Kenneth:
But wouldn't you prefer flying the BCH in that match up?

Hmm, that really depends on the tactics youlike to play. In the end the two DW's, if played carefully, can really do a lot to take down the BCH. One will probably die but if the BCH isn't very careeful it's own death could follow.

It can the very difficult to keep a down shield away from TWO enemy ships when you are a lone ship.

But I agree that the XCC (or XCA or whatever is the bigest X2 ship) should be on the order of the ISC CCX. I don't think that being able to stand up to big X1 is the driving criteria. Even if it is an even combat capability X2 should be easier to maintain and cheeper to build (in the long run once the ship yard is rolling out production). X1 is difficult and expensiveto maintain so this is one of the core advantages X2 has over X1... IMO.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Monday, December 26, 2005 - 07:34 pm: Edit

Loren,

What tactics? If the DW's spread out the BCH will kill them in detail. If they stick together the 6ECM+EW Drone (or whatever) will protect it from most of the DW's fire. (Since each would have to generate ECCM to counter the BCH's ECM.)

One pass and a DW is a flaming wreck (severely combat reduced) with the BCH having lost a shield and having sustained (at most) minor internal damage.

Absolute firepower isn't exactly the same. I argued that with my P5 proposal etc. Gining the 2X ships the ability to fight at slightly longer ranges, (w/o extending the OL range).

The P5 is great for that roll. and the other small but cumulative improvements are to up the combat power of 2X. Just like a CX in BPV is a match for a DN. But if it comes down to straight slugging the DN will win. Is how the 2X ship should deal with GW/1X.

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Monday, December 26, 2005 - 07:52 pm: Edit

I know the debate of what is an XCA has gone on for several years. Perhaps we can table that discussion for now until information from some of the duels Tos suggested are run.

What is the X2 equivalent of a FED CAR+? Use the CAR+ as a test bed: change the P1s to P5s; P3s to P6s; G rack to a G2X rack; Photons to the advanced X2 photons; add X2 enhanced shield system (ASIF or one of the other ideas); 3 point batteries (same number); keep the shields, warp, impulse, other internal boxes, and phaser arcs the same. Run some duel test and adjust the design (number of shield boxes, weapons arcs, number of warp, etc.) to fit it into the game.

The last thing to work out is the ship outline or style.

From this point one can develop bigger and smaller ships.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Monday, December 26, 2005 - 08:13 pm: Edit

Thats a reasonable suggestion.

But the best way to playtest a ship is to fly it same race a few times. And then do traditional match ups.

Including ISC/Andro if not (local).

Here is my old Fed XCC. It could be classed as a XBCH if it's determined to be to powerful.

But I always liked the idea that peacetime fleets would have 1 Big honkin space gun to fall back on. (O'Neil get out of here! Your in the wrong genre.) The XCA/XCL would be of lesser stature. And the addition of NWO boxes helps reduce the gawd awful number of variants that would need to be published.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Monday, December 26, 2005 - 08:17 pm: Edit

And ultimately what needs to be developed first and foremost is the Federation X2-CA and the Klingon X2-D7. These two starships and their movement/weapon dyamnics are the heart of the game (what I call the "kernel"). If these two ships are not balanced against each other, pretty much nothing else matters. Stay in the family, as it were. For BPV comparisons, fight them against their own kind (e.g. Fed v. Fed), then fight Fed v. Klingon.

After that, match them against the Romulan X2-WE. After THAT, THEN we can look at other races.

I said this about a year ago I think, maybe more. We're all coming around again, as several people have mentioned several times now.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Monday, December 26, 2005 - 08:33 pm: Edit

I respect that everyone has his own ideas of how much combat power an XCC should have, but that won't be resolved here or now. The answer to this question is the proverbial Holy Grail at the root of these circular arguments.

What we need is to develop an X2 ship who’s BPV is balanced against a GW ship(s). I for one think this is going to be more difficult then it sounds as I have yet to be convinced that the BPV of X1 ships is correct. I also have serious doubts about the few big vs. many small equation.

In any case, the beauty of this approach is it doesn’t matter. All we need to do is create an X2 rule set and an X2 SSD that is balanced in a duel on a fixed map at each of the above price points.

Edit: Leave for a few minutes to put the kids to bed. Lose two games in a row of connect four to kids with a combined age of 10. Return to post only to find out that Joseph just said everything I intended to say. Geesh. Where's the humanity?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, December 26, 2005 - 08:35 pm: Edit

Kenneth Jones: The DW's have pleanty of tactics available to them.

Without making this a tactics thread:

The DW's have superior internals and shields but they must not allow the BCH to get a close in alpha shot. On the same hand the BCH cannot take out the DW pair in a single shot whereas the DW pair could against the BCH. That is, once the internals dry up on the first target that's it but the other DW is untouched and remains a heavy tactical thread to a now damaged BCH. However, the main approach for the DW's pair should be to play the mid-range game in tight formation until it can soften a shield on the BCH. Once the BCH has to maneuver to keep that shield away the pair can consider splitting up with one drawing the BCH's attention while the other maneuvers at range to keep pecking at the down shield.

The tactics would adjust for different race vs whatever. Fed DW's could play this game very well.

In a 2xDW vs BCH game neither side can use simple duel tactics. Playing to your advantages is vital except if the DW's play to their strengths the BCH will have a harder time playing to his.

I once saw a guy play two FF's in a similar situation. On the first pass on FF lost it's front shield. So he ran off and reloaded while stopping a moment to put the damaged FF in reverse. The rest of the game was very interesting. I think he lost with one unit disengaging but the winner was pretty beat up too (crippled for sure). I recall we all thought it would have been the other way around if the FF's had been Romulan (due to equal shields). I can't recall what race it was though that he played. Lyran or Klingon maybe.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Monday, December 26, 2005 - 09:16 pm: Edit

Tomorrow I'll whip up my own version of the Fed XCL for playtesting. It'll be based a fair bit on the XCC as a design inspiration. Roughly it will be about 60% of the XCC as a benchmark.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 07:08 am: Edit

Also the ECM drone doesn't protect it'self so 3Ph-1s (maybe four ) should kill it at R8.
Then things get to a more equal footting but conversely the DWs can have ( assuming they drone racks ( ECM drones each which is twice as much to kill (and gives away your intentions).
the Six Phot-tubes 2 Fed DWs have matches quiten niceslt to the six of the Fed BCJ...it's a pitty for the BCJ that warp power and shock don't also match up.


Tactics come from each ship using it's strengths without getting caught up in it's opponants strengths. This is just as true of X2 Vs GW battles as GW Vs GW.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 08:37 am: Edit

I stuck my Fed XCL in the 2X SSD's thread.

It's not as good as it could be. I got off work and slapped it together in about 30min using Paint. So a couple things aren't up to code (at least IMO).

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Thursday, June 14, 2007 - 05:45 pm: Edit

Hmm, Alan Trevor suggested that this was the right spot to discuss the general issue of ballancing X2.

I'll try starting it here. All that follows is IMAO (noting that I don't like EY or X1 as written and thus have little experience with them, none with the latest version of either, so what follows is based on blissful ignorance):

1) X2 ships SHOULDN'T be (much) better able to take damage than the equivelent GW ship. One of the main thing that says FF rather than CC to me is, it blows up with 60 internals. An XFF that takes 120 internals to blow up is just a CC with a low movement cost. X2 should be better at avoding taking lots of internals in the first place. But hit a CC and a nominally equal BPV XFF with the same damage and the XFF should be hurt much worse, it's a smaller but more capable ship. The CC is bigger and tougher but less capable do to being older tech. This is one reason I haven't paid much attention to the X2 discussions, it seems like every time I read them they're going FURTHER in directions I don't like.

2) As Paul Scott is fond of pointing out thresholds matter. If X2 ships are impossible for a GW ship to hurt then they will be broken no matter what the BPV is (this strikes me as the point to Alan's ST-II vs F5 example also). So it needs to be possible for that GW CC to do damage to my hypothetical XFF (even if the XFF picks the range, which it will since it is likely to be much faster and more manueverable).

3) If X2 has the same (effective) engagement range as X1 and GW then X2 probably won't work. In that case the hypothetical XFF above needs to be able to do serious damage to a much tougher CA at engagement range, which means it will vaporize another XFF or even an XDD at that range. This is bad, X2 should also play well with X2. Alternately if you toughen shields and make the XDD capable of fast repairs you've recreated the Andromedan BPV problem, it has drastically different value in a fleet action where the threshold can be beat from from in a 1 on 1 where it can't.

4) I want different race's ships to play as differently as possible. (And Omega has proven to me that I HATE having everyone's phasers work differently.) Everyone uses their phasers is BORING, thus I disaprove of any substantial improvement in phasers unless it is dwarfed by the improvement in heavy weapons.

Conclusions:
1) If X2 has a longer (effective) range, say as a result of extending all range brackets except the longest by 25% and allowing range 10 overloads then it needs to be ballanced against GW even if dancing at range 9+.

Note: I wouldn't (further) increase the maximum range since that runs into threshold problems as you can engage from outside your opponent's range.

Range 9+ overloads and battle passes result in GW doing a lot less damage, but that's good since it means I don't need to give X2 really heavy shields or any sort of "structural integrety field" which makes the XFF fly like a low movement cost CA. An ability like range 10 overloads could easily be the MAIN advantage X2 has over X1 or GW.

2) Other than increased engagement ranges and (somewhat) tougher shields any additional ways for X2 to avoid damage that aren't already in the game are probably bad.

Shields work on everyone about equally, most current weapons are semi-ballanced in range 9-10. But other defenses have problems: lots of reinforcement makes for a threshold problem; lots of fast shield repair makes for a pull back and rebuild problem; lots of EW advantages make for a "you can't hit me no matter how much BPV you have" problem.

I wouldn't give X2 ANY significant EW advantage other than ignoring EW from small target modifiers and erratic manuevers (to help finish off those pesky attrition units). I'd claim that the X1 EW advantage is the result of a crew which is at least close to outstanding, and that if you want an EW advantage on an X2 ship you can buy an outstanding crew.

3) X2 should probably be harder to repair (especially shield boxes) than X1 or GW. If X2 takes less damage or takes damage slower than other ships but repairs as fast then the retreat and rearm tactic becomes dominant. Fortunately we can drop the DC rating on the basis that X2 ships are harder to repair in the first place.

4) Rather than adding lots more power, let's make power a bit more effective on X2 ships (keeps the number of boxes down). Especially power spent on heavy weapons (let's not make power phasers first a no-brainer compared to heavy weapons). Give all direct fire heavy weapons 25% extra damage (i.e. a photon still costs 2 & 2 to arm but does 10 damage, full overload still costs 8 total but does 20 damage). Similarly maybe X2 seeking plasma does the same damage as in X1 but moves speed 64 for the first 8 impulses after launch then slows to speed 32 (giving plasma races a real incentive to use seeking plasma rather than bolting even against fast moving foes). Make phasers about 25% longer ranged with no other substantial advantages. X2 ships dance, but if something lets an undamaged equal BPV GW ship into overload range then X2 gets mugged.

5) I'd drop or drastically reduce fast-loads if doing this. Simply claim the changes needed for fast-loads are incompatible with the 25% increases in range and firepower.

Fast-loads feel tech-sloshy to me, it's almost like a way of giving everyone disruptors. Photons are slow but crunchy, that's how they should be and how they should be used. I want the Fed XDD to make the Klingon C8 captain sweet as he decides whether to fire at range 10 or to hold and try to force range 8 or get a rear shield. I want the Fed XDD captain to worry that maybe he should take the Klingon's shot and close to range 5 where his photons will hit more than half the time and his phasers will gut the Klingon if he still has them available. With fast-loads the XDD captain would simply close to 10 on impulse 25, unload all photons, and then come to range 1 or 2 on impulse 1 and tear loose with fastloads unless the Klingon holds fire.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 12:35 am: Edit

I think you'll like what we've been doing.
It's almost unviversally agreed that Overloads should be still limited to R8 and the Phaser-5 was touched-up to push the sweet spot back to R8 for that very reason. To give the GW a shot with overloads.

Also the ASIFs (my ASIF which doubles hull boxes and the ASIF which is a wall of shield boxes between the A and B collums of the DAC ) fail to protect the ship from A3 TORP, A4 Phaser, A10 Phaser and A11 Drone hits even though the ASIFs let the XFF be tougher so the net result is that the XFF losses a huge percentage of its firepower when it takes relative small amounts of internal damage even though it isn't likely to get killed. This is combined with two Ph-5s for every three Ph-1s making single Phaser hits even more deadly.

With X1 levels of BTTY and EW the X2 ships won't be able to just shrug off GW damage.

Plus no one has infinite power. Even a high powered XFF will be running around with about 20 warp engine boxes (and 24 total power) but once you start firing off that pair of 6_w+ 6_w super overloaded photons and 8 EW plus house keeping, you don't exactly have much power for movement and you might be able to use your three 3 point BTTYs to play your EW games but when do you get a breather to recharge!?!

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 02:34 am: Edit

Actually in an XFF Vs NCLa+ duel, the XFF having 3Ph-5s, two X2 Photons and two GX-racks, a simple hit of 18 points of damage will cost the XFF 50% of the Photons, 50% of the drones and 66% of the Phasers even with an ASIF running.

So the X2 vessel will be forced to find new tactics rather than having the ability to win without regular engagement. The X2 vessel will have to use judicious BTTY and recovery periods to get the longer range weapons in a position where they can peel the onion. And GW ships will have to find ways of getting to the "clobbering-time point" before their Onion can be peelled. Throw in a good mix of surprises ( like SPs, WWs and HETs ) and the X2 ships will be a challenge for GW, X1 and other X2 ships alike.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:01 am: Edit

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If X2 ships are impossible for a GW ship to hurt then they will be broken no matter what the BPV is

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By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:22 am: Edit

Agreed; in fact, I don't know anyone who didn't agree with the decision to leave overload ranges at 8.

X2 should be different, and require new tactics. Yeah, you keep racial flavor; that's one reason we all pretty much agreed on bigger photon warhead yield, for example...to get away from fast loads and back to the "mace in the face" strategy. But being different doesn't mean every single aspect of the ship MUST be better. Andros, for example, are effectively 2X technology, and they have the crappy P2 as their only phaser. They make up for it in other ways.

As far as power goes, many of the X2 designs posted over the past couple years had comparable power to X1...some even had less. But, they had better ways to use that power, such as triple caps for phasers, more flexible defenses, etc. Power management is probably the single most important core concept to SFB play; keeping it that way should be a major goal for X2. Having ships with butt-loads of power that any novice can play and demolish an enemy fleet with has zero appeal.

By Joe Stevenson (Alligator) on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 12:41 pm: Edit

"Andros, for example, are effectively 2X technology, and they have the crappy P2 as their only phaser. They make up for it in other ways. "

Do they reallly? In a FLEET battle now, not a tournament duel.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 03:55 pm: Edit

Yes, they do. The toughness Andros display in single ship matches doesn't go away in fleet play...and their other abilities work pretty darn good, too. Anyone who's ever been dis-deved right into the path of a pair of TRH's knows how frustrating they can be. The trick is that they aren't easy to play, but in the right hands they can be devestating.

By Joe Stevenson (Alligator) on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:30 pm: Edit

Mike,

I've heard differently from friends that played a lot of fleet battles, especially against drone users, or if there are a fair amount of fighters.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, June 15, 2007 - 09:40 pm: Edit

Of dis-dev'ed into a just dis-dev'ed Terminator.

Seriously, I've seen that happen. Terminator is displaced toward my ship while my ship was displaced into the Terminator at R1! A bit lucky but dang, two impulses and a fresh NCL went BOOM.

Andro's take out drones and fighters with realative ease. They can transport T-bombs without dropping shields (because they don't have any) and they can self displace pretty reliably. Drop a T-bomb just before the drones move in to hit and displace out. NO more drones. Any fighter that comes within R5 of an Andro ought to be a Heavy Fighter because it will eat a T-bomb and some Ph-2 (the Ph-2's are just so that the thing can get rid of some energy!). Attacking an Andro fleet with drones can actually help them manage their power better. I've seen Andros kill all but one drone and let it hit because they needed a little power for next turn.

And God help you if the Andro you are against is the patient type.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 01:14 am: Edit

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Agreed; in fact, I don't know anyone who didn't agree with the decision to leave overload ranges at 8.

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Having ships with butt-loads of power that any novice can play and demolish an enemy fleet with has zero appeal.

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By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 09:10 am: Edit

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Having a shipload (yes I said shipload) of power and a zillion different power hungy things to allocate it to, can be pretty appealing too.

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By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 11:22 am: Edit

Mike, I've played a LOT of Andros, both in duels and fleet actions.

There is a threshold effect, that can roughly be described as:

"Can my opponent do enough damage in one impulse to punch through my forward PA panels twice in an 8 impulse span?"

If the answer to this is "no", the Andro has a cake walk.

If the answer to this is "maybe", there's an interesting game there.

If the answer answer to this is "yes", the Andro has a difficult time.

Offenses are additive. Defenses, other than EW, are not. Andromedans shift the ratio of offense and defense considerably. I don't think there's a 60 point frigate that has a chance in hell against an Andromedan Viper in a one-on-one duel.

SFB is built on the cruiser. The cruiser duel is built on the presumption that over 7 turns of average firing opportunities and damage, nearly all of the Galactic heavy weapons will do about the same amount of damage, and that putting power into a heavy weapon is roughly twice as efficient as putting power into specific reinforcement. While there are variations in phaser suite, they tend to be pretty small overall, and drones and ADDs tend to replace phasers.

This is one of those fundamental bits of underlying math that the entire game is built on. Change that math and you're going to have problems.

Magellanics have a LOT of numerical analysis on this, and a lot of bench testing going through lots of iterations, trying to find a different mix of phasers/heavy weapons/different kinds of shielding to make something balanced that flew differently. Depending on who you ask, they are marginally to very successful in playing nicely with other ships while not being overwhelming or too weak to be any fun.

One of the big flaws with X-ships (and why Overloaded Phasers went away) is because overloaded phasers, plus the additional quantity of phasers, meant that an X-ship could, effectively, have about 2.2x the phaser firepower of a non-X ship for about 3x the power, and had the power where the throughput inefficiency wasn't a problem.

Andromedans below about 150 BPV (may have changed with new toys) tend to crush things in duels. (See the nerfed Andromedan TC history). Andromedans above about 350-400 BPV start to erode too quickly in their capabilities to have a chance of winning. About the time you get 700 points of Andromedans on the map, every point of Andromedans you add means that a point of Galactics gives the Galactics a greater benefit.

This realization informed the Magellanic equivalent of S8 rules; it's why the LMC is built on destroyers, not CWs and CAs - we wanted to make sure that the biggest force of LMC ships the Andros would ever face in an even fight would be under the 600-700 BPV erosion threshold, and that the range of fights in the 200-400 point sweet spot would have the widest array of possible ship mixes.

Any kind of Andromedan tactical doctrine that relies on A) displacing enemy ships (where you get no real control over where they show up) or B) displacing yourself out of trouble, is doomed. Andromedans should use the displacement device on themselves to achieve an offensive edge, like displacing over a wave of seeking weapons (or mass drivers).

Andromedans should be aware that they have finite numbers of T-Bombs, and that they WILL run out of them before a comparable BPV force runs out of drones. Therefore, T-bombs are a currency to be expended. You're buying turns where your phasers are offensive weapons, or you're buying position with them. Similarly, the Sat Ships are currency to be expended.

Thus, Andro BPV is a flawed model for determining X2 BPV. (Look at all the grumbling that happened in LMC testing for what happens when you look at something other than the basic cruiser duel as your initial balance point.)

Bringing this back to 2X-BPV:

1) There is a solid mathematical mix of offense-defense-phasers-hull boxes underlying the cruiser duel.
2) Changing one of those four variables and making it up with an opposite change in one of the other four variables is difficult.
3) Seeking weapons are designed to give the enemy choices, not do damage to them. A seeking weapon gives the enemy three choices: Take damage, maneuver away from it, expend resources (phasers, T-bombs, tractors, suicide shuttles, wild weasels) to deal with it. ANYTHING that reduces the set of available choices in dealing with seeking weapons (or makes one choice significantly better than the others) is fraught with balance issues. See Mass Drivers for a good example of this - one of the choices that's better is actually letting a few of them hit to preserve phasers; playtesters insisted that, since you couldn't maneuver against them that they should be made easier to kill; I fought this, tooth and nail.

In my next post, I'm going to go through the four variable analysis for LMC, so that you can see where the numbers shifted there - it's a data point for setting X2 stuff, and based on the number of playtest reports of LMC stuff where it was clear that the playtesters had no understanding of the implications, it may not serve as a template for you - but should serve as a good, illustrated example of the difficulties you'll face in setting X2 BPVs.

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 12:47 pm: Edit

Case Study - Tweaking the Underlying Maths In SFB. The Magellanic Development Process.

Introduction: This is not a "I was right, everyone else was wrong" defense of the LMC. It's a presentation of what the intentions of the design process were, and how those intentions, translated into rules, caused difficulties in the playtest process, because the ships got "too far away" from the baseline of SFB. The farther away you get from the SFB baseline, the more trouble you're going have with playtesting.

Variables:

There are some basic variables that define a ship in SFB terms: These are:

Total internals: For a move cost 1 cruiser, this ranges from 88 boxes up to about 105. More boxes tends to make a ship more robust. Fewer boxes gives an "eggshells" factor. More internals gives a "cockroach in space" feel. The usual mix of internals is: 40% power, 15% hull, 15% weapons, 5% transporters, 5% labs, 5% shuttles, 2-5% tractors, 2-5% command hits, and the rest distributed according to racial flavor.

Defensive Capabilities: The root defensive capability comparison is "how hard is it to do internals on the first pass?" A disparity here will give a nonlinear benefit, and even a perceived disparity will change how people fly and fly against the ships.

Phaser firepower: Most ships in the cruiser range can put out phaser firepower generally comparable to 6-8 phaser 1s, and 4 phaser-3s in overall phaser firepower. The exact mix of phasers and firing arcs means there are always point-exceptions, but if you assume that phaser firepower = "9 phaser-1 equivalents" and that two phaser 3s equal one phaser 1, and 3 phaser 2s equal 2 phaser 1s, you'll be doing about the same here.

Heavy Weapon Equivalence: With some exceptions, most direct fire heavy weapons will take one damage in and put between 1.5 and 2 points of facing shield damage out. The maximum power most cruisers can put into heavy weapons is roughly half their warp power; we'll call this power their throughput limit. Seeking weapons don't obey this rule at all, but can be characterized as 3x as energy efficient as direct fire weapons for a general point of comparison.

Secondary weapons (drones, plasma Fs, ESGs) tend to come at the expense of phaser-1 equivalents.

Damage at range is generally more useful than damage in close. A rough mathematical approximation is to look at the area threatened by each range bracket, multiply it by the probabilities for each damage result the set of weapons can do, and divide by the opportunity cost to use those weapons in terms of lost movement points, not energy. (This scales automatically for movement cost of the ship.)

Power Mix: Most cruisers need to be able to move speed 31 with about 8-15 points of combined excess and reserve power available. Every phaser replaced by a secondary weapon should generally reduce the power by one point. In general, assume that every point of battery counts as 1.5 points of generated non-movement related power, due to its flexibility.

You want to give players interesting trade offs. A ship that does everything superbly is boring and will never get flown.

So, having defined the variable set, let's look this over on comparisons.

Internals: LMC ships tend to have a small edge in overall internals compared to ships of comparable movement cost in the GP; with the exception of the Baduvai, most of these extra internals are explained as having BANK hits in addition to Laser hits on the SSD, and have two tracks for sensor and scanner hits.

Most Magellanic ships have "balanced" F and A hulls; the Eneen are an exception, having more A hull than F, because the A hull protects their high powered reactors.

The Baduvai have a lot of heavy weapon hits; this comes at the expense of hull and laser hits as a rule, but they're still an outlier.

Defensive Capabilities: This is the largest point of difference between LMC and GP ships. In general, I consider each box of outer shielding to be worth 1.75 GP shield boxes (to account for VRF and its threshold effect), and each box of inner shields to be worth 1 GP shield box. There are subtler points of difference as well - no general reinforcement, less efficient shield reinforcement, double the throughput for shield repairs and the ability to allocate repair energy before damage is taken.

While the total amount of shielding a Magellanic ship has is comparable to a GP ship of the same size, the distribution of it means that punching through the outer shell to hurt the ship the first time is difficult - this is directly comparable to the proposals given here for X2.

ECM capabilities are more or less identical. Attempting to make the ECM capabilities differ was a nightmare.

Phaser Firepower: Magellanic lasers have two advantages (a range 9-12 span where they're better than phaser 1s, a range 1-2 band for defensive work), and several disadvantages ranging from cosmetic to significant. In general, as ranges get closer, phasers do more damage, and by the time you reach range 5, the difference is significant. Single Medium lasers don't have a guarenteed kill against type I drones.

Lasers are less effective as defensive weapons; they damage plasma at 3:1 rather than 2:1. This becomes significant, when combined with their peak damage output at close range being lower than a phaser. In essence, a Medium Laser will reduce a plasma torpedo by about 3/4 the amount that a phaser 3 will for twice the power. A phaser 1 can expect to reduce a plasma torpedo by 2 to 4 points.

Lasers have power issues as well - their power storage system is hit separately from the weapons themselves, and they can't be downfired to save power, meaning the defensive use of the laser is further hampered.

Because of the reduction in the number of range brackets, and shorter maximum ranges, lasers are minutely more vulnerable to EW, and you can't use the "fire at range 50 and avoid heavy weapons range" fleet tactic.

All in all, Magellanic ships get about 75% of the phaser-equivalence of a GP ship with the same number of weapon boxes and power input.

Heavy Weapons: Magellanic heavy weapons have odd range breaks, and very high opportunity costs to fire in terms of movement points; where most SFB weapons cost 2-3 hexes of movement for a standard load on a cruiser, LMC weapons range from 3-5 points for a standard load, and they typically lose the overload function; you simulate overloads by arming more of them, or arming them for longer.

Disruptors cost anywhere from 8 to 16 movement points per turn to arm all of them. Photon torpedoes are broadly comparable. Plasma torpedoes are a little more forgiving, because the ships need to close the range to use them.

Looking at the three primary heavy weapons of the LMC:

Tachyon Beams cost a minimum of 12 movement points for standard loads, and a maximum of 18 for overloads.

Neutron Beams cost 10 points for arming half of them, 20 points for arming all of them (which is how the Eneen get "overloads").

Charged Particle Accelerators cost 9 movement points; there is no overload in terms of increased throughput, but there is an "overload function" in terms of "increased efficiency with longer arming." To compensate for the lack of overloaded throughput, the system itself is very durable. Most Baduvai ships have a cap of 25 hexes per turn of available movement (with no reserve warp) until damaged, which makes them predictable in gross effects if not fine. If they have an HET in reserve, it's easy to tell by halfway through the turn, by counting how much they've already moved and subtracting it from 20 or 25. Once shield repairs start factoring in, and refilling capacitors, they start slowing down fast.

In general, Magellanic heavy weapons have the same conversion efficiency as GP weapons. One point of energy in turns into (roughly) 1.5-2 damage out if the weapon hits, modulo accuracy.

In terms of overall firepower, Magellanic ships have slightly LESS (about 5%) offensive firepower than their GP counterparts, and more of it is tied up in heavy weapons. They have about 3/4 of the defensive firepower of a GP ship. More of their firepower comes from heavy weapons; Maghadim are the ones that are closest to GP ships in their operations, and tended to cause the fewest beefs in playtesting.

Power Mix: This varies from race to race in the LMC, as the GP ships do.

Most Baduvai ships, following the rubric of "secondary weapons cost phasers and power" tend to have low power curves; their heavy weapon arming cycle means that this low power curve isn't as big a problem at the start of the game when undamaged, but quickly turns into one as a fight progresses.

Maghadim ships are the most GP-like in their power management. With large laser arrays as swing weapons, they eat power fast, and Tachyon Beams are expensive to arm. They caused the fewest complaints in playtesting.

Eneen ships have enormous power curves when the HPRs are running hot, and enormous draws on them with two heavy weapon systems that eat power like nobody's business. There is always the temptation to run those HPRs hot for just one more turn because you need those four points of power. (HPRs chain react when running hot and hit by damage.) In our playtesting, the Eneen were the ones considered to be borderline too strong. In ADB's playtesting, everyone said the Eneen were too weak or "OK".

Because of the different ratio of firepower between phasers and heavy weapons, LMC ships don't turn into "phaser-boats of doom". In some ways, they have the potential to fly like pre-refit Feds. Their less efficient shield reinforcement and greater reliance on heavy weapons (and reduced phaser firepower) means they DON'T play Star Castle. (It's also possible to detect shield reinforcement on LMC ships by firing small amounts of damage at them and seeing what the VRF is.)

Integrating all the pieces together, there is a right way to fight the LMC ships, and there are a couple of wrong ways. Unfortunately, the right way to fight them was not obvious to most playtesters, and I can characterize a lot of the playtest comments as "My favorite tactic doesn't work. Change the rules so it does.".

While it's very easy as a designer to say "Change your tactics to suit the circumstance. Adapt, survive and overcome", from the consumer perspective, this is supposed to be fun. Having to adjust your tactics you've been using for years isn't fun - it's proof that the designers built overpowered ships that nobody will want to play against.

So, consider this a cautionary tale about balancing BPVs and the factors that make ships fun from someone who spent 15 years developing a product. It's not as easy as it looks, and your designs will be grumbled at by playtesters.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 02:12 pm: Edit

Ken,

Don't take this the wrong way, but you said:

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Quote:

Thus, Andro BPV is a flawed model for determining X2 BPV. (Look at all the grumbling that happened in LMC testing for what happens when you look at something other than the basic cruiser duel as your initial balance point.)

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By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Saturday, June 16, 2007 - 03:22 pm: Edit

Mike, no worries. My point in re Andros is that they're one example of something that breaks the BPV system because of the different way they play.

Do look at the discussion about how LMC developed and learn from what I went through.