I think the Range-3-4 bracket is the right mix of hit probability and damage. Range-2 might be a bit much. These are things that would need playtesting.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Tuesday, April 19, 2005 - 07:44 pm: Edit

BTW, I also posted the CIWS in the defensive weapons thread (19 April 2005 - 07:30 pm).

By Allan MacKenzie-Graham (Amg) on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 11:14 am: Edit

How about removing the range limit on overloaded disruptors? This will increase the damage at longer ranges, encouraging Klingons to sabre dance. Use the same to hit as normal disruptors. They will be murder in a fleet battle, which will encourage opponents to close.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 12:29 pm: Edit

Massive can of worms.

OL range stays at 8.

By Allan MacKenzie-Graham (Amg) on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 07:56 pm: Edit

John: In keeping with your 2002 post, call them low-power (current standard), standard (current O/L without range limit), and introduce a new overload at 3X power cost and 3X damage limited to range 8.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 08:49 pm: Edit

And who gets what else???

The Feds will want same or at best quadrupple overloads at overload range (to offset the effect of longer range double plus tripple at overload range ) and the the Hydrans will want!?!
And is this for 6 Disruptors on a cruiser or only four?


The first thing to remember is that X2 must "play nice" with GW and that means either extended overloads OR ASIF + S-Bridge + ship-load of-other-stuff but not both, all for the BPV we are looking at. No one wants to play a 700 BPV cruiser Vs some GW opponants because it'll take forever.


Having a 66% chance of getting a narrow volley of 24 points of damage at R15 each and every time you visit that range is a cheap way to kill GW cruisers. Particularly since you be hitting 83% of the time and have (for 12Ph-1s) about 9 hits of 1.5 point of damage four a grand total of 37.5 points of damage or (for 8Ph-1s) a similar 2.66 points per Phaser-5 ( 6 bearing for 16 damage ) for a total of 40 points of damage on that same 83% narrow volley. Not so true for DNHs `though.
It'll be a tough fight for X1 ships but make a mockery of GW ships and that's probably not a good idea and that's assuming four such disruptors on an X2 cruiser and not six.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 08:54 pm: Edit

A lot of work has been put into the R8 debate ( and is one reason why the Ph-5 works the way it does ) and so the long and the sort of it is.
• R8 stays.
• R8 stays because the BPV of any other range would eat into so many other X2 functions that X2 ships would be one trick ponies.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 08:59 pm: Edit

Of the rules that most everyone agrees broke Supplement 2, extended overload range is number one on the hit parade. It drastically alters game play...and I do mean drastically. We tried once, just for kicks. I'd have to say no way to that one, and I feel almost certain that given the way ADB treats Supplement 2 that anything even similar to the concepts therein will be instantly dismissed.

I can appreciate thinking out of the box, Allan, and it's nice to have some fresh input (Lord knows the rest of us have been running around in circles without getting anywhere at all), but I suspect if you try playing with those rules you'll find that only someone who's had a good, stiff dose of Sane-Be-Gone™ will enjoy them...they are just too unbalancing when compared to GW or even X1 ships.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Monday, February 06, 2006 - 09:14 pm: Edit

Allan, extended range overloads have been published before and they didn't work. It violates rule #1: X2 must by BPV balanced with non-X. If you allow an X2 ship to overload from as small an increment as 10, with their superior manueverability and power curve they will walk all over a GW ship. Try to account for that by assigning extra BPV and the X2 ship falls apart at range 8. X2 can't work only at certain ranges.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 01:49 pm: Edit

Allan,

Debate has evolved a loooong way since 2002. You can fine past posts of me advocating all sorts of things I won't stand by in 2006.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 05:31 pm: Edit

Here here.

By Allan MacKenzie-Graham (Amg) on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 06:29 pm: Edit

That bad? Ditching the 3X overloads, how different is range unlimited disruptor overloads to 8-point photon fastloads? And if you say that 8-point PHOT fastloads are limited to range 15, then the same logic could apply to DISR.

John: Sorry, fresh in my mind since I have been reading the old posts.

MJC: Definitely 4 disruptors. Don't like 6. I feel it was making up for the X1 improvements to the photon without in turn improving DISR.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 06:46 pm: Edit

Allen MacKenzie Graham,

Extended range disruptor overloads are a lot more effective than photon fastloads. Note that a normal disruptor will average (ignoring ECM modifications) 2 points of damage per disruptor per turn in the 9-15 range bracket. A fastload photon will average 2.67 points at ranges 9-12, but at 4 points of power per turn rather than 2 points for the disruptor. At ranges 13-15 even a fastloaded photon only averages 2 points (assuming proximity fuzing, it's less with standard torps). This means it only breaks even with the disruptor on damage at the cost of twice the power.

For what it's worth, I like the idea of X2 having extended overload ranges, but I can't figure out a way to get it to work without breaking something else.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Thereplicant) on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 08:31 pm: Edit

Myself I just can't see the point. It would only make X2 beat X1 and non-X, not making X2 itself funnier.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 09:05 pm: Edit

Photon Fastloads are limited to R15.
But looking at the damages.

Photon Fastloads for Four Phot-tubes.

Range	R12	R15
Fastload Standards	(1/3x4x8) 10.66	(1/6x4x8) 5.33
Fastload Proxies	(2/3x4x4) 10.66	(1/2x4x4) 8

Overloaded Dsiruptors out to R15 from Four Disruptors.

Range	R12	R15
Double damage Disruptor	(2/3x4x6) 16	(2/3x4x6) 16

Plus you've got to factor in the fact that Photons require Warp power to arm.


Basically the X1 Disruptor already got to break even with the Fastloaded Photon by mounting 6 Disruptors in X1. 6 x 2/3 x 3 yeilds 12 which beats the 10.33 the Feds can through up. So trying to justify a better X2 disruptor to beat the X1 Photon doesn't work. And that doesn't begin to factor in the gain it got with the UIM burnout changes.
Now beating X2 Photon improvements...that's a different story.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 - 09:25 pm: Edit

Disruptors will probably actually be nothing special because they've gotten so many groovy things over the years.

Just look at where a Disruptor with Built-in UIM&DERFACS, a six impulse double broadside penalty and capasitors would get you in relation even to an X1 Photon. Yet such a bunch of changes is just a few of slight changes.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 - 12:04 pm: Edit

Actually, Allan, I'm glad to see somebody taking the time to push through the archives before posting.

Otherwise it takes a few months to "break in the newbie".

To reiterate, The one thing we know about X2 for sure is that it will be taking place alongside standard-tech and X1 ships. SVC has said so, and also said that a *requirement* for X2 is that X BPV of X2 and X BPV of standard-tech must fight as equals.

We've seen how oddball technology such as Andro PA panels and Dis-Devs, the ISC PPD, the Tholian Web-Caster and Orion engine-doubling can make problems for game balance. The stricture that says X23 must play nice with Standard tech puts a big limit on how creative we can be with X2.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 - 05:49 pm: Edit

And by the same token frees us up to look at systems other than conventional weapons.

By Allan MacKenzie-Graham (Amg) on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 - 10:49 pm: Edit

6 DISR only helps the XCAs. In fact, only two ships I can think of got 6 DISR, the DX and the Lyr-CAX. Were does that leave the rest of the fleet? The D5X has 4 and the FX has 2. Is the Klink XCL going to have 5 or the XDD have 4? Is the plan then to just mount more weapons on the DISR boats? Inquiring minds want to know!

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 - 11:59 pm: Edit

Well...most everybody has their own improvements to the Disruptor. Some want a heavy Disruptor; Me, I want a more flexible one.

The D5X only needed Four Disurptors to punch out the Fed DDX's Four Photons because the D5X has double the drone racks.

Take a look at the numbers I posted.
Four Disruptors as they currently stand at R15 will equalise (8 points of damage on average) with R15 Fastloaded Proxies and beat ( hands down ) the R15 Fastloaded Standards. Just because R12 is something of an edge is outweighed by the fact that the Disruptor is better at R15.

I don't think the Disruptor should get any better at pure numbers but rather just get more flexible.
That doesn't mean that there arn't some good weapons around including but not limited to, the X2 Kzinti Disruptor cannon, that do allow the X2 DIsruptor to have better pure numbers.

People arn't opposed to seeing fewer and better disruptors on a ship ( with the possible exception of me ), they're just oppossed to situations where a Klingon XF5 can peel the onion of a Fed CB (same BPV) without ever having to take a risk by zooming into a range where the CB has a chance to inflict some meaningful damage back.
The sabre dance should be the thing you do to frustrate the starcastler or punish the overload-crawler, not the method by which this ship or that race can repeatedly and consistantly walk over the opposition.

Remember also that; Phaser arcs and Turn modes and surplus power rate, will offset the effects of unequal weapons so if the X2 Photon is worth 1.5 Disruptors and the Fed XFF has 2 Phot-tubes and the XF5 has 2 Disruptors, the battle can still be quite balanced.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, February 09, 2006 - 12:09 am: Edit

On that last part.

If a Ph-5 is worth 1.5 Ph-1s and an X2 Photon is worth 1.5 X2 Disruptors and a Ph-5 is about worth an X2 Disruptor.
And the Fed XFF has 2 X2 Photons and 3 Ph-5s and the Klingon XF5 has 2 X2 Disruptors and 6 Ph-1s.
Then Klingon is actuall ahead by nothing ( the equaivalent of 9Ph-1s will be fighting the equivalent of 9Ph-1s ).

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, February 09, 2006 - 12:45 am: Edit

One of the early proposals was the simplest and most balanced (and a logical progression). Of course it stipulates that Photons do go munchkin.

That proposal was for a fully integrated DERFACS/UIM (no burnout, one replacement module each disruptor) in each base 6 Heavy Disruptor. It has a two point capacitor. Energy can be applied during EA and OL'ed with the Cap energy or it can be fired as standard from the cap energy alone. Reserve energy can be used in all the normal ways. Such as using the cap energy to arm the disruptor and adding reserve from batteries to overload it.


Now, a base six disruptor doesn't seem all that tough against photons but I would point out that the extreme flexability in power requirements of the new disruptor allow the Klingons to counter the photons better with speed, maneuver and shield reinforcement.

Heavy Disruptors would be mounted in two pairs on an XCA.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, February 09, 2006 - 07:43 am: Edit

The trouble with Heavy Disruptor is that it leaves the Photon with two options of which one isn't much fun and the other is only marginally better.
Get heavier or get more Disruptor-like...unless you mount fewer Disruptors which in turn makes them more photon like (jackpot).


Better to have +2 UIM module and matching DERFACS than to have more damage from disruptors...from a stand point of flavour creation.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, February 09, 2006 - 09:00 am: Edit

Four disruptors with a base damage of 6 are not photon like. They still can fire every turn, are more accurate, and do less damage...particularly if the photon is increased as well. In my testing we used the base six disruptor against base 10 photons, and it worked well. They klingon could snipe like crazy, but woe to the klingon who gets nailed by 80 points of overloads. Basically very, very similar to GW style play.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, February 09, 2006 - 10:35 am: Edit

Thanks Mike for putting it so well. As for this weapon the advances are minimal really. First it's base 6, an increase of one point (but is actually 20%). The other advances are simply miniaturizations of exsisting technology (namely the UIM, DERFACS is software). A capacitor system is not a new technology just a new aplication of the technology.

It's a believable advancement.

I'm a believer in the base 10 photon but still think that OL's over 16 should have a firing limit (such as not being able to be held). Still further an option might be to only allow OL for 17-20 by use fo reserve at the moment of firing (or within four impulses).