This might be errata; the SSD for the GPC-F in Omega 5 has some of the fighter boxes marked with the "=" running vertically. Not sure what it's supposed to mean, but they should probably be like all the others.

By Aaron M. Staley (Awwwdrat) on Friday, May 13, 2011 - 06:01 am: Edit

Apparently the "ALL Omega Errata" file doesn't include errata from O5.

Anyway, the SCS SSD has no note for what the repair boxes are hit on.

By Aaron M. Staley (Awwwdrat) on Friday, May 13, 2011 - 06:11 am: Edit

Omega MRB has the Drex DNc line missing from the MSC.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - 01:05 am: Edit

Okay, finally decided to dip my toe in the Omega waters. So I bought the Omega MRB, and read through it yesterday. And there's two things that are driving me nuts.

The first, minor one is OE30.14. Specifically, that they can't be used on non-dragons even in the simulators. What? It's the simulators! You just reprogram the simulator! If you want to simulate a Federation admin shuttle armed with plasma-Rs and gatlings that resolve on the phaser-4 table, hey, it's a freakin' computer simulation! You program it to do that!

The major one is OE23.0, which unlike the original rules in P6, break setting logic, because they don't have the strict size-class limitation.

The problem here is that you would never, ever use a heavier photon if you could substitute smaller photons in the numbers to equalize firepower. A DN with 4 heavy photons is inferior in flexibility and damage resistance to one with 6 standards, and vastly inferior to one with 12 light photons, with no difference in range, power, energy consumption, or even equivalent cost of repair. We have narrow salvoes, after all, if you need to concentrate fire.

Specific constraints of specific naval architectures might, of course, limit how many total tubes you can have. If you're in a situation where you can't add tubes but you can add firepower, well, you'd upgrade some of them to heavier photons. But every naval architect would approach the problem as "First, how many total tubes can we have? Okay. Now, how many of those can we safely make heavier to max our firepower?"

Assembly and repair issues? The Federation operated how many fundamentally different types of warp-refitted ships in the Early Years? The plasma races get by with how many different plasmas? The tactical doctrine and understanding issues on light vs. standard vs. heavy are significantly less than plasma F vs. plasma S vs. plasma R.

And, of course, if the light photon was, in fact, possible, why wasn't the historical Federation DD, at least, armed with four of them?

Yeah, it's too late to say "Just kidding! The FRA only had standard photons!"—but there needs to be a better explanation as to why the FRA had lights and the Federation didn't. (And some explanation why the FRA ever made heavies, too.)

By Stewart W Frazier (Frazikar2) on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - 06:03 pm: Edit

Note that the Federation is a lot bigger than the FRA and while the Feds just got use to the standard photon, the FRA looked and said they needed something and came up with the light/heavy photons...

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Thursday, May 26, 2011 - 05:23 am: Edit

Size doesn't explain anything.

First, having a small resource base makes it harder to support a variety of equipment in production, because you can't generate economies of scale as easily. If the Federation had all three types and the FRA only one, then the size explanation would be reasonable.

Second, the Federation did need the light photon, especially in the Y era, but also for the MY DD, and arguably for the BCJ.

Third, the heavy photon is inferior to the standard, and there is accordingly no reason for the FRA to invent it.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, May 26, 2011 - 06:52 am: Edit

So they invented the standard photon (EY'ish) and JUST BEFORE the Aurora colony was moved they discovered the light and heavy photon tech. And decided for the reasons given to stick with the one size...

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Thursday, May 26, 2011 - 08:33 am: Edit

I think the short answer is that they use the variant photons just to make them different from the Alpha octant Federation.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Thursday, May 26, 2011 - 06:03 pm: Edit

Mike Grafton:

First, OE23 is clear that the light and heavy photons date back to "the earliest days of Federation research". So at least we'd need that much revision to OE23.

Second, the Aurora colony was moved in Y130 . . . the same year as the Fed DD's YIS. So inventing the light early enough that Aurora has the plans is inventing it early enough it could be adopted by the Federation for the Fed DD.

Third, the "reasons given" don't make any sense, given later Federation adoption of the plasma-F. The plasma-F causes far more "complex assembly and repair" and "tactical training needed" issues than a light photon does.

Fourth, it still doesn't actually make the heavy photon make any sense for FRA use.

--

Terry O'Carroll:

Yeah, that's why they were used. Unfortunately, they didn't get a decent in-universe explanation, so the result is the Federation was stupid for never using the light photon, and the FRA was stupid for ever using the heavy photon.

--

Having thought about it, I've actually got some suggestions to explain the whole thing.

First, you make the light photon a hybrid dependent on Mæseron tech (thus making it something the Federation never invented, instead of it being something the Federation simply stupidly refused to adopt).

Second, you make the heavy slightly easier to repair than 12 points. 11 repair points gives it an actual advantage over the more flexible standard and light photons which explains why someone would ever actually use them.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Thursday, May 26, 2011 - 06:49 pm: Edit

So far, the only published ships with heavy photons are the DN and (conjectural) SCS; in both cases, the hulls have 2 heavy and 4 standard photons on the SSD.

While, in principle, the two heavy photons are double-space weapons, in practice I suspect that the dreadnought would simply have had the same 6-standard complement as (later) Federation DNs had the FRA not been given heavies.


As for lights, the earliest FRA ships with them entered service prior to formal first contact with the Mæsrons (rather, before they knew the Republic was there) and long before the two empires started jointly working on new technologies.

So far as the choice of using lights and heavies goes, the impression I got was that the Feds not using either was as much about politics as it was about military methods. Sticking with one standard type of photon probably sounded like a good way to keep costs down (or at least keep them consistent) for the Council, even if Star Fleet wanted to press ahead with variable-scale torpedoes on their ships.

Tensions betweeen Star Fleet and the Council are nothing new; in the Early Years, the Fleet were forced to use destroyers when they wanted to stick with frigates, while the use of ship-mounted auxiliary reactors on Star Fleet ships was hampered for decades by a noted reluctance of the Council to provide the required waivers.

Though not as pressing as the downward pressures held to the Gorn navy by the Confederation Senate, Star Fleet by no means gets things its own way (even when it actually has an internal consensus on what that way should be); the Auorans, with a very different set of circumstances to deal with, decided to do things differently.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Thursday, May 26, 2011 - 07:27 pm: Edit

If a FRA DN and a Fed DN have the same number of tubes, perhaps the problem is a matter of shock rather than size. The DN's larger mass being better able to absorb the shock of firing the heavier torpedoes. A hypothetical BCJ with 2xStandard and 2xHeavy in the saucer might not be subject to shock, or not as much, because you don't have high-shock weapons in the vulnerable "neck" of the ship, while having about the same firepower as a regular BCJ.

In regards to the excessive repair cost of the heavy torpedo, I would think that the smaller tubes would tend to pad the larger against damage to some extent. If you take enough torpedo damage that you are forced to lose the heavy tubes, you're pretty badly damaged.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, May 27, 2011 - 01:04 am: Edit

According to (OE23.28):

---

Quote:

Only Size Class 2 units and bases can mount heavy photon torpedoes. (Some records exist to show the FRA attempted to mount a heavy photon on a super-heavy cruiser hull during the Invasions, but the shock effects made this configuration undesirable and the project was abandoned.)

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By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Friday, May 27, 2011 - 04:12 am: Edit

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Quote:

Oh, and heavy photons rank just above (and lights just below) standard photons for the purposes of damage priority.

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By Jim Cummins (Jimcummins) on Friday, May 27, 2011 - 11:21 am: Edit

The FRA could have found some technology in the reamins of some other unknown mystery race, that got swept into their space to give them the ability to make the Light Photon. Then the heavy was just an extrapulation in the other direction. In this way the Lights were designed from technology the Federation did not have, and the heavy photon were an unrealised potential. maybe during the x2 era the FRA can develop a benificail heavy photon.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Friday, May 27, 2011 - 08:03 pm: Edit

Okay, actually, if the FRA DN is 2H/4S, that makes sense for them to use the heavies as a way of adding firepower; presumably they couldn't just jam on seven standard photons instead. That works. (This is what I get for going SSD-less MRB as a bargain introduction instead of buying all the modules.)

Of course, you then have the question why, in the pressure of the General War, the Federation didn't include the same 2H-4S arrangement on the DNH, but we can explain that by saying the Federation didn't invent the heavy for the same reason it didn't invent the light.

But you still need a technological reason why the Federation never did that, not a political one. Standardization demands resulting in the "medium" photon doesn't work under the current OE23 text. The current OE23 text has heavies and lights being invented at the very beginning of photon development; given a politically-mandated choice of a single photon size, the obvious choice in the Y era (especially with the initial W ships) is the light.

Unknown mystery race technology instead of Mæseron tech works fine. The key is that for the Federation to plausibly never use different-scale photons, never-ever-ever, it has to never invent them. Given that, for the FRA to plausibly invent them in a matter of years when the Federation didn't manage to in a matter of over a century, the FRA needs some sort of outside influence.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Saturday, May 28, 2011 - 11:58 am: Edit

Steven wrote:
>>Yeah, it's too late to say "Just kidding! The FRA only had standard photons!"—but there needs to be a better explanation as to why the FRA had lights and the Federation didn't. (And some explanation why the FRA ever made heavies, too.)>>

I don't know that there *needs* to be a better explanation. I mean, ya know, game. And a lot of stuff in Omega tends to exists just 'cause. Don't get me wrong, I'm fond of Omega stuff. But much of it is kind of arbitrary.

Even then, the heavy photon could be explained by any number of things involving out of game "hand wavium" factors--a heavy photon is cheaper to build than one and a half regular photons (i.e. 2 heavy photons are cheaper to build and/or maintain than 3 regular photons) or a heavy photon takes up less space than one and a half regular photons. And light photons are larger than half a photon (so 2x light photons take up more space than 1x standard photon). Or whatever factors that aren't reflected in the game that work for you.

In terms of the actual game, the only ship that seems to actually mount the heavy photon (well, in Omega 3 at least) is the FRA Dreadnaught. Which mounts 4x standard photons and 2x heavy photons. Which is equivalent to having 7 photons. No (non battleship) Fed ships have 7 photons. No (non battleship) ships at all have 7 photons. The FRA DN is very heavily armed relative to all the other DNs in the game (7 photon equivalents, 10xP1, 8xP3, 4xSRC or Tachyon Missiles). That ship is kind of a monster. And partially 'cause it mounts 2x heavy photons instead of 2x regular photons.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Saturday, May 28, 2011 - 12:10 pm: Edit

Steven also wrote:
>>But you still need a technological reason why the Federation never did that, not a political one. Standardization demands resulting in the "medium" photon doesn't work under the current OE23 text.>>

Having all standard photons instead of three different kinds increases production efficiency. And makes maintaining them easier (as you only need spare parts for a single weapon system instead of distributing and managing spare parts for three different weapon systems). Or whatever other "not seen in the game" factor you want to invent to explain this issue.

And if light photons are bigger than half a photon (see: "hand wavium" explanations above), the regular photon becomes the most optimal one to use. Say (and I'm picking arbitrary numbers here):

-A light photon takes .6 "spaces".

-A regular photon takes 1 "spaces".

-A heavy photon takes 1.4 "spaces".

(and by "spaces", I mean "arbitrary measure of space or weight that isn't reflected in the game")

So you could replace each standard photon with 2x light photons, but on a Fed CA, that would mean using 4.8 "spaces" for what is effectively the same armament as you get from 4 "spaces" of regular photons. Which isn't an insignificant amount of space, or whatever. And you can mount 2x heavy photons in 2.8 spaces instead of the 3 spaces it takes to mount 3 regular photons. But as the there are concrete disadvantages to 2 heavy photons over 3 regular photons (damage vulnerability, targeting), it doesn't happen much. Even if it is more "space" efficient.

The FRA decided to follow the less efficient path, as their fleet was small and they needed all the edges they could get. The Feds decided to follow the more efficient path, which is part of how they became the biggest economy in the galaxy.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 12:55 am: Edit

In the second post, Peter, you missed the important part of the paragraph you partially quoted; the mention of the Y era.

See, the standard photon took so much power relative to ship power in the Y era that the Federation's "Fighting Instructions" (page 27 of Module Y1) has the W and smaller Y ships not loading their standard photons at all in fleet engagements. Even if lights took up the exact same amount of space on ships as the standard photons, the Federation would have been better off installing usable lights on all the W ships and most Y ships instead standards that went unused.

Uniformity of weapons driven by any combination of politics, logistics, and economics would not stop deployment of the light on those ships; it would stop the deployment of the "mediums" on the YCA and YDN, since the fleets would be more effective if the more numerous ships had a photon they could use. The fact that the Federation put the "standard" medium-scale photons on W/Y ships shows that, at the very least, OE23 cannot be correct about the light and heavy having been developed in "the earliest days of Federation research". The Federation ships in Y1-3 only make sense if the altered-scale photons were not invented until after the Y era, so the background presented in OE23 needs that much change.

All right, then we have the light invented Y125 or thereabouts, and they get left on the shelf for reasons of standardization. Fine. Forty years later, we get to the run-up to the General War era, and the Federation starts experimenting with non-standard torpedoes on its ships. And it installs plasma-Fs instead of light photons? Every single political, logistical, and economic argument against using altered-scale photons is even stronger against using plasma-F torpedo launchers, which are being supplied in limited numbers by the Gorns. It doesn't make any sense that the same Federation that built the DDL, FFL, BCF, and DNF wouldn't have built any similar ships using light photons in place of the plasma-Fs. Even if the lights took up just as much space as standard photons, they'd have that space available to them in the mounts where the DDL, FFL, and BCF put their Fs, because we know those hulls could support standard photons in those spaces.

So, no. Economic/political/logistical factors can quite effectively explain why the Federation did not use lights in the Middle Years, sure. They do not suffice to explain why the Federation never used lights in either the Y era or the General War era. The background bit of OE23 needs to be amended to make Omega's photons a new product of Omega technology, not an old abandoned Federation technology.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 01:08 am: Edit

Steven wrote:
>>See, the standard photon took so much power relative to ship power in the Y era that the Federation's "Fighting Instructions">>

You realize these are just, ya know, dubious historical color, and not justification for technological arguments, right?

>> (page 27 of Module Y1) has the W and smaller Y ships not loading their standard photons at all in fleet engagements. Even if lights took up the exact same amount of space on ships as the standard photons, the Federation would have been better off installing usable lights on all the W ships and most Y ships instead standards that went unused.>>

The standard photons don't go unused. I've played a lot of Y era fights. You arm the photons. 'Cause you have them (although not many of them). Them being light photons would not have made the ships better. It would have made them worse. A YCA with 2x Photons is a reasonably solid ship in the Y era. And it arms and fires those photons.

>>it would stop the deployment of the "mediums" on the YCA and YDN, since the fleets would be more effective if the more numerous ships had a heavy they could use.>>

Well, no, as they can use the ones they have. Y ships with regular photons work fine. They only cost 2 power a turn to arm and 1 to hold. Which are number Y ships can work perfectly fine with, especially given the limited number of them.

>>And it installs plasma-Fs instead of light photons?>>

Plasma F's on fed ships make for an interesting game dynamic. Light photons not as much.

And you are trying to retroactively construct a coherent, logical chain of development when the actual chain of (game) development was nothing even close to logical and coherent. Why are there Plasma Fs on Fed ships instead of light photons? 'Cause someone decided 20 years ago that a Fed DD with a couple Plasma F's was interesting. And light photons didn't even exist in the game at that point.

You are fighting a losing battle trying to make the technological history of the game make sense. Just go with "I'm sure there is a reason that X didn't happen that is not factored into the game rules", and everything will work better.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 12:45 pm: Edit

If you don't care about background material, why are you even commenting on a complaint about background material? What skin is it off your nose?

By Symon Cook (Symon) on Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 01:13 pm: Edit

I've always found the best explanation for things that don't make sense are 'politics' and 'We don't do anything those •••• (choice of unacceptable other people) do'!

It's a common myth that weapons and armour are all about efficiency. That the absolute 'best' system is always the one chosen. Not so! Politics, economics and even fashion play their part. IRL, there are many cases where the 'best system' doesn't get used or is discarded for reasons difficult to fathom. Betamax vs VHS anyone?
Prejudice plays its part. Effective foreign weapons are dismissed in favour of local weapons.
Pork barrel politics can be adopted for the best of reasons or just basic local pride. Then there are interdepartmental rivalries. Always good for an explanation. 'Not invented here' is another favourite, good for explaining a lot.

If I had to explain photons it might be a misguided sense of efficiency enacted by the Federation Council. 'Too expensive to build more than one type and a spare part logistics mess, so you military types pick one type only! You got that?' In which case, standard photons make sense.

'Couldn't' is rarely the reason IRL, it's actually 'wouldn't'.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 02:24 pm: Edit

Steven: Probably because someone will try to justify something unbalanced/silly/what-not based on what you are proposing, or use what you are proposing to propose other silly things, who knows?

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 02:54 pm: Edit

Steven wrote:
>>If you don't care about background material, why are you even commenting on a complaint about background material? What skin is it off your nose?>>

'Cause it is one of those situations where it is all something that is specifically the result of this being a game that has evolved in fits and starts, and trying to retroactively make it all make sense "in game" can lead to trouble in the grand scheme.

This is all an issue that can easily be explained away with "factors that don't affect the game" (i.e. cost/weight/space/logistics/production efficiency/whatever--maybe the capacitors that make light and heavy photons work require a special mineral that is hard to get in the Alpha sector and easy to get in the Omega sector...).

I mean, yeah, they could change the color description on the light/heavy photons. Or they could open the door for the Feds using light/heavy photons all over the place. But really, neither is necessary, as there are enough "non game related" reasons to explain away the possible discrepancies.

The Feds settled on the regular photon specifically due to weight and space issues, and 'cause this decision vastly improved the efficiency of photon production, distribution, and maintinence/repair. They used Plasma Fs in a small handful of ships, which was considered a huge waste of effort and a logistical nightmare, but one of the Eastern Front generals, who had a lot of important political pals, really pushed for it. And it made their buddies the Gorns happy as it got them some extra contract income, which was enough of a reason to go through the logistical hassle. Or whatever.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 03:21 pm: Edit

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Quote:

IRL, there are many cases where the 'best system' doesn't get used or is discarded for reasons difficult to fathom. Betamax vs VHS anyone?

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By Symon Cook (Symon) on Sunday, May 29, 2011 - 03:50 pm: Edit

You never used a Betamax did you? A whole feature film fitted on one Betamax tape. We owned both types!