My impression is X1 tech ships were expensive to operate and maintain. Again it is just an impression but X2 is cheaper to operate and maintain and takes less crew. Small corvett or frigate sized ships (the small "run arond" ships in P6) would be easier to add X2 tech to and would be be similar in capablity to some of the GW DWs and CWs. These could be designed in such a way that small planetary repair facilities could maintain them.

Second point about the Andro war and OpU. Both parts of the overall war would have been a meat grinder for galactic ships, including X-ships. Much of the best GW ships were used during OpU. After that campaign these ships would be showing the strain of the long distance conflict. I think most fleets will be on the depleted side.(my opnion)

X2 offeres a solution of having an X1 level ship which needs less O&M and crew. The same debate of X2 cruisers verse X2 squadrons will rage. I would come out on the squadron side of the debate. For each XCA 4-5 smaller X2 ships would be built.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 09:09 pm: Edit

Tos,

"Shaping the framework" is what I'm trying to do.

Independent former colonies possessing actual warships is one possible element of the framework, but it is certainly possible to design a framework that doesn't include that element. The question is whether that framework makes more sense, or less. I'm leaning toward "less", but you clearly disagree. That's fine, but it hardly means that I am only intersted in tearing things down.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 09:15 pm: Edit

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Quote:

It's not the acquisition that's expensive, it's the operations and maintenance. Many, many, manymanymanymany 3rd world nations have technologically advanced weapon systems that are worth very little in actual combat because the state in question can't keep them running, and can't train with them. Most 3rd world air forces meet this description, as do (these days) some European air forces.

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By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 10:04 pm: Edit

"Heck, they might hire mercenaries to man the ships...sort of a space-going privateer guild."

I like this idea. With the lack of border bases it will be harder (maybe not possible at all) for galactic powers to monitor movement in the devasted regions. An XFF may not be such a useless design after all.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 10:36 pm: Edit

Alan, go down your road far enough, no independents, all you are left with is Empires in open conflict. We’ve done this before. It was called the General War. We need proxy wars where two empires can fight without fear of risking another Galactic War.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 10:37 pm: Edit

I doubt any government will hire mercenaries to operate the main space fleet. Great way to ensure the mercenaries become the government. Now, hiring a limited number of mercenaries to back up the local defense force might often work. (Especially high speed specialty craft that a single system could not afford to keep in full time service.)

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 10:40 pm: Edit

You know, we're kind of getting wrapped around the axle about something that hasn't even been established yet. Judging from SVC's post here, even he doesn't know yet what the X2 background and history really is. And he will decide it for himself when the time to do X2 comes around.

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from posting their ideas, merely making an observation.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 11:03 pm: Edit

Tos,

My problem isn't so much independents as it is independents with a bunch of warships. In my 12:53 pm and 6:59 pm posts I acknowledged the likelyhood of independents with things like skiffs, bombers, ground-based phasers, even monitors. And I also acknowledged the rare exception, of a planet with a real warship, could occur. I just think that it really would be rare.

And the various major powers in direct conflict doesn't necessarily mean a new Genral War, at least not within the specified timeframe. There are numerous published scenarios involving duels or small squadron actions between major powers, during times when those powers are technically at peace. I think it likely that during the "Trade Wars" period, most of the actions will be fought between small forces of the major powers for "control" of some independent colony or region. This won't escalate into a full scale war simply because the various powers' infrastructures are still badly torn up (and also exhausted from the effort of Operation Unity) that it will take years, even decades, before they can support major forces at any significant distance from their core areas. Operation Unity was sort of the "last hurrah" in this regard and was only possible because of the level of cooperation among all the powers, cooperation that disintegrated once the Andro threat was contained.

And none of this is to say that battles against independents won't sometimes occur. But for the most part these actions will be against planetary defenses.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Monday, December 12, 2005 - 11:22 pm: Edit

Alan, understood, and I won't try to disuade you of the logic of your arguments, but what fun is that? Maybe you play different scenarios then I play, but wouldn't it be more fun if these planets had ships?

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 06:34 am: Edit

Richard,

Read up on privateering. It was hugely popular and successful for almost 700 years. Here's a quote from "Public Goods and Private Solutions in Maritime History"...

"One of the most instructive of all examples from maritime history is that of privateering, that is, the employment of profit-seeking, private armed ships during wartime.4 This practice persisted for roughly 700 years and was a widely recognized part of international maritime law. In the context of the present paper, its significance is that it demonstrates that national defense need not be monopolized by the state. Scholars in many disciplines have largely ignored the history of privateers. But this is a part of history which is too rich and well documented just to be erased. Those who assume that only governments can provide for the “common defense” must then criticize privateering along one or more of several lines. If privateers were merely pirates by a different name, then they could hardly be relied upon to aggress only against a nation’s enemies. If privateers were ineffective fighters whose actions did nothing to further the war effort, then their employment was pointless from a public interest standpoint. If privateering was unprofitable, then it could not be relied upon to arise spontaneously when needed. If, on the other hand, privateers followed civilized rules of conduct, imposed significant losses on the enemy, and were sufficiently profitable to appear whenever needed, then the case against privateering must be dismissed."

"Although the practice has been looked on with disfavor by many, it is undeniable that privateering was frequently undertaken on a large scale. The American colonies of Britain commissioned 113 privateering ships during King George’s War of 1744–48, and four or five hundred during the Seven Years’ War of 1756–63 (Garitee 1977, pp. 7–8). During the American Revolutionary War, the British commissioned at least 700 such vessels—94 from Liverpool alone (Williams 1966, pp. 257, 667–69). The American secessionists who opposed them sent about 800 to sea (Stivers 1975, p. 29). “The great number of ships employed in this venture testifies to its widespread popularity and profit” (McFee 1950, p. 120). Some 526 American vessels were commissioned as privateers in the War of 1812, although only about half that many ever actually got to sea (Kert 1997, pp. 78, 89)."

So the concept of hiring out your defense is not uncommon at all, and would be a perfectly logical solution to the problem of defending your newly independent planet from either your former masters, or those who might want to be your new ones. A combination of purchased and locally controlled ships plus privateers could make for a healthy defense of mixed technology.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 11:21 am: Edit

There may be some Frigates unmolested during the ISC and Andro wars, but I agree that a squadron of D5s would draw a reaction. The squadron of D5s I was referring to was sold in Y204 as war surplus to pay off the war debts of the Empire.
Yeah, the D5s themselves do not need to be in orbit on that planet to suddenly be owned by that planet.
Indeed the Treaty may well forbid ships of a race entering into a Neutral Zone and therefore the ship is owned by the neutral world before it leaves the boundary.

Also note that there is help, help and help that the empires could offer, each according to his own.
Romulan ships sent to neutral worlds might well be wholly staffed with Romulan Naval Officers (paying lip service to the treaty ) who pretend to follow orders from the neutral zone planets but never act without coded messages from Romulus.
The Federation might well honestly believe that the neutrals deserve complete control over their own destiny.

Might have a poor crew, for example.
Since the Colony worlds have a single or handful of worlds from which to draw their exceptional people (consider how well China has been doing at the Olympics lately), they could easily have a poor crew and the Empires would like this.
A D5 keeps the Orions away irrispective of crew quality; a D5 with a poor crew has a good chance of being bullied by an XFF rather than going to the expence of having to build and then send an XDD. Net result; reintergration becomes easier.
I would also recommend that the ships age over time (much more rapidly without proper maintainance and particularly with war production hulls) and thus scenarios should list lost systems under G30 to represent that fact that these ships have exceeded their design life expectance and are indeed slowly dieing.

We need proxy wars where two empires can fight without fear of risking another Galactic War.
I think the most common form of battle (other than reintergration battles) will be two indies battling for control of a minor independant world.
You could easily have scenarios where two 120 odd BPV Indie ships go toe to toe with a 170 odd BPV X2 vessel trying to stop them from fighting without actually killing one or both. Three players games have a lot of potential.

I doubt any government will hire mercenaries to operate the main space fleet.
Merc's are great for not being linked back to your government.
Merc's are great for earning money (if your fleet goes merc' from time to time).
Merc's are great if you need a quick helping hand to solve a tempory ( or soon to be tempory ) problem.
Not so good to make your entire defence force from merc's! But that still leaves lots of room for Merc' activities.

And I also acknowledged the rare exception, of a planet with a real warship, could occur. I just think that it really would be rare.
Firstly they're not "real warships" in the same way that a Phantom or a Saber is no longer considered a real jetfighter. The old Klingon D5s and Fed DWs that a Colony will have, have real problems putting the Kybosh on a single CX or DXD and can't simply run away because of the strategic speed edge. And an XDD will probably have a better edge in speed and may well (after all the refits) have firepower equal to or slightly better than the CX (9Ph-5s beats 12Ph-1s (just) and even three 20 point Photons give a good account of themselves against Four X1 Photons so 24 pointers or four phot-tubes or both, puts the XDD in good standing (pitty about the availible warp power)).
Secondly since interplanetry trade will be the life blood of newly independant worlds (they can't all be as earth-like as earth, if you look at the background material), guarding freighters against piracy will be very high on the Indie government's to-do list. And with the Neutral Zones being NEUTRAL, that means doing it yourself...so you'll need real space-going warships.
Thirdly there is the question of what will the Empires do with these already constructed hulls...sell them for scrap!?!...keep running them with out the ecconomic base and population base to keep them running???...or sell them sure in the knowledge that doing so will make retaking that world easier, when the time comes being dependant on you for spares renders them either involved in a very short war (with them on the loosing side) or quitely capitulating.
Oddly enough it's the Indies who have sufficently developed faculties to keep a starship that the empires will will be least likely to sell ships to. Plus you can make "new friends" by selling ships to planets that once belonged to your enemies.
The question really is, does the threat that technology might be used against you (possibly by your enemy empires) outweight the ecconomic cost of scrapping the ships!?!
I say selling them to worlds will be done because once one race starts (and the Feds will), the others must follow or risk the potential that that Empire gets a massive "sphere of influence".

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 01:32 pm: Edit

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Quote:

Alan, understood, and I won't try to disuade you of the logic of your arguments, but what fun is that? Maybe you play different scenarios then I play, but wouldn't it be more fun if these planets had ships?

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By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 01:34 pm: Edit

Tos,

I agree that a scenario involving a planet that only had fixed defenses would be tedious. But by "planetary defenses", I also meant things like bombers and monitors, perhaps even PFs. These could make for some interesting and challenging battles.

Also, the assumption that independent colonies owning warships is a rare occurance is not inherently incompatible with scenarios showcasing the rare attempts when such battles occur. After all, the published scenarios are not representative of all battles in the SFU, they are representative of the interesting battles. As SPP has pointed out in another topic, the great majority of Orion pirate actions would involve a pirate showing up and "firing a shot across the bow" of the freighter. The freighter surrenders and the pirate takes the most valuable cargo and then skedaddles before the police arrive. But we don't see this in published scenarios because it would be really boring to play. The published scenarios represent those rare occasions when something unusual happens; the freighter was really a Q-ship, or the freighter tries to hold out because it knows rescue is close at hand, or the pirates make a conscious decision to attack a defended convoy in force because of the particularly valuable cargo. These types of action may make up 5 % or so of the actual pirate engagements but almost all of the pirate scenarios. In similar vein, if independent colonies with warships are the rare exception (which I believe makes more sense from a historical background perspective), those exceptions would likely still be over-represented in the published scenarios.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 06:22 pm: Edit

The fights will rarely be over the planets. Too many phaser-4s. The fights will be between PFs, bombers, and fighters from the local planet, with perhaps a supporting ship or two, and marauding enemies that want to run off with the profits from the local (planet-controlled) mining details.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - 10:03 pm: Edit

The special bridge function to allow an X2 ship to detect the RTN has been challenged. If every X2 ship gets this capability it minimizes the special nature of true scouts.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - 10:22 pm: Edit

Well for that matter can someone tell me how "detecting RTN" is tactically relevant? For F&E it's relevant, and even for T and U campaigns in SFB, but for general SFB play (and dare I suggest FC some day) I don't see how it would come into play.

I'm trying to visualize how a "detect RTN" phase of a given impulse results in a tactical advantage.

Scout functions are various forms of electronic warfare and intelligence collection. I've suggested that X2 could introduce some form of information warfare, and I think there could be electronic warfare support.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, December 21, 2005 - 11:28 pm: Edit

One advantage is it sets up lone X2 vs. Andro Sat Base battles. Without some way to detect an RTN it would be relatively difficult to justify how an X2 ship stumbled upon a Sat base.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 12:48 am: Edit

I think an RTN detector would be essential on an XCA, not needed at all on an XFF, and other ships in between.

Remember, an RTN detector isn't that useful if the ship can't take out the Sat Base.

Whether that RTN detector is a special bridge (like some of the X2 proposals) or a scout channel (SSCS Goliath) is debateable.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 02:59 am: Edit

Well here's a question.
Are PFTs suppossed to go it alone and find RTN nodes.
What about DBs?
I mentioned to SVC about a month ago that an AxCVL (or AxCVA) with a special sensor could be used to hunt RTN node and his responce was not; "we that'ld be no good because you just don't have the firepower to do the job once you've found it.

If the answer is yes, then an XDD is well worth sending after a RTN node and indeed a fully refited XFF might well be too (although by the time the refit is gotten around to, the Andro are probably wiped out ).


Also I would say that the ability to detect a large number of nodes...simaltainiously could have a tactical effect on the Andro in cutting off their escape routes. If that's the case then a single XFF whose S-Bridge is detecting and is being seen to be detecting nodes can force an Andro to think twice about boogying lest the vessel turn out to be an XCA and thus the tactical dynamic is changed.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 05:00 am: Edit

I think you're missing my point, how is an "RTN detector" playable in SFB scenarios? In other words:

Do I fire the phaser or detect the RTN? Should I accelerate or detect the RTN? Wow it's a good thing I detected that RTN or I wouldn't have been able to achieve an astounding victory. I wish I could detect the RTN but I just don't have the power.

(In between scenarios it can come into play, and obviously it would be playable in F&E.)

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 09:36 am: Edit

Auxilaries are strategically slow. While one might have sufficient attrition units to make the life of a lightly defended SAT base difficult, Andro reinforcements would arrive that the Auxilary cold not disengage from. So even if the Andros lose the SAT base, the galactic player loses an Auxilary. As President, are you willing to trade an AxCVA with all hands for a SAT base?

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 08:27 pm: Edit

Tos;

If it's combined with a sector wide asault on RTN nodes then yeah, we lose the AxCVA but kill all the nodes in the area and thus our fleet can intercept the andro body as it no longer can escape at horrendous speeds.


R.B.N.:

I think it's just a note in the S-Bridge rules. I don't even think it should be listed in the S-Bridge list on the SSDs.
Thus it's a non issue just like GSVs find RTN nodes is a non issue in a scenario. It's something that starts scenarios.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 09:37 pm: Edit

RBN, As it stands right now, the only RTN detector in the SFU is the Special Sensor.

Some of us have made the claim that an XCA should be able to detect RTN nodes, but the idea of putting a full scout channel on a ship-of-the-line is unappealing.

So, Loren came up with the Special Bridge as an alternative gizmo that does some of the things a scout channel does. First, it had to detect RTN nodes.

But that doesn't have any tactical use, so the Special Bridge was given some, but not all, of a scout's tactical functions, such as tac-intel or drone IDs, but would not loan EW points.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 08:33 pm: Edit

On the subject of the S-Bridge.
Maybe we could give it a bridge like function as well as some of the CR comments make me think that CR serves no real purpose in SFB other than limiting S8. So I'ldlike to put forward this.


What if the S-Bridge had an additional ability of being able to communicate with other allied X2 vessels such that the ships can trangulate the location of their targets more effectively.
Each ship with a functioning (powered) S-Bridge that is not being engaged in some other task may gain extra ECCM. Divide the CR of the lead X2 vessel by the total number of vessels ( whether X2 or not ) and round down and then subtract one. The result is the number of free points of ECCM that the vessels with opperating S-Bridges gain.
There is however a limit that no extra ECCM can be generated that is greater than the square root of the number of S-Bridge carrying vessels.
Thus if 5 ships with S-Bridges (and indeed 5 in total) are opperating together under a CR10 X2 Command Cruiser then 10/5=2 so the ships can each gain 2 free ECCM and since the square root of 5 is 2.236 it has not exceeded the seconf limit.

In this way the S-bridge would be truely an S-Bridge and not just a special sensor masquaraiding as a Bridge.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, February 02, 2006 - 09:02 pm: Edit

MJC: There is the issue that was discussed at extreme length about if an X2 ship should have an EW advantage of X1. In general the community at large decided not to give X2 a hard EW advantage of X1 (so EW is handled the same as X1). That is specifically a (as in one of a few) reason why I developed S-Bridge, so as to give X2 some of the advanced capabilities of a scout without the offenseive abilities of a scout, firstly it EW. So X2, like X1 would be capable of generating 8 EW as a flat limit.


THAT SAID...

I have to say I kinda like the idea that X2 ships could communicate better but I think your process is a little too "give 'em". But this thought ocurred to me. What if a ship with S-Bridge could loan 2 ECCM to other X2-Special Bridge equipped ships as a powered function?

I think it could still be too powerful but has both good and bad implications.