Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board

Archive through February 04, 2003

Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board: The "X" Files: OLD X2 FOLDER: The Generic X2 Hull: Archive through February 04, 2003

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, February 02, 2003 - 03:51 pm: Edit

Are you saying these things are "fun" or things to avoid.

That sounds like the "avoid" list to me.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, February 02, 2003 - 04:10 pm: Edit

That's what I thought it was. An Avoid list. Those are all things I would like to avoid.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, February 02, 2003 - 05:11 pm: Edit

It's an avoid list. Sorry for the confusion.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, February 03, 2003 - 10:50 pm: Edit

I had an idea for an interesting way to do MJC's warp boxes generating 1.5 power each.

NEW TECHNOLOGY: Intermix Chamber Accellerator

After being unable to build engines larger than those carried by X1 cruisers, technology was developed simultaneously in several different empires (including the Federation and Klingon Empire) after extensive study of Orion Engine-doubling.

Each warp engine was fitted with a ICA that reinforced the matter/antimatter intermix chamber, enabling it to generate more power, multiplying the power output of a warp engine by 1.5.

Each engine requires its own functioning ICA. An ICA attached to a different engine cannot be substituted.

Above-20 box engines use a 4-box ICA
15-20 box engines use a 3-box ICA
14 and smaller engines use a 2-box ICA

The ICA is damaged on on warp drive hits to the engine it is mounted on. the ICA is higher-precedence than warp boxes and must have a hit scored against it every 3rd warp hit.

Fortunately, it will function completely until all boxes are destroyed.

The ICA may be activated or turned off or on at EA. If a given ICA is off, it is not affected by damage to the ship. A player may choose to take engine damage against the ICA, however.

X2 Orions ships with ICAs may turn an engine's ICA off and double the power normally or leave the ICA on and triple it. Doubling the engines with the ICA on-line does a point of damage to the ICA in addition to the engine damage.

The ICA must be guarded against H&R Raids separately than the warp engine it works with, but one guard guards all boxes of a given ICA.

An ICA box repairs for 12 points and there is no partial-repair, not even as a warp box.

Commentary

This system would force a definite change in the way we use the SIF. We all expect warp power to be increased in X2, but we usually expect that means more warp boxes. lacking more warp,the X2 ship becomes a bit more fragile and may need some SIF protection.

I am throwing this idea out just for fun. I'm not really attached to it. It seemed to me it would be better to create a device that gives the 1.5x power benefit rather than just say "engines produce half again the power."

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Monday, February 03, 2003 - 11:18 pm: Edit

Let me see if I understand it:

Warp engine sizes do not increase beyond X1 levels.
The intermix chamber provides a 50% increase.
For a 15-20 box engine, the system has 2 free hits.
It is a separate system for hit-and-run purposes.

Assuming no hit and run, here's the damage breakdown for the engine:

Damage	power
0	30
1	28.5
2	27
3	27 (1st box)
4	25.5
5	24
6	24 (2nd box)
7	22.5
8	21
9	14 (gone)
10	13
11	12 etc.

If the ship takes enough damage to where the engine is on it's last box, then you have a situation where a single H&R raid costs 7 points of power.

Tos pointed this out, more boxes do not necessarily mean a bigger item; it means a system more resistant to damage.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, February 03, 2003 - 11:47 pm: Edit

I know.

I proposed this knowing that there would be a massive power-loss when the last ICA box was lost.

It seemed a potentially interesting limitation to add some flavor to the idea of 1.5 energy-generating warp boxes. It's a bit bland without it.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Monday, February 03, 2003 - 11:51 pm: Edit

True, but if every little piece is spiced up, there won't be any racial flavor, we'll taste nothing but pepper.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 01:42 am: Edit

I proposed the 1.5 power generation as a spice in it's self. Then added the ASIF to make up for some of the fragility.

It's not a very popular idea and it forces fractional accounting.

Tos is right. More boxes don't mean you have to have bigger engines. They just generate more power and are more durable. We need only point that out in the rules.

But if we do go with 24 point Cruiser engines then the ASIF (if we even use one) doesn't need to be that tough. I do like it because with all that power available I think X2 should have more things to spend power on so that we get back to having to choose what we NEED that power for. So, that's what I like the ASIF for.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:20 pm: Edit

Quote:
I know.

I proposed this knowing that there would be a massive power-loss when the last ICA box was lost.

X2 ships should have more than 1 Achilles' heel.

For what it's worth I think this one is really good.

Quote:
I proposed the 1.5 power generation as a spice in it's self. Then added the ASIF to make up for some of the fragility.

It's not a very popular idea and it forces fractional accounting.

I've been saying that some ships should have just 60 Warp Boxes and other should have 40 that generate 1.5 and others should use Orion Engine Doubling ( I really think the Roms with Stealth and Orion Engine Doulbling and possibly an advanced cloak ( that doesn't pay double the double price if the wap engines are doubled) would be VERY Romulan).

We also don't force fractional acountinting on to people, If you generate 28.5 points of power from you port warp Engines, and you'ld rather just be lazy and list it as 28 points of power, generates, you only need to balance you EAF, you don't actually need to generate every single point of power that the ships is capable of, you more likely to loose if you don't but their is no rule saying that you MUST.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:31 pm: Edit

60 boxes is cool too. People will be expecting a power increase on the order of GW->X1 (+33%) and a literal upgrade of that sort would go to 53.33, which might as well be 54.

60 isn't that much more.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 06:54 pm: Edit

60 warp is enough to power all the heavy weapons and go speed 31.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 07:29 pm: Edit

I wanted ships to generate 50. 48 in the engines and a few in the saucer/ boom. Others would get more power else where. (It's just two more APR.)

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 07:58 pm: Edit

Quote:
60 warp is enough to power all the heavy weapons and go speed 31.

Isn't that as it should be.

Somethings to remember will be that we'll probably go to heavy consumption weapons ( say 24 point Photons with the same of 2:1 ratio ) and Double the standard damage hellbores for a 6+6 arming cost and probably some kind of double damage Disruptor, be it a simple double the overload damage for double the power or 2 shots ( overload if warrented ) 8 impulse apart minimum.
4 Hellbore would suck up 24 power.
Four 24 point Photons would suck up 24 power.
Four Diruptors firing an R20 stnadard plus an R8 Overload, would such up 24 power per turn.
Even 6 Disruptors ( as X1 Cruisers have ) will suck up 24 points of power just building regular overloads.
Four double overloads would cost 32 points of power to arm and 6 of the things would be chewing up 48 of your 60 points of power every turn.

If we say that each hex generated by warp to move faster than 30 costs 5 times the usual ammount then an X2 cruiser can move at speed 32 ( using 1 Imp ) dump 24 points of power into heavies and will use 59 of her 60 points of warp.

How much power certain things cost is a big issue as to what top speed the X2 ships can attain.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 08:49 pm: Edit

Going faster than 31 is a bad, bad idea IMHO.

Just say no

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 08:53 pm: Edit

JT, I agree. But I'm talking about moving at 31 while arming all the torpedos and a few phasers. It would take all the thinking out of the EA.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 08:58 pm: Edit

Yup. 40 or 50 is one thing; 60 is too much.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 09:05 pm: Edit

Warp is negotiable. If we give X2 enough uses for it, 60 would be fine. A Fed arming 16-pt fastloads isn't going to speed-31 even with 60 warp.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 09:20 pm: Edit

If a X2 ship has uses for ALL sixty warp other than floating a big brick, how it X1 or GW going to compeat? If BPV is the answer then I wont like that because the BPV will be so high that you will have no choice other than a fleet against one battle. Yuk.

The BPV has to be so that 2 GW ships can match a XCC. Otherwise it will be too much of a hassle to fight a XCC ship with anything else than another XCC.

IMHO

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 09:36 pm: Edit

Same as you, I don't want a X2 ship's BPV to go too high.

If 60 warp makes it too tough, by all means cut it back to 54 (a 33% increase over X1, same as X1's increase over GW) or go back to 50 if 54 is too much.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 09:42 pm: Edit

50 Warp+4 APR+6 Impulse+20 reserve on MC1= Happy Captain!

It's the same kind of jaw dropping technology (A Gw Captain getting a look at a X2 ship) as My desktop computer is to myself when I was playing on a TRS-80.

(Well, maybe that's an over kill on the analogy.)

By Shannon Nichols (Scoot) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 10:36 pm: Edit

Increasing warp engine power by 50% is to much.Your flying dreadnoughts at that power, not cruisers.Remember X-1 was too hard to mass produce in 205. So in 215 2X is going to be mass produced. Not very likely. Efficiency is a better way to go. Reduce the movement cost of the ships. Reduce the cost of EW. Make heavy weapons more effective by increasing damage out for power in. Reduce the powering cost of phasers.Or make them more powerful. But also reduce their number. By 205 the races will have had 25 years to get it right. If the 2X ships are not over powered it will give 0X ships a chance. An make it easier to balance the various generations of ships against each other.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 11:10 pm: Edit

Quote:
Going faster than 31 is a bad, bad idea IMHO.

Just say no

My what a reasoned debate.
32 is a different kettle of fish.
33 has the following situations.
1) Speed 40 drones will be needed as speed 32 drone just won't work.
2) You won't need the Ph-6 because the Ph-3 will work just finae against those slower speed drones.
3) You don't really needed a long range Ph-5 as the Ph-1 will do nicely, all those X1s WILL be able to get to R5 and so the Ph-5 becomes a little less useful...only UIM disruptor ships will really be able to capitalise on it.

Quote:
JT, I agree. But I'm talking about moving at 31 while arming all the torpedos and a few phasers. It would take all the thinking out of the EA.

Not really.
SSReo, GSReo, Tractors, Transporters, Battery Recharge, Phaser recharge, Stunt shuttles; all eat into you Energy.If you know you can go to speed 24 and still have the initiative then you'ld drop down in speed.

And X2 should be both high speed and able top arm weapons.

Quote:
Yup. 40 or 50 is one thing; 60 is too much.

Let's work on 60 and beat it down at a latter date.
A Klingon FX has 24 warp and only needs 15 of them to move at 30, so it has 8/5 of the energy it needs ( a 60% oversupply ).
How much warp power will an XF have?...30?...so that's a 25% increase over X1 and yet it's double the power that the ship needs to move at 30.
If the X2 cruiser has twice as much power to move at speed 30 doubled then it'll have 60 power.

Let's work on sixty and then beat it down to 50 or 48 or 45 if we need to.

Quote:
Warp is negotiable. If we give X2 enough uses for it, 60 would be fine. A Fed arming 16-pt fastloads isn't going to speed-31 even with 60 warp.

That's where I stand.

Quote:
If a X2 ship has uses for ALL sixty warp other than floating a big brick, how it X1 or GW going to compeat? If BPV is the answer then I wont like that because the BPV will be so high that you will have no choice other than a fleet against one battle. Yuk.

The BPV has to be so that 2 GW ships can match a XCC. Otherwise it will be too much of a hassle to fight a XCC ship with anything else than another XCC.

IMHO

The Frigates and the Destroyers are the ship that are most likely to be involved in the GW Vs X2 battles.
If an XCC comes in at the BPV price of a fully armed CVA group and fights a pretty even battle against a CVA group then so be it.

Quote:
Same as you, I don't want a X2 ship's BPV to go too high.

If 60 warp makes it too tough, by all means cut it back to 54 (a 33% increase over X1, same as X1's increase over GW) or go back to 50 if 54 is too much.

60 warp should be remembered as 60 points of warp power, it'll most likely be 40 warp engine boxes generating 1.5 points of power each. So once these ship start taking internals, that'll drop radically....It might be a BBs power but it'll die like a DNL.

Quote:
50 Warp+4 APR+6 Impulse+20 reserve on MC1= Happy Captain!

It's the same kind of jaw dropping technology (A Gw Captain getting a look at a X2 ship) as My desktop computer is to myself when I was playing on a TRS-80.

(Well, maybe that's an over kill on the analogy.)

MMMMMmmmmmmmm...
TRS-80.

Quote:
Increasing warp engine power by 50% is to much.Your flying dreadnoughts at that power, not cruisers.Remember X-1 was too hard to mass produce in 205. So in 215 2X is going to be mass produced. Not very likely. Efficiency is a better way to go. Reduce the movement cost of the ships. Reduce the cost of EW. Make heavy weapons more effective by increasing damage out for power in. Reduce the powering cost of phasers.Or make them more powerful. But also reduce their number. By 205 the races will have had 25 years to get it right. If the 2X ships are not over powered it will give 0X ships a chance. An make it easier to balance the various generations of ships against each other.

Or maybe by Y205 the X1 tech has been around long enough to mass produce and thus mass production of X1s began then, partly through the new ideas that X2 brought about.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 11:24 pm: Edit

MJC,

Going over 31 makes potentially huge problems for GW-tech and even X1-tech, such as being able to outrun drones and non-sabot plasmas.

Even if you charge 5x normal cost per point of speed, you still have to deal with mid-turn speed changes. For a XCC, that 5 per point of speed becomes 1.25 per point of speed if I only want to do it for 8 impulses. Running an XCC, I can pay 10 points to shave an extra 8 impulses off a set of sabotted plasmas. It's a far better investment than 10 points of reinforcement.

(Actually more like 8.75 since I would have already paid 1 point of impulse to go to 31 and 9 x 1.25 points of warp to temporarly increase my speed to 40 from 31, but I digress)

This is why X2 ships going faster than speed-31 is a dead issue as far as I'm concerned. I am dead-set against it. As SPP sometmes says, you may still be able to convince SVC, but I don't like it.

I am also leaning more and more against range-10 overloads for playing-nice-with-GW-tech reasons.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 11:47 pm: Edit

Quote:
Going over 31 makes potentially huge problems for GW-tech and even X1-tech, such as being able to outrun drones and non-sabot plasmas.

Everyone that wants a top speed at some point slower than the Plasma Sabot, so we are looking a to speed of about 37, 30 warp + 30 high enbergy warp + 1 Imp.

Quote:
Even if you charge 5x normal cost per point of speed, you still have to deal with mid-turn speed changes. For a XCC, that 5 per point of speed becomes 1.25 per point of speed if I only want to do it for 8 impulses. Running an XCC, I can pay 10 points to shave an extra 8 impulses off a set of sabotted plasmas. It's a far better investment than 10 points of reinforcement.

(Actually more like 8.75 since I would have already paid 1 point of impulse to go to 31 and 9 x 1.25 points of warp to temporarly increase my speed to 40 from 31, but I digress)

Not really, you'll be going at 40 for 8 impulses, which is 39 warp + 1 Impulse.
You would move some 10 hexes in those 8 impulses, so the vessel must pay 8 warp to move the first 8 hex and 10 warp to move the next 2 hexes, in that situation for a total power cost of 40 Warp and 1 Impulse.
But it's not really relievant because you'ld have a top speed of 37 at most, it's a little like saying I'll take my D7 and move at 20 for half the round so I can jump up by mid-turn speed changes to speed 40...it'll only cost me 30 points of warp.
X2 ships will get to fire X2 drones at some point under the X2 rules, proably Y218.
I don't see why anyone should have a problem with Speed 32 drones failing to reach speed 37 ships...very few people complain that Speed 20 drones can't hit speed 31 ships.

Quote:
This is why X2 ships going faster than speed-31 is a dead issue as far as I'm concerned. I am dead-set against it. As SPP sometmes says, you may still be able to convince SVC, but I don't like it.

X2 Sabot would undoubtedly be faster than regular Plasma Sabot.

Quote:
I am also leaning more and more against range-10 overloads for playing-nice-with-GW-tech reasons.

Oddly enough, so am I.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Tuesday, February 04, 2003 - 11:52 pm: Edit

I have yet to see a speed 33+ ship proposal that passes the KISS test.

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