Author Topic: Draft Hull Table  (Read 7522 times)

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Offline procyon

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Re: Draft Hull Table
« Reply #15 on: April 27, 2010, 12:31:40 AM »
It seems hard to beleive people would be so against gen hull/advanced eng tech changing the hull sizes.  Anyone who compared a modern destroyer with a WW II destroyer would have to be blind to not see the difference in size (most modern DD's displace as much as a WW II cruiser in general).  The speeds aren't all that different, but the size sure is.
Oh well.  We will probably just house rule them in if they aren't there.  We like them.
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Offline procyon

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Re: Draft Hull Table
« Reply #16 on: June 16, 2010, 04:19:38 AM »
to crucis,

This question may have already been addressed over on the SDS site, but since I can't get to it (and drakar is off playing army for several weeks so I can't ask him), here it goes.

I like the idea of tying weapon tech to drive type, but not giving the J drive a SRW to go with the K might hamstring the J drive.  As I understand from the earlier post the J drive will be slightly faster but have a worse TM.  Giving a highly directional weapon to a ship with poor manueverability is just inviting the opponent to close to a range the J drive can't counter.  It has been my groups finding that J drive ships have it pretty rough with the large blindspot forcing them to turn constantly to keep ships out of their blindspot, allowing I ships to tear them apart.  If the J ship tries to run and use that speed advantage it can't fire.  When it turns to fire, the I ships rush in again.  The I ships spend a greater portion of the battle able to shoot, which is what it is all about.

If you give a J ship a weapon with a 240 degree blindspot and a worse turn mode than its opponent, well, I don't see folks jumping all over that option.  A powerful SRW would help them to keep that big blindspot from becoming the liability it looks like at the moment. (Perhaps some new SRW tied to the K that can fire through the blindspot but only works with J drives?  That would make them and the K much more attractive, but if the I and P can't use the SRW in their blindspot it wouldn't unbalance them to get it.  Just a thought...)
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Offline crucis (OP)

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Re: Draft Hull Table
« Reply #17 on: June 16, 2010, 10:51:46 AM »
Quote from: "procyon"
to crucis,

This question may have already been addressed over on the SDS site, but since I can't get to it (and drakar is off playing army for several weeks so I can't ask him), here it goes.

I like the idea of tying weapon tech to drive type, but not giving the J drive a SRW to go with the K might hamstring the J drive.  As I understand from the earlier post the J drive will be slightly faster but have a worse TM.  Giving a highly directional weapon to a ship with poor manueverability is just inviting the opponent to close to a range the J drive can't counter.  It has been my groups finding that J drive ships have it pretty rough with the large blindspot forcing them to turn constantly to keep ships out of their blindspot, allowing I ships to tear them apart.  If the J ship tries to run and use that speed advantage it can't fire.  When it turns to fire, the I ships rush in again.  The I ships spend a greater portion of the battle able to shoot, which is what it is all about.

If you give a J ship a weapon with a 240 degree blindspot and a worse turn mode than its opponent, well, I don't see folks jumping all over that option.  A powerful SRW would help them to keep that big blindspot from becoming the liability it looks like at the moment. (Perhaps some new SRW tied to the K that can fire through the blindspot but only works with J drives?  That would make them and the K much more attractive, but if the I and P can't use the SRW in their blindspot it wouldn't unbalance them to get it.  Just a thought...)

I'd not a 240* blindspot... It's a 120* blindspot.  Weapons on J drive ships have 240* firing arcs, not blind spots... ;)

Regardless, I understand what you're saying.    Conceptually, I like the idea of K weapons.  They offer an alternative type of LRW that's different from missiles.  And as a "kinetic" weapon, they have a different feel from missiles.  On the flip side, limiting their firing arcs, while it is a part of their "feel", also limits their utility in battle, particularly as ranges shorten.  Also, it does bug me quite a bit that you can mount K weapons on bases and functionally get a 360* firing arcs because bases can rotate themselves oh-so-fast.    I guess that I don't buy into the idea that bases could rotate nearly that fast.  

Also, a problem that I have with the limited firing arcs for K weapons is that I think that if you take the logic to its extreme, those firing arcs should be even tighter, not wider.  My reasoning is that if starships really aren't all that maneuverable, and K weapons are hard mounted into their hulls without any sort of turret functionality, then you have to aim them by adjusting the ship's orientation.  And if you can target anything within a 60* arc on one side of the ship, that seems to imply to me a greater degree of maneuverability than I believe that starships are felt to have.

Frankly, I haven't doing anything with K weapons in a while.  It seems to me that limiting K weapon firing arcs on starships seriously reduces their usefulness, particularly when mated to J drives with their associated wider blindspots.  It might be better if K weapons were treated similarly to beam weapons, and not have any firing arc limitations ... at least not any beyond those that might be linked to the size of the weapon installation.  ((See section H1.06 in Ultra for thoughts along these lines.  This idea isn't a certainty as yet.  But I am considering it.))

But thinking of the logic of K weapons, I'm not so sure that it's necessary for them to need such great amounts of space in their hulls to require such limited firing arcs.  It seems to me that the underlying logic of requiring a long acceleration "tube" is mostly based on the assumption that you are accelerating the kinetic projectile like one might imagine in a mass driver.  But K weapons are NOT mass drivers.  The term "kinetic weapon" is a misnomer.  Their damage is not kinetic at all.  The projectile is encased in a short-lived drive field bubble that carries the projectile to its target.  And when the DF-encased projectile strikes the target's DF, the projectile is converted into plasma, which then strikes its target and causes damage.  So then, why does a K weapon need a mass driver-like accelerator to function?    It seems to me that the assumption of a mass driver-like accelerator was used to create the feeling that it was a kinetic weapon, when it really isn't.

Of course, on the flip side, if the firing arc limiting mass driver-like accelerator concept is removed, and K weapons have full turreted firing arcs, then K weapons do lose a bit of their "feel", but they also become more useful.  And such a weapon really doesn't need a matching SRW.  K weapons really are both SRWs and LRWs at the same time.


Something else to consider might be a change to how the J drive blindspot functions.  It might alternatively have a 60* blindspot, plus an additional 60* "dim zone".  A "dim zone" would be a region where your weapons aren't totally blind, but are seriously degraded in their accuracy.
 

Offline procyon

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Re: Draft Hull Table
« Reply #18 on: June 17, 2010, 09:14:39 AM »
When I was referring to a 240 degree blindspot, I was just referring to the limited arc of K weapons as they now stand in Ultra (don't know what the rules for them were in AD, as I don't have that supplement on hand).  Pretty sure you got that, just making sure.

Allowing more flexible firing arcs would probably solve a lot of the problem.  My players just hate the fact that they can't keep the range open with J drives.  The large blindspot forces you to run sideways to the target if you want to fire, allowing them to close.  Once they get to close, the large TM allows them to stay in your blindspot.  Perhaps J drives just need one 'penalty' or the other.  Either a larger TM or larger blindspot instead of both.  With both the limitations compared to I engines, they seem terribly limited.  (Ultra even cuts their max LRW range, which makes them nearly unusable for my group.  We just tend to ignore that part.)
... and I will show you fear in a handful of dust ...