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	Archive through May 10, 2019	25		05/10 02:08am

Well the Limit of T-bombs is a game balance thing.

Explanation that much explosive ordinance can be very hazards to have on board needing a place to store them IE mine racks. So adding a Mine rack means the Sat ship can carry them. Uses as mentioned above. Did they andros fight seekers were they come from? Are did they get T-bombs from the alpha/like maulers?

I think such a Sat ship would be useful for the Andros. More so as in the Andro war they were fighting fast drones and Sabot plasma.

By Jeffrey George Anderson (Jeff) on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 11:11 am: Edit

For my 0.02 Quatloos worth...

Yes, I had the emotional rush on the thought of the "Transporter and Bomb Escort" and how much fun it might seem to play at first thought, but even before I signed off my computer after posting that, I knew it was something that would get stale and boring VERY quickly.

In short, it would quickly stop being enjoyable to fly, every bit as much as it would not be enjoyable to whomever was on the receiving end of its payload.

TBH: when I was first thinking of (my version of) the SatShips with phasers replacing TRLs, a good deal of the appeal OF such a ship (at least to me) was that it gave up an important capability, namely its offensive value to the battle group, for its improved capability in another (providing for group defense against seeking weapons).

Call me weird, but THAT is something I've always felt was important as a way of showing respect for the hard work you all at ADB, Inc. have done to create and maintain the game and universe I enjoy so much.

By Norman Dizon (Normandizon) on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 11:54 am: Edit

While I would certainly pay a lot of money for this proposal, I believe it is rendered moot by the Secret Memo (04.04.2281) distributed to a few select individuals years ago. In the Secret Memo (which I am risking my life to talk about here), there are details and rules for:

1) The TR-Gatling (TRG)
2) The Andro Phaser (NOT PH-2's)
3) DisDev vs Seeking Weapons
4) The Andro ESG (using Panels+Batteries)
5) The Temporal Elevator Mobile Barrier
6) Andro ADD's
7) Andro T-Bomb Chains
8) External Robots (Powered Armor)
9) Andro Wild Weasels (Jack-Rabbits)
10) The Only Cloaked Intruder (Vlad)
11) The Only Micro-Dominator Mega-Mega Fighter (dubbed Pouncing Petrick)
12) Andro Infiltration Units (Terminators)

Uh Oh. There are two Men in Black and one Woman in Black from ADB at the door...GOTTA GO!

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 03:11 pm: Edit

Gregory S. Flusche:

Lots of things are game balance issues, and T-bombs has a history that you ignore at peril.

Back when they first appeared, T-bombs were really, really, REALLY cheap costing just one (1) BPV per T-bomb (that is only 25% of what they cost now), and any ship could purchase a dozen (I say again, a DOZEN, as in 12). Whether that ship was the B10 battleship, or a lowly G2 police gunboat (or for that matter a common civilian, I say again, CIVILIAN small freighter), if it could scrape together 12 commander's option points it could purchase a dozen T-bombs. (Yes, no civilian small freighter had that many commander's option points, but it was legal for them to purchase T-bombs back in the day). On top of all of that, "dummy T-bombs" were both, BOTH, UNLIMITED and FREE (at least in terms of paying BPV for them). Dummy T-bombs were something you quite literally manufactured in mid-scenario by announcing a transporter operation (so they cost .2 energy, but that is not a BPV price) and lowered a shield to beam it out (it was defined as you were basically beaming out a load of the ship's garbage to fool the enemy into thinking you were laying a T-bomb.

All of the above was legal and the way it worked in the 1980s to early 1990s.

And, yes, I was one of the major abusers of all of that. (You might have heard tales of the Petrick Shipping Consortium and its infamous tendency to flood mapsheets with T-bombs and dummy T-bombs whenever its ships were attacked.)

All of which, because of balance issues, led to today's rules, where the numbers of not just T-bombs, but dummy T-bombs are greatly restricted, the cost of the T-bombs you can have was raised 300%, and civilian ships were prohibited from having them.

Note also that Nuclear Space Mines went from an option of every ship in the game, maximum of two, to only Romulans, minelayers, and minesweepers being allowed to carry them, at least operationally. (And, yes, Petrick Consortium Merchant vessels frequently carried them back in the day, again making me one of the major abusers of what was then a perfectly legal rule.)

So if you start loading up Andromedan ships with them, we already know that the Kzintis will go on the Warpath, the Klingons and WYNs will not be too far behind them, and with the addition of the availability of Plasma-Killer (power-absorber) Mines which were not available back in the day, you can expect the Romulans, Gorns, and Inter-Stellar Concordium to all start complaining about "balance issues" if this were allowed.

My memory is not what it once was, but I DO remember the rending of cloth and gnashing of teeth over this issue back in the day, and I am not enamored of the idea of revisiting it, thank you very much.

As to Norman Dizon, I agree, destroying the entire planet to get him is the only way to be certain, and certainly not, in this case, to be considered "overkill" (GRIN)

By Jeffrey George Anderson (Jeff) on Friday, May 10, 2019 - 05:02 pm: Edit

On the subject of Andromedan minelayers, I would like to make an observation...

There are a great deal of similarities between the Bull Snake (R10.10) and the Cargo Sled (R10.36)

There are also a great deal of similarities between the Cargo Sled (R10.36) and the Mine Laying Sled (R10.35).

Combining these similarities, it's no great stretch of imagination to come up with a mine laying variant of the Bull Snake.

However, there is NOT one (that I am aware of) yet in the Canon SFU.

Might I suggest that either it never occurred to the Andromedans to build offensive minefields OR they had only a limited ability to produce mines PERIOD?

For this reason, may I also suggest that, should a "Conjectural" version of this ship ever be done, it be given the code name of "Bull-Oney?"

(Yessir, I'll report to The Booth now...)