Archive through February 24, 2003
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
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X2 photons:
Archive through February 24, 2003
Quote: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.
Since six 24 point warheads is what we need to bring the CRUNCH POWER back MY levels, I think we can mess around with photons quite a bit without making them game breaking weapons.
If we have four FA 24 point photons and:-
Proximity Overloads.
Dial up Standards.
Dial Up proxies.
Vacinity fuse ( 3/4 damage +1 to hit )
16 point fastloads ( though I'ld rather keep them at 12 )
Then we still don't exceed the offsensive capability ( even with all these flexability alterations ) that would generate CRUNCH power equal to six 24 point warheads.
Therefore I would say that four FA 24 point warheads with a whole bunch of flexability improovement is the way to go.
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And for those who are against R40 Proxies hitting half the time, the average damage would be 12 points every second turn ( assuming the fastload standard range limit still applies from X1 ) but Tos' 6 X1 phot-torps on a cruiser would also mean the ship would generate 12 points of damage every second turn. So I'm now for giving 12 point standards and 6 point Proxies to X2 Photon armed vessels.
Re: 16 point full fast loads.
Is a 64 point volley every turn ( 128 damage over two turns ) better than one single volley of 96 points of damage every second turn?
I think not but I'ld rather keep fastloads at 12 to give players a real reason to encourage them to go with 24 pointers.
24 points of damage is TOO much.
Imagine, an X2 FF crippling a GW CA with one alpha shot.
We don't need to make everything in X2 a huge improvement. The weapon systems have already undergone a large improvement over GW->X1. I think X2 should get better phasers, a few very small tweaks to heavy weapons, and mostly improve the systems and overall ship capabilities.
And yes, 2x64 point volleys is better than 1x96 point volley for Mizia and power usage.
And so we would see the creation of the Fed Anchor. I don't want to see that.
Mike, your XDD would be a night mare against a base. It could stop and could use reserve (batts) for house keeping for a couple turns while dishing out 64 each time. Now make that a squadron.
16 point fast loads cannot be matched by even the Heavy Disruptor. So you go and catch the Klink and anchor him. Then kill him. He wont be able to match your damage out put at all. His drones are ineffective against the G-Racks and phasers.
I say 12 point standards and 12 point max fast load (turn for turn balanced against the heavy disruptor). But with OL to 16 out to ten hexes and OL max at 20 out to eight hexes. The Fed regains the two turn period crunch advantage.
Quote:24 points of damage is TOO much.
Imagine, an X2 FF crippling a GW CA with one alpha shot.
With a 130 BPV price tag, yes I can see that, especially with a Fed.
How many people complain that the 98 point Fed DD can "cripple" a CA at R8 with a single shot!?!
And Two 24 point Photons will only yeild 18 points of internal damage by themselves and 3 facing R6-8 Ph-5s will only geterate a further 10.5 which coupled with the photons is 28.5 points ( ignoring BTTYs ) and thus won't actually "cripple" said CA.
Quote:We don't need to make everything in X2 a huge improvement. The weapon systems have already undergone a large improvement over GW->X1. I think X2 should get better phasers, a few very small tweaks to heavy weapons, and mostly improve the systems and overall ship capabilities.
True but despite the supossedly large numbers being talked about we still have plenty of room to manouver before we attain parity with an MY Fed CA.
Quote: And yes, 2x64 point volleys is better than 1x96 point volley for Mizia and power usage.
Through a 50 shield her and 48 point shield there.
64 against 28 points fform Caps-to-SSReo and and 20 from BTTY is just 16 points against the first sheild and then on the next turn, ( assuming no recharging of the defenses ) a 16 points of internals attack.
I say differnt.
Remember three things about photons:
1) They can be held, i.e. the first volley of 96 damage costs only 12 power. A disruptor would have to invest 48 power at range 4 to get that crunch. After the first volley most ships won't be able to catch an X2 ship.
2) X2 bats are rumored to have carry over warp. An X2 Fed will likely have little problem overloading the second volley.
3) Arming photons will slow a ship down, but we can't create something that makes a base an autokill.
Fed racial flavor: Massive crunch, but with a power crunch.
People fear the Fed Jackpot. They should. 
Removing the ability to jackpot takes away the Fed-ness from the Fed ship.
I originally thought improving from (1 turn 12s and 2 turn 16s) to (1 turn 16s) was the way to go, particularly in conjunction with rapid-fire disruptors. I'm questioning if I was right.
If we're looking at 4x16 x 1 shot a turn, then we have a disruptor without the accuracy.
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Maybe we should remove the rapid-arming function and go to 4x32.
Good luck finding the power to arm that beast....
Remember that even BPV means a X2 CA against X0 ships will be fighting 2-on-1 or 3-on-1 (See my post under X2 Playtest Reports). 2 D7Ks are 304. 3 D5s are 396. 3 F5Ws are 357. The XCA should be in the 340-360 range.
If you jackpot, you obliterate one ship.
If you hit with 2 at range 8 (which is more likely), you cripple one ship. But you're not close enough to finish it off with phasers, and the rest of the squadron (with full weapons) doesn't fear empty torpedo tubes.
In a 3-on-1, can the squadron do enough damage to the XCA before the XCA picks off each of the three ships?
The point being that four 24 pointers neither makes the "jackpot" impossible to get nor makes the "jackpot" as much of a game winner as it was in the MY period but six 16 points makes the "jackpot" so rare that the Fed has no hope of a turely devistating blow.
That's why four 24s is better than six 16s...Fed Flavour!
My proposal in no way took away the Fed Jack pot.
Tos, much agreed.
Remember three things about photons:
1) They can be held, i.e. the first volley of 96 damage costs only 12 power. A disruptor would have to invest 48 power at range 4 to get that crunch. After the first volley most ships won't be able to catch an X2 ship.
And what shall X2 Disruptors have!?! If the Disruptors get a 4 ( and after the BTTY refit a 6 (they are actually pairs of phasers caps )) point capasity attached to each Disruptor and tied to the Phaser caps ( being energized for 2 power each disruptor for those that like WS-0 ) then they can be held for nothing!
2) X2 bats are rumored to have carry over warp. An X2 Fed will likely have little problem overloading the second volley.
In Fastload, yes...even if it arms two turns by slowing pumping out WARP into the Phot-tubes, 15 or 25 BTTY based warp will give you what four 12 point warheads!?! And thats using up all your BTTY warp power!?!
AND in Doing that you can have ( if five 5 point BTTYs ) just 1 point of BTTY to stop enemy damage??? Sure great run at 33+ for a turn and have another set of 12 pointers to spit, you'll have to take practically every point of damage the enemy does to you as real sheild damage ( or worse ) and you won't be able to do it again next turn.
The threat of having a primary attack followed by fastloads with the BTTYs-hold-warp thing isn't all that much more terrorfying than Disruptors....I'ld say less torrofying than 12 phasers with thripple Caps and each disruptor having a apir of double caps, all linked into the same cap system, but then the Klingon really should beable to do the rapid counter punch much more effectively than the Feds.
3) Arming photons will slow a ship down, but we can't create something that makes a base an autokill.
I have no idea of what you are speaking of!
Anti-base work.
600 BPV for a STARBASE so that's be say 2 XCAs or more likely an XCA and an XDD.
You can narrow volley for 2 different ships so you'ld have to look at the avarage spread.
Even 8R8 24pointers will only generate 96 points of damage.
Then you are forgetting 6 ECM plus 6 ECM from the special sensors under the new rules but let's just pretend they don't apply. But An ECM drone and 6 ECM creates a +1 shift that makes it very hard 64 points of damage every second turn.
Since a SB cripples a regular cruiser per turn inside overload range, the XCAs will get harmed to such a great extent whilst every they hang around inside overload range that I wouldn't think it would be a walk over for the Feds.
Getting centerlined by just the Ph-4s of the SB is 95 points of damage at R8, so the Base will give as good as it gets...maybe even better.
Even if not Centerlined, 57 Ph-4 based points of damage on each ship will mean real damage to both vessels and the heavies will cause that damage to yeild internals...the X2 ships can't just hang around a starbase and expect to kill it without a fight.
We're going in circles on this. Everything that's brought up to improve the photon gets shot down as either too complex or too powerful. Seems like there are two basic camps: make it more accurate or flexible, or make it more powerful.
Both sides have arguments for and against, many largely having to do with keeping the flavor of the photon (i.e., the big crunch, gamble weapon). The "accuracy first" side seems to feel that making the warheads any larger will be unfair to 0X and 1X ships or bases. The "damage first" side doesn't seem to mind that, given that there would be no improvment in the chance to hit and that the energy cost for more damage is prohibitively high. Given all that, I don't think we're going to come to a compromise without first seeing how it plays against the 2X disruptor. Personally, I'm in the "damage first" camp. 50% more damage may seem like too much, but that's also a huge increase in arming costs.
Consider this: the current 1X DD has 24 warp. To fast load all it's photons to 12, it will spend the entire 24 warp to do it, leaving only AWR, impulse and batteries to do everything else. In short, it'll have to almost sit still to pull this off. A 2X DD, with four photons and 30 warp with a max fast load of 16 would have to spend 32 warp to fast load up to it's max. It's even in worse of a power bind than the 1X DD was! So, while having the option is daunting, I don't think it'll break the game to allow it. That's just me, of course, and I'm aware that this may not play well with 0X. So, what's the answer? Leave it alone? Mount more instead of making them better? What do we do to satisfy both camps?
Gee, I though my proposal was a pretty good compromise. I put a lot of thought into it by setting side by side with the disruptor (albeit the Heavy Disruptor with a damage base of six).
The back story to the twelve point standard was the experience of fastloading the 12 point OLs led the Engineers to stabilizing it into what could be used as standard. But still couldn't create a larger Fastload warhead. They did apply some of the same stabilization techniques to extend the range of the 16 point OL to 10 but the new levels (18 - 20) were to unstable to make that process work.
You are going about it the wrong way. You balance the Disruptor to the Photon, not the photon to the disr.
er.... why?
If A is balanced to B, then B is balanced to A.
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Not really, because the Disruptor proposal was offered and generally accepted first. The Photon was still "Up in the air".
Everything in the game is balanced around the photon. I personally don't care for your new disruptor, but that is neither here nor there.
Well, it true that a good part of the proposal requires the acceptance of that disruptor though that is the first desent I have heard. I think at this point the Photon and Disruptor must be co-developed. If we make a very powerful Photon what kind of Disruptor shall we create? Mild changes in the Photon could require radical changes in the Disruptor to keep up.
Well, if we want to keep the same paradigm (i.e., photon remains a primarily two turn arming big-crunch weapon that isn't very accurate, and the disruptor is a fast arming, relatively accurate weapon that does less damage) then they should be co-developed. The trouble is (for me, anyway) that I'd like to see differences in the disruptor using races themselves.
My own very personal view is that photons and disruptors start to look a bit more alike, as designers start to improve in areas that they percieve as needing it. That is, photons get a bit more accurate and resistant to EW via making them a two-die weapon, and the standard, vanilla disruptors start producing a bit more damage; say six, instead of five, but with the same arming cost. There could be special disruptors, too, like a new disruptor cannon for the Kzinti, and maybe something else for the Tholians, while the Klingons/Lyrans use the vanilla one.
I have a problem with disruptors and photons looking more alike. That's the direction Old X2 went in and contributed to them being dull as dishwater and close to interchangable. X1 starts down that path by giving the ship 12-point fastloads, which are only slightly short of the 16-point max loads. A fed could play disrutorp boat and plink every turn. Bleah. More power needs to be held back from the fastload for the second turn of arming.
Well, that's not quite what I had in mind. The supplement 2 weapons had problems because the hit charts were almost identical out to range 12, and not much different in terms of chance to hit beyond that. Add the fact that there was no longer a proximity photon, and yes...they looked very much alike.
That's not what I want, or suggest. What I mean is that rather than making the photon a bigger crunch weapon - something it's already quite good at - the Feds would work to alleviate some of it's more obvious shortcomings, like vulnerability to EW. Hence, the 2d6 chart. The disruptor, while fast and accurate, has almost no punch at all, even at close ranges. So, making it a bit heavier, but keeping the ranges and hit numbers the same as X1 (and maybe adding a capacitor) improve it's weak spots. They don't look or act the same...in fact, they look even more different than before with one using capacitors and the other using a 2d6 chart instead of the 1d6. Photons would still excell at close range bone-busting, while the disruptor would still be a knife-fight weapon.
I'd still want R8 overloads, and the photon table shouldn't be as good as the hellbore table.
Quote:You are going about it the wrong way. You balance the Disruptor to the Photon, not the photon to the disr.
I don't see that we actually need to balance out our Disruptors with our Photons.
Try this.
The Feds build a 360 BPV cruiser and Klingons Build a 300 BPV cruisers that is nearly ideantical except for the heavy weapons capasity.
The Disruptors have several minor improvenments.
• A +2 bonus from UIM (Since X1 aleardy gets a UIM 1-6 chance to hit a GW ships at R8, the "R8 autohit shouldn't happen" aspect can be considered null and void.)
• A +2 Bonus from Defracs.
• A 4 point ( and latter 6 point after the BTTY refit ) Capasitor for each disruptor that is linked into the Phaser caps and energy uin it is perfectly interchangable with energy in the Phaser Caps and Visa-Versa.
This would be considered a 20% increase in the Damage generated at the primary firing range over regular UIM Disruptors and so the entire weapon could be considered say 22% better than older disruptors.
On the Other Hand the Photon gets:-
• 24 Point warheads that can be armed with no more than 6 power if holdable but can be charged with as much as 8 if that's not a problem.
• 16 point Non-holdable Fastload.
• Proximity Overloads.
• Dial-up 8-12 point Stndards.
• Dial-up 4-6 point Proxies.
• Fastload limit remains R15.
Now with all those benefits, the Fed Photon becomes 50% better in her primary attack run and gets 33% better over X1s if she chooses to fight fast and she's 66% better at hitting ( for half damage ) if she dances with the Proxi-overloads...so we can say that she is about 70% better than X1 Photons.
But the real Question is...is that difference so bad?...when the BPVs of the ships reflect this.
I say let's build the Weapons and generate a BPV for the weapons and then have non-cookie-cutter BPVs. We only have to Balance Disruptors and Photons to BPV, balancing them to each other is straight-jacket we don't need.
Quote:I have a problem with disruptors and photons looking more alike. That's the direction Old X2 went in and contributed to them being dull as dishwater and close to interchangable. X1 starts down that path by giving the ship 12-point fastloads, which are only slightly short of the 16-point max loads. A fed could play disrutorp boat and plink every turn. Bleah. More power needs to be held back from the fastload for the second turn of arming.
That's my thinking, Overloaded Phasers wasn't the only bad move made in the development of X1.
Quote:That's not what I want, or suggest. What I mean is that rather than making the photon a bigger crunch weapon - something it's already quite good at - the Feds would work to alleviate some of it's more obvious shortcomings, like vulnerability to EW. Hence, the 2d6 chart. The disruptor, while fast and accurate, has almost no punch at all, even at close ranges. So, making it a bit heavier, but keeping the ranges and hit numbers the same as X1 (and maybe adding a capacitor) improve it's weak spots. They don't look or act the same...in fact, they look even more different than before with one using capacitors and the other using a 2d6 chart instead of the 1d6. Photons would still excell at close range bone-busting, while the disruptor would still be a knife-fight weapon.
I don't know what you think you're saying but it sounds to me like you're giving the Photon more Disruptorness and the Disruptor more Photoness, and saying that things involving "play" which the imaginary captain of the imaginary vessel does't see will make them less alike doesn't count and thus we are still causing them to become more alike.
The truth is that with the Defenses and ships currently being put forward, we would need SIX 23 point Photons to get the same internal damage percentage generated by Photons in X2 as the Fed CA did in the MY period.
For that reason; four 24 point Photons will be fine!
Four 24 Point Photons with cool flexibility will be FINE as well.
Since the Ph-5s alone can generate what we shall call real damage then the Disruptors and Ph-5s can generate real damage and thus the Disruptors will be fine even if there is no improvement of them at all.
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Let's take the weapons where we want ( within reason ) and BPV out the problem of balance.
Let's say our baseline photon is the 12/24 proposal.
If we give it a 2d6 hit chart, we would need to drop the damage to something like 10/20.
You exchange one advantage (some of the enhanced damage) for a nother (less EW-able high probs)
I don't think comparisons to EY have much value. While the EY BPVs may be balanced to each other, they are not balanced to MY.
Fed YCA is 84. Klingon D6 is 113 BPV.
3 x Fed YCA = 252. 2 x D6 = 226.
Fed CA is 125 BPV. Klingon D4 is 75.
1 x CA = 125. 2 x D4 = 150.
Do either of these battles look like the MY squadron has an advantage?
Jeff, nope....not that I can see.
John, I'd even go so far as to say that a 2D6 chart would mean no need to incraease photon damage at all. Keep it as with 1X, and give it that chart, and it should be fine. How this makes it anything like a disruptor I don't know. If no change to the chart, then I can live with the 12/24 photon. It'll be expensive, but it ought to work.