A thing that should be true of all X2 hulls:

They should be a bit quirky, as that makes them more fun. That is, they should not be narrow-focus killing machines.
And I can justify this "in-game" as well:
- the ships are designed to win wars, not just to win battles.

Specifically, the big advantage ot the Lyrans in the GW was their ability to rapidly upgrade catamarans to trimarans. In the post GW peace, I think they would want to produce catamarans, so as to have a fleet they can rapidly upgrade in any future war. (If they are all produced as tri-hulls, they won't be able to upgrade them.)
Likewise, the Gorns would produce single bubble ships.
A catamaran DN, or single bubble DN (or CA?) of course threatens rapid wartime BB construction. (Even if they can't actually do it, their enemies won't know that they won't be able to do it come the next war.)

As a result, the initial ship design may be "lacking" in systems that are expected to be added by the extra "wartime" hull section. Likewise, they would have an excess of systems that could not easilly be added as part of a wartime refit/upgrade.

The Feds could adopt Neo-Tholian multi-hull tech, and build saucers and rear-hulls separately. On their own, the separate hulls would probably have an imbalance of systems and/or weapons.

By michael wheatley (Mike_Wheatley) on Saturday, January 11, 2003 - 09:44 pm: Edit

Another general X2 hull trait:
- Option boxes.

Similar, but not necessarily identical to, HDW option boxes.

Reason:
It reduces the number of SSDs we have to buy!
(Note especially the silly number of Romulan Hawk SSDs...)

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Saturday, January 11, 2003 - 11:29 pm: Edit

Michael, I like the "upgradeable" feature. Ships are easier to maintain in peacetime, and easy to upgrade in wartime.

The way I see it, Y205 is a transition year for the galaxy. The Andys have been defeated, and the ships that survived have all returned home. The Galactic Powers spent 16 years at each others throats, 2 years being pacified, and 18 years fighting as allies.

The X2 ships are starting be built, but the galaxy is no longer at war.

The political situation in Y205 should be similar to Y140. The races may be eyeing each other, and there may be skirmishes, but no galaxy-wide wars.

FFs and DDs are relegated to escort duty, pirate hunting, and whatever other roles warships have in a peacetime navy.

CAs are the grandiose "show the flag" ships, and they have a lot of punch for when the pirates get obnoxious.

DNs are too expensive to maintain, unless you want to start draining your treasury.

The only difference is that the CAs, DDs, and FFs are a lot stronger than their Y140 counterparts.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, January 11, 2003 - 11:51 pm: Edit

Some of your S.I.F. posts have been responded to in the Partial X upgrade thread by me.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 01:01 am: Edit

Alex, I knew it was some where but would apply to X2 and so it supports my post as a whole.

Thank for specifying it.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 09:10 am: Edit

I'ld like to put forward an idea about the Structural Integrity Feild.

I don't like the idea of a special SSD ( cloak-like ) Box or H&R against the S.I.F. generator nor do I like the idea that the first Excess Damage hit will disable the S.I.F., so I would put forward this idea.


• This system assumes the S.I.F. is one hat doubles Box "strength" by type, rather than providing a seventh shield track on the SSD.

• The S.I.F. becomes disabled when the ship becomes uncontrolled.
If the vessel becomes recontrolled then the S.I.F. control Computers need to be "calibrated" which requires 1 points of C.D.R., whereupon all the availible types of boxes for the S.I.F. control Computer become availible.

• The S.I.F. Control Computers are housed in each control box and can be destroyed through an H&R attack in the control box against the S.I.F.C.C., effectively assainating the S.I.F. Control Computer.

When on of the S.I.F.C.C.s is destroyed then there is a chance that the structural integrity feild generators are disrupted. One should roll on the table when a S.I.F.C.C. is assainated.

• Because the Stresses involved in rupturing the structure of a ship are immence, there is the chance that feedback from damage to structure will disrupt the opperations of the S.I.F.
When a point of Excess damage is inflicted on the vessel and for every point of Excess Damage that the vessel takes, roll against the vessel's breakdown number and if failed, roll on the table below.


• When a vessel has her S.I.F. Control Computers disrupted one rolls on the table below with and the listed type of Box looses it's ability to be reinforced by the S.I.F.
This is in effect irrespective of whether of not the S.I.F. is powered for those particular kinds of boxes.
When a 4 is rolled the player may choose from the possible results ( assuming they are availible ( that is both on the ship and not already rendered unavailible ).
If a kind of result is already made unavilable ( by previous damage presumably ) then the result is rerolled until one of the avilible result is rolled ( note if their is only one availible kind of box, then just pick it instead of rolling }.
Availible box types are determined by what kinds of boxes the vessel had in an undamaged state and the destruction of the boxes of a particular kind have no bearing on the possibility of the avalibility of a particular box type ( because CDR could rectify such a situation ).

Roll	Type of Box rendered unavailible
1	Control Box
2	Lab
3	Shuttle Bay Box
4	Cargo Barracks Hull
5	Hull
6	Excess Damage

• When a particular system type is rendered unavailble to the S.I.F. ( due to disruption of the S.I.F.C.C. ) then the type of box could be made availbe by performing CDR on the S.I.F.C.C. in an amount equal to the CDR required to repair one box of that particular type of boxes.
The CDR of Control Boxes shall be 6, which is the cost of all control boxes.

• When a particular kind of box becomes anavilible to enage in S.I.F. activities, the player will write on the SSD on EAF or the Back of either, NO LAB, or NO CARGO or NO HULL to denote that these S.I.F. types of boxes have been lost to him, crossing out that note or rubbing it out with an eraser when he has regained the avaibility of that box type.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 09:38 am: Edit

A side note to the Freighters shouldn't have huge quantities of Psuedo Armour through the raising of the S.I.F. idea.


During the design stages of the SSD when the Low and Full power cost of the S.I.F. are determined, we can calculated the energy costs of the Low and Full power values throught the use of two aspects.

• The number of boxes; two 25 space boxes are going to be a lot easier to power than twenty-five 100 space boxes.

• The number of cargo spaces in those boxes; two 25 space boxes are going to be a lot easier to power than twenty-five 100 space boxes.

By Combining these two aspects of cargo, true freighters ( rather than ships that just happen to have a couple of cargo boxes ) shall have a terrible time trying to power their S.I.F. and capitalise on their Cargo Boxes.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 09:39 am: Edit

And why would anyone invest 2X technology in a freighter?

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 11:47 am: Edit

When it's cheap enough that faster delivery times pay for the costs.

In the X2 time period, expect X1 freighters.

Or, if you choose to think of GW freighters as using EY tech 9and not even late-EY), expect them to move to late-EY.

Either way, instead of speed-16 or 18 engines being the norm, speed-24 ought to be.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 11:50 am: Edit

MJC,

A new TRACK?!?

I think your proposal fails the KISS test.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 12:19 pm: Edit

Michael, it definately fails the KISS test.

A couple questions:
Is the SIF field supposed to make ships more resistant to damage in general?

Or is it supposed to make it possible, given the massive amount of firepower these ships will probably have, to have ships take damage in more of an X0 style?

Is there a way to make the SIF work, keeping KISS in mind?

Given that an X2 CA is supposed to come in the 300-350 BPV range, can the SIF field be designed so that 2 X0 CAs (from any race) can score damage on it?

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 12:43 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

In the X2 time period, expect X1 freighters.

---

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 12:51 pm: Edit

Check out the new thread for Structural Integrity Fields.
Since there has been some cross-posting, I decided to make a new thread for the proposal.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 06:09 pm: Edit

Crazy idea but what if we use that new thread just for proposals so that all proposals are in one place. Then use this thread for the discussion of the current proposals. If a proposal changes we put the full changed proposal back into the X2 SIF topic.

One of the problems we are encountering now is once the discussion gets going we lose the proposals deep in the archives.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 07:28 pm: Edit

Good idea.

I'd think proposals would work better here than there though.

Or we create (yet another) topic.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Eagle) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 12:15 pm: Edit

What was KISS an abreviation of?

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 12:17 pm: Edit

Keep It Simple, See

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 12:31 pm: Edit

Alex, that is the kinder version and the one I prefer.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 01:29 pm: Edit

Instead of "It's the economy...", "Keep It Simple..."

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Eagle) on Tuesday, January 14, 2003 - 03:08 pm: Edit

Tnx. I approve fully of that philosophy!

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 01:55 am: Edit

I wonder how people feel about the X1 requirement that the vessel must have an OUTSTANDING CREW?

I think it's a bit limiting and would rather that X2 learnt from that experiance and thus in the early period of X2 ( Y205-220 ) there was a different limit.

The limit being one of the following.

An OUTSTANDING CREW

A Legendary Captain

A Legendary Engineer and Navigator

A Legendary Science Officer. Doctor and Engineer (Scouts and GSVs only)

These then would limit the numbers of X2 vessel that any race could have without limiting the restrictions soly to OUTSTANDING CREW.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 11:07 am: Edit

It seems to me that the outstanding crew thing for X1 is more of a historical foot note since they don't get to use any of their special abilities on the X-Ship they crew. It was part of the explaination for why they were limited in production and didn't suddenly replace whole fleets. By the time X2 comes out I would imagin there would be a better pool to draw from. As each X2 ship is launched it draws it's crew from the best of the X1 pool and is considered normal (maybe Green for a bit). Crew from XP ships filter into the positions left open by the new X2 crews on X1 ships. XP ships then would get phased out. There shouldn't be any GW ships by that time except maybe in the acadamy.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 11:53 am: Edit

"There shouldn't be any GW ships by that time"

I agree with your theory but I have two concerns with it.
1) Module X1 says GW ships (could be XP) are still in operation during the Y205 period.
2) Every time anyone mentions a Year Out of Service date for the MSC ADB rejects it and says ship classes will stay in service. This is still a game. Players will still want to be able to take their favorite XP ship and fly it against the latest and greatest. Even if because it just happens to fit the S8 price point you need. The more historical ship selection the more I like it.

I think we should keep some mixed tech operating in the Trade War period to keep things interesting.

I have taken your comments to read Y205, which may not have been intended. If you are using an earlier timeline which proposed X2 is mid-Xork war then I agree.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 08:33 pm: Edit

Tos:

SVC has already said that if GW ships can not fight the X2 on an equal BPV footing then the X2 project will be a waste of time as it would splinter the game, into those that like GW ships and those that like X2.

That's the biggest reason why we should avoid some kind of large immunity.
5 Point BTTYs are only a small immunity, the 130 point FFXX with 2 such BTTYs can be immune from the first ten points of damage, but at 130 BPV, the Fed CA or KLingon D7 she fights will be able to generate more than 10 points in a single hit and thus the immunity is limited.
Granting that a ship can generate 10 ECM ( even with a GW ship's 6 ECCM ) will cause the GW ship to fight through a +2 shift for every attack, every shot, and with only 1/6 of the GW ships R8 potons hitting that is a massive immunity...as massive immunity that can be carried for 10 power unlike the BTTYs which carry a small immunity for 10 power.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 09:01 pm: Edit

GW ship puts up 6 ECCM - fights through a 2-shift
GW ship puts up 2 ECCM - still a 2-shift.

That 4 points of power can be put to better uses, like speed.

And if the points are even, that means the GW ships will be fighting 2-on-1 or 3-on-1. Somebody's got to get into range to take the shot.