I think that the Web caster and PH-5 combo is being over rated. Web Casters aren't as effective against a fast moving fleet and the Ph-5, while longer reaching than the Ph-1, isn't longer reaching than most torpedoes.

Additionally, the Tholians cannot afford a fleet full of specialized units. A few is OK but for the most part the Tholians need units capable of responding to a veriety of situations. They need the long reach of a torpedo on most of their units. I just don't see the Tholians being able to convert to an all phaser fleet.

This is not an inside trac thing. As I stated I don't have nay line on post Y204 but just my opinion.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, January 10, 2006 - 11:07 pm: Edit

I'm still not quite sure on why Tholians need heavy weapons.

Lets take a look a basic idea.
My XFF with the 20 warp engine boxes 3 Impulse, three 3 point BTTYs and 1 AWR and 3Ph-5s and two drone launchers and two X2 Phot-tubes.

If we through it up against a Tholian PC with the same power and shields and 4 FX Ph-5s and an LS & an RS Ph-6 then we can assume by centerlining that the XPC can shoot down the drones ( rapid pulsing as pairs of Ph-3s to kill the type VII drones ).
So we can look at damages at varrious ranges ( assuming the XFF doesn't use proxies and fires on alternate turns when unable to fastload.

Ship	Phasers	Heavies	Total	Range
XPC	4x2/3	0	2.66	R40
XFF	2x2/3	1x1/6x8	2.66	R40
XPC	4x7/6	0	4.66	R25
XFF	2x7/6	1x1/6x8	6	R25
XPC	4x2	0	8	R15
XFF	2x2	2x1/6x8	6.66	R15
XPC	4x2	0	8	R12
XFF	2x2	2x1/3x8	9.33	R12
XPC	4x3.5	0	14	R8
XFF	2x3.5	2x1/2x8	22	R8

Taking into account proxies and Fastloaded Overloads, I don't see why a 5FXPh-5 suite or a 6FXPh-6 suite can't provide the results we're looking for?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - 11:29 am: Edit

Have I missed a memo some where down the line?

Since when are Tholians a Drone Using race?!?!

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - 12:09 pm: Edit

Jeff, you might have read that a liitle fast. Although he didn't define it I'm pretty sure the XFF he's talking about is a Fed up against a Tholian PC.


MJC: The problem with an all phaser Tholian fleet isn't in the duel and certainly not in a frigate duel but in heavy squadron and fleet actions and in open space.

The PC will and always has done well as phasers only. Will there be an X2 version? Sure I guess. I could even see an all phaser DD as a specialty unit that hangs out at starbases (6 x Ph-5, no disruptors). But in general the THolians need heavy weapons on their fleet units.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, January 11, 2006 - 12:26 pm: Edit

Loren, I hope that's the case, but with MJC one can never know for sure.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 03:11 am: Edit

Sorry, I thought I typed that the pair of Ph-6s cancelled out the drones.

I'm still not sure one "needs" heavies because a Ph-5 stays fairly competative at range with heavy weapons.

Just line up an X2 Disruptor (mine) and a Ph-5.

Range	Disruptor	Ph-5
0	10	8.33
1	8.33	7.5
2	6.33	6.5
3	6.33	5.66
4	6.33	5
5	5	4.5
6-8	5	3.5
9-15	2	2
16-22	1.33	1.16
23-25	1	1.16
26-30	1	0.66
31-40	0.33	0.66

All in all, I'ld say the Ph-5 handles quite nicely up against a Disruptor with built in UIM & DERFACs and considering how much lighter it is to arm particularly when the Disruptor is using overloads ( although this is lessened by Disruptor Caps ); is going to be able to hold it's own.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 05:18 am: Edit

MJC

Without having seen the P-5 table, i can't be certain, but surely it is more vulnerable to EW shifts than the DSR?

All

Why not avoid the phaser-web problem by simply saying that the tholians have to downfire a P-5 as a P-1 in order to fire it though web?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, January 12, 2006 - 11:09 am: Edit

There really isn't a phaser/web problem. The issue is an all phaser Tholian fleet. The Tholians can't compeat with an all phaser fleet. They can defend in web pretty well but not in open space.

========================================

Since X2 ship will likely have WC as a common element they way to balance it's use in a fleet might be to give it more non-web functions (so there is more to use a WC for that for a fleet to spring up a half dozen webs for the enemy to fight through. A Tholian fleet springing up so many webs could turn into something un-fun to play against. But if there is new functions (such as Stick Web Fist) we might see cast web reduced to a few stratigic placements instead of all over the board.

I really think the place to advance the Tholians is in the basic hull and the WC. (with Ph-5 and X1 torps)

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, January 13, 2006 - 12:12 am: Edit

D.S.:

I think that depends on the range. Phasers are known to be EW resistant at close ranges and EW prone at longer ranges so in the end I suspect that it's a wash.
Also the Ph-5 will pick up more with a negative shift ( that X ships can use ) than the disruptor at R9-15, 16-25 & 31-40 so we can expect EW to be something of a wash.


L.K.:

I still don't see why the Tholians can't compete with an All Phaser Fleet? Or even just all Phaser XDDs and XPCs???
If an XPC has 4FX Ph-5s, an LS Ph-6, an RS Ph-6 and a pair of FA X2 Disruptors; it's not that different from an XPC with 6FX Ph-5s and an LS Ph-6 and RS Ph-6.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, January 13, 2006 - 04:46 am: Edit

D.S.:

Web site here

If you feret around through this web site, you'll probably find the Ph-5s tables people prefere to use and find that most are pretty much the same ( t'anks Loren).


That reminds me Tos. If I haven't done the XD5 ( which is the last of my XCMs ) then remind me just to send the XCMs I have in a week or so.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, January 13, 2006 - 10:56 am: Edit

MJC: All I can say at this point is run a simulation on a map of an open space battle. Yes, Tholians will fight at bases but what they really have to defend is the long stretches of open space borders.

But don't play the Klingons to help the Tholians, play them to beat the all phaser Tholians. Assume both have PH-5 (Klingons with rear Ph-1), assume a somewhat heavier disruptor (say a base six so about +1 point), X1 Drones in GX racks, 20 point warp engines. Tholians have all Ph-5.

There is a problem in that no specific points are agreed on so each of us may be thinking of a different weapons and ship design. In your X2 universe the disruptor may be more down played and the PH-5 more upgraded.

Lastly, you present two options in your above post: One is the All Phaser-5 FLEET and another an all Ph-5 XDD and XPC. There is a big difference as the second one is one I've suggested as possible. Naturally the XPC (if there is one) would be all phasers and I certainly see the XDD having an all phaser variant.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, January 13, 2006 - 11:05 am: Edit

Yeah, I have a pretty watered down Disruptor to others ( although have a willingness to mount six on some cruisers ) as it's just an X1 Disruptor with built in UIM & DERFACs, four point Disruptor Capacitors (upgrading to 6, probably when the BTTYs get upgraded ) and a 6 impulse double broadside penalty.
I think it's nifty but others would call it weak...basically the Photon gets bigger and the Disruptor gets more flexible...funny the direction I'm taking it, eh!?!

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, January 13, 2006 - 02:39 pm: Edit

Loren,

I'm not advocating an all-phaser Tholian X2 fleet (though once upon a time I did advocate that all Tholian SC4 X2 ships be phaser-only), but I think your analysis is a bit off. It's hard to be sure because you haven't gone into specifics about how you see the fight shaping up.

Here's the way I see it. (And since none of us know what X2 will actually be like, I'm going to explicitly list some assumptions. Obviously, if you are working from a different set of assumptions, your conclusions could be very different.)

1. During the period under consideration, the majority of the warships available to all powers will still be GW-tech (though increasingly with XP refits) or X1 ships. There is background text, including in Module X1, that makes this probable in my opinion. One thing that follows from this assumption is that any battle which sees multiple X2 ships is probably a very important, high priority battle. Nobody, but least of all the Tholians, will have enough X2 ships available to mass several together for minor skirmishes. If the situation is too much for one ship to handle but not important enough to justify massing X2 ships, we are more likely to see an X2 ship as part of a force also containing X1 and XP-refitted GW ships.

2. Tholian SC4 X2 ships will be phaser-only (with snares), but larger X2 ships will also have webcasters. I am not advocating that this is what the X2 Tholian fleet should actually look like, though I did once upon a time. I list this as an assumption because my purpose here is to examine what would be the likely result if that were what the Tholian X2 fleet looked like. From this it follows that small (SC4) Tholian ships will tend to have more phaser-5s than their opponents in the same class. We need to be careful here about what constitutes a "class" however. The Tholian DD, at both GW and X1 levels is much closer to the Fed FFG/FFX than to the DD+/DDX, in BPV and in total systems. The fact that it's called a DD and has a .5 MC doesn't really change this. The peculiarities of Tholian ship construction mean that many of their ships just don't correspond well to the classes used by other races. The Tholian DD is more like a "Frigate with Cruiser shields" than it is like any standard class.

3. Tholian X2 ships will be "Archeo" designs and will tend to have superior shielding than their opponents. With a small number of exceptions (the DHW Heavy Dreadnought being the most obvious), Archeo-Tholian ships are usually among the best shielded ships for their BPV in Alpha. We don't know if this will hold in X2, but it certainly did in X1.

If these assumptions are valid, what do they suggest about the viability of a Tholian all-phaser (except for those ships that have web casters) X2 fleet?

One-on-One Duel: Although there are a few exceptions, most ships can't hurt a comparable opponent with long range bombardment. It is usually possible, with a combination of ECM, EM, and shield reinforcement, for a ship at long range to make itself immune to a single enemy of comparable size, BPV, and technology level. The exceptions frequently involve some kind of weapon/power mismatch, such as the Fed DD. It has cruiser weapons but not cruiser power. It can put out enough firepower to overwhelm a comparable BPV destroyer at range 30. But it will have so little power left for movement that the enemy will generally be able to close the range quickly. Single ship duels are usually settled at medium or short range, rather than by long range bombardment. And at those ranges, the superiority of the Tholian's phaser suite and shields should be easily adequate compensation for the lack of heavy weapons. Conclusion - All-phaser Tholian SC4 ships are viable in a duel.

Small Skirmish: The Tholian is responding to a minor border incursion. The responders are an XDD, a DDX, and an XP-refitted CHP (which is actually the leader of the force even though it is the oldest ship). The incursion force is discovered to be a simialr composed Klingon force. The Klingon force would presumably have 8 range-30 disruptors, two of which are X1 and two of which are X2. The Tholians have two X1 range-30 disruptors and four photon torpedos. The Tholians also have superior phaser firepower and better shields, though some of that phaser fire will be diverted to deal with Klingon drones. But since the Tholians will also have snares and T-bombs to help against the drones, on any given turn when they think they need it, they will have phaser superiority, even if they don't have it every turn. The snares also mean that the Tholians can, at carefully chosen points during the battle, temporarily block Klingon DF weapons. Conclusion - It is by no means obvious that the Tholians are at a disadvantage here. Note that since for each side the X2 ships are only a fraction of the total combat power, individual differences between these ships is of diluted importance.

Lightning Raid against a high priority target: Three F7 Highly Advanced Frigates cross the border to attack a valuable (but fleeting) target of opportunity. A squadron of three Tholian XDDs moves to intercept. (I really dislike calling X2 Klingon ships by names like XD7 or XF5. This seems to me to ignore established Klingon naming conventions. Note that in the EY period most races have ships designated "WDD" or "YCA" or some such. But the Klingons don't use that nomenclature. They have the "F3" and "D4" and the "C4" and so on. The basic Klingon X2 cruiser should be the D8, not the XD7.) This may be a tough one for the Tholians. At long range, the Klingon disruptors probably give them fire power superiority, and with massed squadron fire the Tholians may not be able to ECM/"brick" sufficiently to negate it. But I have been assuming the Tholians do have better shields, so the question is whether the Klingon fire superiority at long range is sufficient to overcome the Tholian shield superiority. Note also that this particular scenario assumes a Klingon raid into Tholian space against a fleeting target. So it may be that all the Tholian XDD squadron needs to do is delay the Klingons long enough for that target to escape, after which the Tholian squadron disengages. Or maybe they only need to hang on long enough for slower but heavier reinforcements to arrive, since the battle is taking place in Tholian space, after all. Conclusion - Hard to say, but this scenario does highlight the importance, for determining whether all-phaser Tholian X2 ships are viable, of embedding the battle in a strategic setting. Why is the fight occuring at all? Three Klingon Frigates, even X2 Frigates just ain't taking on a phaser-4 equipped Tholian base that already has its webs in place. That's a job for a full scale battle fleet. Which leads us to...

Full Scale Battle: For some reason this battle is important enough for both sides to commit battle fleets consisting largely, though perhaps not entirely, of X2 ships. But it isn't taking place at a base/planet with established webs. If it were, all-phaser Tholians (with snares used as web generators to maintain the webs) are obviously extremely viable. But there is no plausible construction for this battle that wouldn't see the Tholians fielding multiple web casters in their fleet. The 312th arives in this galaxy with 22 web casters (two NDN, four NCA, six NCL, and two spare Command Modules). Starting in Y184 the Tholians can build their own web casters at a presumed rate of about two per year (extrapolating from the "U" rules section and the F&E rules on web caster conversions). By the time any race has enough X2 ships to form X2 battle fleets, the Tholians will have been building web casters for well over 20 years. Even allowing for combat losses in the GW or Andro incursion (source material suggests the Tholians largely sat out the ISC Pacification), the Tholians will have sufficient numbers of them that a major battle in open space will certainly see multiple web casters. Any nominal Klingon superiority in long range fire power will be meaningless as with multiple web casters, plus snares, the Tholians can , with proper care as to manuever, timing, and web placement, basically completely shut down their opponent's long range fire power. Note that in this case the Tholians aren't using their casters against the Klingons directly. They are creating shields directly in front of their own ships that the Klingons can't shoot through but Tholian phasers can. Long range, ECM, and shield reinforcement may dilute the effectiveness of massed phaser-5s, but Tholian diluted effectiveness beats Klingon zero effectiveness any day. And at long range the Klingons can't really maneuver to get a clear line-of-fire because they have to move so far that the Tholians can easily get new webs up in time, though they have to be a little careful about the rules against casting web adjacent to an already existing web. The Klingons will need to close the range to get any shot at all, but that brings them into the range where the Tholian superiority in Phaser-5s and shields becomes dominant. Also, as the range closes the Tholian web casters transition from being pure shields to their other functions. Conclusion - I'm not a gambler by nature but I'ld be tempted to put money on the Tholians in this battle.

In your earlier post you very correctly pointed out that Tholian ships can't be designed only for fighting behind web. They also have to be able to defend their space at a distance from bases/planets. And I'm not saying that, even using my assumptions, there are no plausible scenarios in which all-phaser Tholian X2 designs wouldn't be at a disadvantage. Any post like this one can only examine a small subset of the possibilities but I have tried to examine some that I thought were the most representative of the Tholian strategic X2 situation.

Depending on your assumptions; about technology, about tactics, about the strategic situation, your mileage may vary.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Monday, January 23, 2006 - 03:51 pm: Edit

Awfully quiet around here lately.

By Daniel Knudtson Thompson (Brezgonne) on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 - 05:02 pm: Edit

"Tholians, well the PC ain't coming back because of very real reasons that I cannot atribute to only myself. Selts being a cool-air species have their PC built in a different manner. FOr Tholians to get a PC they would have to research from scratch."

And people like me can, and will, still scratch our heads ands strongly disagree. And why exactly the Seltorians would have different particle cannons than the Tholians when the Tholians gave them to them, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. As I understand it, the Bugs are more or less in a worse off tech position than the Holdfast was. The get a bunch of neat things shoved onto them and didn't really need to know how it worked as long as the replicators kept churning them out.

Either way; I politely but strongly disagree about the Tholians not having particle cannons.

"I think that the Web caster and PH-5 combo is being over rated. Web Casters aren't as effective against a fast moving fleet and the Ph-5, while longer reaching than the Ph-1, isn't longer reaching than most torpedoes."

Yes they are. Web casters are devestating. The Holdfast can't deploy enough of them at one time to really see just how terrifying they really are.

If you really want to see what effect mass web casters have, run a Home Galaxy fleet against pretty much anyone. 15 to 25 casters will dominate any engagement. It's also the primary reason that it's so bloody hard to figure out how the Bugs could have won since Web breakers simply don't do enough to counter the massed number of web casters (and web fists) that they supposadly defeated.

A full Navy fleet is able to completely destroy the equivlent opposing fleet with little or no loss of ships. I know. I've done it. That pickup battle rule about Holdfast casters is there for a reason. Old Galaxy / Campaign fleets simply walk over all opposing ships with VERY few races even able to make the Tholians think very much.

The bottem line I'm trying to explain is that a Navy fleet plays very differently from a Holdfast fleet. The core tactics are the same but how you execute those tactics is very different due to the Navy fleet having more web casters than you know what to do with (and I mean that litterly)

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, September 15, 2008 - 02:00 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

The phaser emitter could be a seperate system from the weapon itself. In regular SFB the phaser capacitor, generator and emitter are all depicted by a single box on the SSD. Maybe an X2 ship has seperate boxes for the emitters on the collimator ring and the actual weapons (which would be a block of boxes in the middle of the ship somewhere).
For example, my X2 ship has 8 FX phasers. I take a bunch of damage through the #6 shield and lose the emitters on that arc. So now I have 8 FA+R phasers. This limits my tactical options, but I'm still in the fight. This makes the phasers on X2 ships a little harder to kill instead of easier to kill as Loren was concerned about. Obviously there would need to be a way to destroy the actual phaser systems themselves. Maybe every 3rd hit knocks out an actual phaser instead of just an emitter, similar to what SFB does now with the "phaser quality" rule. Or maybe it's hit on another line like battery. This defensive improvement is balanced by the much higher amount of damage X2 ships can pump out, and by keeping the number of phasers firing through the collimator reasonable.

This could apply to all X2 ships, or just Feds (Maybe they were motivated to focus more heavily on phaser technology after the post-GW photon hit-rate studies were leaked to the media.)

---

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Monday, September 15, 2008 - 11:18 pm: Edit

The current phaser is damaged directly as function of the DAC and capacitor storage is proportionally reduced. The emitter is more analogous to a mauler, but less durable. Below are some ideas for discussion.

DAMAGE: The capacitors supplying power to the emitter are destroyed on phaser hits on the DAC. The emitter stops working when the first excess damage box is hit. Any remaining capacitors power 2xP-1s (FH or FX depending on empire and ship). The ASIF I think would work to keep the emitter functioning longer.

FIRING ARCS: This is ship and empire dependent. Examples: Gorns and Feds would be a 360 degree arc; Klingons 270 degree arc.

REPRESENTED on SSD: A Klingon XD7 might have 3 forward phasers and these would show as a single box with a 6 in it representing 6 capacitors. The Feds might have a square representing 4 phasers with an 8 in the square representing 8 capacitors (we can make the 8 bigger font so Tos can read it). The title would be PH-5E-360; E stands for emitter and 360 represents the arc.

PHASER 5: Some have suggested 1.5 points of power per shot. An idea to consider is the PH-5 is a pulsed phaser. The first pulse is scored with the PH-5 table; the second pulse, for ranges 0 to 8, is scored on the PH-3 range 3 column and for ranges 9 to 25, is scored on the PH-3 4-8 column. Pulse fire costs 1.5 points of energy. Each pulse is a separate die roll and doesn't use narrow salvo rule.

A second mode of fire is x number of shots as a narrow salvo scored using the Ph-5 table (no second pulse shots). Energy cost is the number of shots plus one.

A third mode of fire is a single shot as a Phaser 1 for one point of energy.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 - 01:24 pm: Edit

JoeC,


DAMAGE
The direct result would be phasers that oould fire but don't have power to fire. I tend to be a little dubious of this because part of SFB is maneuvering to bring weapons to bear and how this changes as the ship takes damage.

I tend to look a little more favorably on the notion of emitters that get destroyed quickly and capacitors that stick around longer.

FIRING ARCS
While everybody loves large-arc weapons, the game breaks if one gives a ship too many of them.

REPRESENTED ON SSD
But there's no way to take partial damage. Combining phasers into a single block means they're all OK or all destroyed together. It could also make ships over-vulnerable to phaser hits.

PHASER-5
This might work as a P-1 + a P-3 but a P-5 is powerful enough and doen't need any more damage.

I'm not sure I fully understand your phaser proposal. Are there limits on firing modes? Some sound rather powerful.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 - 01:50 pm: Edit

I am dubious of the value of a rule seaparating capacitors and emmiters when both X1 and X2 ships have considerably large capacity battery suites. What is the tactical value? Easier repair? I'd lay five to one that SVC would say the emmiter is the major portion of the repair of any phaser and you might save one repair point, or none on smaller phasers.

I still like my old proposal for the Ph-5. It would have a twelve point max damage but cost 1.5 power. You could fire it as a Ph-1 for 1 power and as a Ph-6 for 1/2 power.

The old most widely settled on proposal was a Ph-5 with a max damage of 10 costing 1 power and a pulse mode of two Ph-6 for 1/2 power each (basically just an upstrengthed Ph-1X). This was too similar to the Ph-1X, IMO.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 - 02:32 pm: Edit

Question:

Who thinks the Hydrans will still use something like a Gatling phaser at X2? Personally, I would like to see it for differentiation purposes. But I would prefer it to be improved in some way over the X1 Gatling.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 - 04:37 pm: Edit

I'd like to see it too.

The two easiest routes to go are more powerful pulses or more pulses.

More powerul pulses would be a gatling P-6

More pulses would be 5 or 6 P-3 pulses.

Both would be overkill.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 - 07:49 pm: Edit

I've wondered if the Ph-6 should not be just an extended range Ph-3 with maybe an extra point of damage at the R0 and R1 range.

Something like:

Die	range	.....	.....	.....
roll	0	1	2	3	4-8	9-15	16-20
1	5	5	4	4	2	1	1
2	5	4	4	4	1	1	0
3	4	4	4	3	1	0	0
4	4	4	4	3	0	0	0
5	4	4	3	2	0	0	0
6	3	3	2	1	0	0	0

This way it wouldn't be too powerful for use in the next gen Gatling and not too powerful as a pulse phaser (two shots) from a ph-5 and reasonable with a half point of power. Other proposals had the Ph-6 putting out six max damage which is a bit much for a half point of power, IMO.

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 - 10:59 pm: Edit

John and Loren,

As I understand SFB SSDs are going to the overlay graphic style similar to FC. Rather than the current method of phaser boxes being inside the hull outline have the phaser boxes around the outside of the forward hull; one or more boxes per arc segment; for a 270 degree phaser-ring you would have L, LF, RF, and R. Maybe the LR and RF boxes can firing through each adjacent arc. I would expect the ASIF would protects the phaser-ring against the first few hits.

While I wasn't involved in the original discussions on the PH-5 my view is it is the offensive phaser. I would like to see it have multiple offensive firing modes. I like the idea of the XPH-1 being the defensive phaser with limited aegis and rapid pulse.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 - 11:15 pm: Edit

The Ph-5 offensive phaser was designed to widen (extended range) the Ph-1 damage curve without increasing max damage.

The Ph-1X is the offensive/defensive (rapid pulse) phaser.

What is the design purpose of a Ph-6? Does such a phaser already exist in the form of a Ph-2X or Ph-G?

By Jeremy Gray (Gray) on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 - 06:59 am: Edit

JRC, SVC experimented with the FC-style SSD in the last captain's log, but it isn't (to my knowledge) a forgone conclusion that SFB is stitching to that. Y2 is certainly not going to be in that format. I don't think we can assume that it definately will (or will not) happen.