I figure the Klinks would go for bigger drones, while the Kzinti would go for more old-style drones.

Klinks get improved drone types (more armor, more warhead). They are trying to get a drone wave past a series of ph-3s.

Kzintis get improved drone racks (fire more, faster). They are trying to get a drone wave past a series of ADDs.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 01:13 pm: Edit

Want to make X2 drones bad ass? Take the X1 drone and make ATG standard and add another turn of endurence.

With this, I think that X2 should continue the trend to move away from drones as a main line tactic.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 01:46 pm: Edit

Every Kzinti in the room is looking to kill you.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 02:00 pm: Edit

I agree with Loren that X1 drones with automatic ATG, fast speed, two spaces and a longer endurance should be enough to scare the hell out of anyone. Just think how nasty an ATG drone, coming at top speed and carrying an armor module and a 12 point warhead will be! ARGH!!!

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 02:56 pm: Edit

John. Kzintis might for an exception but they will have to think out of the box because the defenses on X ship make drone pretty tough to hit with. X ship defenses pretty much deleated the Fighter except for the Hydrans. Not even PF survived. Drones are going to take a beating.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 09:40 pm: Edit

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Quote:

Drones are going to take a beating.

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By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 12:13 am: Edit

The Kzinti CX has 6 racks, 4 G and 2 C.

What if the Kzinti CXX has 8 C racks, or 6 racks that can shoot out a drone 8 impulses (up to 3 a turn)?
No need for fancy X drones, just use more of the GW stuff that can already be mass produced? (i.e., put the X2 improvement in the racks and the drone-assembly line).
After all, since the Kzinti are trying to get their drones through a wave of ADDs, the improvements are a waste.

The Klingon CX has 2 drone racks that still replace the shuttle bay.

What if they kept the same number of racks, but improved the individual drones.

The GW type-I was 4/12, type IV was 6/24, and a lot of players use 8/18.
The X1 type VII was 6/18, the type VIII was 8/24.

What about this:
X2 drones have a 2 space 6/24, a 3 space 12/36, but could only fit on the Klingons specially designed 10 space racks? And the Klingons kept to their "two drone racks on a cruiser" doctrine?

There will have to be consideration given to balancing "points to kill" vs. "chance to kill with the new type of phaser". The X0 game balance hinges on this, so it's something we'll have to get right.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 02:07 am: Edit

No I mean "Drones in the game", "Drones as a tactic".

Sorry about that. But I must say you did hit on part of my point. Drones should be scaled back to the original use. As an auxillary weapon. This does leave the question of what to do about the Kzintis. If the Kzintis continue with drone wave tactics then the Klingons will have to, and the Feds will be facing drone waves and have to match that and then there will have to be X-fighters because they can put out the largest drone wave of all. Then there will be anti-fighter ships and Carriers and Escorts and every thing will be the same except it will take longer to mark of the huge number of damage points on the huge shields and fighters and everything small will die by the dozen and death and destruction will reign everywhere and, and, aaaaarrrrgggggg!

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 02:07 am: Edit

I'm serious but LOL too.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 03:10 am: Edit

I think the Kzintis can remain the exception.

And no X fighters either (except Hydrans)

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I can't think of a "why wouldn't they do it if it helps them out" reason, but I can think of a big playability reason:

Kzinti fleet battles. Without a laptop. What do you mean ALL the races have that many drones?

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But you do bring up a point. I forgot about the humungous number of drones a CVA squadron can put on the board. And CVAs didn't intend drones to just affect the maneuver of the enemy, they wanted multiple hits.

For the Klingons, a CVA squadron includes:
C8V carrier, 235 EPV,220 BPV, 0 (!?) drone racks.
24 fighters (Z-YC after Y183), 5.5/11 BPV (264 BPV for the 24)
4 drones per fighter (1 BPV per drone each for speed 32), 96 BPV,
AD5 war cruiser escort, 120 BPV (up to 136 with speed 32), 4 G racks,
2 x F5E frigate escort, 100 BPV (up to 116 with speed 32), 4 G racks.

For a total of 948 BPV and a launch rate of 24 type I drones/turn, plus 12 rack-launched Is or IVs, plus the scatter packs it can dish out.

The writeup from CL23 says that X ships were not intended to annihilate attrition units, but they do better than X0 ships at defending themselves.

Although it would be out BPVed 950-350, I think a CXX should be able to handle what the whole CVA squadron can dish out, but just barely (rock-paper-scissors). If it can't, then you're asking people to continue to build X0 CVA squadrons in the X2 era, perhaps with X1 tech on the CVA itself.

And 2 CXXs together should stomp the CVA group.

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I may be asking the impossible.

A CX2 that can:
• defend against 48 Type-1 drones/turn,
perhaps having to tie up ALL of its phasers in the process.
(the second CXX gets it's shot at enemy ships)
• not suffer from the old X1 phaserboat syndrome,
• have to respect what a Kzinti CXX can dish out in terms of drones.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 12:23 pm: Edit

The main problem with firing all those drones is that they are amazingly expensive. You have to build them, put them in a warehouse until war is declared, truck the things halfway across the empire, load them onto the ship, all the time keeping them maintained, safe and secure.

And then all you'll be doing is encouraging that idiot captain to stick half a dozen of the things on a shuttle which will get blown apart by the Klink at R22. So you have to send him another bunch of shuttles too.

Now if we introduce a CVA group, the whole problem expands tenfold. If you're not at war, a CVA is a waste of time, money and resources. Similarly for PFTs.

All of which means that if the galaxy is at peace in Y205, nobody except the Hydrans will want fighters; nobody except the Kzinti will want DB ships; nobody except the Lyrans will want PFs (and they'll be casual).

Therefore:

The Kzin will use drones as a primary weapon; the Feds and Klinks will use them as secondary weapons; the WYN will be somewhere in between. Anything else is too inconvenient. And you don't have to worry about CVA groups; the most you'll see is the drones from a similarly-sized Kzinti X2 force.

Therefore:

An X1 Kzinti CX can chuck out 8 drones per turn, plus SP, so averaging 12 or so. Let's imagine that going up to 16/turn in X2 (for +15% BPV).
Therefore a Klink DX needs to survive about 30 ATG drones for 1 turn, plus 16/turn thereafter (until the Kzin reloads).

T-bombs can take care of about 8; twin Gx racks (as ADDs) might handle 8, 10 rapid-fire P1s might handle 10, tractors 2 and shields 2. In the next turn, Gx take out 6, phasers 10, shields 2.

I don't see this as a problem. The Kzin will get hits, but not many (none if the Klink goes fully defensive).

The above assumes something like 8 damage to destroy a typical 2X drone.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 12:27 pm: Edit

That ship might be able to survive the drone wave but then there is the DF. A CVA group would slaughter an X-ship in short order.


Also, if you put ATG on drones standard, then drones in general have to be scaled back. If not, then unlimited size of drone waves become the norm and that's bad.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 07:39 pm: Edit

Well, as the CVA group has three times the BPV of the X-ship, it should. Or in practice, the X-ship would retrograde and blow the fighters apart at R15. Or disengage.

True that ATG makes the drones far more effective. You could make plentiful ATG or triple drone control a Kzinti schtick to limit other races' use of it.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 07:51 pm: Edit

My old group toyed with the idea of giving Kzinti ships a sort of limited special sensor, that had only the drone-related functions; drone control, breaking drone locks, etc. The number you could have was limited by size class, and they could be attacked by H&R raids like a UIM or cloak. That gave them much better drone control, but nothing extravegant. IIRC, an SC 4 ship could carry one, SC3 two, and SC2 three.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 10:45 pm: Edit

I'd like to see an ADD improvement.

Either range 4 hit on 1-2 or range 4 hits 1-3 and range 5 hits 1-2.

To balance this I'd say an ADD hit does 6 damage to a drone, 4 to a shuttle/fighter and 2 to a PF. That aught to start to limit PFs in the X2 era.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 11:16 pm: Edit

I don't think we should tinker with that part of it. "An ADD that hits a drone kills the drone."

But an ADD improvement for the Klinks balanced against a launch rate improvement for the Kzintis would be interesting.

I think the standard charts are fine, but maybe an ADD-24?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 12:45 am: Edit

ADD-18 with six of them Chaff Drones.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 04:04 am: Edit

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Quote:

Also, if you put ATG on drones standard, then drones in general have to be scaled back. If not, then unlimited size of drone waves become the norm and that's bad.

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By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 05:09 am: Edit

If we have drones that go faster than 32 then well need a longer range ADD period.

If we want tougher drones their are two ways of doing it that I can think of just off the top of my head.

1) Make all X2 drones, Poundal drones ( they can carry external modules with out reduction in speed ) or have the ability to be switched to poundal mode, so they can carry large ammounts of external armour to resit the effects of the phaser defenses...possibly we should make armour modules increase the drone damage by 3 per half space instead of two to reflect advancing tachnologies.

2) Build a SUPER ECM, say a wild Weasel drone warhead, that can be coupled with armour modules.

The DRONE puts up 6 ECM to it'self and any drone in the flight it is in ( all in the same hex ) up to a limit of 12 drones.

ALL fire on any of the drones in that flight are SO distracted by the intense electric warfare that they MUST target the SUPER ECM drone.

By putting up a WILD WEASEL DRONE, the defenser must destroy it first ( slowly to avoid overkill ) and then will be free to fire on the other drones ( hopefully by then it'll be too late ) unless there is a second SUPER ECM drone in the flight.

By having enough super ECM drones in the flight we can even force the slowing down of the enemy defenses despite the enemy having full aegis.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 12:15 pm: Edit

MJC: ATG at R8. Whoops. Heh, you'd think I would have remembered that but nope, I didn't. Sigh, there is so much to remember in this game. Oh well, that's part of what's cool.

So, it's simple then, scale back drone control to 1 * sensor rating and add ATG as standard. If a X2 ship really needs to it can use it limited Spec. Sens ability to control more. (This is an ability I posted earlier which was to give the main Bridge [what ever the number of boxes] the abilities of one special sensor. Once all the bridge boxes are destroyed the SS ability is lost until repaired at an additional cost.)

Kzintis would then retain Double control. Plus the use of the Bridge Spec. Sens.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 04:10 pm: Edit

ADDs only need a modest range increase. 5 will cover everything that needs covering.

Make it something like

Range 1: 1-2
Range 2: 1-3
Range 3: 1-4
Range 4: 1-4
Range 5: 1-3

What ADDs need more than range is shots and reloads. Suppose ADD ammo gets smaller? An ADD, when connected to aegis (and what X2 ADD wouldn't?) gets two shots per turn.

Also important is ADD reload times. Suppose the smaller size meant ADDs reloaded something like 6 shots in 16 impulses. A ship could take a ADD out of service during the "down" part of the turn and have ADDs back during the other half.

And, yes, an 18-shot ADD wouldn't be a bad thing.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 04:30 pm: Edit

I did work up a 15 shot ADD, with a to hit chart similar to that one, John. Just haven't posted it yet. Sounds like there's interest in such a thing, though, and frankly it makes sense. The ADD would get upgraded just like everything else.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 06:53 pm: Edit

John ADD's can fire every Impulse. So I presume you meant 2xImpulse instead of 2xTurn. But I like the range chart. It's practical and the incresed R5 is at the lesser to hit chance.

I would say make it so myself.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 07:43 pm: Edit

Kenneth Jones,

Yes, that was what I meant.

Fire 2x per impulse (on different Aegis steps)

Reload 2x per turn

By Trent Telenko (Ttelenko) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 07:44 pm: Edit

I like the idea of standard ATG and extended endurance as standard features.

How about something like a limited range "sprint mode" for X-2 drones that makes over running drone armed ships a pain?

This could either be something like the anti-ship missile for fighters that were proposed earlier or the Hyper drones of the Flivers.