my bad.

Actually the MCM came first but I tweaked both in parallel and I may have copied the LDH's hull over wtihtou renumbering.

I knew I should have left them with the same number of phasers! An early versiuon of the LFF has 2 forward P-5's until I looked at the armament of the standard Fed FF and cut one as a result.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 09:45 pm: Edit

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Quote:

Most variants would simply entail changes to the secondary hull allowing the saucer section to stay standard at all times.

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By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 09:48 pm: Edit

Mike,

This doesn't address true MC=1 ships.

The standard Fed X2 cruiser is NOT envisioned to be the MCM and more than it was the NCA in the General War.

There is still a need for a full-cruiser hull to develop into a XCB and eventually a XBCH.

This just takes care of the low-end of the fleet.

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 10:37 pm: Edit

Mike,

John and I discussed this. I expressed the same idea the XCA (XCC-XCB) and XBCH (and variants) are still needed and represent a different part of the fleet; the high end.

Another part of the discussion was the DDX becoming a XDD which becomes a XNCC. I suggested these ships represented a third segment of the fleet.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 11:05 pm: Edit

I consided applying the concept to a unit that started at MC=1 (what I mean when I refer to a "Heavy combat Unit" but decided I didn't like this way of doing this mass-produced, generic manner for larger ships.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Monday, December 13, 2004 - 07:13 pm: Edit

I've been thinking lately about rules that could be "broken" only for X2 to provide new capabilities.

I know, your eyes are rolling, your heart is palpatating, and your blood pressure just went up, but seriously other than the ol' "hey how about speed 32+" chestnut, what other rules might be bent or broken?

Obviously such concepts invite disaster, so such ideas must be considered extremely carefully. Breaking "big" rules are certainly DOA, such as changing the number of impulses per turn, changing the basic damage allocation chart, etc. But what about "not-so-big" rules? What sort of rules might those be? What sort of "alterations" might be made to those rules? What are the repercussions of those specific ideas? What should be "just plain no?" Just how politically incorrect is such a thread?

I have a couple of ideas, notably involving X2-ADDs, but I'm holding out for now.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Monday, April 25, 2005 - 10:21 pm: Edit

The above is my CIWS (for example), among other things lately posted.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, May 16, 2005 - 11:47 pm: Edit

I was thinking about my idea for a 4th series of Romulan designs. They could be named after African Birds or Australian Birds or some such, rather than the traditional hawks, eagles and krestels.


Basically the idea is that the Romulans felt that ARMOR & BTTY allowed them to "toggle" their shield damage to allow them to perform H&R attacks without loosing large numbers of internal system losses.
The WE showed that this was possible.
The KR showed that H&Rs are very effective.
And the Sparrowhawk series showed that the Romulans could do it themselves.
But what if the Romulans built their own forth series vessel that had armour and large numbers of BTTY designing to opperate this way from the ground up. The vessels could even find that some form of ASIF made armour much more effective and thus the BEAM THROUGH nature of armour made Romulan H&R attacks very effective.


So basically what if the Romulans developed a second generation ship with armour that is more than just a KEX Refit???

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 05:34 pm: Edit

But cloaking needs run counter to H&R needs so the combination of technology seems awkward. Armor does seem to have some problems leading to the reduction in that technology. Just seems like an unlikely and expensive path to use one impractical tactic.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 08:52 pm: Edit

1) If an ASIF improves armour then it might be more workable.

2) Does cloak run counter to H&R or just caputuring the ship by boarders, the threat of which causes fewer guards to be posted...or am I missing something???

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Tuesday, May 17, 2005 - 11:58 pm: Edit

Cloaking runs counter to the idea of running up to the enemy at range 5 with a shield down, which is what you need for H&R.

Besides, if any race was going to emphasize the H&R, it would either be the Gorns or the Klingons.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - 12:05 am: Edit

To effectively utilize H&R, it is necessary to make several attacks against key systems. That in turn requires saying uncloaked for much of the turn possibly until the enemies weapons recycle. If you expect the armor alone to be thick enough to handle a turn's phaser fire without shields, that just might be too thick.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - 08:40 am: Edit

MJC, while the original idea isn't really viable, it is certainly a good basis for developing a unique commando ship for the Klingons.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - 10:35 pm: Edit

Carl:

Maybe.


R.W.:

No it was not my intention to have armour thick enough to last the entire turn but really, whats the points of being uncloaked for the bulk of the turn waiting for the weapons to recycle if your transporters are also recycling, you're actually waiting for the next turn.
That being the case, yes! Being uncloaked is good because you can then beam over the second H&R as your shields are brought down again and your phasers do their stuff. To say that the Romulan can not turn a fresh shield to the enemy whilst waiting for the weapons to recycle seems to me to based on inherantly unfair thinking.


J.T.:

I'm not quite following that, I think, you're thinking of what you are thinking because of the cloak-plasma combo.
Really the Forrest of Ph-1s ( and indeed the Ph-5s are better at this ) on an X1 vessel and thus the R5 ( or better ) firepower of a Romulan X2 ship can pull down a Shield in transporter range ( particularly if transporter range was increased to say 7 ).

If anything the cloak ( by itself ) lets you uncloak at practically any range you could want ( particularly when using the huge X2 BTTYs supply to keep the cloak up and move ) because the enemy doesn't want to fire through a few extra hexes of range, particularly with his phasers.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Thursday, May 19, 2005 - 03:31 am: Edit

MJC: To conduct multiple hit and run raids at a specific system, one needs to stay uncloaked with shields down for an increased time frame. Since most proposed X2 ship designs have relatively fewer SSD boxes, H&R must be concentrated on those few. For example, a ship might only have one plasma launcher left after the initial exchange. To fully utilize H&Rs, the attacking ship must conduct an H&R (which most likely fails), wait 8 impulses to try again and then wait another 8 impulses to make a third try. Then the ship must wait to the cloak activates.

Unless the battle pass occurs very early in the turn, the Romulan ship will start the next turn not completely cloaked (or forego full usage of H&R). That leaves a very vulnerable ship when the opposing weapons recycle in EA. Designing a ship that in order to use one system must ignore the other very expensive system will prove inefficient.

Regarding armor: unless the design can stop multiple phaser shots at close range, the armor is too thin to be worth the inconvenience. If it is that thick, either the Romulans will have to have much thinner shields or prove badly broken with excessive defenses.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Thursday, May 19, 2005 - 03:33 pm: Edit

I realize there's some kernal issues at stake here, but what if a cloaked ship was 3x the range vice 2x? Also, how about allowing a de-cloaking ship to start firing (with passive-/low-power-fire-control-type penalties) before it's completely decloaked (e.g. after 2 impulses of the fade-in)?

I don't think the focus should be on defeating cloaks (not that anyone's is here) but on making them more effective in an increasingly cloak-proof environment, this allows us to retain the Romulan flavor.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, May 19, 2005 - 04:11 pm: Edit

Passive fire allowed during fade sounds good to me.

Have firing during fade restart the fade clock back to zero.

Example:
Impulse 1, ship cloaks, +1 Range
Impulse 2, +2
Impulse 3, +3
Impulse 4, +4, lanuches plasma on passive, resets the fade clock, +0
Impulse 5, +1
Impulse 6, +2
Impulse 7, +3
Impulse 8, +4
Impulse 9, +5, fully cloaked.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Thursday, May 19, 2005 - 04:31 pm: Edit

Question; the following is the changes that have been agreed upon?

1. Ph-V
2. SIF
3. MC 1/25

anything else?

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, May 19, 2005 - 06:53 pm: Edit

What's a MC 1/25?

By Jonathan Biggar (Jonb) on Thursday, May 19, 2005 - 09:52 pm: Edit

I presume that was "MC 1.25"...

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Friday, May 20, 2005 - 12:06 pm: Edit

Yes. Move Cost 1.25.

I am curiosu because I haven't been able to keep track on the progress you have made on X2. Been to busy getting misunderstood in other topics

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Friday, May 20, 2005 - 12:27 pm: Edit

Nothing is agreed on, really. You might find small groups who agree on some things, but nothing universal.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Friday, May 20, 2005 - 03:17 pm: Edit

CMC, you haven't missed anything. Nothing much has happened in XP/X2 for some months. There was an announcement that ADB might put a playtest version of XP into the next Captain's Log based on Petrick's dial-a-refit design. That pretty much stopped all discussion since everyone wanted to see the semi-official interpretation. I also suspect they forgot they said that as more important things intruded.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, May 20, 2005 - 08:30 pm: Edit

Carl M. C.,

For the most part a lot of people have accepted what the Ph-V is (at least the chart). There has been debate over the energy cost. Also there is talk over how it would be deployed.

Many agree on an advanced SIF as a direction but there are several proposals as to just what an ASIF would be. Remember that ships already have SIF's so, as I've always maintained, the new system would be called ASIF.

Move Cost 1.25: I rather like this idea of shifting the next X2 heavies up a bit but many don't care for this. Some seem to think the entire SFU will fall apart if this happens stating that a cruiser is MC1 and if its MC1.25 then its not a cruiser. This arguement makes no sense to me but it does to others I guess.

I am happy to say that my Special Bridge was well recieved and is used in many designs. It solves the problem of where to take X2 beyond X1 EW abilities without unbalancing the game. So, X2 retains X1 level of EW but, though Special Bridge, gains a few of the other Scout Sensor functions as well. The entire bridge acts as one channel and the ability is lost when all bridge boxes are destroyed. The Special Bridge cannot generate EW. Its functions are a subset of scout sensor functions. Exactly what that subset is remains to be nailed down.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Friday, May 20, 2005 - 09:59 pm: Edit

My own Advanced Bridge (which is a variant Of Lorens Special) is primarily additional sensor ability w/o any form of offensive features. Primarily it doesn't have any form of anti drone capability.

I've also been championing a different P5 chart which cost's 1.5 per shot.

My P5 Table

Here is my one revised 2X Cruiser design. It has my Advanced Bridge listed as Special for Harmony's sake.