Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	Archive through March 15, 2011	25		03/16 03:02pm
	Archive through March 22, 2011	25		04/12 09:51pm

I meant when Mike comes over here tomorrow night.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - 09:05 pm: Edit

Troy, I look forward to yours and Mikes reports!

If mike does use a Fed POL equipped with Ablative shielding instead of "normal" shields, it could be an interesting study... IIRC thePOL had been upgraded to 50 BPVs (plus drone speed upgrades) so that gives us a "ball park" BPV figure to compare to.

Good Luck to Both Contestants!

By Troy Latta (Saaur) on Thursday, March 24, 2011 - 10:34 am: Edit

Schedule change. We played last night instead of tonight, but it took us 3.5 hours to get through 3 turns of battle in a heat zone for the campaign (Selty DDE and Q-L vs Paravian WCL and Alunda TR). Thus, we didn't have time to playtest the armor. Maybe Sunday when all the guys are over someone will have a break to mess with it.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - 08:14 pm: Edit

Just for giggles and grins, lets post the conversion to a squid variant of the POL.

System	POL	Squid
Photon	1	1
ph-1-FA L	1	1
ph-1-FA R	1	1
Bridge	2	2
LAB	2	2
Probe	1	1
AUX	1	1
Trac	1	1
Tran	2	2
BTTY	2	2
Cargo	2	2
SHTTL	2	2
EMER	1	1
ph-1-360d	1	1
C Hull	5	5
Imp	2	2
L Warp	5	5
R Warp	5	5
CU	10	10
BP	2	2

Shields facings would have the following factors:

Type	Normal Shields	Ablative Armor
Shld#1	14	14
Shld#2&6	12	12
Shld#3&5	10	10
Shld#4	9	9

Note: the POL would hve normal shields. the Squid ship would only have Ablative Armor.(and zero energy cost for shields.)

Both ship types have a MC=1/3=0.334
both ship types have a life support cost of 1/2
fire control on both ships cost 1
the shield energy cost of the POL is 1/2+1/2.

Was there any other modifications needed to convert a POL to a squid typ vessel?

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - 09:51 pm: Edit

What's a squid?

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - 11:10 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

What's a squid?

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By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 01:58 am: Edit

No, what's a squid ship? Context is an important part of understanding English sentences.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 03:13 am: Edit

Squids are the hypothetical species which use this type of armour (mentioned further up the thread).

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 03:57 am: Edit

Oh ok. Probably would be a good idea to NOT exactly duplicate the ship systems onto the squid. A little variance is a good thing.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 11:50 am: Edit

Richard,
the idea of duplicating a Fed POL with ablative armor was to let people (should they want to) play test the two ships to allow a comparison to how shields work vs Ablative Armor when all other systems remained constant.

that way we might be able to factor how effective (or ineffective) Ablative Armor is compared to similar numbers of shield boxes/shield facings.

The general gist (atleast for me) is that ablative armor is less effective and convenient to use than are regular shields.

but it is a different approach for protecting a ship... for what its worth.

By Stewart W Frazier (Frazikar2) on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 08:21 pm: Edit

Squid? That's marine slang for Navy personnel (except corpsmen, them's medics)...

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 09:31 pm: Edit

A wiley invertebrate that lives in the ocean, but that is not important right now.

By Joseph Brown (Jlbrown) on Tuesday, February 14, 2012 - 01:29 am: Edit

This seems like it could be interesting; how did the playtest turn out?

Having read the entire thread to this point, I have some initial knee-jerk reactions. It has been a while since I played, and I do not have a rulebook handy, so please excuse me if these are a bit off; here goes:
[list=1]
[*]Would it be simpler to use the existing 'X points of energy spent on EW generates a shift of Y', rather than a custom table? If memory serves, that calculation is basically 'take the square root of energy spent, drop fractions = shift' -- so it is fairly easy to figure in-game. Since folks who use the EW rules are already used to doing it, this wouldn't be adding a new math-related task.
I realize that this is 'natural' ECM that affects incoming and outgoing fire equally, and that it is generated by damage, not energy -- but if you declared '1 point damage vs AA = 1 point of energy for purposes of calculating the strength only' then it seems fairly straight-forward.

[*]I'd like to add a concept -- smouldering. There is a problem with squid ships outrunning their protection just when they need it; I hope this will help. The concept is that the ships armour doesn't all boil away at once, and is handled as follows:
A} Ship is hit for damage to the ablative armour. The armor is marked off the SSD at the appropriate stage in the impulse, and the same number of 'smoke' tokens are piled up to be placed on the SSD, effective at the end of that impulse.
B} 'Smoke' tokens which are due to be removed from hexes are removed.
C} 'Smoke' tokens due to be removed from the SSD are removed from the SSD and placed in the hex the ship is in.
D} Any new 'smoke' tokens due to be placed on the SSD are placed.
This creates two pools of 'smoke' tokens, one (placed on or near the SSD for clarity) which follows (and affects only fire to and from) the ship, and another (placed on hexes) pool which affects all fire to, from, or within the hex.

[*]I like the idea of the ship shedding 'smoke' tokens every impulse, but would like to see it scale -- I think a number of tokens equal to the shift (caused by the tokens on the SSD only) at the beginning of the impulse is a good starting point.

[*]To avoid mucking about with a bunch of hexes every impulse, I think having every hex lose half of all it's 'smoke' tokens at the end of the Dogfight Resolution Interface (basically speed 4) may work.
[/list]

I think this could lead to interesting fleet-deployment compromises for the squids; moving slow and 'schooling' maximizes protection from enemy direct-fire but causes vulnerability to explosions. Moving fast and spreading out would increase their offensive potential.

Thanks for sharing this interesting concept.