Archive through January 16, 2003
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board: The "X" Files: OLD X2 FOLDER: X2 ph-3 and other small defensive weapons: Archive through January 16, 2003
By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 06:26 am: Edit

Quote:

The P5 becomes the offensive P1 analog.
The P1 becomes the offensive/defensive P2 analog.
The P? becomes the defensive P3 analog using the P2 chart out to range 15.



Now are we still talking about a Half damage, 3/4 power, ship mounted Ph-4 and calling it a Ph-5???

If so the races that will have Ph-5s have a sweepspot of R17!?! and the Races that have Ph-1s doing the Job of Ph-2, you'll either need:-
1) Ph-5s in numbers similar to the PPD
2) The non-Ph-5 races will let themselves be ( and I hate to use the word but it's the only accurate description Raped.

Now if we've all suddenly decided that the Ph-5 will have a sweetspot somewhere around R8, then yes, the Ph-1 becomes the new Ph-2 and the Ph-5 becomes the new Ph-1.

If we insist on using the half damage Ph-4 then the sweetspot will be about R17 and the Ph-2 analog will need a sweetspot of about 15 but no lower than 10 at the absolute ( and then we'll need about twice as many of them as the Ph-5s ).

With Speed 40+ drones and some X2 ships able to run round a speed of 37, POINT BLANK RANGE BECOMES 3 to 4 hexes BY DEFAULT.

This is why I say that Ph-1s and Twos will become the new point defense weapon!

Quote:

The problem I have with the pulsed P-2 is that the P-2 is a P-1 with poor targeting but also that is is too long of a ranged weapon. Two shots of Ph-2 is more damage (up to 12) and will turn into the phaser hose problem. Making it pulse through the X aegis is a complicated system, IMO. And using two power from the 3 point cap doesn't seem balanced.



Since you can not pulse against ships under X1, you're restricted to X Aegis targets, we'ld have to be morons to create a HOSE problem with rapid pulse.
Rapid Pulse must neber be allowed to target real ships.


I say we do it like this:-
We have a Ph-1 analog which could be a half damage Ph-4.
We have a Ph-2 analog with is almost exactly the same weapon but without a Hyper Targeting control system that forces it to have a shorter sweetspot and slightly less damage ( due to inherent inaccuracies ).
The Ph-3 analog isn't really needed because of rapid pulse BUT the Ph-1 becomes the new standard for point defense.
Ph-G should probably fire 5Ph-2 shots and be a total point blank weapon.
All X-ships will probably have Full Aegis.

Then each weapon gets it's rapid pulse modes.
Weapon Ph-5 Ph-6
Basic Rapid Pulse 2Ph-1 shots 2 Ph-2 shots
Ultra Rapid Pulse 4Ph-3 shots 4 Ph-3 shots


Then we say that the centrol computer aboard the vessel can emulate the effects of the Ph-1 targeting system so that the Ph-6 can fire as downloaded to Ph-1 standard.

So the weapons a a great number of fire choices.

Weapon. Ph-5 Ph-6 Energy
Ph-5 shot 1 1.5
Ph-6 shot 1 1 1.5
Ph-1 shot 1 1 1
Ph-1 Rapid Pulse 2 2
Ph-2 shot 1 1 1
Ph-2 Rapid Pulse 2 2 2
Ph-3 shot 1 1 0.5
Ph-3 Rapid Pulse 4 4 2

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 07:30 am: Edit

Actually, the more I think about it the more I think we need ahn R8 sweetspot for the Ph-5.

The reason is simply this.

If we fight outside of effective range of X1 and GW ships, that is use our R12 ( or R10 ) overloads coupled with out R17 sweetspot Phaser; the only thing the enemy can throw at us are marginal phasers and Standard Heavies.

Our BPV will shoot up to about pentupple that of an X1 vessel just with those few thing, extra speeds and a S.I.F. will make an X2 vessel even more expensencive.

If the Sweetspot of the X2 Phaser is R8, then the GW an X ships will be able to trade more than marginal phasers and for effective phasers and overload shots for overload shots, and thus the BPV of the ships will go up only by a little, then we add in the speed and S.I.F. and we'll get monsterships that are still playable by a handful of GW ships joining together.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 09:23 am: Edit

The phaser we have been calling the Ph-5/P5/Ph-V/PV is the one found on the two ships at http://sfbfog.iwarp.com/SSD/Federation/

The P5 as proposed above has its sweet spot at range 13. At 13 it autohits and does an average of 2 damage. Average damage goes to 3 at range 10 and 4.5 at range 8. This is a sniping/medium range weapon as max damage is limited to 10 with an 8.5 max average. The presumption was that the number of P5 would be limited, 6-8 for a CA(XR), more for CA(X2).

The ships shown are using XP1 as offensive/defensive phasers but that could be easily changed based on what we come up with here.

Mike had a link with the various phaser tables up but the link no longer works.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 09:45 am: Edit

You bring up real concerns that we don't so improve XR/X2 that the X1/XP ships can't beat a dancing opponent. The CM I linked to above would dance the pants off a CX. A B10K could take it down though. Looks like the BPV needs some more tweaking.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 10:15 am: Edit

I took it down, but I can re-post it in the P1 thread.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 08:25 pm: Edit

Quote:

If we fight outside of effective range of X1 and GW ships, that is use our R12 ( or R10 ) overloads coupled with out R17 sweetspot Phaser; the only thing the enemy can throw at us are marginal phasers and Standard Heavies.

Our BPV will shoot up to about pentupple that of an X1 vessel just with those few thing, extra speeds and a S.I.F. will make an X2 vessel even more expensencive.



That is the exact same problem with YCA vs. X0 CA. An X0 Fed CA (125 BPV) would wipe the floor against 2 Klingon D4s (2x75 = 150).

I don't have a problem with extending the sweet spot of the X2 phaser. But Range 17 seems a bit much. Maybe range 10-12 would work.

Effective range = furthest out without any zeros.
Marginal = at least one zero.
Long = next column after marginal
ph-1ph-2ph-3ph-5
Effective53210? 17?
Marginal88315? 25?
Long1515822? 30?


Then again, HMS Dreadnought was the first battleship to have all big guns, and it made all previous warhsips obselete.

An all ph-5 ship might be the wave of the future.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 08:32 pm: Edit

T.S.:


The Ph-5 table looks alraight to me so long as we:-

1) Build a less powerful version to reinstate racial flavour...do we want everyone to have the Lyran-Tholian-Kzinti Ph-1/Ph-3 array!?!
And
2) Up the PBV so that dancing becomes less effective against enemy standards.

I personnally don't mind getting all the 260 ( of 500 ) extra BPV from having long range sweetspot extended range Overloads and nothing else...but then I'm in the minority in this.


Perhaps the Ph-6 should have a sweetspot of R8 and be in larger numbers ( thus enemy Overloads will be a threat, where as the Ph-5s should be in such small numbers that they have trouble breaching the enemy SSReo ( X1 cruisers tend to have 12 points of that.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 09:15 pm: Edit

Tos:

Oops...I meant Tos not T.S.

Sorry.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 09:20 pm: Edit

If we take the Ph-5 and remove the R7 and R9 range brackets.
Shift all the values down.
Rename the R11-13 breacket as 9-12 and the the R14-17 as 13-17.

And then we've got our R8 sweetspot weapon.
And an R8 sweetspot weapon can play as a Ph-1 to the Ph-1 doing the job of a Ph-2...if you get my meaning.

If the sweetspot does get moved then we can drop the power requirement down to 1 point ( instead of the awkward 1.5 ) without much concern.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Wednesday, January 15, 2003 - 11:00 pm: Edit

I don't think 1.5 is at all awkward. The cool thing is that the cap. would hold three points. You could choose to use only down fire modes for three turns without rearming. Or full mode for two.

Of course there is even more options than that given the capictor dynamics.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 12:31 am: Edit

John T: I like your Ph-6. A little like my Pulse Phaser 3 but easier to explain and everything.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 02:07 am: Edit

Thanks. it makes things easy if you simplify the P-5 to being able to fire as 2x P-6 against aegis targets. MAYBE 3x P-3. Nothing else.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 02:33 am: Edit

I may well consider that for may proposal. Not the 3 x Ph-3 but 2 x Ph-6 might be good. I'll have to run the numbers to finalize it.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 05:01 am: Edit

Hey, I get no credit for the P-6? sheesh, tough room :)

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 08:50 am: Edit

Quote:

I don't think 1.5 is at all awkward. The cool thing is that the cap. would hold three points. You could choose to use only down fire modes for three turns without rearming. Or full mode for two.



Yeah, it's not so complicated as to make the game unplayable, but 1 point i smoother, and an R8 sweetspot means you haven't got an uberweapon and thus can afford to go back to 1 point of power per shot.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 11:10 am: Edit

If I misplace credit or don't mention all involved PLEASE tell me. I would want to be remembered regarding my ideas.

Chris Fant, so what happened? Did you propose the Ph-6 and John made his own chart? Let me know because I forget, sorry.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 11:17 am: Edit

Not that any credit on here matters to me really, but I did post this, and then John posted his table and we went back a forth a few times.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 09:25 pm: Edit

Or, we could have a P6. A P2 damage(approximately) for a half point of power.


Besides, everything is so far from the proposal stage that any credit due would be very premature.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 11:31 am: Edit

No, but from with in the board I like to be acurate.
<EDIT> I looked but the Ph-6 was posed long before that. Oh, well, time for credit is not now, so no need to worry about it.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 11:34 am: Edit

And besides, everyone it seems, has come up with slight variations on the same idea for many things, especially the SIF and other oddball systems. Would be most fair to just call it all group effort and colaboration at this point I think.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 05:02 pm: Edit

Yup. Frankly, I've been all over the place. I'm going to focus more on 2X, and stay out of the XP, X1R, X2P and what have you...too much to deal with, and frankly I don't think most of it'll ever see the light of day. Once we get a few solid choices for weapons, I'll make up tables and post them for everyone to see. Then we can really decide what we want.

A question. Call me ignorant, but what defines a particular weapons "sweet spot?" I've seen posts about this term over and over, and frankly don't get it...at least with the ranges mentioned. For instance, MJC called the R17 bradcket for the current P5 a sweet spot. Why, I don't really know. (Personally, the sweet spot to me would be any range bracket where a weapon autohits and the opponents doesn't. But, that's me.)

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 07:06 pm: Edit

My definition is auto-hit. A P1 autohits at 5. The P5 proposal autohits at range 13. A P4 autohits at range 17.

Speaking of the P4, its time for a big upgrade to compete with the new longer range plasmas and whole host of other threats.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 07:45 pm: Edit

Ah......that would be the P-8 :)

Say, auto-hit out to range 20-25 or so. Costing 3 points of power per shot.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 09:41 pm: Edit

To me a sweetspot is both autohit and has a throughput greater than 1.

If a Ph-1 suddenly cost 4 points of power then the sweetspot would move from R5 to R3.

I called R17 the sweetspot because I was under the assumption that as a Ph-4Jr the Ph-5 would have the same sweetspot as the Ph-4 which is R17. I'm sorry that I didn't have Ph-5 chart to work from.

Phasers tend to have a big jump at the sweetspot in throughput.
The Ph-1 jumps from 2.166 to 3.5 in throughput at the change of R6 to R5 and Ph-2s have a change of 1.166 to 3.5 throughput in the change of R4 to R3.

The Ph-5 doesn't have such a massive change in throughput so it's a little hard to spot where the sweetspot is.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 11:33 pm: Edit

"The Ph-5 doesn't have such a massive change in throughput so it's a little hard to spot where the sweetspot is."

I think the chart that Mike is posting is the one I modified (suggested). I designed it to be a very smooth damage curve. Your post confirms I was sucessfull. An advanced system shouldn't have a range where it is suddenly less effective. However if there was to be a defigned sweet spot I'd say it was at R6. You have the possibility of considerably higher damage output than at 7. In fact, I would say R6 will be the typical Alpha strike range for X2 ships. Though some might go for R5 which will average 7.5 over 5.5 damage per phaser.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Thursday, January 16, 2003 - 11:34 pm: Edit

Hmm, P8. P4*2. Same damage but double the range of a P4? That will deserve some respect.

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