Archive through March 04, 2003
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
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X2 Shields:
Archive through March 04, 2003
George,
What's important is to pay attention to consensus. We've been kicking this stuff around for about 6-8 weeks now.
I'll use the phaser cp->reinforcement debate as an example.
Consensus is that ships will have a SIF that blunts internal damage in some way. Exactly how it will work is a debate temporarily on hold, but we will propose some kind of SIF to give starships durability against internal damage.
Consensus is that Shields will be able to shunt some %tage of damage to an adjacent shield. there are some holdouts, such as MJC, but most of us like the idea.
I tend to evaluate new proposals in the light of past consensus. As a result, since I know we're proposing a SIF (despite not knowing exactly what) and I feel confident we're going to do damage-shunting, pulling additional reinforcement from the phaser caps goes over the top.
I agree. I can live with an SIF and sheild shunting, provided they don't stack up to be too much together. Using power from phaser caps to reinforce shields feels very Andro-ish to me.
Quote:With regards to BPV the important thing to note about the EY vs. X1 comparison is that it doesn’t work well. It doesn’t work well and we have learned from the mistake. One of SVC only guiding principle in X2 design was that the BPV must work between X0/X1/XP/X2. We should not seek to replicate the mistakes of the past, we should strive to correct them. X2 BPV must translate to X0, including the force dynamics equation. Do we need a mission statement topic?
I'm not so sure we need a Force Dynamics modifer.
The XFF at about 130 BPV will do nicely against those CAs it'll be fighting so we don't need to say that because there's only one B11 that therefore the XCC needs to be watered down.
Quote:What's important is to pay attention to consensus. We've been kicking this stuff around for about 6-8 weeks now.
I'll use the phaser cp->reinforcement debate as an example.
Consensus is that ships will have a SIF that blunts internal damage in some way. Exactly how it will work is a debate temporarily on hold, but we will propose some kind of SIF to give starships durability against internal damage.
I don't mind stacking technologies on top of each other; I'ld like to see X2s have the ASIF, the 5 point BTTYs ( which will be great for protecting the ship from damage ) and Caps-to-SSReo. The drawback will be AT WHAT BPV COST?
The reason I don't like the damage shunting is that:-
1) Andros have 2 "shields" a front and back, to take care of the problem that with 6 different sheilds it can shunt a lot of damage into shields that'll never be fired apon.
2) There's a lot of people who fear to play the Andro because of everything it can do with damage and the complexity of working out how to stow that damage, which will cause a lot of players to refuse to play with or against X2 ships because of the complexity of figuring out which point of damage goes where.
3) The Andros need to keep some racial flavour and ripping off their tech sound like it'ld be cool but it eventually wouldn't be, lets keep 5 point BTTYs as the only andro rip off...would you rather I put forward an idea that galactics have Displacement divices and that Lyrans in Particular had X2PFs and internal hangers and that all the really cool aspects and some more of the Satelite ship concept were added to X2 Lyrans!?!...maybe everyone can have X2PFs with internal bays!!!
The damage shunt isn't andro-ish in my mind.
That makes people leery of andros is that they can use their weapons damage (as power) against them. The shield shunt simply spreads the damage ebtween two adjacent shield. What was the percentage in the proposal?
20%?
Hardly a cause for terror.
As for the rest, I think you're alone or nearly so in advocating 5-pt batteries. George? It seems like the rest of us have gone for 4-pt or 3 + warp storage.
Propose what you like. It's an open forum. But the stuff that seems to have little chance of making it into the final product will get correspondingly little attention from me.
John; we've been kicking around shield concepts for X2 for nearly three and a half years now. Only those discussions were on other sporatic X-threads before the X-topics area was formed.
My feeling's on consensus are that consensus isn't what drives good design, but rather good design drives good design. I've examined the ship integrity field thread briefly, and for myself it's a direct ripoff of Modual E2's races defenses. I hope SVC recognizes this and either tweaks the concept (assuming he's inclined to use it), or "shunts" it altogether 
. If the integrity field were applied in another way it might get my personal thumbs up. As it is I disapprove, but trust the game's author to give it his usual thurough examination, and make an appropiate decision.
Phaser capacitors only bother me if said capacitor can be discharged in repsonse to an attack. I don't have a problem with the discharge going to the shields before or after the firing-impulse, but I would agree that to discharge batteries (heck, I don't like the current discharge batterie's rule) upon the moment of a strike is too much.
As for stacking the technologies, even though I said no one suggested it (and I believe only Loren hinted at it, but no one actually suggested a ship with every shield technology suggested here), I have no problem with it as long as the BPV is accurate. Again, I think this is the real core issue you're probably grappleing with: What point value does one assign a new tech for the game?
How many points is assigned to a hard, shunt, cap or some other defensive tech? I have no idea, but I know it's going to be based on the techs from which the rules draw their structure; i.e. a phaser-cap to specific shield reinforcement rule might add X-number of points for every phaser because of the added capability. Or for a "shunt" or "dispersal" system some factor (X) will be multiplied by the number of shield boxes that are able to divert additional damage, and so forth. I dont' really know.
Again, the whole purpose of this thread is to flesh out concepts, and with great consideration hash out the pros and cons in their completeness. And that's all this thread is about. It's not about adding rules to the game as such, as it is to theorize, postulate and otherwise conjecture what would be some insteresting ways to improve a ship's defenses without beefing up the shields.
Heading out for the evening.......
Quote:The damage shunt isn't andro-ish in my mind.
Yup. IMHO, the caps-to-ssreo is more andro-ish than shield shunting. With the former, you get to take energy from weapons and transfer it to your shields. With a big enough capacitor (say triple for 2X, something I've seen a lot of) and a suite of 10 or so phasers, and you have 30 points to play with, in addition to batteries and other excess power. The protection/weapon energy relationship has a distinctly Andro feel to it.
In my old group, we experimented with what we called "flexible shields", basically very similar to the shield shunting. It worked very simply:
A shield can only reinforce an adjacent shield. The max number of boxes that can be moved is based on size class:
SC4 moves 5 boxes.
SC3 moves 7 boxes.
SC2 moves 9 boxes.
You can only move from two shields at once, and only one time per turn, so you gotta make it count. So, an XFF could only recieve 10 points on a given shield, or 5 points on two shields, one time per turn. Like as not, that 10 points is going to be gone. By limiting it to one time per turn, and adjacent shields, it was very hard to abuse the rule and make uber shields. This practice could be used in concert with regular reinforcement rules. It was easy to keep track of, and IIRC didn't break the game, though it did add some interesting new tactics (like trying to get in your big blow before your opponent transferred boxes, or speed changes to zip past someone after they moved their boxes, and hitting the shield they moved them from).
Even with 12 tripple caps, you are only looking at 36 points of damage that can be stopped.
If you then want to fire say, 8 Ph-1s that's still only 28 points of damage.
Such a ship would be fighting against either another XCC or a CX + DDX or BCG + CARa+ + NCA.
Which can generate, 48 , 48 Fastloaded 64 Full two turn and 72 points of damage at range 8 with their Photons respectively. The ability to stop even the amazingly high amount of damage of 28 points isn't going to make the game broken and isn't going to make the unwinable for one side, and this at the cost of completely emptying your Caps.
As for not being able to apply the Caps like BTTYs when the damage occours, I'ld rather take an ineffiecency penalty like 4 points of Power from the Caps generates 3 points of SSReo, then have the Caps-to-SSReo be forced to be discided on prior to the impulse of fire.
Maybe even Caps-to-GSReo could be done at the instant and Caps-to-SSReo is discided peremtively, but beyond that wouldn't be worthwhile.
George,
What we've been trying to tell you is that it isn't as simple as "just assign a point value."
I and others have tried to make that point several times in this thread alone. It's an important concept.
To take the debate to a slightly silly extreme (in order to try to make the point one last time), I can build a ship that moves at speed-128 and has a single 200-point 360-degree main gun that always hits with a max OL range of 15, and also gets 40 free EW per turn in addition to the 40 it can generate. I can give it drawbacks that reduce it point value, such as only taking one internal to kill and having no shields or defense systems. We can calculate its BPV at 1000, 2000, 10000 and throw equal points of anything we like at it. But it the opponents can't hit it with DF or seeking weapons, it wins every time.
Balance via points becomes problematic as the gulf in technology increases.
I suggest we aim at balance in the closed-map objective-based scenario. All SFB BPVs have issues if the maps scroll, and the only VC is to destroy the enemy.
I would be ok with a 2x2 closed map being assumed for a duel when calculating BPVs but disagree that an objective based scenario is the proper place to balance BPV. BPV is balanced on the battle field.
See, to me the purpose of a ship is to accomplish a mission. Sure, blowing up the other navy is a major part of any navies mission... but due to the ability of weaker fleets to decline battle, and the tendancy of stronger fleets to win without recieving commensurate damage, very many (I hesitate to say most) major historic fleet engagements saw one fleet, or both, with an outstanding ground objective.
Which while true IMO has nothing to do with determining BPV.
Hmm... I see your point. I just see the objective-based field as the most important one, and therefore the most valuable one to determine efficacy in. A ship that is supreme vs other ships, in open space, but of no more than limited utility fighting over a planet or starbase is a ship that whilst highly attractive to a player of games, is one that the navy may not find so worthy of investment...
John; no you haven't, not quite, and I've never said that assigning a point value would be easy, and I understand that BPV evaluation is not easy. If you'll reread my previous posts I did touch on this very topic.
I'm not sure where we're misconnecting here. Again, this is a concept thread. I don't know any plainer way to put it.
Rest assured that anything devised here is not written in stone.
If you don't like something that's great. But until your last couple of posts you hadn't elaborated on your disagreements, and that's not so great because myself and others don't understand where you're coming from.
I'd ask that you please reread all my posts, because a lot of what you've written I've already addressed.
Aaron, that's the difference between a multi-role ship and a pure combat specialist.
The combat specialist may struggle with non-combat objectives. The multi-role ship should be able to perform them weil.
George,
I thought I had made most of my difficulties on the specific proposal known. To review: We have two systems that are generally accepted as a part of the "collective X2" we are building here and going phaser-caps to reinforcement make a third defense and that seems like one too many, especially vs. GW tech.
In addition, we don't really need to turn the phaser caps into a second source of reserve power when a 5-battery X2 will have anywhere from 15-25 available as-is.
As for making the tech gulf argument before, that's what the 3x YCA vs. CX challenge was intended to demonstrate and my entire reason for posting it. If points is points, 3x YCA (3x80=240) should be an even fight for 1xCX (240) and it isn't. The reason for this, just as it was in my silly exmple above, is the difference in technology, which means "assigning an accurate point value" is not enough in balancing a ship because an "accurate point value" for an XCC facing a CX and a different "accurate point value" for the same XCC facing, say, a GW-era BCH.
John; as I tried to point out this is just a forum for new defensive concepts.
Nothing more.
No one's discussing outfitting a ship with every concept generated here. You've given some interesting examples in your past posts (what few there were), but from my point of view you still haven't made your core issue manifest.
You're worried about how any of these ideas will be valued in terms of their BPV, but are approaching the matter from a purely "functional" or "wholistic" perspective. Your notion, based on your EY verse X era ships example, is that they most likely will not work properly because in the past the EY ships, in your opinion, were not correctly valued in terms of their BPV assignments.
The course to overcome that is to put said devices to the test. That's when the yea or nay sayers will have their positions justified. And there's only one of those whose opinion is pertinent in the end.
George,
What can I add about the particular idea in question?
I don't like it in concert with other defensive ideas. Defense becomes excessive.
Divorced from other proposals, I don't like the idea of convering phaser caps into an alternate source of reserve power.
And I don't like it because it's aesthetically displeasing. Energy in the caps should stay there until fired through the phasers.
That's enough reasons I should think.
While a difference across two tech levels may be difficult (EY vs X1), balancing the points across one level is key.
Personally, I don't think the points are balanced between EY and MY.
Fed FF, no refits is 71 BPV. Y127 construction.
3 ph-1, 2 ph-3, 2 photons, 12 warp, MC 1/2, 3 impluse, 2 battery, 18/18/18/18/18/18, max EW 6, 6 C hull.
Klink D4 (YCA) is 75 points.
6 ph-2, 2 drn, 2 disruptors (no OL), 24 warp, MC 1, shields 23/17/15/13/15/17, max EW 4, Hull 3/6.
Does anyone think the D4 has a chance in this duel?
John; ah, I see. 
Quote:And I don't like it because it's aesthetically displeasing.
That's a perfectly valid reason in my book. But you need to say that in the first place LOL!! Because you had me scratching my head for the longest time ... I kept thinking to myself "hmmm...what's not connecting here?" 
Anyway, I can sympathize. Myself I don't much like carrier's, PFs, Fed-fighters and drones, and the stagnant photon torpedo. But I still have fun with the game because there's enough variation on the themes to give me a kind of good-fun feeling when I play.
If I had my way photons would've evolved, Feds would've never been given fighters (much less carriers), and a host of other developments and so-called innovations that, in my personal opinion, very much detract from those artists who created the fiction some 30 years ago upon which this whole game is premised.
But, so what? It's just one interpretation of that fictional vein, and I think ultimately that's how it's best viewed.
Makes sense.
The addition of carriers and Attrition units gave SFB a lot of growth room but changed the nature of the game, putting a lot of strain on seeking weapon defense.
Official proposal for damage shunting.
25% of the damage done to a shield OR 25% of the damage may be shunted to an adjacent sheild.
Whichever is smaller.
Could you clarify please.
Example:
36 point sheild take 25-point attack.
6 points (1/4 of 25) can be shunted because the damage is the smaller.
The same shield takes a 48-point attack.
9 points can be shunted (1/4 of 36) because the shield is the smaller.
The shield's value includes any damage and reinforcement that was present before DF weapons fire. Reinforcement in response to damage cannot change the shunt amount.
Naturally the shield must have at least one functioning box in order to shunt.
Thanks John. That explains everything fine. Your previous post was a bit unclear IMO.