John, I wasn't suggesting every impulse use. I was suggesting that we should consider other cycle times based on playtest feedback. This is primarily in reaction to the original 6-impulse delay. The proposed 4-impulses delay might be the sweet spot, I just don't know. I am concerned that tracking which tractor cycled on which impulse will become tedious.

I also don't see any point in providing this upgrade to X1. Among other things a tool primarily used for drone defense is of little value during the Andro war. You want to make this a Y205 refit available for X1 ships and built into all X2 ships then OK, but I’d still rather it be X2 unique tech.

Assuming a Trade War X2 duel vs. an equal BPV GW drone using opponent, there will likely be lots of fast drones on the GW side. A 250 BPV XCA will not be able to simply wade through 18 inbound fast drones every turn, and if it can then we designed the XCA wrong.

I’m not sure we want this device to be used to hold shuttles. Defensively it may not be a big deal, but if this technology was used by a carrier it might get out of hand.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 05:20 pm: Edit

Tos,

I misread your meaning when talking about recyle times.

I didn't say drone defense was its primany or sole use, though I agree it would be of little defensive use against the Andros.

One of those other intended uses was carrier operations, allowing rapid recovery of fighters. I'm not sure how a carrier might get out of hand with them.

Another very good use would be minesweeping, where the ship needs a tractor link to the mine before being able sweep with phasers.

I also wanted to use it for drogue duty. Loren has proposed a ship have a "drogue rack" and a teather beam fits smoothly into that.

I don't see how even a 4-imp cycling teather would grant that much improved defense against 18 fast drones. Like X-aegis, it would help optimize defense somewhat. I agree that excessive drone defense is an issue to keep in mind.

I completely agree that a tractor with teather capability is X2 tech. No argument. But replacing a tractor with a teather-only system seems appropriately X1.

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 07:41 pm: Edit

A question on the types of technology:

What seperates advanced GW-Tech, X-Tech, and X2-tech from each other (I understand the uber ship issue i.e. a 60 warp DNX). As an example some X-tech in the form of XP refits can be applied to SC2 units. Could then the Teather Beam be added to a SCS, CVA, BCS etc. as part of a refit?

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 08:33 pm: Edit

Joe, It's simply a matter of what ships are allowed to carry it.

X-tech includes those systems that are published in module X1, or have a rule in the system's description that says "this system only appeared on X ships."

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 08:39 pm: Edit

Generally when you're down to your tractors for defense, the drone's going to hang around in the tractor beam for a while because the ship usually didn't have the weapons to get to it.
Ahhh...but isn't that a tactic that is to some extent an outworking of the fact that tractors can only be slapped on one target per turn as a maximum rate!?!

The teather is not defending the ship against 5 drones so much as aiding in optimizing defense against them.
Yuhuhh...stopping each drone for an impulse at R2 or R1 with the tractor-teather gives an extra two Aegis steps to an X1 vessel which is the equivalent of giving the ship a drone and shuttle only FULL AEGIS.
It is indeed awfully good at organising the defense of the ship.
If you can hold the last drones you teather until the end of the turn it becomes even better at organising your defenses.

We might want to retain the 4-impulse recycle or the ability to teather a SC5 unit, but that'd be it.
Maybe a limited duration and recycle rate, so you recycle every four impulses but you can't hold for longer than 2 impulse and any unit you've tractored with a teather can't be teathered again for 16 impulses.
You see if there's no limited duration then a guy can choose to spend his point of power in tractors to teather or tractor a drone but he can also teather a drone for the rest of the turn which makes choosing unneeded until the battle situation changes and the player realises he actually does need a teather. By limiting the number of impulses a teather can stand the player much coose one or t'other right at the beginning.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 09:25 pm: Edit

Joe,

Assuming teather beam tech isn't exclusively X2, there's no reason it couldn't be included as an XP refit, one it was generally available.


MJC,

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Quote:

Generally when you're down to your tractors for defense, the drone's going to hang around in the tractor beam for a while because the ship usually didn't have the weapons to get to it.
Ahhh...but isn't that a tactic that is to some extent an outworking of the fact that tractors can only be slapped on one target per turn as a maximum rate!?!

---

---

Quote:

The teather is not defending the ship against 5 drones so much as aiding in optimizing defense against them.
<I>Yuhuhh...stopping each drone for an impulse at R2 or R1 with the tractor-teather gives an extra two Aegis steps to an X1 vessel which is the equivalent of giving the ship a drone and shuttle only FULL AEGIS.
It is indeed awfully good at organising the defense of the ship.
If you can hold the last drones you teather until the end of the turn it becomes even better at organising your defenses.

---

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, October 05, 2005 - 10:05 pm: Edit

I just have a sneaking suspicion it'll marginallise the Kzintis far more than any other race and that is a bad direction to go in.


Also reread what I wrote about SOP being use tractor LAST. And think not along the lines of drone burn out but rather recycled phasers having the chance to shoot the drones next turn.
Organising so you save the big ones for latter is a very different thing to organising two extra Aegis steps and so I would expect tactics to change suit with the new technology...playtest be the judge.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Thursday, October 06, 2005 - 12:58 am: Edit

You can't "save the heavies for later" unless you have IDed the drones and know what the heavies are.

Drones DO walk up and introduce themselves, but the whole point it to avoid that.

Drones have gained combat value as the Y-year gets later. I don't mind a mild check on that.

That's all this is, unless a convincing case can be made otherwise.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, November 26, 2005 - 10:48 pm: Edit

How do things stand with reguard to X2 batteries?

I've been thinking about H5.5 and maybe we could add rules to make them less effect.

1) If the warp power that is held over a turn (from that held turn onwards) can only count as AWR power only then centain fears about massive movement can be reduced.

2) If the warp power can only be held as AWR-warp-power for the the turn after being allocated then further stunts (last turn heavy loading of SS or somesuch) with warp might be reduced.

3) If we make a note that since klingons ( and every other race ) can arm both SS and antimatter bombs; more effective warp power does not give the Feds too much of an advantage ( and that advantage would be covered by a higher BPV anyway ) and that since warp BTTY-power will have to be loaded with warp power at sometime during the game it is a weakness as well as a strength, then we can avoid arguments that holdiong warp power across turns favours the Feds.

4) The argument that 5 point BTTYs will create ships with more power in BTTYs than can come from the engines doesn't really hold together under real world naval architecture.
An example being that several large ships have had their forecastles blown to smitherines when the compressed air cylinders (that are used to turn over the engines because electric starter motors just don't come in large enough sizes) rupture...but very few ships indeed have ever had an explosion that ruptured the hull when a spark set off the heavy fuel oil (fires, sure but explosions!?!).
To put simply, just because X points of BTTY power is more than X-Y points of engine power doesn't mean that X points of BTTY isn't the right number.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Sunday, November 27, 2005 - 09:29 am: Edit

I see little need to hold warp power over the turn. You don't get more power after all, only changing the amount that is warp. But since X ships have 40 warp allready it is no big gain.
Therefore the current way of cykling power in the batts to get reservepower is good enough IMO.

The physics is tricky too; The mixing up of the engine and the energy needed to make it operate is bad. Warp energy is an effect so to speak, created by the engines.
Try think of it as kinetic energy. To hold warp power over a turn is to have the effect of a flywheel. Ordinarily Flywheels store energy in the same form that the engine create it; as Kinetic energy. Then you can connect it to the gear box and get movement.
I don't se how that can be done with warp engines. How do you store the warp energy?
How do you use the stored energy for movement?
There are no gear box to connect to, only the engines themselves.

It WOULD benefit the Feds over others. And arming of SS (and antimatter bombs... What!?) is no way to make up for it.


In short, an unneccessary idea that will generate MORE rules.
My X2 designs just got more 3 pts batties and seems fine.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, November 27, 2005 - 12:56 pm: Edit

CMC: I think you are looking at warp energy late in the process. When you are sending warp energy to a photon torpeedo you are not sending a warp effect. You are sending plasma generated in the warp core. These terms are more Trek than SFU so in SFB it is just called Warp Energy. That energy is not electricity and gets converted to electricity for storage in batteries. APR directly generates electical current. Impulse engines have two types of energy involved, one of which is electricity (that which makes the magnetic field) so the power converter in integral to the system.

Warp Energy is used by warp engines directly and not converted (which is why you can't send APR energy to the warp engines). It may well be substantually more real energy that a typical APR point but after electrical conversion it is the same. End result is a point is a point is a point.

I'll move on... sorry for the technobabbling...

Warp stored over a turn: It true that it will mainly benefit Fed unless you can use warp stored over a turn like reserve warp (i.e. for movement). In that case it is scary powerful. Basically you could HET solely on battery power following a turn of special preparation. X2 would be the ultimate master of the two turn set up. Is this good? I don't know, maybe.

You said, "In short, an unneccessary idea that will generate MORE rules.
My X2 designs just got more 3 pts batties and seems fine.

I generally agree with this. My early design were 4 points (more than X1 and less than Andros) but I now believe three is fine. My X2 paradigm is that X1 is the halfway point to X2 and that some X1 stuff is the final product (left only to be refined to greater efficiency in production).

So X2 batteries hold the same as X1 but are physically smaller, easier to repair, hold power for longer (perhaps X2 three point batteries can perminantly hold one point so at WS0 they begin with one point).

So X1 Phaser1 with their ability to fire two ph-3 actually came from an adaptation of the X2 Ph-5 which wasn't ready in time for X1. The Ph-6 is a result of the X1 Aegis multiplexor targeting system and the new magnatomic phase crystal used in the Ph-5.

Etc, etc.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Sunday, November 27, 2005 - 02:17 pm: Edit

Loren, yeah but techno babble can be in the way.
This after all SVCs version of the STar Trek.
Photons could very well work different here for all I know

Myself think X2 is the old X1 tech on new ships.
The old ships are after all not very good designs; over crowded and over gunned.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, November 27, 2005 - 04:08 pm: Edit

Well, photons don't have casings (although there has been no final answer on that).

I derived that the Advanced Structural Integrity Field was what made X2 ships happen. It mentions something of this sort in the rules. It also mentions that BC class hulls could not be made to handle X-tech until X2 and if fact that is what X2 vessels were.

Since it's been published IN the RULEBOOK I strongly feel that X2 (specificly Second Generation X-Ships) must have continuity with this. (R0.200) Design Notes.

There is another more specific paragraph I'm still trying to fine again.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Sunday, November 27, 2005 - 06:08 pm: Edit

heh, in my X2 project the ASIF is a Fed thing only... (and I have seen no mention of that partiular thing in the rules btw)
But y to X2 on BCH hulls. Or rather New Generation CAs patterned on BCHs.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, November 27, 2005 - 08:25 pm: Edit

"Or rather New Generation CAs patterned on BCHs."

Exactly they way I've been trying to put it.

But X2 would not be limited to such hulls, only that these would be the premer starships. There would, of course, be the more common hulls; the CL, DD, and FF classes.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 12:17 am: Edit

I wasn't actually trying to create more complex rules to get in the way of having fun, rather trying to save H5.5 from Errata via Addenda.
For what it's worth I still think X2 ships should start with X1 BTTYs and then get refitted with X2 BTTYs.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 08:27 am: Edit

Well, any X rule book would be the latest say on the matter, so in effect being errata.
And errata isn't that bad in itself. What happened
in the eighties was an effect of rules being continuosly being re-written. And that pitfall have been avoided by ADB since then, But it is possible to go a step to far in avoiding that; after all here and there in the text material there is information that have an effect on X2, and are challenges to its continueity. These can be worked around, but it could perhaps be better to just ditch some of it.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 08:37 am: Edit

Loren, myself I have come to the conclusion that there will be general trend towards having fewer ship classes. In fact it would mirror developments in real life. Not that this is what I want, but it is the logical way things progress.
The FFs are too small to survive, and they are not big enough to be flexible. So it seems there will be DDs, CLs and CAs. DNs would appear late in the era.
A fun side effect of the demise of the FF is that there will be some yard capacity over. It is time the police get decent X tech ships, a process that probably starts with the Romulans who allready have SEAs in Police service.
Police ships with X-engines would have no trouble pursue and kill pirates, meaning the pirates would have to aquire that tech themselves.
BUT as we can read in X1 only a few pirates, mostly owned by the cartels, could afford this.
I wouldn't mind seing the end of the pirates, if this is the logical consequence of the general introduction of X tech.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 09:47 am: Edit

I think the opposite is true of X2 FFs.
If you've got 30 box shields all round (an increase from the 24 all round of the FFX) and the long lance of Ph-5 (even if only having a handful of them) then you can give a very good account of yourself against any NCL or NCA opponent you could expect to encounter.
On the Monster Front, the Special Bridge and Lab combo (plus probe drones from her twin GZ-racks)will allow an FF to gain as much info at R15 as an XCA. Keeping at R15 is much safer than getting close so the survivability of the XFF increases saving money over the long run.
All in all, so long as, all out war doesn't break out; the XFF will have a role and indeed a very important one (as X2 pirates start to become more common).

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 10:24 am: Edit

MJC, what you describe is actually a police ship. Frigates need also be survivable in war time.
And since Non-X ships are not viable except for second line duties anything an XFF is running into on border/frontline patrol will be equally or more powerfull than itself.
Secondly they are small. They don't have much room for equipment for their support role which is very important.
Thirdly X-tech made FFs roughly equal to non-X DDs.* That is however not a good foundation for a design that is intended to be in service for decades. The designs need to have room for growth and that is hard to find on the smaller FF hulls.


BTW, 30 box shields is a bit optimistic I think.
The SEA went from 16 to 20 box shields.
I can imagine 24 box shields, and cirka 50 ints tops for a frigate (the X engines add 4 ints). That doesn't compare too well to ordinary GW era DDs.


*actually It seems CLs and DDs will become slightly less powerfull compared to CAs.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 10:27 am: Edit

The FF is too small to survive in open warfare. That did't stop the powers from building them, and it won't stop them from building them during a period of low intensity trade wars. The FF is dead! Long live the FF!

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 10:44 am: Edit

Also depending on what is put on XFFs (Full X-Aegis plus Phaser-5s in FFX numbers) they might be too useful not to throw into full combat.

Also to some extent X-BTTYs (or even X2 BTTYs) allow the XFF captain a little more room for mistakes than the old FFs.

Also the wider neutral zones makes meeting enemy fleet vessels far less likely.

Against GW ships the combination of EM and X-EW would make an FF last even in a fleet battle...relitively speaking.
A computer assisted EM that benefits SC4 units would make XFFs very useful...although isn't likely.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 11:10 am: Edit

I don't think the FF would be dead but reassigneded to specific missions. For the most part there would be no Battle versions (or very few) and all FF's would be variant types (drones, scouts, carrier resupply, survey, etc).

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 11:53 am: Edit

I tend to agree with Loren and Carl.

The XFF is too small to survive in a fleet battle, or even a moderate squadron fight. But that has always been the case with FFs.
A squadron of 2-3 XFFs would be perfect for convoy patrols. And, perhaps with varients giving the XFF squadron the same feel as a D5 squadron in the GW.

What if the governments decided that, due to the large neutral zones, the police forces all needed to be beefed up. All shipyards that are too small to produce the new XDDs would be converted to build XFFs. And the XFF becomes the POL of the X2 era?

The XFFL would be the general purpose police flagship.
The XFF would be the convoy defense ship.

The XDD would be the military's small ship.
The XCL would be the ship the military sends when an XDD is too small to do the job.
The XCA would be the sector's flagship.
The XDN would be conjectural.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, November 28, 2005 - 12:11 pm: Edit

Carl-Magnus Carlsson,

I've got to disagree with your statement that "Non-X ships are not viable except for second line duties" from your 10:24 am post.

First of all, none of us have any real idea what X2 will look like. We can talk all day about phaser-5s and phaser-6s and S-Bridge and 10-point or 12-point photons. But SVC has made it clear (I think) that he hasn't done any real thinking about X2 yet. He currently has other projects (including X1R) that are higher priority. For all we know he may decide that a phaser-5 is just a phaser-1 on steroids (which it is), and that that's boring and he wants X2 phasers to go in some completely diferent direction. We just don't know.

Secondly, one of the few things that SVC has made clear is that X2 tech, whatever it ends up being, has to be BPV compatible with both X1 and standard GW technology.

Thirdly, there is the issue of size. If the current ban on SC2 X-ships (other than the Jindarian asteroid ships and the DLXs, which were "impossible" to actually build) holds for X2 as well, even an X2 ship might have its hands full and them some facing a Heavy Dreadnought with full XP refit. (Recall that under the rules published in CL, which might be changed in X1R, a Dreanought can't XP heavy weapons but can XP its phasers, APR, batteries, drone racks, and shields.) The X-ships (whether X1 or X2) would have the important strategic advantage of superior range and speed, which would mean that fights in "open space" wouldn't occur unless the X-ships believed it would be to their advantage to fight. But the DNH-XP would still be a very powerful unit in, for example, an assault on an enemy BATS; hardly a "second line duty".

Obviously, X and X2 technology make older ships comparatively less capable. But "not viable"? Sorry, I just don't see it.