What changes should be consistent for most or all X2 hulls, regardless of size?

To start the ball rolling, I will reprise a suggestion I made elsewhere:


The Structural Integrity Shield.

The shield is raised when minimum shields are raised.

The shield is generated inside the ship, reinforcing the hull at major bulkheads and structure points.

The shield primarily armors the DAC, providing a small amount of defense to each column of the DAC, which must be destroyed before damage may be scored anywhere in that column. The amount of defense is small, but slows damage penetration and gives the ship greater durability.

Example: A Fed CXX has a SI shield which gives 5 points of protection to each column of the DAC. When the CXX takes a volley of 30 internals, 5 points are expended defending the A-row hits. Since the ship has no cargo, rolls of 7 start to work on the 5 shield boxes defending the B-row, along with any second rolls of 2-5, 9-12. No actual B-row hits are scored until all of the B-row shield boxes are destroyed.

SI shields can be repaired like any other shield. shield repairs regenerate the most recently-destroyed SI shield box at the time when the repair is completed, not when it is started.

SI shields, while techncically a "7th shield" cannot use specific reinfocement. They can use general reinforcement. General Reinforcement may be allocated exclusively to the SI shield but doesn't need to be. The SI shield will always use all general reinforcement available when damage is done to the ship.

General reinforcment first takes the place of destroyed SI shield boxes, starting from the deepest row, working out. All deeper boxes must be filled in with reinforcement before boxes from the next column may be filled in. If the amount of reinfocement exceeds the number of destroyed SI shield boxes, the excess is added onto the A-Row defense.


Example: Our Fed CXX has taken damage to the point where the A and B-row defenses are gone and the C-row defenses have 2 boxes left. The ship expends energy for 7 points of general reinforcement. That reinforcement first takes the place of the 3 destroyed C-row boxes, with the remaining 4 all going to the B-row. if the ship were less damaged, say the A-row defenses were destroyed along with only one B-row box, the A-row shield would take 6 points before going down.

The SI shield will block transporters to a limited degree. If the SI Shield has undestroyed boxes defending the A or B rows (or has enough general reinforcement to defend the A or B rows) this will bar the ship from transporter activity the same way a normal shield would. As with any other shield, this effects both inbound and outbound transporter activity. The ship may drop its SI shield using the same procedure as for dropping any other shield. When a ship drops its SI shield all genral reinforcement allocated specifically to the shield is dropped also.


The SI shield allows opportunities for racial diversity through adjusting the amount of defense given to each DAC column. The Klingons, say, emphasize the defense of weapons. They heavily reinforce the A-B-C rows of the DAC with 8-7-5 Shield boxes, but quickly drop to 3 or 2 deeper in the DAC, while Feds use a steady 5 all the way to the back. Fed ships are therefore more durable overall but are hit moderately harder by the first 30-40 internals.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Thursday, December 19, 2002 - 05:41 pm: Edit

Copied from the main discussion:

What about bringing back the XE2.43 rules for rapid-pulse phasers, this time *without* the benefits of Aegis? Ph-G mounts would be able to get 6 shots off instead of 4, Ph-1 and -2 mounts would be able to get 3 Ph-3 firings, Ph-4 would be able to get 6 as well. Additional energy would be limited to 50% of what the phaser mount could handle.

This would have the effect of increasing point defense, and not completely violating the racial flavour of the Hydrans while doing so, since they will maintain their technological lead in the field *and* the other races will not be able to come close to the weapon that started it all - the Ph-G.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, December 19, 2002 - 08:14 pm: Edit

You...know I don't see why ships should all have uniform changes.

Look at the Excellcior Vs the Enterprise-A...there's a huge differance in size, yet they are both cruisers.

On the other hand the Klingon Bird of Prey is still running around with the same hull size.


I'ld say we don't need to have uniform increases in hull and structure.
Some ships will have BETTER and some ships will just have MORE and all in all it'll balance it'self out.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 19, 2002 - 10:55 pm: Edit

I'll support MJC post with this. The Fed CA vs.the D7.

Radically different hulls and balanced.

However, there is likely going to be some uniform changes because the lessons learned from the GW will be simular. All these races fought like hell with each other then fought together against two common enemies (the first joining them against the second). X2 should reflect the lessons learned from that amazing experience.


That should be the center point, the foundation of designing X2.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Friday, December 20, 2002 - 05:39 am: Edit

The rapid-pulse phasers provided a pretty big headache for original X1 playtesting. Especially against plasma. Ships were so well defended that the original playtest X-rules attempted to balance the defensive firepower of a X-ship by saying 3 points of phaser damage were required to reduce an X-plasma warhead by 1.

Aegis doesn't really affect plasma defense much anyway. And if you look at the rules closely you'll find the addition of Aegis to the equation to be as much of a limitation than an advantage. Sure, the X-ship's drone defense is better and better still for the aegis FC. But tying X1's rapid-pulse mode to Aegis means that the X1 ship can only use that pulse-mode against targets that qualify as an aegis targets I.e. Nothing larger than a PF. (GW Aegis can't engage PFs but X1 aegis can) It's much easier to just say you can only use rapid-pulse mode against aegis-valid targets.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Friday, December 20, 2002 - 07:37 pm: Edit

There is a way to reduce the effectiveness of point defense phasers in rapid-fire mode: Deny them the benefits of ECCM generated or lent to the ship. All you need to do then is to add 4 points of ECM to X2 plasma torpedos. A die-roll shift of -2 will effectively guarantee that the forest of Ph-3 bolts fired in defense against are reduced in effect from 3.833 points of damage each to 2.5 points each.

Balance against drones could be achieved by increasing the durability of the drone frames in 2X.

OEW would become devatstating to any use of point defense if rapid pulse is employed.

Against fighters and PFs, your average player would chose to fire the weapons as Ph-1s, and would gain the full benefits of their EW suites.

To recap:

Arming: In order to fire a phaser in rapid-pulse mode, a phaser is overloaded by reserve power (from any source) or by allocation -- The phaser capacitors *cannot* hold any more power than a GW vessel. The limit to the overload power is 50% of the normal amount of power that the phaser normally uses.

Restrictions: Phasers fired in rapid pulse mode are not subject to any ECCM generated by the firing ship or loaned to the firing ship or the effects of Aegis fire control

Effects: Firing phasers in rapid pulse mode will generate a number of Ph-3 bolts equal to the total amount of energy divided by 0.5, with the noted exception of the Hydrans, who divide the energy by 0.25.
(Example: A Klingon D8X is beset by a number of Kzinti drones. The Captain decides to fire fire a phaser in rapid pulse mode and allocates 0.5 power to the phaser he wishes to fire. The Phaser-1 mount fires a total of 3 Ph-3 bolts at the incoming drones with no ECCM modifiers.)

Anyhow, this is just an idea -- and isn't that where changes sometimes come from?

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 02:26 am: Edit

Mike,

you do not want to make every P-1 on a hydran a P-G. Even just for defense.

I'm inclined to think that repid-pulsemode is fine as-is and doesn't require much tinkering.

it's also something I'd prefer to not change for X2. Renstalling the OL function is all the change I'd want. if that.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 01:55 pm: Edit

What is it that Hydran opponents fear about Ph-Gs? The ability for the Hydran ship to 'close and hose'. By stripping any ECCM benefit from the mode, it would mean that rapid-pulse mode would be less effective against ships.

That removes all of the fear-factor from the Ph-G mode. Remember too that in the proposal, the Hydran would have to pump an extra 1/2 energy into the phaser (not from the capacitor, since the capacitor cannot hold extra energy now), either from allocation or from reserve, so that limits its use too.

Do me a favour. Try out this in playtest and let me know how it works for you before you mentally dismiss it -- I think that you'd be surprised how well it works....

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 02:19 pm: Edit

Why would one weapon on a hull not get the ECCM benefits of all the other weapons on a hull. This seems inconsistant.

x2 might have a larger phaser capacitor though. This would be helpful.

Structural Integrity Shield - why not just add 5 boxes to each shield. Effectively you have created a 7th shield.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 02:31 pm: Edit

Pseudo-science Technobabble warning!!!
A Phaser-1 mount isn't really designed to unleash a rapid burst of pulses. The rate of fire and reaiming of the mount within microseconds would preclude gaining an effective update from the fire control computers in that short of a time. This has the effect of negating the efects of ECCM generated by the firing ship during this fire mode.

Like I said, give it a shot -- you may just find that it works. Then again, you may just find that it needs some further tweaking...

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 09:11 pm: Edit

I've been toying around with the Hydrans for an RPG that spans through to the up to Voyager.

Now, here's the problem.

Everyone admits that at some point ( X2? ) tractors will get longer range...R5???

The ESG is the Lyran big hammer and needs to be able to strike at opponents, even ones, holding the vessel in a tractor beam...that is to say that people are lothe to anchor a Lyran because of the ESG reach.

If the ESG gets a longer range to remain equal to the tractor's reach AND gets a more powerful capasitor ( say 10 points; an improovement over the 7 of X1s ) and we have multipliers of

Range	Multiplier
0	x 4
1	x 3.66
2	x 3.33
3	x 3
4	x 2.5
5	x 2

We still get the ability to smash the Hydran and more importantly her stingers with 20 or 25 points of damage before she even get to a range that was better than the sniping she could have done further out.
And this assumes that the ESG doesn't continue it's multipliers as 2.66 and 2.33!

All in all the Hydran needs a phaser that has a longer reach than the Ph-3 derived Phaser-G and one that still maintains the Hydran gatling Phaser dynamic.


I would propose the the Fast Phaser or Ph-F.

It would fire ten times in a turn ( which is far more rapid than the 4 times of the Ph-G and spend 0.2 points of power per shot ( which is a little less than the 0.25 points per Ph-G shot ).

The Phaser would very limited ( no more than 2 ( and rear facing on ships ) except when mounted on fighters.

Each shot would use the table below.

PHASER-F TABLE	RANGE
DIE ROLL	0	1	2	3	4	5	6-8	9-15	16-25
1	5	5	5	4	4	3	2	1	1
2	5	4	4	3	3	2	1	1	0
3	4	4	4	2	2	1	0	0	0
4	4	4	4	1	1	0	0	0	0
5	4	3	3	1	0	0	0	0	0
6	3	3	2	0	0	0	0	0	0

In inventing a New kind of gatling phaser for the Hydrans we can skip out on the CAN she Fire in Rapid-Pulse, Can she fire in Overload, Can she Fire in Overloaded Rapide Pulse mode on ships, questions whilst still granting effective firepower and traditional racial flavour to the Hydrans.
This is especially true if we increase the range of overloaded weapons to R10 or further where conventional Fussion Beam & Gatling Combos will get blown away at or before they reach range.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 09:24 pm: Edit

Ten times? In one turn? With a range of up to 25, and a damage potential of five? That makes it the ultimate close 'n hose weapon. For two points of power, I can potentially dish out 50 points of phaser damage, to say nothing of the mizia opportunities the ship has. Isn't that excessive?

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 09:53 pm: Edit

10 shots with that thing? Why not just make a ph-GX that has 6 ph-2 pulses.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 10:21 pm: Edit

Basically you need to still have the weapon effective at ESG maxium range.

If the weapon would be better firing 5 Ph-F shots then that would be a good idea.


Note, I personnally think the Hydrans should be the most "close and hose" race. They should be able to Mizia the guts out of the enemy because everybody else can alpha-and-run/dance much more effectively. They are the race that invented the fussion beam, you know.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 11:56 pm: Edit

What if you took the ph-3 chart, add 2 to all ranges, then fill in for the new range 0-1?

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 10:42 am: Edit

I'ld still like to reach out to R25...just so it's longer ranged, like all the other toys.

Since it's probably that R12 Overloads will be in X2 the Ph-G lookalike should have a longer range.

But yeah, shifting the core of the Ph-3 chart and filling in an R0-1 bracket with say 5 4 4 4 4 3 should do fine ( an increase of 0.1666 points of damage over R2 BTW ).

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 12:20 pm: Edit

I think R12 for OL is too far. We might convince the Steve's that Ten is good since that will match the Plasma Glory Zone.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 01:20 pm: Edit

I'll go with a R10 Overload but not a R12. 10 seems to be more acceptable to me. I've advocated slightly longer ranges for Heavy weapons. OL'd or not.

Phasers though will have to be carefully considered.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 08:02 pm: Edit

Other things we could try:
Reducing the movement cost for the same size ship rather than maintaining the movement cost for a larger ship. I'm not real fond of simply making an X1 DN SSD and calling it an X2 CC.

Eliminate the overload max-range limitation. Even if we don't do this for ships it should be seriously considered for units with positional stabilizers.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 07:58 am: Edit

One thing I'ld like to see to create Racial Flavour in X2 is different forms of power generation.


One race could just have 60 warp engine boxes on their cruiser.
Another could have 50 that generates 1.5 points of power per box.
Yet another race could have 40 but have ORION ENGINE DOUBLING.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Thursday, December 26, 2002 - 11:32 am: Edit

There is a discussion in the Speed Limit topic. Lets first nail down the speeds we are talking about since they will affect everything else.

So go in and put your Opinion/reasoning in and we can nail this sucker down flat pretty quickly. So go put your vote up.

***Sorry multiple post.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 08:16 am: Edit

Hey...how do people feel about X2 ships being modular?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 11:10 am: Edit

Aside from the use of NWO, I vote no.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 12:14 pm: Edit

no. I hated HDWs for that very reason.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 12:43 pm: Edit

Really? I felt that NWO was a great replacement for the old HOLD rules.

X2 ships are going to need to be multi-mission. NWO fills that need, IMO.

Cfant: What about NWO formed that opinion in you?