Here is an idea to help the plasma races show an increase in plasma technology through the war years.

The technology to allowing plasma torpedoes to hold their integrity longer; Plasma-R,S,G torps maintains their stated warhead strength for the first 15 hexes then lose two from their warhead strength per hex after that. Plasma-F's hold their warheads for the first 10 hexes then looses two strength per hex after that.

This will give the plasma's a slight increase in range, and stronger warheads that maintain their integrity a little longer.

With the steady increase in the abilities for ships to maintain higher speeds, plasma torpedes had to be improved to keep pace.

The range increases would look somthing like this;
Plasma-R 40 max range
Plasma-S 30 max range
Plasma-G 25 max range
PLasma-F 20 max range

This would also help in some situations with plasma races having to fight direct fire races in a larger than normal play area.

Would be first developed by the gorns in 176, Romulans in 178, orions in 179, ISC in 181, Federation in 179.

O.K. this is my first idea to post, and I am not sure what has and has not been suggested before now, so, please bare with me and give me some honest feed back. I have played with this idea twice with Gorns in a pick-up games, I used a CC in both fights, first fight was against a Fed. CC. He disengaged missing about a third of his ship, I had about 23 internals. Second fight I was in the HDD he was in a Romulan KE. This fight lasted several turns, several ww's was used on both sides, I had the miss fortune to hit his NSM. we hurt each other but his R was a monster when he caught me with an enveloping R.
We both was tied to a spot near a damaged ISC ship we both wanted to capture. We had 15 turns to chase each other off and capture the ship before the ISC show to reclaim what is theirs.
Neither of us won...lol

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 12:17 am: Edit

Plasma sabot already exists to increase the range of plasma torps, basically by speeding the plasma up by 25% to 40. See (FP11.0).

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 02:00 pm: Edit

One the face of it, Keith, you're suggesting a change to the plasma tables and that pretty much dooms your idea.

The ADB would almost certainly nix such a change because it would require they spend a huge amount of busywork reissuing every SSD with a plasma torp. Worse, they'd have to have both the standard and advanced plasma charts, taking up much SSD real estate, which is sometimes in short supply.

This is not to say your idea is bad, just fatally impractical.

If you haven't looked at the plasma sabot rules (IIRC, Module R10 or buy the 2010 Master rulebook PDF through e23 on Steve Jackson Games' site), you ought.

Terry rightly points out the sabot gives plasma both a range and speed extension. The speed increase is obvious (speed-40), but the rules also account plasma endurance by impulses, not hexes covered. A sabot plasma covers 5 hexes in 4 impulses, burning 4 "hexes" of range. It's quite an upgrade, but it also carries a hefty energy cost.

By Keith Rohrer (Warpurge) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 02:28 pm: Edit

No, I havent even seen that rule. Speed 40 torps, thats a change, whats the energy cost?
But, speeding up a plasma wont increase its range, just how fast it gets to its range limit.
May I ask, what year this become available? Does the Sabot use the impulse 32 chart still?
Whats IIRC?

Thank you for the fead back so far.

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 02:45 pm: Edit

It does increase the range because every 4th impulse is two hexes of movement (instead of one), but only counts as one hex of movement for the plasma table. In other words for sabot plasma, the table measures impulses after launch, not hexes moved.

IIRC = If I Recall Correctly

Sabot comes along in Y180, there is both a refit point cost, and an increased energy cost to fire sabot plasma.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 02:53 pm: Edit

The way speed-40 is run, the plasma moves twice on impulses divisible by 4. There's a caveat or two that keeps the rule from being abused.

The cost to sabot a plasma torp is usually slightly less than the 3rd turn of arming. (example: 4 pts for a R-torp) A lot less for small plasmas like F-torps (1 pt). You must pay it in the final turn of arming though. You can sabot enveloping and shotgun plasmas, but it gets expensive. (an enveloping R-torp sabots for 8 on top of the 10 you pay to envelop)

Sabot plasma range is accounted in impulses, not hexes. A F-torp will cover 6 hexes over the 5 impulses its warhead is at 20. 12, possibly 13 hexes over its first 10 impulses of life. This isn't quite as large as the range increase you're proposing, but it works.

By Keith Rohrer (Warpurge) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 04:29 pm: Edit

Does the Sabot help the plasma races on a floating map better versus direct fire race?

By Troy Latta (Saaur) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 05:18 pm: Edit

Not appreciably, since dir ships usually have other late-war upgrades like fast drones and ph2-ph1 refits.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 07:31 pm: Edit

Certainly it can help if you can get close, but at range not so much.

By Mike Kenyon (Mikek) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 07:57 pm: Edit

If you can power the plasma in sabot, that's power you aren't using to move leaving further from the target ship in question. It injures the run away option for how to deal with the plasma as "fast" is likely not fast enough. Of your real good you play it to go from range 2 to 0, leaving him bad run and fire options .. Which I always notice when it's too late to ED/WW. This results in a convenient way to toast space marshmallows.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Thursday, October 27, 2011 - 08:02 pm: Edit

Plasma ships are already effective enough on the fixed map, I think the success of the Gorn in the tournament shows that. If you increase the range of plasma to compensate for weakness on open map, that makes it too effective on fixed. Federation Commander, at least, gets around the problem by using a "location map"; if you are finding that plasma is too weak on open map, and too powerful on a fixed map, use a location map.

By Keith Rohrer (Warpurge) on Friday, October 28, 2011 - 01:02 am: Edit

Very rarely did we ever play with an open floating map, we did use lareg area maps than a standard map, but there is always a map edge.
I agree that the Gorns are a good race if not bland...no special secondary weapons or equipment for them, they could use use more drone defence.

Thanks for all the feed back.
I consider this subject closed.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Friday, October 28, 2011 - 02:55 am: Edit

I've played with floating and large non-floating maps (and normal sized non-floating).

In a very general way, I feel the game works best with a large non floating map.

I don't think you get to close subjects here unless you're the powers that be. :-)

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, October 28, 2011 - 04:38 am: Edit

There are also variant kinds of plasma torps in the simulator races. The Triaxians?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, October 28, 2011 - 11:25 am: Edit

1. Plasma sabot already does this.

2. yeah, new tables and re-issuing SSDs is a bad plan.

3. And when we do what, have a new table for disruptors every 5 years, a new photon chart every six years, a new hellbore chart every 4 years? And everybody gets extra shield boxes every 4 years?

I don't think so.