be limited to fighter-scale beams and keep the buoys at the same size.  Of course, the initial beam buoys show up a few TL's before fighter weapons, so it'd probably be more logical to simply upscale the buoys to a size that made some more sense within the paradigm I described above.

[Paul M (OP)]

Look lets cut through the "organic byproducts normally found on the south side of a northward proceeding male bovine" can we.

Starfire's technology is magic.  And should be treated as magic:  there may be from time to time logical consistancies in how things are causaly related but often enough they just occur.

There is no logical reason for the existance of pods because I can't trace any engineering chain of development that lets me develop them at TL9 and not TL8.  That they require a HAWK missile implies they have to be after TL8 but that is all.  There is no justification that a pod fired missile is not given a -5 to hit exactly the same way as a missile fired into a blind spot is.  I can not from any sort of engineering or laws of physics principle determine why a SBMHAWK1 has 3 missiles, a SBMHAWK2 has 6 and a SBMHAWK3 has 8, and so on.

The same is true of IDEW.  How come I can do that and not minuratize my main guns on a ship?  I don't know.  Why can they fire every 30 min...what happens if I made their capacitor bank larger?

And so on.  The rules in 3rdR grew out of a game that was never intended to be anything but scenarios you fought.  The whole empire development thing is a cludge on top.  4th edition attempted with varying degrees of success to develop a basis but at the end of the day for that to work you need to establish the rules of reality and live with the consiquences and that is never done.  Instead the effort was made to make the psuedobabble justify the existing rules...work that does not as the green rubber muppet might say.

I have no interest in discussions on the "logic" of magic since it is fundamentally illogical or else it would not be magic.  The same is true of Starfire's technology.  Strikefighters exist because they exist and that is because someone thought they were a neat idea based on the popularity of Star Wars.  They have the rules they do because that makes them like air craft fighting ships because someone else thought that was a neat idea for the ISW3 scenarios.  Pods, IDEW, MF and Gunboats exist for the same reasons and if the game was nothing more than fixed scenarios this would be completely acceptable since the force mix is given and I would assume balanced.  But in starfire campaigns that external balancing doesn't exist and the internal balancing doesn't seem to be "optimized."

In 4th Edition a lot of effort has been made to fix some or most of these issues.  It is why I inevitably suggest it to anyone who is a new player.  It is still magic but it is more like Ars Magica's magic where there is a system involved rather than just random stuff happening when you wave your hands such as in D&D.  The UTM was a start to do this with Starfire 3rdR and they did a good job on things like missile effects/costs or ECM or tractor beam rules but they didn't do anything to change the development costs and other things that affect campaign play in 3rdR.

The point isn't so much if the AW or armed SC are not logical...you can if you want them to exist, justify them.  At the same time you can logically justify their lack of existance...but given there is no coherent laws to the starfire universe, how do you say which is correct definitively?  It is like arguing about the whichness of why.   I personally don't think strikefighters are sensible, and I have said so multiple times, but I still use them in Starfire (I'm a rigillian fan boy I guess).   The SCN can't use fighters but they can use apn and gunboats and will do so.  My personal opinion does not change how I deploy something in the game...that is based on how it effectiveness can be maximized.  I do though from time to time get my panties in a knot about if this is at all good for the game.  But that comes about because I think it is not, not because I don't like a system.  I like IDEW and MF (at least when I am defending) but that doesn't mean I don't see there is a problem if they are too easy to build and deploy.

[Paul M (OP)]

The whole "the drive field affects weapon fire ..." thing is not supported by the game mechanics.

Beam weapons do fixed damage regardless of the state of the drivefield of the unit firing.  A ship at full power does x damage at range y.  A ship at station keeping mode does x damage at range y.  A base does x damage at range y.  A space station does x damage at range y.  A pdc on a moon does x damage at range y.  A ship with no drive field present does x damage at range y.  IDEWa which have no drive field do x damage at range y.  A drive field down ship firing on another drive field down ship/base/moon PDC doesn't change the situation any either.  Nor is a fighter laser employed by a drive field down small craft any more powerful then that of a drive field up small craft.  Fighters for some reason or another cannot drop their drivefields if memory serves.  Gunboat equiped fL do exactly the same damage as fighter equiped fL even though the drivefield of the gunboat is considerably stronger than a fighter (based on detection range).  Fighter generation does not affect the fL damage even though I would assume each generation of fighter has a stronger drive field (as the fighters are faster).  Nor is pn2/apn fL fire any different than fighter fire even though the pinnances have also a stronger drive field (as it can protect the pinnance in a warp transit).  A ship with tactical (J) engines does x damage at range y.

Summary:  a beam weapon, with the execption of the fG, does the same damage at the same range against any eligable target regardless of the state of the two objects drive fields (firing object or target object). 

I still don't see why I can not mount a fighter laser on a IDEW buoy.  Then I have a system that fires every turn and does 1 pt of laser damage to a target inside of 4 hexes from the buoy. 

[crucis]

Look lets cut through the "organic byproducts normally found on the south side of a northward proceeding male bovine" can we.

Starfire's technology is magic.  And should be treated as magic:  there may be from time to time logical consistancies in how things are causaly related but often enough they just occur.

There is no logical reason for the existance of pods because I can't trace any engineering chain of development that lets me develop them at TL9 and not TL8.  That they require a HAWK missile implies they have to be after TL8 but that is all.  There is no justification that a pod fired missile is not given a -5 to hit exactly the same way as a missile fired into a blind spot is.  I can not from any sort of engineering or laws of physics principle determine why a SBMHAWK1 has 3 missiles, a SBMHAWK2 has 6 and a SBMHAWK3 has 8, and so on.

As for missile pods, HAWK, and blindspots, I'd probably say that missile pods should probably have blind spots lust like starships and probably say that pods would only target units not in their blind spots, and leave it at that.  The only reason I can imagine for not having blind spots on missile pods is that with so many pods, it may just be easier to ignore blindspots when firing hundreds of pods worth of missiles... which would obviously be a gameplay reason, not a science based reason.


As for the # of missiles per pod, I tend to agree with you.  But in an environment where pods fire volleys of unlimited sizes, pod size doesn't really seem to be much of an issue on combat itself.  Now, if pods were firing in "squadrons" of limited numbers of pods, then obviously pods with larger missile capacities would be of greater value, as would being able to link greater numbers of pods.  The one limitation on pod capacity that does come to mind is how many missile tubes can one build into a missile pods while keeping the pod small enough to continue to be considered a "small unit".

The same is true of IDEW.  How come I can do that and not miniaturize my main guns on a ship?  I don't know. 

 

I explained my this was the case in my previous post.  You may not like the pseudo-science BS, but it's the operative PS-BS in the game and it does provide the reason within the game for why you can't use, for example, fighter beam packs in starship XO racks.  (I see that you've addressed this in a follow-on post.  I'll address your follow on points there.)

Why can they fire every 30 min...what happens if I made their capacitor bank larger?

I agree that in real life, this is a VERY legit question.  But this is a p&p game, not a computer game, and we can't support a model where someone just comes along and wants to build a slightly larger buoy with a larger capacitor to get better beam buoy performance.  We'd end up with many dozens, ir not hundreds, of variations of every weapon in sight when people wanted to tweak this or that detail about their favorite weapon.  At some point, you have to say that enough's enough and rule that will only be limited variations of weapons to try to keep some sanity in the game.

And so on.  The rules in 3rdR grew out of a game that was never intended to be anything but scenarios you fought. 

This simply isn't true.  Task Force Games published a set of strategic rules for 1st edition (STARFIRE III: EMPIRES), so clearly they intended for strategic rules to be a part of the game, long before DW wrote 3rd edition.

I have no interest in discussions on the "logic" of magic since it is fundamentally illogical or else it would not be magic.  The same is true of Starfire's technology.  Strikefighters exist because they exist and that is because someone thought they were a neat idea based on the popularity of Star Wars.  They have the rules they do because that makes them like air craft fighting ships because someone else thought that was a neat idea for the ISW3 scenarios.  Pods, IDEW, MF and Gunboats exist for the same reasons and if the game was nothing more than fixed scenarios this would be completely acceptable since the force mix is given and I would assume balanced.  But in starfire campaigns that external balancing doesn't exist and the internal balancing doesn't seem to be "optimized."

Incorrect.  I know exactly why GB's came to exist because I invented them.  Not in their final form, but my idea for GB's and their reason for existing was the basis for the GB's that came to be written into the ISW4 rules.  I created the idea for gunboats because I did not want ISW4 to be a repeat of the Theban War where only one side had fighters and the other had no fighters or a decent counter tech.  And since we had decided that Bugs couldn't do fighters for physiological reasons, the idea for a somewhat larger, multi-being craft that could be a less than perfect counter to fighters came into being.

Furthermore, I'd say that to some degree, various technologies came into being because DW was "telling a story" within the game, and the various technologies were elements in that story, so to speak.  But i'd also say that because if this, sometimes things appeared at TL's that seem more linked to where they fell in his "story" than they do with where they would more logically seem to belong relative to our understanding of the overall tech tables and so forth. 

Missile pods might be an example of this, and there are probably others.  Heck, if you were to ask why one couldn't develop a CAM pod at TL9, it would be a very fair question to me.  Or for that matter, why are pods so missile specific?  Why shouldn't any 3 csp missile be able to be launched from a missile pod that can fire 3 csp missiles?

In 4th Edition a lot of effort has been made to fix some or most of these issues.  It is why I inevitably suggest it to anyone who is a new player.  It is still magic but it is more like Ars Magica's magic where there is a system involved rather than just random stuff happening when you wave your hands such as in D&D.  The UTM was a start to do this with Starfire 3rdR and they did a good job on things like missile effects/costs or ECM or tractor beam rules but they didn't do anything to change the development costs and other things that affect campaign play in 3rdR.

That's because the UTM is strictly a technical manual that doesn't go into other areas that would have been nice to see tweaked and improved.  (I won't comment any further on this point as it's a rathole that's best avoided for reasons I think any veteran of the Starfire List would understand.)

 

The point isn't so much if the AW or armed SC are not logical...you can if you want them to exist, justify them.  At the same time you can logically justify their lack of existence ... but given there is no coherent laws to the starfire universe, how do you say which is correct definitively? 

I won't disagree with this statement, except to say that the EC18 pseudo-science article does provide for the most part the "laws" that govern 3E tech.  You may not think that they're coherent.  That's your choice.  But they do exist.

It is like arguing about the whichness of why.   

 

That's a cute turn of a phrase.  Kudos. 

I personally don't think strikefighters are sensible, and I have said so multiple times, but I still use them in Starfire (I'm a rigillian fan boy I guess).   The SCN can't use fighters but they can use apn and gunboats and will do so.  My personal opinion does not change how I deploy something in the game...that is based on how it effectiveness can be maximized.  I do though from time to time get my panties in a knot about if this is at all good for the game.  But that comes about because I think it is not, not because I don't like a system.  I like IDEW and MF (at least when I am defending) but that doesn't mean I don't see there is a problem if they are too easy to build and deploy.

Have you ever considered trying to create a set of house rules for something mirroring 4E-style AWs into your campaign to replace the 3E ones?  Or does your use of SFA prevent you from doing this?

[crucis]

The whole "the drive field affects weapon fire ..." thing is not supported by the game mechanics.

I didn't say that it was a perfect and thoroughly well thought out piece of pseudo-science.  I just copied what was in the EC18 article.

Beam weapons do fixed damage regardless of the state of the drivefield of the unit firing.  A ship at full power does x damage at range y.  A ship at station keeping mode does x damage at range y.  A base does x damage at range y.  A space station does x damage at range y.  A pdc on a moon does x damage at range y.  A ship with no drive field present does x damage at range y.  IDEWa which have no drive field do x damage at range y.  A drive field down ship firing on another drive field down ship/base/moon PDC doesn't change the situation any either.  Nor is a fighter laser employed by a drive field down small craft any more powerful then that of a drive field up small craft.  Fighters for some reason or another cannot drop their drivefields if memory serves.  Gunboat equiped fL do exactly the same damage as fighter equiped fL even though the drivefield of the gunboat is considerably stronger than a fighter (based on detection range).  Fighter generation does not affect the fL damage even though I would assume each generation of fighter has a stronger drive field (as the fighters are faster).  Nor is pn2/apn fL fire any different than fighter fire even though the pinnances have also a stronger drive field (as it can protect the pinnance in a warp transit).  A ship with tactical (J) engines does x damage at range y.

I will say that I think that the above paragraph sort of provides its own answer.  The game cannot seriously attempt to provide different damage lines for the same weapon in multiple firing scenarios, because you'd end up with pages upon pages of damage lines.

So I suppose that I'd say that at some point, one has to accept that things are less than perfect and move on because it's a game, not a NASA simulation.

I still don't see why I can not mount a fighter laser on a IDEW buoy.  Then I have a system that fires every turn and does 1 pt of laser damage to a target inside of 4 hexes from the buoy. 

While conceptually, this might be possible...

a) I don't think that buoys would have the power generation capacity of a fighter that could allow them to fire every single turn  (maybe every 5th turn?). After all, they only need station keeping drives. 

And before you say, why can't you mount in better power generators, I've already answered that in the previous post.  We can't allow seemingly infinite variations on weapons of the game would be thousands of pages long.  Furthermore, there are game balance issues to consider and I'm not sure that allowing a beam buoy that could fire a fL or a fL2 once a turn every turn would be good for game balance.


b) Given that fL is a TL9 item, such a buoy could not exist until at least TL10.  That said, it wouldn't be unfair to wonder why a laser that was functionally equivalent to fL, though not truly a "fL" module, couldn't be developed at an earlier TL strictly for beam buoy use.  Of course, if this was done there would be someone asking why couldn't they mount that weapon on their starships, particularly their small starships.  It's a never-ending circular complaint.

[Paul M (OP)]

You can't seriously be telling me that the EC18 BS explains something when the explaination fails to be accounted for in the rules of the game are you?  This is exactly what I meant by there are consiquences and inevitably the consiquiences are ignored.  If this than that...only the "than that" never is taken into account.  Which makes the "if" rather more or less "because that is the way it is."  So you are back to magic:  it works that way because that is the way it works.

It was that starfire III set of campaign rules that I first played starfire under but the basic game was intended to be played with scenarios for which it is relatively balanced.  As I recall we didn't even have courier drones and the SM had to introduce his own system (drone launcher or something like that) he was plenty miffed whent he official one came out.  Up to 4thE the campaign rules were special sause added on top of the scenarios...4thE is written from the point of view of a player based campaign.

If you were the originator of the GB then how is it not what I said?  You had a good idea (or bad one if you don't much like 5000 GB battles) and said ok lets give them: "speed this, and weapons that and endurance whatever and ..." It isn't like anyone seriously sat down and worked out if such a beast was possible under starfire engineering.  The values of things are chosen for balance or other reasons not because technology limits you to something.  They could have had speed 10 and an endurance of 5 days for example if that had been acceptable balance wise.  Is there some reason you can't mount 2 CAMs on them rather than 4 AFHAWK or SMs?  If you look at an aurora fighter/pinnance/small craft/parasite/battlerider they are designed exactly like a ship, they follow exactly the same rules as a ship, they are only constructed using fighter factories if they are small enough rather than shipyards.  But beyond that one thing they follow the same rules as a ship.  That is what doesn't happen in Starfire where all the AW are anomalies that show up out of the blue heaven with special rules to cover them.

Back on pods...I'm not talking about firing in the pods blindspot...I mean the pod provides no guidance and the missile is flying the whole distance with its terminal guidance package.  When a ship does this with a HAWK missile (by firing into its blind spot) the missiles are -5 to hit...when pods do it there is no -5 to hit.  Why?  It can't be the pods provide guidance because it is clear that if 1 SBMHAWK pod is presented with 3 eligable targets it engages all three targets with a single missile...and the pod doesn't have Mx of any sort.  Nor is there a rules about over target limit...so either a pod has Mx built in...and M3 costs more than the pod..or else is it isn't providing guidance, which I have to admit seems to be the way they are supposed to work since otherwise you don't need "HAWK" missiles.  The rules suggest that the missiles are flying under their HAWK system, which gives a -5 to hit when not used in conjunction with shipboard fire control and updates; except when this is done by a pod.

If "x" then "y" would be my preference...not if "x" then "y" except in the case of "w" or "z" or "a" or "b" where use "v."  In starfire w,z,a, or b is likely to be a small craft, or AW.

My point about pods has always been about game balance.  I'm not serious about the fL on an IDEW...I'm using that to point out that if you want to say "logically" these things should exist you open yourself up to the fact that "logically" things should exist that perhaps never occured to you and that when you see them cause you to go "Oh MY GOD NO!!"  My arguments have been largely that most of these AW end up being bad for game balance when the only thing limiting them is money to build them.  I've been asking for ways to make them more "balanced" not arguing they should not exist.  If I think they are sensible or not is a different matter but not what I am talking about...they exist in the game.

And yes because we use SFA we have some issues that show up due to the limitations of Steve's software.  It isn't so easy to change stuff, though Starslayer can modify a fair number of things.  And ultimately what I was asking was for peoples input for house rules to make the pods less devasting I WIN buttons when the RM unleashes them on the unsuspecting infidel.  I thought this was abundently clear...

[Starslayer_D]

Heh, well, Steve provided ways to add weapons and tech systems to the tables.. just woe to you if the next update came out. And seeing how TRP and LWH are disapearing from magazines again.. amunition and some other things don't fare quite as well.

[crucis]

You can't seriously be telling me that the EC18 BS explains something when the explanation fails to be accounted for in the rules of the game are you?  This is exactly what I meant by there are consequences and inevitably the consequences are ignored.  If this than that...only the "than that" never is taken into account.  Which makes the "if" rather more or less "because that is the way it is."  So you are back to magic:  it works that way because that is the way it works.

It was that starfire III set of campaign rules that I first played starfire under but the basic game was intended to be played with scenarios for which it is relatively balanced.  As I recall we didn't even have courier drones and the SM had to introduce his own system (drone launcher or something like that) he was plenty miffed whent he official one came out.  Up to 4thE the campaign rules were special sauce added on top of the scenarios...4thE is written from the point of view of a player based campaign.

I'd say that a very large portion of the new tech introduced by DW in 3E started out as house rules in his own campaigns.  I have a rather fair amount of his old tech stuff from back then that he sent me that I also used in my own games.

Also, I don't know if you realize it or not, but both the 3E tactical and strategic rules were written as a single combined set of rules.  They were sold as 2 separate products because Task Force Games wanted to do so to make more money selling them separately, rather than as a unified whole.  But DW did write them as a single product.

If you were the originator of the GB then how is it not what I said?  You had a good idea (or bad one if you don't much like 5000 GB battles) and said ok lets give them: "speed this, and weapons that and endurance whatever and ..." It isn't like anyone seriously sat down and worked out if such a beast was possible under starfire engineering.  The values of things are chosen for balance or other reasons not because technology limits you to something.  They could have had speed 10 and an endurance of 5 days for example if that had been acceptable balance wise.  Is there some reason you can't mount 2 CAMs on them rather than 4 AFHAWK or SMs? 

Because on GB's those inline racks cannot be combined for mounting items larger than a single inline rack's capacity.  Simple as that.   Those inline racks are like a tube.  You can mount four 0.25 csp items or two 0.5 csp items or one 1 csp item.  But you cannot combine the capacities of two inline racks together.  That would be like wanting to fire a double sized (call it 2 csp) wet navy  torpedo and wanting to be able to launch it from a 1 csp torpedo tube.  It can't be done.  A 1 csp torp tube can only fire ordnance that's 1 csp or smaller, and you can't combine the capacities of two tubes to fire something larger.  And the same is true of inline GB racks.

(And yes, the idea of a 5,000 GB battle is appalling.)

As for the GB, honestly, I don't particularly like it in its official form.  It's too too easy to hit for my taste, and I don't like that it mounts point defense.  (I simply don't like PD on anything smaller than a starship.)

As for working out "if such a best was possibly under Starfire engineering", Starfire is a GAME, not a NASA simulation.  I'm not interested in needing a physics degree to know if Force beams are possible, or having to be a rocket scientist to figure out of gunboats are possible.

Back on pods...I'm not talking about firing in the pods blindspot...I mean the pod provides no guidance and the missile is flying the whole distance with its terminal guidance package.  When a ship does this with a HAWK missile (by firing into its blind spot) the missiles are -5 to hit...when pods do it there is no -5 to hit.  Why?  It can't be the pods provide guidance because it is clear that if 1 SBMHAWK pod is presented with 3 eligable targets it engages all three targets with a single missile...and the pod doesn't have Mx of any sort.  Nor is there a rules about over target limit...so either a pod has Mx built in...and M3 costs more than the pod..or else is it isn't providing guidance, which I have to admit seems to be the way they are supposed to work since otherwise you don't need "HAWK" missiles.  The rules suggest that the missiles are flying under their HAWK system, which gives a -5 to hit when not used in conjunction with shipboard fire control and updates; except when this is done by a pod.

Actually, IIRC, pods are not allowed to split their fire.

As for your line of reasoning regarding HAWK and a lack of guidance, I see where you're going, but missile pods' usefulness would drop considerably if all of their fire was at -5 to hit.  Thus, there must be some other factor below the radar screen that we're not seeing (which could be nothing more than handwavium, of course).

If "x" then "y" would be my preference...not if "x" then "y" except in the case of "w" or "z" or "a" or "b" where use "v."  In starfire w,z,a, or b is likely to be a small craft, or AW.

I agree with you ... to a degree.  I don't like lots of little rinky-dink exceptions and tech systems that are so complex that one needs multiple pages of rules just to make them function as intended.  The original "Dx" is one example.  Its original "partial datalink" capability required a lot of rules to make it function.  Cloaking in ECM3 is another example.  Pages of rules just to cover what really shouldn't need to be such a complex system.  Or SBM's with their silly loiter mode rules.  Just give me a 2nd generation cap missile with an upgrade to a range of 40 hexes instead.


But I don't really see fighters as an exception.  I'm not bothered by them requiring slightly different combat rules than starships, and if it takes a little bit of handwavium to get fighters into the game in a useful way, then so be it.  It's a game, not a NASA simulation.

However, I will agree that AW's seem to be a mish-mash of messy rules are rife with your w,z,a,b exceptions.  Of course, to some degree, there's little choice because AW's are just that ... automated.  And the rules must cover how that automation works for targeting those weapons.

[Hawkeye]

Sorry for the delay in combing back to you.

If that were the case, fighters would be all but useless.  And given that fighters are intended to be a superior weapon in Starfire, forcing fighters to just be small starships and be targeted on the normal starship vs starship weapons table would make them useless, and thus is a non-starter.

And that was the point, I was trying to make. Once you start to apply logic to the starfire rules, a lot of things would simply not make sense or be useless. But you (and me too, make no mistake about that) _want_ fighters to be there _and_ for them to be useful, so logic has to take a backseat.

When the quote refers to "interference" it should be read as "attenuate".  If the drive field attenuates a beam on the way in, the distance left before the beam hits the target is minimal and the attenuation will also be minimal.  But a beam that is attenuated on the way out (from the ship where the beam was fired), the distance from the firing unit to the target unit is vastly greater and the beam will have had all that distance to have its effects reduced by attenuation.

I am with Paul on this.
If this is the case (and you adress the bouy problem yourself in the part I cut from the quote), then not only buoys, but also bases, PDCs and ships with their drivefield down should make more damage.
And again, I am not arguing to introduce more rules to adress that. I don´t want a rule to cover every single eventuality. I have fun with 3rdR as is right now (even if some things don´t make a lot of sense) but it was you who asked for logical reasons for some things to not be possible.

I stand by what I said about buoys. It is simply unlogical that I can build a weapon for a buoy, that does regular damage, but is only 1/80 the size of that regular gun (not to mention that the buoy has also to carry some form of target aquisition gear, sensors and a frame to hold all that stuff.

If a force beam is 4 HS, then it is 4 HS, no matter where it is mounted.
I could see shaving off 1 HS for the fact that the buoy has a much smaller power plant and uses a large battery to power the gun, but not more (there is that _big_ battery and there still is a power plant, and of course, there still is the beam itself, not to mention the sensor/targeting gear).

If you ask me, how useful size-3 bouys would be, I can´t answer that, as I don´t have a lot of experience with them, but probably a lot less than now. The logistical effort to move hunderts of them around lets me shudder, as my standard FT-6 can now transport some 12 or 13 bouys per trip.

A similar thing with mines. A MF patters is supposed to be 50 individual mines. Those mines have a fusion warhead, an engine, that allows them to move 37.500km (half a tactical hex, assuming the MF is in the center of the hex), they also have station-keeping drives, short range sensors and a target aquisition/navigation system (otherwise, how can they hit a moving starship?)
Those 50 mines take up 0.2 Hull Spaces - realy? Why then is my regular Gun/Missile launcher, which is basicly the targeting system + launch rail for the missile, 3 HS in size? If the targeting system can be made so small, I´ll put them on my missiles and strap a couple thousand on the ouside of my small escorts - Macross missilestorm, here I come

Of course, that would totally break the game, so I don´t want that either

The point is: We want some things to be there and be useful, therefore they are in the game in a way that makes them useful, logic has not a whole lot to do with that. We might come up with arguments, why things are as they are, but that only comes in _after_ those things are already there. If you want stuff to stick to logic, it would have to be the other way around



And I say it again: Game balance beats laws of physics - as long as it is not too blatant, of course.

Because on GB's those inline racks cannot be combined for mounting items larger than a single inline rack's capacity.  Simple as that.   Those inline racks are like a tube.  You can mount four 0.25 csp items or two 0.5 csp items or one 1 csp item.  But you cannot combine the capacities of two inline racks together.  That would be like wanting to fire a double sized (call it 2 csp) wet navy  torpedo and wanting to be able to launch it from a 1 csp torpedo tube.  It can't be done.  A 1 csp torp tube can only fire ordnance that's 1 csp or smaller, and you can't combine the capacities of two tubes to fire something larger.  And the same is true of inline GB racks.

Ok, then _my_ race will build their gunboats with a single, size-4 rack (basicly, a huge tube and the gunboat is build around it, similar to how the A-10 is build around the GAU-8), giving me all the flexibility I can ever want

Of course, if we follow that wet-navy example, launching below-size ordnance goes right out the window, because I am pretty sure, you can´t launch a 53cm torp through a japanese long-lance 61cm tube

As for your line of reasoning regarding HAWK and a lack of guidance, I see where you're going, but missile pods' usefulness would drop considerably if all of their fire was at -5 to hit.  Thus, there must be some other factor below the radar screen that we're not seeing (which could be nothing more than handwavium, of course).

And there is your reason why pods, for logical reasons, shouldn´t exist because "there must be some other factor" is just hadwaving "it is as it is because that is how it is"

[Paul M (OP)]

You are correct pods are not allowed to split their fire.  My mistake it has been a while since I looked at the rules.

I would have assumed that the ISF and 3rd started as a single rule set given the numbering of things.  I didn't know that since the first rules I owned (rather than borrowed) were 3rdR and ISF.

As far as tech goes I developed a great deal for that campaign some which is oddly familier to me.  The 2xdamage from anti-matter missiles...at the time I felt pretty jipped by only getting 2x damage.  I also had an anti-proton beam that did 64-32-16-8-4-2-1 damage.  Plus anti-matter power generators for more powerful shields and weapons.  Then I ripped off black globe generators and shields that were impervious to all attacks (you could knock them down but no bypass them).  The problem with any of this stuff in Starfire is that you don't have a clue why something is what it is and so how do you extrapolate?

I just sent Starslayer my first thought on the F2, F3 and E2 and E3 (advanced 4 HS beam weapons).  But how do you determine what is an acceptable range, damage, and cost increase?  You can't because there is no logical relationship between these things.  4thE took this to the extreme and produces what I tend to think of as bland but nourishing gruel as I believe everything got spreadsheeted to death over damage per HS per MCr.

As for GB inline racks...I have no idea what they are.  They are described as some odd sort of organized Xo racks and I can't see why I can't stick a CAM on them.  It would certainly be more useful then 4 SM for anti-shipping use.  Against Dz or better point defence you need a 5000 GB strike to accomplish anything as you only get leakers through since 16 missiles will not overwhelm a datagroup composed of a ship larger than a FG.  Zi/Dz nerfs big time fighter missile and command datalink would render it impossible to engage with SM from GBs.  Ripple firing fMs assuming that you can then launch 64 fM's per data group...but I don't think ripple fire works that way for fM...if it did then I'd say at least then you have a chance to hit something.  But sending in fighters with fRAM is going to cost you a lot of fighters sending in GBs for fR attacks...I'd doubt you will get much back from them unless you snow the defender under in GBs...so we are back to 5000 GB strikes.

As far as hitting things goes it is no more difficult to hit a fighter than a starship.  The early fighters are not faster than CTs fully loaded.  The GB is only slightly faster than some fighters.  Hitting anything at 0.25 LS requires highly accurate pointing systems and missiles could care less as they are standoff weapons anyway.  But GB are considerably easier to hit than fighters under the current rules.  The point defence is pretty non-sensical but it helps to avoid them dieing in job lots to CM fire.  The pinance and assault shuttle get the "equivalent" of a point defence to represent their onboard weapons while the GB gets a real Dxz and that is a bit hard to accept.   I've used PGBs and they died fairly brutally and I rather doubt the more advanced ones do any better.  But given they are about the size of an EX I don't see why this should not be...killing swarms of EX is also not that hard.

I don't find swarm weapons of any nature make enjoyable battles, personal taste.

As for the -5 to hit reducing the effectiveness of pods...yeah they would would they not.  Strange but true it is pretty damned ineffective to be firing into your blindspot with your Wa...it makes "-HAWK" a bit of a joke (As in "Homing All the Way Killer" the last word should be Klutz or Komik or Katastrophe or anything basically but a word that implies the missile will hit something) and I'm thankful that it doesn't add to the price of missiles.  I'm not even sure it is worth 5000 MCr to develop it even.  50 MCr maybe but not more.  It is an utterly worthless technology so far as I can see...and AFMHAWK is even more of an absurd joke... -5 off the fighter to kill chart generally leaves you a 0 or less to hit.

As far as a simulation or needing a degree to play the game.  You most certainly don't.  But if you are developing the game you generate more consistant rules if first you work out the laws of the universe and then apply them...like say, for example, good SF writers do...CJ Cherryh had a nice article on how she did tech development for her Alliance history books. 

[crucis]

You are correct pods are not allowed to split their fire.  My mistake it has been a while since I looked at the rules.

Don't worry about it, Paul.  I had the benefit of having read the SBMHAWK rules a couple of days ago and remembering the one bit of trivia.   

As far as tech goes I developed a great deal for that campaign some which is oddly familiar to me.  The 2xdamage from anti-matter missiles...at the time I felt pretty jipped by only getting 2x damage.  I also had an anti-proton beam that did 64-32-16-8-4-2-1 damage.  Plus anti-matter power generators for more powerful shields and weapons.  Then I ripped off black globe generators and shields that were impervious to all attacks (you could knock them down but no bypass them).  The problem with any of this stuff in Starfire is that you don't have a clue why something is what it is and so how do you extrapolate?

I know what you mean.  I'm very, very hesitant to introduce anything that sounds too cheesy (not to mention too imbalancing).

I'm a bit wary of using any sort of anti-matter generators, because it seems like it would be like removing CRAM from magazines... You'd have a system in your ship which could destroy the entire ship if hit.  Now, on one hand, if the system was a single central generator that you could stuff deep in the bowels of your ship and wasn'tt like to get hit until the ship was all but destroyed anyways, well that might not be too bad.  But Starfire has assumed for quite some time (at least back to 3rdR) that all weapons, etc. mounted their own local power generators.  So, if this remained true, and each weapon was upgraded to include a local anti-matter generator, one could argue that any hit on a beam weapon might blow up the ship, and that seems rather unacceptable.  So either one assumes that any form of anti-matter generator must be a central system deep within the ship, or that no one develops AM generators because they feel that they're too great a risk on a starship.  Of course, one could also rationally argue that there's always someone willing to take that risk, at least as long as the likelihood of a catastrophic failure is reasonably low.  Frankly, it's an issue that I think that I'd prefer to sidestep, and find other rationales for improved beam performance, such as better fusion power plants, better lensing for focusing the beams, more powerful beam emitters, etc.

I just sent Starslayer my first thought on the F2, F3 and E2 and E3 (advanced 4 HS beam weapons).  But how do you determine what is an acceptable range, damage, and cost increase?  You can't because there is no logical relationship between these things.  4thE took this to the extreme and produces what I tend to think of as bland but nourishing gruel as I believe everything got spreadsheeted to death over damage per HS per MCr.

Yes, Marvin did put all that stuff in spreadsheets, and I think that it's a good starting point and the spreadsheets are a good tool.  But I agree with you that the 4E weapons are rather bland, and that's something that I want to avoid, if at all possible.  I don't particularly like how 3E beam weapons are so cookie-cutter in size, with standard beams being 4 HS and cap beams being 6 HS.  This started shifting some with the 5 HS 2nd Gen HET Laser.

I should point out that one shouldn't fiddle with the sizes of the beam weapons just because it looks neat to have beams of varying sizes.  Adjusting their sizes is a useful way to promote some semblance of balance.  That said, I certainly don't intend on going as far as in 4E where you see weapons fractional sizes.  That is going too far, IMO.

As for GB inline racks...I have no idea what they are.  They are described as some odd sort of organized Xo racks and I can't see why I can't stick a CAM on them.  It would certainly be more useful then 4 SM for anti-shipping use.  Against Dz or better point defence you need a 5000 GB strike to accomplish anything as you only get leakers through since 16 missiles will not overwhelm a datagroup composed of a ship larger than a FG.  Zi/Dz nerfs big time fighter missile and command datalink would render it impossible to engage with SM from GBs.  Ripple firing fMs assuming that you can then launch 64 fM's per data group...but I don't think ripple fire works that way for fM...if it did then I'd say at least then you have a chance to hit something.  But sending in fighters with fRAM is going to cost you a lot of fighters sending in GBs for fR attacks...I'd doubt you will get much back from them unless you snow the defender under in GBs...so we are back to 5000 GB strikes.

I don't see why you don't understand the description I gave you for inline racks.  It's not that complicated.  BUT!!! ... having said that, I agree with you 100% that a pair of CAM's would be much more useful than 4 SM's.  Fighters and GBs simply cannot fire large enough volleys once datalinked point defenses become available, particularly after command datalink is available.  6 ships worth of point defense is a daunting target even for command DG's of capital ships.  Fighters and GB's don't stand a chance with fM's, and are currently left with the only option of either ramming a FRAM assault down the enemy's throat or maybe trying to knife fight with fP or fL2 at around 3-4 hexes.

I think that giving fighters and GB's an option for a CAM-like "torpedo" like weapon would give them a better hope of survival.  FYI, I think of fR's as more like bombs that WW2 dive bombers would use rather than torpedoes.  And in an environment where ships are defended by AFMs, Dx(z) and Z2, FRAM strikes are pretty much suicidal.  Fighters really ought to have a better (and less suicidal) ordnance option than fR's.

As far as hitting things goes it is no more difficult to hit a fighter than a starship.  The early fighters are not faster than CTs fully loaded.  The GB is only slightly faster than some fighters.  Hitting anything at 0.25 LS requires highly accurate pointing systems and missiles could care less as they are standoff weapons anyway.  But GB are considerably easier to hit than fighters under the current rules.  The point defence is pretty non-sensical but it helps to avoid them dieing in job lots to CM fire.  The pinance and assault shuttle get the "equivalent" of a point defence to represent their onboard weapons while the GB gets a real Dxz and that is a bit hard to accept.   I've used PGBs and they died fairly brutally and I rather doubt the more advanced ones do any better.  But given they are about the size of an EX I don't see why this should not be...killing swarms of EX is also not that hard.

EX's don't exist in my mind.  There's never been even the slightest chance that they'd exist in Cosmic.

Also, there will be no point defense on any pn, ast, or GB in Cosmic.  If pn's and ast's need some sort of "weapon" to represent their ability to support ground troops, I think that it'd be best that they either have some innate ground attack value, as well as the ability to drop "bombs".  (More can probably be done on that front.)  But they won't have any "weapon' that lets them engage in space based combat.

As for GB's, I don't like how easy they are to hit.  Oh, I suppose that one might argue that GB's are some sort of seriously inferior cobbled together sort of technology (from the historical PoV, rather than our PoV).  But at this point I can't say what I'll do to address this, because I need to deal with fighters first, then adjust GB's accordingly.

I don't find swarm weapons of any nature make enjoyable battles, personal taste.

I certainly don't like swarms of starships, and have always intended on tweaking the rules to favor larger ships, such as having a single per-HS cost for warships and doing away with the 4 HS rebate in the construction rules.

Also, this is a big reason why I've always been very hesitant to include rules for allowing multiple ships to safely transit a WP if their total HS size was below the HS capacity of the WP, because it only serves to incentivize the use of swarms in WP assaults.

As for the -5 to hit reducing the effectiveness of pods...yeah they would, would they not.  Strange but true it is pretty damned ineffective to be firing into your blindspot with your Wa...it makes "-HAWK" a bit of a joke (As in "Homing All the Way Killer" the last word should be Klutz or Komik or Katastrophe or anything basically but a word that implies the missile will hit something) and I'm thankful that it doesn't add to the price of missiles.  I'm not even sure it is worth 5000 MCr to develop it even.  50 MCr maybe but not more.  It is an utterly worthless technology so far as I can see...and AFMHAWK is even more of an absurd joke... -5 off the fighter to kill chart generally leaves you a 0 or less to hit.

Actually, I thought that part of HAWK technology was that if a member of your datagroup could see the target your blindspot (i.e. wasn't in its blindspot), you took no penalty.  Essentially, handing off the targeting of ships in one's own BS to a datagroup member that could see the target cleanly.  Of course, the only way to be able to hand off targeting in this way would be to keep the ships in one's datagroups spread out, which might be nice for anti-ESF, but a pain for people who prefer to keep a DG's ships in the same hex for simpler maneuvering.

I suppose that a simplification of the HAWK tech rule would be to do away with the blind fire penalty, and only keep the hand-off rule.  Or scrap HAWK tech completely, which wouldn't really be that great a loss...

[crucis]

Sorry for the delay in coming back to you.

No prob.  I'm just glad to have more people being willing to comment. 

And that was the point, I was trying to make. Once you start to apply logic to the starfire rules, a lot of things would simply not make sense or be useless. But you (and me too, make no mistake about that) _want_ fighters to be there _and_ for them to be useful, so logic has to take a backseat.

I agree that trying to take logic too far on the Starfire rules exposes flaws.  OTOH, I don't think that it's a good thing to use that as an excuse to ignore logic entire in this regard.

I want fighters, though I do intend on tweaking them to try to address a few of their less than perfectly logical points.  Believe it or not, I enjoy these discussions.  I don't mind having people point out flaws in some of the tech systems or rules, as long as we can all be agreeable in our discussion.  Knowing where some flaws are, even if I'm aware of some of them, is a good starting point for figuring out how to tweak things to try to fix or minimize those flaws.

I am with Paul on this.
If this is the case (and you address the buoy problem yourself in the part I cut from the quote), then not only buoys, but also bases, PDCs and ships with their drive field down should make more damage.  And again, I am not arguing to introduce more rules to address that. I don´t want a rule to cover every single eventuality. I have fun with 3rdR as is right now (even if some things don´t make a lot of sense) but it was you who asked for logical reasons for some things to not be possible.

No problem, hawkeye.  No problem at all.  And I was glad to have Paul point out that glaring hole in the pseudo-science.  I'm trying to think of a way to deal with that hole, whether by tweaking the pseudo-science, or tweaking fighter beams, etc.

I stand by what I said about buoys. It is simply unlogical that I can build a weapon for a buoy, that does regular damage, but is only 1/80 the size of that regular gun (not to mention that the buoy has also to carry some form of target acquisition gear, sensors and a frame to hold all that stuff.

If a force beam is 4 HS, then it is 4 HS, no matter where it is mounted.
I could see shaving off 1 HS for the fact that the buoy has a much smaller power plant and uses a large battery to power the gun, but not more (there is that _big_ battery and there still is a power plant, and of course, there still is the beam itself, not to mention the sensor/targeting gear).

If you ask me, how useful size-3 bouys would be, I can´t answer that, as I don´t have a lot of experience with them, but probably a lot less than now. The logistical effort to move hundreds of them around lets me shudder, as my standard FT-6 can now transport some 12 or 13 buoys per trip.

It's comments like this, hawk, that may me wonder if buoys should use beams that are scaled to fighter size, power, and range, rather than starship size, power and range.  That way, smaller buoys can feel more rational. 

The point is: We want some things to be there and be useful, therefore they are in the game in a way that makes them useful, logic has not a whole lot to do with that. We might come up with arguments, why things are as they are, but that only comes in _after_ those things are already there. If you want stuff to stick to logic, it would have to be the other way around

I think that logic here is useful, but it shouldn't be the "end all and be all".

And I say it again: Game balance beats laws of physics - as long as it is not too blatant, of course.


Ok, then _my_ race will build their gunboats with a single, size-4 rack (basicly, a huge tube and the gunboat is build around it, similar to how the A-10 is build around the GAU-8), giving me all the flexibility I can ever want

Cute... a 16 csp mega-inline rack!  Seriously though, I could see someone in the canonical history wondering why they can't replace the 4 inline racks on a GB with 2 larger racks capable of launching 2 csp ordnance such as a CM or a CAM2.  This then gets into the question of what's really needed to launch missiles in the Starfire universe.   Is a launcher just a mass driver that kicks the missile out of the ship and beyond the DF's threshold before the missile's drive kicks in ... in which case one might argue that if said missile was floating in space, it might be able to fire up its drive and perform normally.  In which case, one might argue that you could put a CM or a CAM2 in a 2 csp GB inline rack and use it normally... except for the on question as to the details of how the missile launches from the GB.  Not sure if GB's have the internal equivalent of fXr or not, which would be an issue for CM's, but CAM2's would make really great weapons for GB's.... though in their present, easy to hit, form, it'd still be difficult to get CAM's into range.  But the thought of GB-launched CM's would be a nasty one ... except for one thing now that I think of it.  A 4 ship squadron of GB's could only fire 8 CM's, and most targets at their TL would probably not have much problem with a volley of 8 CM's.  OTOH, 8 CAM2's (with AAM warheads, of course) that could not be intercepted (and with AAM warheads) would be great ... for any GB's that survived to get into range to fire them.

Of course, if we follow that wet-navy example, launching below-size ordnance goes right out the window, because I am pretty sure, you can´t launch a 53cm torp through a japanese long-lance 61cm tube

Well, I see no reason why one couldn't create an adapter that would let you put that 53 cm torp in the 61 cm tube.  Of course, I don't know that engineering that goes into torps and their tubes, but I'd assume that those who do are smart to figure something out.