Author Topic: First impressions  (Read 18120 times)

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Offline alanwebber

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #45 on: May 02, 2011, 06:08:10 AM »
Dalord

If you look at the playtest game, you can see that a full double broadside can pretty much wreck all your armor and most of your shields in one go. I know I'm using fire each turn weapons, but after 2 turns of combat, one ship is taking internal hits and the other isn't far off.

Regards

Alan
Regards

Alan Webber
 

Offline dalord0 (OP)

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #46 on: May 02, 2011, 06:30:07 AM »
Alan

I noticed that when you hit with the lasers, you add the volley up and then apply mitigation, I do it the other way mitigating each shot and then adding and applying the damage, ill have to ask Erik which is correct because there is a large difference in damage

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Dalord
 

Offline alanwebber

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #47 on: May 02, 2011, 07:49:22 AM »
Erik

I'm trying to design a destroyer with better equipment but I'm having problems getting enough tonnage to produce enough hard points. I'm assuming I can only have 1 set of shields / armor / ECM / ECCM / engine / FTL engine. However, can I have multiple sensors and compensators? Otherwise, the only way to boost the tonnage is to increase the number of power plants way above my power requirement. Okay, redundant power is not a bad thing but my latest ship has a requirement of 360 and a power generation of 2400 just to get 6 normal hardpoints.

Regards

Alan
Regards

Alan Webber
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #48 on: May 02, 2011, 08:54:11 AM »
Alan

I noticed that when you hit with the lasers, you add the volley up and then apply mitigation, I do it the other way mitigating each shot and then adding and applying the damage, ill have to ask Erik which is correct because there is a large difference in damage

Cheers
Dalord

I apply it per volley, but direct fire and indirect fire weapons produce different volleys, even if they hit at the same time.

Offline Erik L

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #49 on: May 02, 2011, 08:55:43 AM »
Erik

I'm trying to design a destroyer with better equipment but I'm having problems getting enough tonnage to produce enough hard points. I'm assuming I can only have 1 set of shields / armor / ECM / ECCM / engine / FTL engine. However, can I have multiple sensors and compensators? Otherwise, the only way to boost the tonnage is to increase the number of power plants way above my power requirement. Okay, redundant power is not a bad thing but my latest ship has a requirement of 360 and a power generation of 2400 just to get 6 normal hardpoints.

Regards

Alan

I personally design ships by giving them a tonnage, say 5000 tons, then calculating the number of hardpoints. That gives me a base on how many weapons I can shove into the hull, which usually tends to suck up a lot of room and power requirements.

Shields, armor, and engines (normal & ftl) are single items. Sensors and ecm/eccm could have redundant backups.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2011, 08:57:30 AM by Erik Luken »
 

Offline alanwebber

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #50 on: May 04, 2011, 02:48:46 AM »
Erik

A few issues not resolved with version 3 of the playtest rules.

Page 7 says that there are hit modifiers for ECM / Sensors - does this mean for target acquisition as I can't find any reference to this under the hit part of the rules.

Page 9 refers to table 2.10 for weapons fire (doesn't exist).

Page 11 - reference to table 2.6 for power plants and 2.9 for compensator damage.

Page 19 - plasma missiles - how is the 5 point reduction in damage allocated where there are multiple entries in damage type? Also, HTK used for both system damage and missile destruction. The former is called HP earlier in the rules.

Page 22 - HTK data missing for all sizes above 20 cm.


Regards

Alan
Regards

Alan Webber
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #51 on: May 04, 2011, 10:21:51 AM »
Erik

A few issues not resolved with version 3 of the playtest rules.

Page 7 says that there are hit modifiers for ECM / Sensors - does this mean for target acquisition as I can't find any reference to this under the hit part of the rules.
I think that is an artifact of earlier designs. I'll remove it.

Quote
Page 9 refers to table 2.10 for weapons fire (doesn't exist).
Another artifact. Prior weapons had variable signatures.

Quote
Page 11 - reference to table 2.6 for power plants and 2.9 for compensator damage.
Don't you love renumbering tables? :) 2.6 is actually table 9. Table 2.9 is table 12.

Quote
Page 19 - plasma missiles - how is the 5 point reduction in damage allocated where there are multiple entries in damage type? Also, HTK used for both system damage and missile destruction. The former is called HP earlier in the rules.
I'll reword that.
Code: [Select]
Every five points of damage done to a plasma missile reduces the damage of the missile by 2 pts in each type.
Quote
Page 22 - HTK data missing for all sizes above 20 cm.


Regards

Alan
Odd... that was there.

Offline Erik L

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #52 on: May 04, 2011, 02:44:22 PM »
As per a question in Alan's game 2, I've added a 9th column to table 8 Damage Allocation that is structure for each roll.

Offline Erik L

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #53 on: May 04, 2011, 02:59:47 PM »
Code: [Select]
Every five points of damage done to a plasma missile reduces the damage of the missile by 2 pts in each type.

I changed this back to 5pts in each type. Given a 300cm CS5 plasma missile with 30 HTK. It does 9/27/2 damage. 5 points of damage reduce that to 4/22/0, another 5 (10 total) to 0/17/0, another 5 (15 total) to 0/12/0, another 5 (20 total) to 0/7/0, another 5 (25 total) to 0/2/0, and the last 5 pts destroy it. I think that scales a lot better than reducing only by 2 pts per 5 and simulates the containment field being disrupted over time.

Offline Erik L

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #54 on: May 04, 2011, 03:51:27 PM »
Also, HTK used for both system damage and missile destruction. The former is called HP earlier in the rules.

The only place I saw "HP" where it did not refer to "Hard Point" was on page 10, "Each component on the ship has a number of HP." I changed that to HTK. I'll add HP and HTK in the definitions in chapter 1 (if they are not already there).

Offline Erik L

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #55 on: May 04, 2011, 04:25:02 PM »
It's not stated anywhere in the rules (until now), but Compensation does not necessarily need to equal Thrust (the ships I've posted all do). However, Compensation should be at least equal to Thrust.

So a ship with a Thrust of 4, and Compensation of 8 could max out speed at 8 hexes (11 if they are willing to accept the chance of failure). This ship could accelerate by 4 Thrust per turn in a straight line.

Offline Erik L

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #56 on: May 04, 2011, 05:35:39 PM »
I think for the v4 document, I'll include the full tech trees also.

Offline alanwebber

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #57 on: May 05, 2011, 03:27:07 AM »
Erik

The tech trees will be very useful.

A couple of points from my test games.

Detection seems too easy. Everyone seems to detect everyone else all the time and having better sensors makes no different apart from the longer range. The requirement is to get the die roll between 0 and 100 if possible which means either decreasing the signature or increasing the resolution. A quick look at the figures from the test games would suggest that decreasing the hull signature from Tonnage/20 to Tonnage/40 would achieve this but I suspect this would need more evaluation with different ships and detection systems. Another possibility would be to introduce range into the equation e.g. the further away you are, you get a negative modifier to the dr.

My second point is based on the ships I've so far developed and what I see as a major problem. At the moment, the only limitation on thrust is energy available. In all the ships I've built, I've had to cram in masses of power plants in order to get the tonnage up to the required amount such that I've had 3 - 5 times the power I need to run the ship. I hate to think what a 5000 ton capital ship would look like. This means I don't have a need to trade off systems to match the power available. Adding hangers and fighters would add to the tonnage but not the hard points. In the last game, one pirate ship lost a third of its power systems but it still had enough to run all the systems on the ship.

I also find the engine construction counter intuitive. At the moment I can add an engine to a 500 ton ship and generate 3 thrust for example. I can then put the same engine (tonnage and cost) onto a 20,000 ton ship and generate 10 thrust if I have enough power.

If my thoughts are wrong on this then please ignore the rest but I would like to see a 5000 ton ship which was not overpowered by a massive amount.

My suggestion to solve this is to change the engines so that the current cost and tonnage are increased a multiple based on the tonnage/500 rounded up.

I'll give a few examples.

Basic Nuclear Torch Engine. Tons=350 Cost=600 Power/thrust/1000tons=60
Improved Plasma Torch Engine. Tons=300 Cost=3100 Power/thrust/1000tons=24

Primtive Fission PP. Tons=20 Cost=250 Power=20
Improved Antimatter PP. Tons=14 Cost=1200 Power=120

A 1500 ton ship with BNT engine would require 1050 tons for the engine. A thrust of 1 would require 120 power using Primitive Fission or 120 tons of power plant. This leaves 330 tons for other systems which looks about right. A thrust of 2 would require 240 tons of power plant which wouldn't allow for weapons etc although it might make a good scout.

However, at 2000 tons, the engines would require 1400 tons and the power requirement for thrust 2 would still need 240 tons. This leaves 360 tons for other system which should be sufficient with some trade offs.

For a 1500 ton ship with IPT engines, the engines would add 900 tons and a thrust of 5 would need 240 power or 28 tons of Improved Antimatter power plant. This leaves much more room for advanced systems and weapons.

Again, this requires a lot more testing but I think it adds more consistency to engine design and helps to overcome the massed power plant problem.

Feel free to ignore both points but, if you think my analysis is wrong, I would appreciate it if you could post some ship designs using the latest rules which overcome the problem.

Regards

Alan
Regards

Alan Webber
 

Offline alanwebber

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #58 on: May 05, 2011, 03:39:26 AM »
I've just started building a missile destroyer and seem to be okay for power plant numbers. Perhaps the answer is to increase the weight of the beam weapons. After all, 6 missile launchers is 450 tons plus magazine space. 6x30 cm lasers is 90 tons. Also a 75 ton missile launcher takes 1 hardpoint, a 60 ton laser takes 4!!!

Alan
« Last Edit: May 05, 2011, 04:13:25 AM by alanwebber »
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Alan Webber
 

Offline dalord0 (OP)

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Re: First impressions
« Reply #59 on: May 05, 2011, 06:22:04 AM »
One thing about the sensor idea is that when targeting missiles it is already hard to get a lock due to the really low sigs

Dalord