The Any Box concept comes from a SVC concept so he's just exploring that.

Mike, that's true about the original CA. I wasn't going that far back and think, personally, it's too far back. This ship, because of the arcs, is very vulnerable to phaser damage. In any case the Ph-5 can fire as two Ph-6 so I'd think that would cover the basic defenses better for the early X2 era. Adding Ph-6's later would be done because there isn't room for two more Ph-5's. In any case the "Lessons of the General War" would influence them to design it no so retro I think and have the 8 phaser-1 standard on a cruiser pardigm hold.

This is just my own thoughts. You've done a nice design there. It has a very BCH base feel (something I've advocated as you know based of passages in the rules).

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 12:42 am: Edit

Mike, I just read that passage on 12/25 above regarding three point batteries.

L-O-frickin-L!

By Nikolaus Athas (Nycathis) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 02:13 am: Edit

Loren,

Yah I knew it wasnt Mike's concept - I just dont like a box that can change functions so dramatically.

What is it about Control, Lab, Tractors and Transporters that make them able to switch between at will?

Or do they represent a redundant control point that allows them to take over these functions?

Ie a station that can be used to control a transporter or tractor or can tap into the computer network or something.

If so where does the cargo fit in...
see what I mean ?

Its keen but it really doesnt make sense to me, and the one thing I have always enjoyed in this game is that with few exceptions everything makes sense!

(Kudos to the Steves for that)

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 05:30 am: Edit

Tos:

I must say the XCL's BPV is a bit low.
It should be at least 1000.
But once it is; I'm willing to play!


M.R.:

I would also like to say that increasing the Warp Engines to 48 boxes is only a 20% increase over X1 levels. And then it has an actual ( initial ) reduction in firepower over the DX.

I'll email my Fed XCL SSD to you ( as it's finished ) and you might get a better feel for my thinking.
I think the XCAs should be rare and the XCLs and XDDs are the back bone of the fleet. Perhap I'm wrong in this as people want to play MC1 ships, but they can, a bunch of X1 cruisers and all XCAs will be able to fight XCAs. Trying to expect MC1 GW ships to fight MC1 X2 ships is trying to put the genie back into the bottle after the huge leap forward that was X1.


On any boxes.
I think it should take a turn to swtich to the new box.
A legendary Captain takes a full turn to get out his chair walk over to the Weapon's officer's chair, tap him on the shoulder and then sit down to become a legendary weapon's officer.
Why should a bunch of nanites convert the contents of that SSD box from a tractor to a transporter in 4 impulses!?!

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 08:35 am: Edit

Here's my Fed XCL.

I stuck it together in about 30 in paint. So a couple things are still a little sloppy but it should give you a fair idea of how I see a XCL.

Note the Photon arc of FH.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 08:40 am: Edit

Loren, Nikolaus,

Yeah, I'm not really too keen on the any box thing either, but Steve mentioned it and said last year that he still stuck by what was in P6, so I figured it was worth looking at. I limited it to internal systems. No external stuff, like probes or shuttles...that just didn't make sense at all to me. Between those boxes and the four NWO's, you can do a ton of customizing on that ship, which is what I wanted. Say you're going out to fight the space monster of the week. Need lab? Fine; get four with your NWO and two more with your any boxes, and you have a whopping 14 labs to work with. Going to land troops? Get two barracks, two cargo, and turn the any boxes into transporters. Fun, but I dunno if I like it or not. Oh, and about the drone rack. Yeah, just one. The thing is, the rack shown (designed by Tos) has two magazines; it almost never has to be reloaded in a game, and because it can switch from one magazine to the next when it wants to, you have much more control over your load out and ability to fire. It's a great system, and plenty able to do the job of two standard racks.

I guess one reason I didn't put extra weapons on the XCA was that I don't consider them the uber ship of the fleet. I know the CX was, but that was the only time in history that was the case; the rest of the time, the cruiser is plentiful. I was thinking of X2 being more like the change from Y to GW; cruisers are still around in heavy numbers, but are much better than before. I mean, look at the difference between the Y cruiser and the middle years one. Huge changes, but they show the gradual effects of technological change and development. That's what I sort of wanted for X2. Y205 sees the first depoloyment of what would eventually be a big portion of the fleet, just as the first GW cruisers and destroyers became the bulk of the fleet during the middle years.

So, with that in mind, I didn't want to make the cruiser too powerful. It can act as a command ship because it's much more advanced than anything else, but that really isn't it's intended purpose. You still have perfectly good CX's for that role, as well. No, the "big gun" of X2 for me is the XCC. It would be relatively rare, rather like the BCH of the day. Here's what I had in mind for it:

Fed XCC

Note the changes; no NWO, an extra drone launcher, more phasers, and a "mono phaser" design. A bit more power (even with the CX), and slightly better shields. Very good ship. Not as flexible, but it isn't supposed to be. It's purpose is to command fleets and fight; not explore stuff or multi-task all around the quadrant.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 09:30 am: Edit

K.J.:

ASIF!?!
I think there's a lot of BPV in ASIFs.

Actually 36 x 3/2 is 52 so it's a lot of warp engine power for vessel (even I think 48 for MC1 is a lot ).


On the XCC...Divine Bovine Batman; 10Ph-5s!?!
Even with only 36 warp power it's quite a bang and puts a whole bunch of CXs out of the running ( atleast at that BPV ).
A Fed CX is putting out 19.5 points of damage at R8 (9 bearing Ph-1s) with phasers in an oblique and that things is putting 35 points!

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 10:21 am: Edit

Uhm I don't have any ASIF on it. I don't like the concept. To me it seems clunky from earlier discussions. So none of my units have it.

And if you note. My P5 is slightly different from the more standard version.

30 warp is standard for CWX's.

36 increases warp power by 20%. (Which is less thasn the 33% of 1X.) With the 6 P5's drawing 9 power it doesn't have as much reserve power as you might think. Especially with Fast loads.

12 warp for fast loads 4 HK 9 P5's=25 power which leaves 17 power for movement. for a max of speed 25, (with one of it being IMP). Which doesn't include EW games or any special bridge functions.

A Fed CAR+a (w/o using the RH or p3's) has a speed of 18.

The NCLa has a speed of 21 using the same considerations.

So for a ship two generations more advanced it doesn't seem that off for it to be 4 hexes faster than a GW ship of comparable class.

The XCL can go all out for a short pwriod of time. Like a CX. But then it's panting and will have run out of it's reserve power.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 10:26 am: Edit

Anyway. It's not like I'm permanently wedded to it. It's just something I threw together in short order from cutting up the XCC. Cutting 2-4 Warp power is possible. But the XCL gets reworked into the XCW when needed and the power would even be shorter then. (With a fourth Photon taking up residence.)

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 12:51 pm: Edit

I'm not a fan of the Any Box either. Just doesn't feel right to me. It reminds me too of a Holo-Deck sort of thing. Too early for that in SFU history, IMO.

Mike R.: I just noticed that your XCC has an line there along the FA arc you REALLY don't want to be in if you're its enemy! Alternately, if you are attacking after the Fed XCC has fired its weapons it is the optimum angle to strike since you can hit the maximum number of phasers from that angle.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 - 06:29 pm: Edit

The Any box is just to much IMO to add to a standard ship.

One of the shield galaxy races uses something like the Any box. But the race is designed around it. (Not to mention the race is very odd all on it's own.)

The rules for that one system are about 6-7000 words. And there are still rule interactions I'm sure I haven't covered. (For comparison a typical rule averages around 1250 per page.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, December 28, 2005 - 12:26 pm: Edit

Nah. We don't need an any box and it complicates BPV calculation and balance vs. GW-tech.

Multifunction boxes might be nice if you want a trac that both tracs and teathers for example.

MAYBE we can talk SVC into letting us launch huttles by transporter also (runs afoul of the "no Andro tech in galactic ships" edict)

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, December 28, 2005 - 01:04 pm: Edit

Landing shuttles by transporter from range 5 would be wild.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 02:59 pm: Edit

Is that a "good" wild or a "bad" wild?

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 03:59 pm: Edit

Wild as in huge implications on carrier tactics. The statement was not intended to imply either good or bad, and I just don't know. What I do know is if this technology were to become prevalent for X2 it would favor races choosing to field carriers, which I think makes it tilt slightly to the undesirable side.

If the technology could be limited to unmanned ½-space fighters with fire once and land to rearm weapons it could be made to work. But then we could make a whole class of ½-space fighters without resorting to using a transporter to launch/land them.

Anyone want to post a table of an X2 ½-space fighters in the ATU thread?

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 04:45 pm: Edit

One of the things I like about X1 is the reduced emphasis on attrition units (though I disagree that they have been made obsolete by X1). I would prefer that X2 not be overly cluttered with them. This is an interesting idea but maybe it should be restricted to the Hydrans, Federation, and possibly the Kzinti. These are the races for whom fighters are most important, I think.

Other races might get... well, something else, to compensate for not having this capability.

(And NO, I really don't want to there to be X-tech PFs, not even for the Lyrans.)

Just my .02 quatloos worth.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 04:49 pm: Edit

I would think that fighters would be ONLY heavy fighters in the X2 period (regular fighters and bombers on planets only).

X2 carriers would carry six heavy fighters and a XCVA would carry 12.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 05:45 pm: Edit

Just to clarify my earlier post; I have nothing against X-tech (even X2-tech) ships carrying standard tech fighters, heavy fighters, or PFs. It's X-tech attrition units that I'm not too keen on. The suggestion for 1/2 space fighters, movable by transporter seems clearly a proposal for X2 attrition units and if it is allowed at all, I hope it will be severely limited.

It does occur to me, however, that in addition to the previously mentioned Hydrans, Feds, and Kzinti (my 4:45 pm post), the Klingons might want something like this, specifically as an anti-Tholian weapon. While transporters won't function through web, they will function in to or out of web.

Consider a Klingon fleet trapped in the outer web during a Tholian base assault, with all surviving Tholians retreating behind the middle web. The Klingons can only try to pull ships back out of the web with tractors (assuming that some Klingon ships have not entered the web yet) or try to use ECM and shield reinforcement to survive long enough for the web to weaken so that they can advance to the middle web. They have no way to attack the Tholians directly. But with this system, Klingon X2 ships trapped in the outer web could transport their unmanned fighters forward to the middle web and attack the Tholian ships there. If nothing else, the phasers the Tholians divert to destroy these fighters would reduce the volume of phaser fire against the Klingon ships, meaning that they would be less damaged when they assaulted the middle web.

So I would add Klingons to my previous list of races who might use this. My concern is that everyone will insist on this capability, which is something I definately don't want to see.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 09:03 pm: Edit

If shuttles could land by transporter I think, we'ld need to have a rule that the fighter needs to be at speed 0 when transported ( ED okay, might raise this to speed 1 ). I don't like the idea of superluminal craft being transported (atleast not by Andro) and I don't think the shuttle could stop inside the shuttle bay location where it is destined to land if suddenly the computers and pilots and such had to "reinitialize".
The transporters would also have to be larger ( say 3 BPs or 2 CU at combat rates ( doubles for non combat rates (only one H&R target though)). If the cost of these transporters jumps up to 0.5 or even 1, that'ld be an okay thing to help level the playing feild.


I think Attrituion units can be had in X2 without too much bother. Drones ships already hurl attrition units so the Kzintis will already have `em.
The Lyrans should get X1 PFs int eh X2 period.
The Hydrans should get X2 Fighters in the X2 period.
I'm not sure if the Feds should get X2 fighters ( or even X1 fighters or just mega-X packs ) in the X2 period but if they do, they should be R.C.!

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 11:15 pm: Edit

Beaming up a shuttle? Yuk.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, October 01, 2007 - 12:12 am: Edit

John Trauger:

I'm going to try to send some Hydran X2 .GIF files for your X2 website so be on the look out for `em.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, October 01, 2007 - 05:29 pm: Edit

They're up.

http://www.vorlonagent.com/sfb/x2/mjc/mjc-x2-hydrans.htm

http://www.vorlonagent.com/sfb/x2/mjc/mjc-x2-hydran-rules.htm

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, October 01, 2007 - 08:47 pm: Edit

T'anks.

P.S. Are there any races which I ought to have sent (like Romulans or Kzinti)...I've been at this so long I can't remember.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, October 01, 2007 - 10:06 pm: Edit

You're asking me? Everything you've sent is now up. Mostly Feds, Lyrans, hydrans and maybe a little Klink.

Please keep your file sizes delow 100K, preferably below 75

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, October 02, 2007 - 03:13 am: Edit

Okay...well I might organise some Romulans ( some of their X1s on the hard disk of the machine I've been using ) but it'll take some time...have to think about cloak opperations (probably why I left it for so long).

The Hydran and Lyran .GIF files were 70 kb or so so the Romulans should come out the same size.

PS There should also be some Kzintis as well.

PPS You know I really like the XSC. By linking her S-Bridge and seven of her scout channels to her 8 labs, she can collect a lot of scientific information and still loan herself ECM from her 8th scout channel. The poor old XFS either get to plug in her three scout channels and the S-Bridge into her 4 labs or she does some jamming but not all of her labs are getting 100% of what they could be discovering.