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	Archive through November 16, 2009	25		11/16 06:26pm

John,

1) Life is unfair. For example there are many other kinds of terrain that favor one perticular tech. Heat zones vs PA panels come to mind.

2) for that matter, black holes/ gravity waves are death on seekers and fighters.

3) Besides at first you don't know where a given hole is going to go! So you might jump down a hole and end up in a BAD place.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 03:24 pm: Edit

Point taken to a degree, but the Andros are something of a specialty race too. and they can fight in heat zones, just not for long.

Plasma is simply hosed on this terrian.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 03:44 pm: Edit

Nah.

1) LONG RANGE seeking plasma is hosed.

2) So are webcaster dependent defenses.

3) Seekers in general are not lovin' the terrain. from using planets to lose lock ons, to rocks vs drones, terrain is tough on seekers.

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 03:59 pm: Edit

Not to mention other terrain which hoses. Like Nebulas being hard on Lyrans, Hydrans. Radiation Zones vs. empires like the Branthodon Regime.

Only empires that benefit from any terrain seem to be Tholians and WYNs.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 06:26 pm: Edit

If you have a 1 in 6 chance of being destroyed if you go into a hole, you'll avoid all the holes. There's almost no point in their being there.

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Monday, November 16, 2009 - 07:05 pm: Edit

It's all about the group. The people I play with would use them, I'm pretty sure. Other than the same two players who tried to go Monty Haul in our Magical Murder Box campaign (One hex in, get salvage roll, pop back out, no danger, no challenge, as opposed to guys like me that went in and took shots at the Juggernauts, dealing with the adverse terrain and such to still pull out my salvage, hopefully before that shriek caught me up the downed 4 shield).

Never underestimate the group that would do something "Stupid" or "Tactically unsound" or "Just plain risky" in the name of fun.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 08:48 am: Edit

Jim & Jordan, you could of course first check the hole out.

Fire a probe into it. Send in a shuttle, etc.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 07:35 pm: Edit

Aha. If they're consistent, that changes things.

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 07:52 pm: Edit

Yeah, I had not thought they were consistant. Makes it more playable in general but less fun for the "Beer and chips" type meet and shoot chaotic cutthroat game. For those days when you want something fun and explosive and highly unpredictable.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - 01:11 pm: Edit

Well, a given entrance hole leads a given exit.

You just don't know which one.

And the way I have set up the system its both random and fairly easy to track for each player WHILE the other players don't get to see all the info.

So like I said, it would be fun in environments with smaller ships dodging around other terrain and doing stuff. Perhaps frigate squadron with each captain limited in his comms?

For example each captain can SEND 10 bytes once every 4 impluses to ONE other ship or the Squadron commodore can SEND 10 words an impulse to his entire squadron.

So FF#1 can send "hole1234to5678" to JUST FF#2 or the FFL.

The FFL might send "probe1234"

YOu would be encouraged to have squadron signals (I'd limit them to perhaps 20 standard messages stuff like


Actually it might be fun to list a bunch of these standard tactical commands.

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Wednesday, November 18, 2009 - 07:24 pm: Edit

I was wondering where that proposal came from, since I read the Other section before I checked in on this one. Now I know.

Course I can't imagine anything more tedious in team based matches than communications rules, especially when most playrs will try or learn about intercepts. You end up having to have one guy come up with ciphers and codes between sessions for your guys to use...

Ug.

On topic: Problem is unless you're PBEM or something the moment you send that shuttle through, or a probe, whatever, every player at the table will SEE what happens. And there is a certain SFU logic of "We just saw the enemy probe go through the anomoly at 0320 and the same warp signature reappeared instantly at 1705."

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, November 19, 2009 - 09:22 am: Edit

The point of this proposal (Prairie Dog Space) is for ships to have some terrain that is fun and kinda unpredictible.