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I would choose a range-8 24-point photon because, while more powerful, it plays nicer with GW-tech where X2 has to enter GW's overload range to deliver its own. There's a (potentially important) equality there.

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By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 12:10 am: Edit

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But what if you got to choose between 16-point range 10 overloads and 24-point range 8 overloads?

What if you got to choose 12-point range 12 overloads plus 16-point range 8 overloads verse 24-point range 8 overloads?

Somewhere there is an equal balance. You prefer more crunch, I prefer more dance. Ideology again.

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I suddenly like that idea...especially with my recent disruptor post.

I could go for varriable range overloads limits based on warhead strength but if it blew out the BPV too much then I'ld rather just go with Heavy Hitting photons.

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By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 12:21 am: Edit

Oops.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 03:19 pm: Edit

My choice would be range-8 every time, but I'm open to seeing if R10 OLs don't break the X2-GW fight.

By Aaron Gimblet (Marcus) on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 04:11 pm: Edit

Ill say it here so I dont have to say it everywhere, but John seems to be thinking about the same as I do lately. So just consider the 'what he said' to be said.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, February 15, 2003 - 04:21 pm: Edit

Ditto, especially if we're talking about a base 12 point photon, with 24 point overloads. R8 is enough.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Friday, February 21, 2003 - 09:26 pm: Edit

Some reasons 3x16 point photons are better than 2x24.
1) Takes damage better, particularly when closing with overloaded torps
2) Greater flexibility between classes. Adding one 24-point photon is a big difference and reduces designer flexibility.
3) Less susceptible to game unbalancing jackpots, all hitting or all missing. Smaller torps reduce the lucky dice odds.
4) When heavily damaged it will be easier to arm torps 2+2 than 3+3.
5) There is no advantage to 2x24 point torps over 3x16. They take equal power and do equal damage.

I don’t understand this rush to improve the photon when to me the smaller warhead is clearly superior.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, February 21, 2003 - 11:35 pm: Edit

Some reasons 3x16 point photons are not better than 2x24.
1) Takes damage better, particularly when closing with overloaded torps
Pads out the ship too much and creates a problem for the Klingons who already mount 6 Disruptors on a cruiser and those disruptors aren't getting much better. AAnd isn't really a technological leap forward, say the removal of the Shock penalty...BCJ anyone!?!


2) Greater flexibility between classes. Adding one 24-point photon is a big difference and reduces designer flexibility.
It might be easier to pick and choose a BPV with some flexibility of design but the truth is that the BPV is supossed to let you pick and choose your weapons...don't put the cart before the horse and demand that it's going to work better.


3) Less susceptible to game unbalancing jackpots, all hitting or all missing. Smaller torps reduce the lucky dice odds.
Unless the Fed choose to Narrow Salvo so that's no real reason.


4) When heavily damaged it will be easier to arm torps 2+2 than 3+3.
No one has yet said that the X2 Photon can not fire standard 8 point warheads, sure it mihght be given 10 or 12 point standards but it'll still have 8 point warhead capability and thus be as able to russel up 2+2 warp power to arm those standards/procies.
5) There is no advantage to 2x24 point torps over 3x16. They take equal power and do equal damage.

I don’t understand this rush to improve the photon when to me the smaller warhead is clearly superior.
The smaller warhead you propose only advantage over the 24 point uberwarhead is that it will take 1.5 A3 Torp hits to remove 24 points of potential damage from the enemy's damage generator.
It's not worth changing the flavour of the Feds ( crapshoot ships ) with no back-up heavy weapon ( until thwe GW brought about refits and design changes ), just because it seems sensible to you.
Now if the Photon became unworkable ( E.g really heavy ECM enviroment ) then making a change to the flavour of the Feds might be warrentted but since X1 ships and from that stepping stone X2 ships even if we do something to rectify the problem, are gong to have markedly reduced offensive capablities with their Photons, the idea that they need to be watered down to become less able to "get lucky" is a little silly.

A CA can fire four 16 point warheads at an enemy sheild that'll have at best 30 boxes and some 4 BTTY.
For some 15/32s of the total damage that was generate by photons being past into internals.

A CX can fire four fastloaded 12 point warheads ( or 16 point warheads ) against a shield that'll have at best 40 boxes and five 3 point BTTYs for eiter 7 sheild boxes left (12 point fastloads) or 4 points of internal damage, being generated by the Photons.

A XCA can fire six 16 pointers or four 48 pointers against a sheild that has a best 50 sheild boxes and a defensive factor like Caps-to-SSReo or Damage Shunting OR 60 boxes and will have five 5 or 4 point BTTYs ( or may only three for a preiod ).
Against the 60 boxes and 20 points of BTTY you will find the 96 points of damage being stopped such that 16 points get past through to the internals of the ship.
Against 50 boxes ans heild shunting the ship shunts 20% to either side and thus takes 50 damage on his facing sheild, 10 on the two sheilds next to that, and stops 20 points of damage with BTTYs and thus takes 6 internals.
Against a 50 box sheild with Caps-to-SSReo the ship will take from the 96 points of damage some ( 8 3-point caps with-holding 6 Ph-5 shots ), stops 20 with BTTY and 15 with Caps and 50 on the sheild for 11 points of internal damage.

And the CX and XCA oppoents being struck will have more internal boxes on the SSD than the CA's oppoents so reducing the number of internal in actual terms results in a further reduction relative terms.


Now all that being taken into account.
The MY Fed CA has a massively more powerful ability to "CRUNCH-POWER" it's way through enemy shipping, reducing the crunch power by generating a more standardised spread of damage only serves to make a capasity that has already been reduce into a completely evapourated effect!

Let's not render ships impotent, just because some ship way back in the dark ages had uber-crunch.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 12:06 am: Edit

Your response to point 1, 2 and 3 don't dispute my points.

Your response to point 4 has an interesting side effect you haven’t explained. Are you claiming that the standard Fed warhead should be 8? As in the only photon allowed to fire beyond range 8 is the 8-point warhead? Or are you saying that a standard range-40 photon can have a warhead of 8, 9, 10, 11, 12? The former is obviously inferior as you lose 33% of your damage at range, the latter is a significant rule change for the concept of ‘standard’ torps. Perhaps you meant something else. Please elaborate exactly how you would have it work.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 03:24 am: Edit

Okay, not really.

I would like to see more flexibility in standards, as one of the areas where standards improve.

Having an 8, 10 and 12 point Standards that can be launched as both standards and Proxies could be a way of generating more flexability with Photons.
With Proxi and Standard already granting Flexability in the MY period over the Y period.
So too X2 would either get flexability through A Vacinity/Locaity Fuse for 3/4 damage and +1 bonus to hit or we could generate that a similar flexability with 8, 10 and 12 point Photons with differing power supply costs.
Personnaly I wouldn't have problem with 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 point photons in "Dial Up Standard X2 warhead" as a weapon faculty but I'm not sure which way the fractional points of damage should be rounded for proxies.


As to the 6 Photons. I wrote this earlier when the net was down.
When one looks at the internal damage cruch power of the MY Fed CA generated solely by Photons and considers a standard target for that damage, say a D6C (CL20 Pg 103 ) We find that bounded by the outline are some 86 boxes.
When we apply 64 points of damage to the 30 boxes of her shield and past her 3 points of BTTY generated SSReo she takes a total of 31 points of internal damage which is then some 36.04% of her entire internal boxes.

We shall take a Klingon X2 Cruiser as being a Klingon DX with 8 Warp removed and generating 1.5 power per box ( 48 warp power ) and we shall say that she has 12 X2Ph-1s ( the Klingons haven't tried to munt Ph-5s on the boom yet although they are mounting 4Ph-1s there ) and she has Caps-to-SSReoand some five 3 point BTTYs ( the Klingons haven't yet gone for better BTTYs ) and her strogest sheild has 50 boxes.
We shall then strike with 96 points of damage from four 24 point warheads.
She takes out 15 with BTTYs and 28 with Caps-to-SSReo and 50 with shields and thus takes only three points of damage internally.
The X2 cruiser has some 106 boxes inside the outline and due to the ASIF doubles the following boxes, Hull, Cargo, Bridge, Lab, Shuttle, Barracks, excess Damage (which isn't inside the outline ) for an extra 24 boxes.
3 points of internal damage divided by 130 internal effective boxes is 2.3% which is a massive reduction of the ammount of percentage internal damage.

Even if we to go with some six 24 photons we would only be generating some 51 points of internal damage which is 39.23% and thus having six 24 point Photons would pretty closely aproximate the same Crunch Power as the old MY CA had with her 4 Fully Overloaded Photons.

Thus the 144 point of damage that could be generated with six 24 point warheads doesn't bother me.
But I suspect I'm the only one willing to say that.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 10:47 am: Edit

I think I'm following your argument more clearly now.

Using photons only a MY CA will punch a shield and do 36% damage to a Klingon D6C.

A CC+ would do 31 internals or 32% to a D7L.

A BCG would do 21 internals or 18% to a C7.

A CX would do 9 internals or 8% to a DX.

So following that trend, 36->32->18->8% in X2 a full photon volley from a Fed CA should do no internals to a CA(X2) using bats defensively. Now I follow your logic.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 11:04 am: Edit

I can't pretend to have read all this. But, I agree with Tos that trading out a number of launchers to get the same damage isn't a desireable outcome. When we earlier talked about giving the photon 12 point standards with 24 point overloads and 16 point fastloads, I was under the impression that this didn't come at the cost of reducing the number of tubes...in other words, your Fed XCA will still have four photons...they'll just be 50% stronger than before.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 03:08 pm: Edit

I think most are still assuming 4x24 torps on a Fed CA. I'm thinking I'd rather have 6x16 torps.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 04:12 pm: Edit

Ah, I see. No shock? So would you see something like this for Feds:

FF: 3x16
DD: 4x16
CL: 6x16
CA: 6x16
CC: 6x16
BC: 8x16

Is that the preference you have? If so, what options would you give the photon used that way? What level fastloads, any changes to the chart, etc.?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 05:03 pm: Edit

4 x 24 (96) pointers or 6 x 16(96) point photons. No one will be able to come even close to that kind of crunch. The Klingon with 4 heavy disruptors would have a crunch value of 4 x 12=48 but only at very close range. If the Feds get 16 point fast loads then no way would that balance out.

Give the Klingon six heavy disruptors and it gets better with 6 x 12 = 72 but thats a difference of 24 internals in one exchange. That's pretty big. Add phasers and you get into real meaty internals.

I propose this: Fed get four Photons able to OL to 20 and standard load to 12 (still can't fast load past 12 so basically no fast OLs). Note that the power of 12 point standards is a very big thing. Being able to fire out to 30 with a 50% to hit with a SIX point warhead is a big deal.

The Klingons get six heavy disruptors (6 point base) but two are rear firing.

OL to R10 but the photons over 16 cannot fire past R8.
The HDisr. can fire out to ten as OL but at R9 and R10 there is a +1 shift reflected on the chart.(i.e. it will be harder to hit with a OL and R9 or R10 than it is witha standard.)

This R10 OL rule will help to play nice with the past generations. Sure, you can OL to ten but it's not the optimum range.

I'll come up with some charts to better illustrate my proposal.

For now I think we should keep the max ranges at R30. To suddenly extend the range of a weapon by a full 100,000 KM past 300,000 KM seem too fantastic to me. I mean, hitting a 300 meter target zipping around at translight speeds at 100,000 KM is reaching pretty far in the imagination as it is.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 05:52 pm: Edit

Loren,

The max range for X1 is already forty. Don't want to go backwards.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 07:28 pm: Edit

I was thinking more like:

FF: 2x16
DD: 3x16
CL: 4x16
CA: 5x16
CC: 5x16
BC: 6x16

But I also tweaked the photon in non-warhead ways. Pull up one of my recent SSDs (XCA2 or XCM2) from the SSD thread and study that photon chart.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 07:32 pm: Edit

What is the need to change both the number of and the amount of damage for photons.

16 point fast loads are not unbalancing, if we do NOT change the number on the ship, except I'd like to see 3 on the FF/DW size ship.

Of you improve the To-Hit at long range, that will help the Feds in the dual at range game.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 07:45 pm: Edit

The Fed DDX(X1) with 4 photons every turn photons is an unbalanced ship. The Fed FF(X0) with 2 photons is arguably an unbalanced ship in a duel.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 07:52 pm: Edit

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So following that trend, 36->32->18->8% in X2 a full photon volley from a Fed CA should do no internals to a CA(X2) using bats defensively. Now I follow your logic.

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By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 08:22 pm: Edit

You want to reverse a 100 year historical trend?

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 08:26 pm: Edit

I disagree Tos. Neither of those ships has the power to do full overloads in a turn, nor do they have the capability. And, as they are older ships, they are not a good comparison.

The DDX can do 4 12 point OLs in a turn, using 24 power, of the 28 warps type power it has. That leaves the X-ship moving at max speed 9.

The standard Fed FF with its two photons cannot really afford to power them both and move. So, also not a good comparison.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 08:48 pm: Edit

Mike R.: Where does it allow in X1 Photons to reach out to 40? I can't find any reference. If X1 is R40 then of course X2 should be as well especially since it is not, then, a "Play nice" issue.


Did anybody see the balance achieved between the Photon and Disruptor? And the adjustment or the R10 OL process? Any comments on that?

I mean, it certainly passes the KISS test. Is more powerful. Feds retain the crunch advantage and Klingon become masters of the oblique attack.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 09:10 pm: Edit

Y130 to Y205...it's a 75 year tend.

And it flows with the other trend, the change that took the Fed YCA and her two 8 point warheads and installed four 16 point warheads, a 300% improvement ( 4 times as much damage ) over the old YCA.

Jumping up from four 16 pointers to six 24 pointers would be an increase of 125% ( 2.25 times as much fire power ) which oddly enough is the increase in the phaser firepower in overload range of the old X1 phaser capability of the preceeding CA design, but don't let that be a reson for you to hate it.

The true point being ( and don't consider this abusive Tos ) but the Fed should not be redesigned as a dancing vessel. Just because you'ld like to see the shift in the Fed X2 design be to dance doesn't mean that; that is a good idea.
The Klingons should dance and Feds should pound and that should be the nature of the game!
One of the reasons I'm oppoosed to R10 Overloads now is that it makes every race a dancer and I'ld like to see racial flavour and racial tactics based on what each ship is indiviually good at, not what Tos would like all ships to be able to do.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 09:24 pm: Edit

Loren,

Unless they've changed the charts from publishing X1, it's on the Fed SSD's in X1. They just changed the last column from 13-30 to 13-40.

I don't mind having 12 point standards, 24 point overloads and 16 point fastloads. If a Fed captain wants to shell out the power needed to arm those 16 point fastloads, he deserves to either loose or knock the crap out of someone. It'll take 32 points to arm those; with the 48 or so warp points that have been proposed as the power for a 2X CA, that leaves only 16 points for movement...all remaining power will be needed for housekeeping, the SIF, EW, etc. Even if the batteries will store warp, you'd have to drain them all and still use engine power to achieve those four 16 point fastloads. I don't know about anyone else, but I'd only do that in very limited circumstances. I might do one or two, but never all four unless I really, really had to.

The smaller ships are even worse off; they literally can't do it. An XDD would only have 30 or so warp (well, mine did, anyway!) They could never arm all four in one turn at 16 without coming to a complete stop and holding their breath while turning off life support.

So, I support the 12 point basic photon, with the 1X chart and R8 overloads. That's me, and the above explains why I'm not worried about it. I'm open to discussion about other strategies, though.