The first four columns show a progression, the last column sums up my ideas:

	early years	X0	old X1	new X1 (CL23)	X2
Max EW	4	6	6 (+2 free)	8	10
-1 shift	never	never	no	yes	yes

I propose that X2 ships can get up to a -2 offensive shift, including a range bracket shift.

ECM	shift
9 to 15	-3
4 to 8	-2
1 to 3	-1
0 to -2	0
-3 to -5	+1
-6 and better	+2

This change would
• allow a CXX to keep a smaller number of big phasers,
• make ph-3s much more effective for drone defence (autokill vs. standard type 1 drone at range 1).

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 03:49 pm: Edit

Nothing in this game should get an automatic shift.

Especially an auto-offensive shift.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 08:09 pm: Edit

It is becoming clear that bases in X2 will be difficult to defend. Perhaps allowing a base to generate 12 ECM and lend 12 ECM to anyone, including itself, would help.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 08:23 pm: Edit

Well, they usually have scout sensors come the later years. So, they can do that now, I think.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 10:54 pm: Edit

They can generate 6 and loan 6 now in X0 for a total of 12. Not sure what they can do in X1 but I'm talking about maxing out at 24 ECM for the base.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 10:56 pm: Edit

Tos,

I never said the ships get an automatic shift.
I said that X2 ships should be allowed to use 10 EW points a turn.

When two X2 ships are facing each other, both ships are on even footing.

But when an X2 is facing an X1 or X0, then it gets a significant advantage.

Bases that have not upgraded to X2 tech would have the same problem that lower tech ships have.

Now, if an X2 scout channel can lend 10 EW instead of 6, and doesn't get blinded, that might be enough to keep the bases in business.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 11:10 pm: Edit

Jeff: I wasn't responding to something you wrote, nor did I suggest an automatic shift. I was just making a random EW comment.

After reviewing the above it would appear you intended to address your response to John as he mentioned the autoshift.

IMO 10 EW max for X2 sounds reasonable for ships.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 11:20 pm: Edit

Tos, Sorry about that. I must have gotten something crossed up when I was reading the messages.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, December 22, 2002 - 11:39 pm: Edit

No sweat, I was just confused for a moment. All good now.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 08:59 am: Edit

A 10EW limit sounds good to me. It matches the increase of 1X ships over GW. Maybe limit the total EW increase to +2/2 ECM/ECCM so the actual limit would be 8/2 or 2/8. For a total of 10EW.

IIRC the 1X EW increase was only to ECCM. So 2X could be 2/2 more. Giving an ECM shift of -2. Even if the firing ship puts 4ECCMvs8ECM into the EW battle. It would still have a shift of -2. Unless it did 5ECCMvs8ECM bringing it to a shift of -1

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 01:15 pm: Edit

We could leave EW as is and allow X2 ships Bridge to act as one Special Sensor. When all Bridge boxes are destroyed the SS is destroyed. It must be repaired separatly after at least one Bridge Box is repaired. (Note that I mean BRIDGE and not CONTROL). That means they can generate up to 12 EW for them selves or even lend some.

I could see a new tactic where a squadron has one ship make an attack run while the other two ships lend support for maximum EW. Then the next and so on.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 04:15 pm: Edit

Loren,

I really think that putting special sensors on line capital ships is a bad idea.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 04:17 pm: Edit

But are CXX ships supposed to act mostly alone? If so, designing them to work best in squadrons doesn't make sence.

The reason I broght up the offensive 2-shift is that it would eliminate the need for building a new type of phaser.

At 9-15 with a 2-shift, the ph-1 effectively is 5-4-3-2-1-0. Who was it that wanted the new ph-1 to have a longer effective range? This would do it.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 07:12 pm: Edit

Jeff,

You my be drawing too much on the commander's X2 background and it may or may not be correct.

You have to expect squadron-level combat will still occur. If nothing else, in a region of space where war has been going on for 30 years straight, it gets to be a hard habit to break.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 08:32 pm: Edit

John, I can't see these ship not having these abilities. I'm only suggesting having the abilities of ONE special sensor built in and destroyed with the main bridge. That way we don't have to creat anything exotic. The player has a choice of how he/she wants to use their one S.S. and it is vulnerable to destruction.

These ships will likely opperate alone most of the time but squadron level battles would be as common as fleet battles in the GW. Big Fleet battles (six to ten ships) would be rare. Base assaults would probably be non-exsistant in this era.

Any one here ever try to assault an X-Starbase? An X-Starbase with a fleet backing it up can't be matched. Command limits makes it impossable.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 08:41 pm: Edit

If you want to put a special sensor in the hull, you ought to do that instead of raising the ships personal EW capability.

You're creating a starship capable of 16 points of EW by itself with 6 or more of it lending.

I just think of the old X2 ships who all had two unblindable spacial sensors...

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Friday, December 27, 2002 - 12:13 am: Edit

Somoene asked "Why only phasers get an offensive shift?"

I propose that the shift apply to all weapons.

Disruptors with a 1-shift would auto-hit their OLs, but there would still be a decision as to what range to close to.

With a 2-shift, disruptors would auto-hit at range 15, and be very accurate to 30. An X2 Klingon would sabre-dance like never before, but if the opponent were also X2, he could counter this with his own 10 points ECM. The result is an increase in the capabilities and range without creating an unstoppable tactic.

For photons, X1 says they can fire every turn if the warhead is limited to 12 points.

Photon torpedo table (after giving an offensive 2-shift:

Range	0-1	2-4	5-8	9-12	13-30
Std	NA	auto	1-5	1-4	1-3
OL	auto	auto	1-5	NA	NA
Prox	NA	NA	NA	auto	1-5

ph-3 table with a 2-shift (useful for X2 bases attacked by drones)

Range	0	1	2	3	4-8	9-15
	4	4	4	4	4	3
	4	4	4	4	3	1
	4	4	4	3	1	1
	4	4	4	2	1	0
	4	4	4	1	0	0
	4	4	3	0	0	0

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Friday, December 27, 2002 - 07:26 pm: Edit

Don't get too carried away by the -2 shift. While it'll be great for plastering X0 ships, it won't see much use against X2 or even X1.

Even an X0 scout, ECM drone, EM, WW, asteroid field or whatever will potentially negate it.

What it will tend to do against X0 and X1 is force the enemy to spend power on ECM to prevent it; this limits his ECCM and means that you now have an advantage in both ECM and spare power. Expect a -1 offensive shift and a +1 (vs X1) or +2 (vs X0) shift.

The X1 rules in CL23 say that the -1 shift applies if the X-ship has any ECCM advantage, not Jeff's 3+ as posted above. [Personally, I think it's a bad rule, and campaigned against it, as a 0-shift almost never happens. I'd prefer it to take +2 ECCM or more.] So we have to assume something more like

0 net ECCM: 0 shift
1-3 net ECCM: -1 shift
4-8 net ECCM: -2 shift
9-15 net ECCM: -3 shift*
etc

*I don't know if the -3 shift will ever be relevant, as it takes mucho power investment and probably a scout. So forget it if you don't want it.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Friday, December 27, 2002 - 08:43 pm: Edit

I was trying to come up with something simple to use that would eliminate the need for new phasers, new disruptors and new photons.

If you put this system on a CX hull, add 6-10 shield boxes and 8-10 warp engine boxes, it should make the ship much stronger than a CX.

But it wouldn't be an uber-ship that suffers from anything like the "range 5 OL" problem.

As to whether a -1 or -3 ECCM is needed to create a 1-shift, playtesting can solve that later.

I'm OK with putting a special sensor on the ship (even if it can be blinded). It might be one of the "lessons learned in the last war". The Kzinti built the SSCS in Y196 to fight the Andys. Up until then, nobody had put a special sensor on a capital ship before.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, December 29, 2002 - 02:25 pm: Edit

...but new toys are half the fun of X-tech.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 01:41 am: Edit

I for one would like an EW total of 8 points for X1.

That's the same as X1.

I think the new gizmos and extra power ahould give X2s a powerful offsence, giving people a 10 EW just lets them blow your EW by putting up one ECCM and generate a +1 shift ( minimum ) of their own by generating 9 ECM.

I think it'ld be better to keep the EW at 8.

We might consider increasing the ability of Special Sensors to lend up to a matching 8 to make scouts a intergral part of a squardon activities.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 01:44 am: Edit

I agree with MJC...

yes I actuallt said that folks. Watch out, the world is ending.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 01:46 am: Edit

I wonder how people veiw EW in the late X1 and early X2 period , when the MUST HAVE OUTSTANDING CREW restriction is removed from X1 ships.

Will the availible EW drop to 7?

How does that effect our X2 EW thinking?

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 02:12 am: Edit

I had proposed EW go to 10 so as to avoid building uber-phasers.

Each new generation of technology has had a 2 point EW increase (4 for EY, 6 for X0, 8 for X1), so 10 for X2 seems logical.

An X1 ship with 7 ECCM allows that X1 ship the same advantage over X0 ships, that an X2 with 9 would have over an X1.

Maybe the 2-shift was over the top.

But, for an X2 CA, 6-8 of the modest ph-5 proposals plus a 1-shift should be comparable to an X1 CC with 12 ph-1.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 06:08 am: Edit

Just because Y jumped down by 2 does not mean others should automatically jump up by 2.

Will X really generate 8 points once we take out the outstanding crew?

I think 6+1+1Outstanding is X1
So X2 should 6+2 with the possibility of a further +1 if OUTstanding crew is added.

That remains 8.

Besides which we will have uberphasers so the EW increase isn't needed...all it'll do is make the ships immune to attacks by ships that can't generate 10 ECCM.