Tos;

I suggested that phaser-5s not be able to rapid pulse some time ago, as a rationale for X2 ships not being phaser-5 only. Under the scheme I was considering, one "space" of phasers could be either:

1. Ph-5 - Powerful long range punch but the worst choice for seeking weapon defense.

2. Ph-1 - Most flexible choice with decent range and rapid pulse capability for drone defense or close range work against fighters/PFs.

3. Pair of ph-6s - Best against seeking weapons and against ships at close range, but the worst choice for long range fire.

Presumably different races would make different choices in their phaser suites, depending on their perceived needs. One race might go with mixed ph-5/paired phaser-6 armament, while another might have only a few ph-5s but lots of phaser-1s. There wasn't much interest in this when I first suggested it, bit it still seems to me a reasonable idea.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 05:06 pm: Edit

Re: Romulans. IMHO, and in my proposal thus far, the Roms are in sad economic shape and have returned to having closed borders and no outside contact, just as they did prior to the GW. They build and maintain a more or less defensive fleet that patrols these borders and pounces on anyone crossing them. So, they can get away with comparitively shorter ranged ships with smaller crews.

Re: mixed phasers. I have no objection to mixing phasers; it's good flavor. I do, however, STRONGLY believe the P5 must have a defensive mode. If the emphasis for X2 is to have less weapons than X1 (but better), a defensive mode is necessary to survive. A pair or two of P6's and some P5's will not be able to defend against X era seeking weapons. Even the speed 32 X1 drones would be a problem. The key to balancing this is not having too many phasers. An X2 CA, for example, might have 6 P5's and a pair of P6's (mine does...that's how I know!). Enough to do what it has to do, without being massively overgunned. It has worked great in playtesting. I can safely say without a doubt the above XCA could not have handled even modest drone waves without a defensive mode for the P5. Now, if you want all three, you run into another problem...assuming, that is, that you stick to the 1.5 cost P5. Your capacitors will be a bitch to keep track of, because you have a .75 cost P6, a 1 point cost P1, and a 1.5 point cost P5 all using the same system. Waaaaaaaaaaaay too much math. That is another of the reasons I stick with the 1 point P5 and half point P6.

Just my 2 cents worth, and observations from testing.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 06:08 pm: Edit

Mike;

But would the ship not have worked, if instead it had had 7 (rapid pulse capable) Ph-5s and no Ph-6s? That would take up the same amount of space, be identical against seeking weapons/fighters, be a bit better against ships at long range, and be marginally worse against ships at close range. It would take phaser damage marginally better. All in all, not much of a difference.

It seems to me that with rapid pulse phaser-5s, it becomes harder to justify why everyone doesn't just go with an all phaser-5 ship. I don't think the idea of a "treaty" based on the Washington and London treaties from the inter-war period is satisfactory as an explanation. It ignores the actual historical dynamics of that period and doesn't really fit the political situation in the x2 era. I guess you could say that, like the Klingon's phaser-1s prior to the "K" refit, some races have great difficulty producing phaser-5s and therefor deploy them only in limited numbers. That might do it, but I'm not even sure that explanantion fits unless X2 ships are built in much larger numbers than I assume (perhaps mistakenly) that they will be in the time period covered.

I agree with you about Phaser-5s taking 1 power point and Ph-6s taking .5 power. I don't like the 1.5/.75 either.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 06:20 pm: Edit

Why would someone use P-1's when P-5's were availabel?

Why didn't eveybody go all-P-1 in the MY time period?

Same reason.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 06:30 pm: Edit

John;

I'm not sure it is. That was the point I was basically getting at in my comment above about Klingons before the "K" refit. And the difference is that during both MY and the General War, all races were building warships in great numbers. So a race like the Hydrans or Klingons (or the Lyrans to a lesser extent) couldn't produce sufficient numbers of ph-1s to match their ship building rates. But if (and I may be wrong about this) X2 ships are built only in small numbers during the first few years the technology was available, it becomes harder to justify races not being able to build enough ph-5s to meet their needs.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 06:35 pm: Edit

Well, not necessarily. Even with a smaller fleet, you have to figure the P5 is a grossly expensive system. As for the trading 1 P5 for 2 P6's, well, that's just the flavor of the ships. The Feds traditionally use a couple of 360 defensive phasers. Two of these take damage better than a ship with 1 P5 in it's place, and two P6's are probably less expensive than a single P1. Ergo, you use them. One reason I prefer a lesser number of P5's for the Feds is to encourage them to get in close and use their photons to bust ass like they did in the GW/MY periods. Sure, a half dozen P5's is good damage, but the real threat is what it always was; letting them get in photon range and cracking you open like a walnut.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 07:41 pm: Edit

The Klingons would have a ph-5/ph-1 mix for the same reason they had a ph-1/ph-2 mix. They can't afford to put all good phasers on their ships.

The Klingon ship I posted a while back replaced the back LR/L and RR/R phasers with a suite of RX phasers, similar to the F5's configuration. After looking at it again, I think I should have made them ph-1s instead of ph-5s.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 07:43 pm: Edit

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Same reason.

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By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 09:00 pm: Edit

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Are you SVC, then how do you know?

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By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 09:16 pm: Edit

If you're going to go that route, I think it should be based on difficulty of production rather than "expense". To continue with the Klingon ph-1/ph-2 analogy, the cost of a "K" refit is one point per phaser upgraded. It would only cost 9 points to upgrade every phaser on a D7, and yet the D7K only upgrades the 3 bow phasers. If it were just a matter of "cost", the Klingons might have built fewer E4s and similar small ships and upgraded a lot more of the phasers to phaser-1s, which would have made their fleet more effective overall. Yet they never did. I think the rationale works better if you say that ph-1s (and phaser-5s in the X2 era) were difficult to produce in large numbers, rather than simply saying they were too expensive. The SFU already has several examples of systems (web casters, stasis field generators, ship mounted gatling phasers for the Feds) that are production limited far beyond their BPV value.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 10:01 pm: Edit

That's fine; so long as it's some real, practical limitation and not in response to a treaty. A treaty might be used to limit numbers of ships by size, or something, but limiting the number of phasers? Nah. Too many ships use differing amounts to get it to work.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 10:18 pm: Edit

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Are you SVC, then how do you know

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By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - 11:25 pm: Edit

I just read the posts for this year. There seems to be three modes being discussed for the P5. A 1 point or 1.5 single box firing, some type of matrix firing (multiple elements or boxes), and a defensive mode (one box firing multiple times.

Have any of thought of combing all three modes for the P5. A standard CA (XCA) layout has phaser boxes in pairs. So in a sense these pairs are the matrix. In the defensive mode they can fire X number of times (I am assuming the defensive mode is 2x per box at 1 point power per box). They can fire individually as a P5 for 1 point of power. Finally they can fire as a pair for 1.5 points of power each box for greater damage at longer range. Mike mentioned narrow salvo rules or die roll modifications and collum shifts as away to increase the damage; something along that line is what the 3 points power buys you.

This is a more of an outline than a finished idea.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 03:10 am: Edit

Since we're theorizing, I don't have to be anyone to suggest why ships would have mixes P-1s/P-5's. Initial supply would be a bottleneck right there whereas P-1's have established means of production end vast economy of scale.

Replies like MJC's are why I find about 1 in 10 of his posts worth my time reading. I answer even less.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 05:22 am: Edit

J.T.:

You did couch it in "undenyable fact" by just saying it is as it's always been.

I'm willing to have a REASON so long as it holds together.
Manufacturing bottle necks won't hold back the progression for a decade and half which is what we are looking at Y205-220.

But I think some kind of reason can be found.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 07:07 am: Edit

Smoke and flames.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 08:08 am: Edit

He didn't couch it as an undeniable fact. He simply answered the question "why" by using the parallel between MY P1's and X2 P5's. He didn't say it was undeniable...you read that into it.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 09:48 am: Edit

MJC,

Uhhh...

"Manufacturing bottle necks won't hold back the progression for a decade and half which is what we are looking at Y205-220." ???

YIS for D7C - Y143. I believe this is the first Klingon warship (not base) to use the phaser-1. K refit becomes available Y175. It sounds to me like "manufacturing bottleneck" held up wide spread ph-1 deployment for three decades. And even after the K refit, the Klingons didn't go all ph-1. Many of their line warships continued to use some ph-2s long after that date.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 01:49 pm: Edit

One thing I did find in playing these early generation X2 ships was that they are somewhat susceptible to phaser hits on the DAC. It's nothing people who play EY or MY games wouldn't be familiar with; but late era GW and first generation X ships tend to have a lot more padding. In one heavy exchange I remember, the XCA I was running lost three phasers in one big salvo. Two were P6's, and one a P5. That really hurt quite a lot. On the older CX, such a loss would still leave 9 phasers left to use...more than the XCA had to start with. I don't have any objection to that; as I said, it is very reminiscent of the "older" era play, something I personally feel many hard core SFB'ers prefer and would like a return to. But for those who dislike that, or prefer lots of padding, the P5 in lower numbers might not be such an attractive option.

Don't get me wrong; the XCA is still a mighty good ship. I got extremely lucky one game, firing a centerline narrow salvo at range 1 and rolling a one, for a whopping 60 points of phaser damage...all along with the 60 points of photon damage fired the impulse before (one missed). Boom. Even the CX is hard pressed to generate all that. Needless to say the game was over right there. Heck, I didn't even take all that big amount of internals.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 01:53 pm: Edit

The Fed CA was suseptible also.

Nothing a couple of P-6s won't cure.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 03:02 pm: Edit

Oh, it has couple. And I agree, the old CA was the same...and I like it.

By Roger Dupuy (Rogerdupuy) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 07:31 pm: Edit

Ah...the old days...

Is X2 an unconcious desire the bring back 'the old days?'

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 07:34 pm: Edit

Proposal outline for the P5

The power cost for a P5 is either 1 or 1.5 points depending on the mode it fires in. A P6 costs .75 points of energy.

The P5 phaser has 3 modes. These are: Mode 1 rapid pulse firing 2x as a P6 (1.5 pts); Mode 2 firing as a single P5 (1 pt); Mode 3 combined fire of 2 P5s (1.5 pts each). The combined fire is only by 2 adjacent boxes. The advantage is a shift of one column left and up one row. This is only for the range columns 6-8 and 9-15. Per (E1.6) narrow salvoes one die is used for both phasers. The effect is to gain maximun of 1 point damage ranges 6-8, and 2 points at ranges 9-15 per phaser (please note I may have an old P5 chart so the damage points could be different from currents ones).

The XCA will have some form of Aegis FC which it can use for modes 1 and 2. Mode three gives the XCA mid range advantage without it becoming a long range sniper.

The phaser layout I have used on some of my XCAs is 4xP5-FX, 1xP6 each LS and RS, and 2xP5-RX.

I am interested in your comments on this outline, does it need to be tweaked or discarded?

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 08:20 pm: Edit

Roger,

It's not "unconcious", at least on my part. I've always contended that the political situation across the galaxy in Y205 will be similar to Y130. Very wide neutral zones, poor economies, peace across the galaxy (maybe Wild West style peace in the neutral zones, but no declarations of war).

Therefore ship roles would have to be similar as well. I extended this to mean that the X2 ships should have more "cruising range" reflected in the SSDs, i.e., fewer weapons.

Also, the late GW ships had to be optimized to fight everyone and be able to handle everything from an R-torp to 2 PPDs. That's boring. Unlike the tournament, the regular game benefits from a little bit of RPS.

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Joe,

The first two modes are where the consensus is at, except maybe for the power costs per phaser.

The "third mode" that you describe doubles the average damage for the ph-5 at range 15, and only costs an extra 1/2 point per phaser. What you have proposed is effectively an overload function for phasers that works at range 15, but instead of 1.5x damage for 2x power, this has 2x damage for 1.5x power.

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My two cents on phasers:

I like the ph-5's damage chart, if it fires for 1.5 power. For 1 power, it's too efficient.

It can also be as versital as anyone would want:
• Fire as 1 ph-5 for 1.5 power.
• Fire as 1 ph-1 for 1.0 power.

And under X-aegis:
• Fire as 2 ph-6 for 3/4 power each.
• Fire as 3 ph-3 for 1/2 power each.

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 08:55 pm: Edit

Jeff,

How are you calculating average damage. I have seen the term but am unsure what the method is.

If the increase is to much for mode 3 move only one column left and not up a row as well.