Uhm no statistically the hit rolls are anything but accurate. If you look on SFA you will notice an option to reduce PD effectiveness by -1, that came from me pointing out the average of 90,70,50,30 is 60.
I was talking about the statistical accuracy of combining the 2 fighter-kill shots into a single shot, not Dx's anti-missile performance. I 100% agree that 4 on 7 for "D" is too high. It also doesn't really leave a lot of room for upgrades when the TL3 version starts out so capable. I've already intended on having TL3 "D" start with a 4 on 6 performance. Heck, if anything, one could argue that a 60% performance is a little high, given that the unrevised 3E's version of "D" had a performance of only 50%, when it used all 5 of its shots.
The Dx anit-fighter chart over-estimates the kill chance but denys the defender the 25% chance of killing 2 fighters. Arguments about reducing the die rolls I find amusing given the number of dice we used to accumulate to do major battles.
Paul, Have you done a statistical check on the probabilities of taking 2 shots using the old Di Fighter Kill line against a single target to produce the likelihood that the fighter will be killed? I have, and I can tell you that the Dx to-hit line in 3rdR DOES accurately represent those probabilities. The only range where there's a slight error is at range 4, where the to-hit on 3rdR's version of Dx is "3", when technically it should be "2". However, it's clear to me that given that the to-hit at range 3 was 4 and the to-hit at range 5 was 2, that Marvin wanted to smooth the to-hit curve with a '3' at range 4, which I think is not unreasonable.
As for denying players the chance for shots at 2 different targets, I agree, it is a loss. I understand why marvin did it, but i hate how it produced a single to-hit line that was so ridiculously over-powered. Of course, I don't think that Dx (or Dcx) should have ever gotten 2 fighter-kill shots to begin with.
You have the F which works well with missiles and skips nothing. You have the E to skip armour and the L to skip shields, neither of which work well with missiles (excepting the L and LTx). At some point a penetrating weapon is just more valuable. I swiss cheesed the assaulting Rigillian escorts with the Pc's from the bases when playing "Wall of Fire, Wall of Steel." As passive amounts increase the value of that goes through the roof. These were not "precison hits" any more than the carrier killer bases or ships would be. The Auger bug design is a perfectly sensible late game assault ship...its Pc's will destroy anything near the warp point regardless of the level of passives. But I see no reason to have 3 flavours of the same weapon...since a penetrating laser, energy beam and force beam are identical in effect unless you do the 4thE sillyness which makes the Lp the icing on the "lasers are better if only slightly" cake.
I wouldn't say that E-beams don't work well with missiles. if missiles can strip the shields of a target as an E-beam ship is closing to beam range, it will save said E-beam ship from having to knock down those shields before it gets a chance to start skipping Armor. But you're 100% correct about Lasers not having any synergy with missiles, except perhaps laser torps.
As for penetrating weapons, yes, as the density of passives increases, so too does the value of penetrating weapons. (BTW, at least ion 3E, it's worth noting that N-beams cannot penetrate shields.) I think that this is a reason why in 4E, penetrating weapons don't automatically just outright ignore all passives, or E-beams ignoring armor, ot lasers ignoring shields. They can ignore some passives before the density of those shields forces them to do some damage to passives. Honestly, I'm not sure if this is or is not a good idea for Cosmic.
Of course, with lasers, you have anti-laser armor, which doesn't exist in 4E, and Ebeams may have to contend with overload dampeners (if mounted), which also don't exist in 4E. But nothing stops primaries as we well know. So, yes, as passives get more dense, the value of ignoring those dense passives becomes greater. Hence the value of fighter primaries (whether you like them or not). fP are a deadly upgrade to fighter fire power, and perhaps an unbalancing one.
As for not seeing any reason for different flavors of penetrating weapons, well, I do. Flavor. 4E assumes that weapons development will occur in some very distinct tech trees, which is a logical historical concept (though it can complicate things). But 3E never used that concept. Within the paradigm of tech trees, it makes all the sense in the world to me to have a flavor of penetrating weapon for each of the basic beam weapons trees (L, E, and F). it also allows someone who is roleplaying their race and has focused on, say, particle beam technology (of which E-beams are a part) to develop a penetrating beam based on that technology, rather than have to give up role-playing and meta-game his empire into developing a weapon outside of said empire's greatly preferred area of beam weapon technology. That is why I support having multiple penetrating beam weapons. And it's a reason that I find to be highly logical.
I can understand back before the advanced passives were in play that the point of the rule was to limit the use of anti-matter on XO racks or fighters to prevent an alpha strike wipe out effect but that is no longer the case as anti-matter has been toned down in damage and better point defences and passives have made even XO launches less dangerous. It is a game rule that was put in place to prevent a problem that no longer exists due to other changes so far as I can see.
No, this is absolutely 100% not true, Paul.
The reason that anti-matter on XO racks explodes and destroys the ship is because I told Dave that that's exactly what would happen!!! He already had included rules for AM magazine explosions taking out the ship, but he'd overlooked the fact that the same thing would happen when AM-tipped missiles were destroyed in XO racks. There was never a word of discussion about the impact of the rule regarding fighter strikes, etc. It was entirely 100% about realism (at least within the pseudo reality of 3E as Dave Weber and, to a lesser extent, I perceived it).
I know, I was there. I discussed it with Dave over the phone and he was aghast that he'd overlooked the danger of XO mounted AM missiles, which he corrected quickly.
Di is according to the description a point defence where the anti-missile missiles have been removed to add in more laser systems. I'm not a big fan of the system as I see no reason why regular point defence systems would find fighters anything but big, slow, easy to kill targets but whatever. It is clearly not a software update. I just find the name a bit ironic..."improved point defence" ...yeah sure.
What description are you reading for Di? Here's the description right out of unrevised 3E.
IMPROVED POINT DEFENSE (Di)
The strikefighter threat created dreadful problems for fleet defense officers, and one response was the creation of "Di" by modifying the sensors and software of a standard "D" to provide enhanced anti-fighter performance.
There's nothing in there about removing the counter-missiles. Nothing at all.
As for the "Di" name, well, you can't really blame that on Dave Weber, since it was created in 1st edition's STARFIRE II: STRIKEFIGHTER, before DW arrived on the Starfire scene.
As for canonical...I assume you have Webber's permission to use his universe? If you don't have it (in writing) from him, it is likely a good thing you have stopped considering using the official history in cosmic. I'm not a lawyer but I would be very very very surprised if you could use even the timeline in ISF without permission and not face eventual consiquences. Marvin got really lucky when he released ISW4 that Webber chose not to go after him legaly (you could say he got lucky that Webber is a reasonable guy...nice guy...whatever). At least my assumption is that it was Marvin as I can't see who else it could have been at that point...but if not him than someone else got really lucky.
Actually, SDS doesn't need Dave Weber's permission to use the game history. Only the characters are his. The history belongs to Starfire. This has been discussed before.
As for ISW4, it was actually written by Dave Weber. The problem was very much an honest one, not any attempt by Marvin to hose Dave. TFG had passed along the manuscript to Marvin when he's bought the rights to Starfire, and I think that Marvin had wrongly assumed that DW had been paid for the work, or whatever. Could DW have sued? Probably, but the legal costs would have almost certainly outweighed any potential return that could have gained. This was actually all explained in a post by DW in some newsgroup posting over 10 years ago... DW never blamed Marvin for the oversight from what I understand.
Furthermore, even when I'd intended on working within the Canonical history, I wasn't going to do anything with the Terrans, Orions, Gorm, etc. My focus would have been on the Star Union (my creation) and its various conflicts with totally new races, both in the past and moving forward. (Well, except for the First Crucian-Arachnid War, which of course would have included the Bugs...)
But still, I won't say that you're entirely wrong insofar as using a new history would make moot even the slightest potential for legal issues. That's not my reason for doing it, but I won't deny that it's a convenient secondary effect.
Also the aftermaths of those battles...after I started playing starfire regularily the first thing that became apparent is that the aftermath of the scenario is written utterly without any relationship to the battle outcome probable based on the game rules. We played a number of stars at war scenarios...I don't recall a single one where the battle outcome was similar to what was written. One of the most absurd involved slow, laser armed cruisers fighting faster force beam armed ships. We only tried to play one ISW4 battle so I can't say for those...they are too big to actually fight out. The one we tried was the first real battle of ISW4 (the one where the TFN task force first encounters the bug plasma guns) so it is a small one and it was just too much. Stars at War is an entertaining mini-novel...and the stories in it are interesting in themselves (such as the one about the TFN task force investigating the missing ships at the start of ISW3) that lead to interesting scenarios but the outcomes bear no relasionship to the game mechanics. But this is pretty much largely true of Crusade and the two ISW4 books...they are set in the starfire universe but they aren't starfire the game.
I appreciate the feedback on these things Paul. I think that the problem you point out is due to a lack of proper playtesting.
I can tell you this... the battle between the Bugs, Alliance SF19, and the Star Union at the very start of The Shiva Option should play out very much like described in the book, and I'll tell you exactly why. I created a scenario for that battle, then played it out, and wrote up what happened and passed it along to Dave Weber, who accurately portrayed the battle's results as I described them to him... including how the opening volleys from the Crucian SDF's destroyed 3 out of the 4 Bug command datalink ships. I randomly chose which BC's were targeted and as luck would have it, 3 of the command ships get targeted. No favorites were played by me when I played out the scenario.
Regardless, the best way to make sure that scenarios turn out the way you script them is to play them out to verify that things work as you want them to. And then make whatever adjustments are necessary.