Archive through February 18, 2003
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board: The "X" Files: OLD X2 FOLDER: X2 drones: Archive through February 18, 2003
By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 11:42 pm: Edit

No intent to misquote was made. Perhaps I missed something in your long post. I'll re-review it to see where the error lies.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 12:07 am: Edit

I think I get it. Maybe. Two things, I chose your Klingon fleet (the only one with scout channels) not the Fed fleet. Since the Klingon fleet had more drones it seemed more pertinent to the discussion. Your rebuttal addresses the Feds, which appears to miss the basis on which I made my 14 drone rack comment.

“You know just as well that I said the ability to ID drones is not the same thing as being able to kill them.”

Second, I’m not terribly concerned with the drone ID capabilities of full aegis. Yes its important but not an unreasonable improvement. I would prefer it if labs just got two attempts per turn but that is off-topic. What concerns me about full-aegis is the ability to fire, analyze damage, fire, analyze damage, fire, analyze damage, fire, analyze damage. This usually makes drones dead and goes directly to being able to kill them.

OK, now I think I’ve found the root of the miscommunication. I stated: “Particularly with Full Aegis' ability to ID drones” and you were responding to that point. I assumed everyone would know full Aegis provided 4-pulses, but I chose not to make the assumption that people would remember it could be used to ID drones, hence the emphasis. You chose to dispute the advantage I emphasized without addressing my main (unspoken) concern that 4-pulses was too much.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 07:43 am: Edit

Quote:

What concerns me about full-aegis is the ability to fire, analyze damage, fire, analyze damage, fire, analyze damage, fire, analyze damage. This usually makes drones dead and goes directly to being able to kill them.

OK, now I think I’ve found the root of the miscommunication. I stated: “Particularly with Full Aegis' ability to ID drones” and you were responding to that point. I assumed everyone would know full Aegis provided 4-pulses, but I chose not to make the assumption that people would remember it could be used to ID drones, hence the emphasis. You chose to dispute the advantage I emphasized without addressing my main (unspoken) concern that 4-pulses was too much.


Actually I dispute both the fact the Full Aegis lets you ID drones and that 4 Rapid Pulses lets you kill lots of drones.

I don't know about you but how many people do youthink fire one volley on the first Aegis step then fire another on the second and then another on the third, and then descide to thrown everything including the kitchen sink at the target.

Most people look at reasonably average results, say 4 points of damage per phaser-3 shot, and fire that many needed to kill the drone ( or just a little more if it's not a nice neat result) and then fire on the basis of what's left however many average results is need to kill the remaining damage points of the droneand again on the third as many as would be neeed to kill the drone with average results and then on the next as much as they would need to roll all 6s and still destroy the drone.

But look at what is happening with 2 Aegis steps that X ships, have.
An average blast to beat the drone is fired, followed by either an average blast to destroy thwe remainder ( on the basis that the unluck streak can't last forwever ) or a blast assuming that all results will be 6!

The Differnace isn't all that great.
Few drones survive via bad results under limited Aegis.
If you need 8 points to kill a drone and fire 2Ph-3s at R1, and get 7 or 6 points of damage, it doesn't matter if you have three steps or to go or just 1, you fire off another Ph-3 shot and kill it even if you rolled a 6.

4 pulse Aegis won't be much of an overkill because these ships are kinda short on phasers to start with.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 08:10 am: Edit

It matters at range 2. If you fire those same two P3s at range 2 you may do 8 damage or 2. Each follow up shot may do 4 or 1. Full Aegis allows you to keep firing until you know its dead. Unlike you I would prefer the possibility of getting a drone hit, it won't even crack a Frigate's shield.

"I don't know about you but how many people do youthink fire one volley on the first Aegis step then fire another on the second and then another on the third, and then descide to thrown everything including the kitchen sink at the target."

Me. Its particularly effective if you are using ADDs in the first two segments and phasers only on what you missed.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 08:43 am: Edit

Quote:

Me. Its particularly effective if you are using ADDs in the first two segments and phasers only on what you missed.



Sure, sure, it's an added bonus for the guy who has two ADDs and a set of Phasers to spare to fire at the one Drone, but how many X2s are going to have that!?!


Lets fire on a Type XI drone 40/10/40 with our Ph-5s...can we raid pulse Ph-2 shots?

With limited Aegis I can fire just expecting average R2 damage of 4 points at that range and fire, 3Ph-2 shots and roll all 6s, so I only inflict 9 points of damage.
Second step I fire a Ph-3 Pulse and kill the drone, absolutely.

With Full Aegis I could theroretically fire 2Ph-2 shots in the hope of getting that 1/36 chance of killing the drone there and then coupled with the 7/36 chance of only needing a Ph-3 shot to finish off the job ).
The next step I realise that I need to ( because I rolled a pair of 6s ) do another 4 points of damage and fire another Ph-2 shot aiming to kill it, with the phaser.
I roll another 6 and only inflict 3 points of damage.
So on the third Aegis step I fire a Ph-3 shot to generate the last point of damamge.

If I had a two step and fired and rolled a pair of 1s ( and say a six ) with my initial blast, then I would have overkilled the drone by 3 points of damage but would save a Ph-3 shot.
If I had rolled a pair of ones then I would have saved both the third Ph-2 shot and the Ph-3 shot.

Net result.

A Four step Blast lets people save a handful of phaser shots over a two step Aegis.
It won't allow drones to slip through* it'll just reduce the number of overkill phaser shots on those rare times when people roll better than expected or allow for extra fire to be brought to bear if the player rolls particularly poorly ( in two differnt Aegis steps ).

It's Advantagious to have the 4 Step Aegis but not that much more Advantagious over the Two Step Aegis as to make it a game breaker.
People will tend to only need 3 of the 4 steps made availible to them even when they USE every single Avaibile Aegis Step to maximise their fire effeicency so it's not that big a deal.


* If the ship runs out of Phaser to shoot then drone may well slip through and this is likely considering the small number of phasers being proposed.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 11:41 am: Edit

SFB's version of aegis was intended at making drone defense more efficient. But you don't get more phasers.

If a drone wave is coming at you...

If you don't have aegis, then you have to guess how many phasers you need to kill the drone. If you're wrong, or roll poorly, you're toast.

If you have limited aegis, then you can fire 1 ph-3 at each drone. Then, if you rolled 3 damage, a Type I has 1 point left and a Type IV has 3 points left. Either way, a second ph-3 kills it. But you did identify which drones were 8/18s, didn't you?

If you have full aegis, then you use the first two steps to polish off all the normal I's and IV's, and use the labs and aegis ID to identify which drones will need special treatment in the last two aegis phases.

Now if speed 64's move one hex in normal movement, and one hex between the second and third aegis steps, then the balance between offense and defense may shift back to the offense....

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 01:45 pm: Edit

Speed-64 drones would be excessively fast for playing well with GW tech. I'll agree with Tos on that point.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 05:50 pm: Edit

I tend to agree. The tricky part is having drones that are usable in X2, where every ship likely has full aegis, but still play nice with GW tech.

Personally, I'd like to look at everything else that might work before looking at speed 33+

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 06:27 pm: Edit

I'm going to say something that borders on heresy here, but here goes. Why do we have to improve the drones at all? After all, the 2X ships will mostly be fighting 1X and 0X opponents who are perfectly vulnerable to the drones of the GW. Maybe drones have peaked. If you improve the launchers instead, you can get a new paradigm without making new drones that are hard to balance.

Just a thought.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 08:12 pm: Edit

Quote:

If you have full aegis, then you use the first two steps to polish off all the normal I's and IV's, and use the labs and aegis ID to identify which drones will need special treatment in the last two aegis phases.




Okay lets just look at the GW task group, you have a BCG, a CARa+ and an NCA.
It launches 7 drones that could be Type IVF but could also be ALL Type IVF-A or all Type IVF-a, so lets mix it up and say its 4 Type IVF and Two Type IVF-A and one IVF-a.

The XCC has 12 Phasers and 2 drone racks of it's own which may or may not be carrying an ECM drone and is probably carrying MWX warhead on a Type VII or X drone for very great drone defense ( destruction of four drones ), but that makes using the rack as an ADD hard so it'll just load up on Type IX ( or latter Type XII ) drones to use in the gaps.

Four 2/3 attempts to ID the drones out to R15 with the Bridge as Special Sensor means there is a pretty good chance that the two drone racks of the XCC hurled Type IX or XII drones at the Type IVF-As.

So five drones get to R1 and the XCC is forced to phaser them down with Aegis ( having I.D.ed them at R3 there is no firing blind on them ).
We'll assume that all the Ph-5s can rapid pulse 3Ph-3 shots ( although I'm the only one who seems to be in favour of that in the phaser threads ).
So the Type IVFs each get a pair of Ph-3 shots because a single Ph-3 shot can't kill them and the Type IVF-a gets a pair in the hope that the Phasers roll that 16 out of 36 chance of generating the full 8 points of damage.

The phasers didn't do so well in the attack on the Type IVF-a and on the second Aegis resolution phaser a third shot was invested.

The total number of Phaser three shots invested:- 11.
Which would have taken 4Ph-5s.

If the drone racks needed to fire in some other fashion and therefore didn't get used for longer range drone defense then the Rapid Pulse phaser would work as follows.

The Type IVFs would each get a pair of Ph-3 shots because a single Ph-3 can not kill them.
The Type IVF-a would get a pair of Ph-3 shots in the hope that the 16/36 of generating 8 damage would occour.
They Type IVF-As would each get a trio of Ph-3 shots, because a a pair can not generate the 10 points of damage to destroy them.
We will pretend that the rolls were bad and both the Type IVF-a ( which had a 20/36 chance of not being destroyed ) and one of the type Type IVF-As survived ( each with a 1/27 chance of surviving ).
On the second Aegis step the two remaining drones each take 1Ph-3 shot and are destroyed.
Some 18 Ph-3 shots are fire consuming 6Ph-5s.


The 4 to 6 Ph-5s consummed by this defensive fire are from the 8Ph-5s that can be brought to bear by this 480 BPV XCC ( a cheaper ship ( lower BPV ) will have fewer facing Phasers but fewer drones attacking it ) which is a 50 to 75% of your entire bearing Phaser capasity being thrown into defending yourself against drones that the enemy ( an non-real drone chucker ) can launch at you every turn!

If the drones a group with two turn's worth of drones striking in one turn, you will have to deal with between 8 and 12 of your 8 facing and 12 total Ph-5s being invested into drone defense (from a non-real drone chucker) and that hasn't yet considered wht defenses you must have ready for the 12 Photons being hurled at you!


Now you might say that these two examples showed that one won't need the third and forth Aegis steps and thus full Aegis, is superfuluios, but I would say that it just shows that full Aegis on an X2 ship should be cheaper than a GW period ship ( partly because X2 ships won't be useing the ADDs for reasons I outlined above and more ).


If the enemy is a real drone chucker, say a C7 plus D7D plus D6D, then the ability to throw 14 drones out per turn.
Since the D6D can carry Kzinti load outs of drones so we'll up the amount of armour involved but the number of drones is doubled so we will assume 8 Type IVFs, and 6 Type VIF-As.

They XCC can ID four drone ( with a 2/3 chance of success ) at R15 and so we will say that the two Type IX or XII dofight drones that are fired strike one correct Type IVF-A and one incorrect Type IVF.
Then 6 of the remaining 12 drones are automatically I.D.ed at range 3.
Then the ship ( it must be a Fed ) uses it's remaining 7 labs ( one was used with the bridge as special sensor ) to I.D. the 6 remaining drones ( each with a 5/6 chance ).
Well assume that most of the rolls were successful and by deduction the ship knows what it is dealing with.

All the Type IVFs get a pair of R1 Ph-3 shots because a single Ph-3 shot can not kill them and thus all 7 are shot down for the use of 14Ph-3 shots.
The Type IVF-As get a trio of Ph-3 shots, because the 2Ph-3 shots can not destroy it ( un identified drone might only get a pair fired at them but this isn't about the power of the four step Aegis ) and there is a 1 in 27 chance that the trio does not kill the Type IVF-A drone.
We'll assume that one Type IVF-A drone needs to be finished off in the second Aegis step.
This is a total of (14+15+1) 30Ph-3 shots which will require 10 facing Ph-5s ( which could be done through carful manouver ) or we could back track the last 6 shots and say that the 2 of the 5 Type IVF-A drones countn't be fired at ( although the defender left 1 Ph-3 shot open in case it was needed ) and thus the ship takes 24 points of drone damage because she couldn't bring enough weapons to bear without altering her coarse too much.
And we haven't even mentioned the 8 Disruptors and 6Ph-1s yets.


This then is the long and the short of it.
Full Aegis doesn't really matter.
The fact that the ships are so short of phasers and thus have so much trouble generating defense is the problem and taking full Aegis away from them only serves to exasabate that situation!!


If we limit the Rapid pulse to 2Ph-3 or 2Ph-6s ( rather than the full 3Ph-3s I would like to see added to the X2 Rapid pulse ) then the we can just multiply the total number of Ph-5s invested in each defense by 1.5 which will will make defense against some increadably unremarkable drone assaults as being more than the X2 Cruiser can generate!

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 08:17 pm: Edit

Quote:

I'm going to say something that borders on heresy here, but here goes. Why do we have to improve the drones at all? After all, the 2X ships will mostly be fighting 1X and 0X opponents who are perfectly vulnerable to the drones of the GW. Maybe drones have peaked. If you improve the launchers instead, you can get a new paradigm without making new drones that are hard to balance.


Yeah, I tend to think that the drones will be Type VII & VIII and then move top Type X & XI as the Admiralty realise that the enemy also have drone ships that can move faster than 32.

I'ld actually like to see Type VII drones in the racks and the players spend commander's option points on buying Type X drones as the speed increase.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 08:53 pm: Edit

Quote:

Okay lets just look at the GW task group, you have a BCG, a CARa+ and an NCA.



Which would be about 480 points. I didn't read through the rest of the post, because an XCC SHOULD be outgunned by that squadron.

Quote:

Why do we have to improve the drones at all? After all, the 2X ships will mostly be fighting 1X and 0X opponents who are perfectly vulnerable to the drones of the GW. Maybe drones have peaked. If you improve the launchers instead, you can get a new paradigm without making new drones that are hard to balance.



Mike, I've been saying that all along, sort of.

My original idea was to have the Klingons keep the same number of racks, same launch rates, and improve the drones.

The Kzintis would keep the same types of drones, but increase the number of launch racks and the launch rates.

Klingon opponents tend to use phasers as the primary drone defense, so bigger drones is a logical step.

Kzinti opponents tend to use ADDs and ESGs as the primary drone defense, so more drones would be a logical step for them.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 09:11 pm: Edit

That sounds workable to me, though I hardly count. I'm a self-professed drone hater. They slow the game down for me, and frankly, I see them as an anachronism. Flinging suped-up nuclear missiles around just isn't very Trek to me, and aesthetically unappealing. I know, I know, I'm in the minority. I just don't like 'em.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 09:12 pm: Edit

Quote:

Which would be about 480 points. I didn't read through the rest of the post, because an XCC SHOULD be outgunned by that squadron.



A 12Ph-5 XCC with all the trimmings is supoosed to be too powerful, if we drop the number of phasers, the problem gets evern worse.

Consider a 320 BPV XCC with supossedly 8Ph-5 of which is can get 6 to bear against a BCG and an NCA!
Those six drones are going to be much more deadly against the 6 facing Ph-5s than the 7 drones were against the 8 facing Ph-5s.

So the truth is that the Aegis won't really help the XCC all that much because it'll the ships will run out of Phasers to shoot at the attacking drones, long before the third Aegis Step is entered into.

Hence Full Aegis should be allowed on X2 vessels because it helps efficently ( particularly with the 6 Auto-IDs ) distribute the limited amount of phaser fire that it already has.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 09:16 pm: Edit

J.T.:


I would like to ask, was your comment an attempt to be deliberately rude?

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 10:30 pm: Edit

I support upgrading all XP racks to X-drone capable, mostly GX. Then make GX2 racks for X2, which launch identical drones. X drones become the standard drone for XP/X1/X2 to simplify logistics. Any advantages X2 drones get XP/X1 ships also get.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 10:57 pm: Edit

I can agree with that.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 11:01 pm: Edit

I can agree with that.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, February 16, 2003 - 11:59 pm: Edit

I would like to put an 8 year lag time on the introduction of the X2 dones for X1 ships and a 12 year lag on the X2 drones for GW ships, just to make X2 ships, really high tech wonders.


I'm not too happy with GW ships facing and throwing speed 40 drones at each other, with out even X1 Aegis to protect them so we would need a YIS that'll make X1 Aegis or at least higher speeds ( particular for X1 ships, moving at speeds above speed 32 ) availible for the defense.
An NCA as it stands fighting a D7D as it stands both throwing 40/10/40 drones at each other ( or worse with poundal mode and external Armiour using Advanced Armours 40/18/40 ) would just be about going BOOM in a hurry.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, February 18, 2003 - 06:03 am: Edit

ADDs

I see ADDs as going in one of three directions and would like some comment on their uses.

When drones reach speed 40, the likely hood of an R3 & R2 shot become very slim indded and if there attack with the ADD drops to an R3 and an R1 shot then the ADD is in effect destroying one drone per wave.
If the ADD becomes even less effective ( say just the R3 shot on an incomming drone that the ship is moving towards ) then regular drones become more acceptatable as a drone defence.

To offset this there are three possinble altenative to my mind.

1) A High Powered ADD
An ADD round that uses such highly advanced and powerful explosives to project it's shrapnel that the target drones can ge hit at longer ranges.
It would only inflict the regular 1D6 damage of shuttles but would use the rable below to attack targets.
Range 0 1 2-3 4-5 6+
To Hit Na 1-2 1-3 1-4 Na


2) A Huge ADD Round
An Add round that takes up the same space as a single space drone but has a massive ability to hit targets ( if only Fighters and Drones ) at long ranges. It would have a to hit table as follows.
Range 0 1 2 3-4 5-6 7 8 9-10
To Hit Na 1 1-2 1-3 1-4 1-3 1-2 1


3) The Abolition by the Admiralty of the ADD launcher.
The ADD round remains availible as is and can be mounted an G racks as per usual but no ship carries the ADD launcher.
Instead those ships that would have an ADD launcher carry X2E-racks armed with 12 Type IX ( and later Type XII ) drones.
The X2E-rack can launch drones with a three impulse dely per drone.

The reason for this as a selection of the admialty was because the X1 rendered ADDs in effective.
The X1s, could use the Type VII MWX drones that allowed the bus drone to destroy one drone and the three Type IX dogfight drones to destroy the remained, this was much more effective because type IXs could travel some 64 hexes before they burnt out unlike their predicessors, the Type VI.
Additionally there were only two ranges that X2 ships launched drones at R0-1 and R9+, the reason being that X1 ships had plenty of power for the anchor but could inflict the 11A internal hit that renders a drone rack useless, at R8 and thus the drones we're launched outside, byut because the enemy with their ADDs ( if GW ships ) could shoot at strung out drones more effectively, X1 ships used waves of drones in their attacks.
Finally as a cheap defensive alternative X1 captains found that they could destroy easy targets ( like enemy drones and SPs ) with a simple Type IX drone that could cover 64 hexes before buring out and yet used half the space in the racks of they Type I analog and thus in low drone rate X1 duels, the user of the Type IXs tended to reload LAST and thus had a shot to get each of his racks to launch a Type VIII drone that only the phasers would be availible to defend against.

Consequently the X2E-rack became the weapon to replace the ADD rack and the ADD fell into obsolecence.
Moving in on a ship that launches a wave of drones at range 12, and firing every third impulse, could get 3 ( 7 impulses ) Type IX or XII drones onto the board and thus defend the ship from three drones in the enemy wave.
Launching when anchored the X2E-rack gives some hope of defense.


Which idea do poeple think is best?

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Tuesday, February 18, 2003 - 07:03 am: Edit

An ADD is going to be significantly less expensive than a speed 40 IX drone and for that reason alone should stay.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, February 18, 2003 - 03:19 pm: Edit

Agreed. We have a proposal for a minorly-increased range-ADD in the archives that about mirrors the high-powered ADD.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Tuesday, February 18, 2003 - 06:19 pm: Edit

Speed 40 & 32 dogfight drones will be more expensive but be more able to destroy drones at longer ranges because they won't be limited by the 12 hex restriction of the type VI.
That's such a massive advantage that the "cheap" aspect will be wasted on because the "protects you better" thing makes it cheap by spending less time in the ship yards repairing or replacing the ADD equiped vessel.

If you want to destroy a bunch of drones then a type VII MWX warhead kills four drones from the wave so it's better than the ADD and if you want to kill just one drone then a Type IX or XII will take one 1/2 space in your racks whilst the R3+R1 ADD shots to kill 1.0 drones will take twice that much using a full space!

( Statisitically speaking 24/36 will only need the first R3 shot and 4/36 will kill on the second shot with the remaining 8/36 getting shot at twice and still not killing the drones so the drones are being used up at a rate of ( (24x1+2x(4+8))/36 x 0.5 ) 0.66 spaces from the rack, but that's still more rack spaces than 0.5 ).

And a High Powered ADD is probably more expensive than a speed 32 Type IX.

So I think the ADD round will be an impromptu selection ( like the sting-ray drone in a year where MWs are availible in the GW ) that the captain might pick up for his G-rack ( they work a treat when being chased by drones ) but that the ADD launcher ( ADD-6 & ADD-12 not G-rack ) will disapear from installation and be replaced with some kind of sup'ed up E-rack. Even a regular E-rack could launch ( assuming it can launch X1 drones ) type IX drones at such a rate that it' become significantly more effective than an ADD-12.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Tuesday, February 18, 2003 - 07:20 pm: Edit

On the topic of drones are we going to price the ships with drones (X1) or without (X0)?

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, February 18, 2003 - 07:22 pm: Edit

Tos, what do you mean exactly?

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