Given that ground bases are associated with large, solid masses, should they have they be seen as having the same kind of armor that the Jindarian astroid ships have? I don't see any reason why this proposal would necessarily change anything in F&E. An alternative would be to allow, for some increased cost, "underground bases" with the rock armor feature. They could represent "hardened" military installations on key planets. Such armor shouldn't require any additional maintainance outside of the original construction outlay. They'd have surface access ports for their weapons and sensors and hangar capacities.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, May 05, 2003 - 10:36 pm: Edit

Have you seen the rules for bases mounted on rocks? As it stands, they get to double-up their shields. That's a better deal than most jindos get.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 01:46 am: Edit

John: The rules for increased shields and more concentrated weapons apply to large bases set on planets. (P2.747) is quite specific that large bases can't be placed on asteroids. Placing them on planets does come with the drawback of making it much harder for friendly ships to dock with the base. Small bases on asteroids only get the questionable advantage of increasing their firing arc up to 360* at a cost of also being damaged from those arcs.

I imagine you could try to hollow out the asteroid and hide the base deep inside. This would probably have some deleterious effects:

the base would not be a single easily moved object but rather spread amongst hollows in the asteroid

if the entire asteroid takes sufficient damage, the entire base must be abandoned

Jindarians would most likely not conceal bases in this fashion. Any asteroid solid enough to protect buried ground bases would be a prime candidate for conversion into an asteroid ship.

It could be an interesting rule though if effects were more pronounced. For example, a large base (say Battlestation) could be wrapped by parts of asteroid. Those asteroid pieces would improve protection slightly but would also block some of the docking positions and module mounting points. This would allow for reevaluating campaign priorites regarding space combat versus logistics.

By Ahmad Abdel-Hameed (Madarab) on Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 02:36 am: Edit

While I was more thinking along the lines of the smaller ground bases like the GBDP and such, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be allowed for the larger bases that are more commonly seen in space (like the BS, BATS and SB). I'm not entirely convinced that the tradeoff suggested between protection and module access is necessarily applicable since you could place that equipment on the surface. Even so, on bases placed on moons and planets, there are very few ships that have the capacity to take advantage of that in any case.

By John Kasper (Jvontr) on Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 08:55 am: Edit

I saw an SSD for an asteroid starbase once. The various parts of the SB were distributed in an assymetrical fashion based on the shape of the asteroid. Some portions had armor as well as shields, some didn't. Firing arcs were odd. Fun SSD.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 01:05 pm: Edit

Richard,

Oops. Show what happens when I speak about rules I haven't read in a few years.

But I would disagree about not being able to mount a base in an asteroid. When asteroid diameters are measured often int he tens of miles, there's plenty of room for even a starbase to be mounted within.

But yeah, a lot of the armor would be a one-time thing, but it ought to have a lot of it. be interesting to see how a set of rules would work.

By Ahmad Abdel-Hameed (Madarab) on Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 05:47 pm: Edit

I'm not entirely sure that the armor would simply represent rock. Given the kinds of energies displayed in typical SFB weaponry, I'd suspect that some high-tech processing would be involved to turn a portion of the overlaying rock into something that was better able to resist damage and protect internal systems.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Tuesday, May 06, 2003 - 07:06 pm: Edit

John Trauger: The rule is the rule. Unless the Starbase is completely built through out the asteroid and the shields could cover the entire asteroid, the base runs the risk of having the asteroid shot out from under the base. A Starbase has around 600 internals, can easily add another 200 internals in external pods and modules, plus those 80 box shields. Counting reinforcement, the Starbase take 1,000+ points of damage to kill, considerably more than the 400 points to kill the average asteroid.

Ahmad: I doubt the asteroid would need much improvement. The asteroid takes 400 points of damage. The Jindarian DN has 6 armor facings of 80 each.

Try writing up a sample rule and SSD. Unfortunately, it will be very easy to create a system that will replace the standard base.

By Piotr Orbis Proszynski (Orbis) on Wednesday, May 07, 2003 - 10:47 am: Edit

I would think a limiting factor would be cost. Just make the economic cost of such a base thrice (or *N, whatever seems right) that of a regular one, for the prepping of the rock

By Jeff Williams (Jeff) on Saturday, May 10, 2003 - 04:28 am: Edit

Or consider that an "armored" base is giving away one of its chief abilities: shield reinforcement. While you could argue continuous damage control repairs to the armor, a la jindarian armor belts, the power of a starbase to reinforce shields is a major defensive ability.

Unless you're gonna give it rock armor belts AND full shields. In which case it's just plain broken. Either/or works better.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Saturday, May 10, 2003 - 11:08 am: Edit

My experience is that The "renenerating armor" idea never holds up as well in practice as theory.

I learned this first running the Juggernaught. Jindo ships are so power-poor that the "advantage" is negligable. In practice it is negligable for reasons unique to the Jindo which are otherwise off-topic here.

Treat rock armor as added shields for all practical purposes. What we're talking about is a hardened base. The SFB equivalent of places like Chyenne Mountain.

There would have to be restrictions on its operation to compensate for the defense advantages.

It would either not be able to take agumentation modules or they might cost double to reflect the added defense. In campaign terms, if you all them to have modules, you will never be able to change what they are (presumably they're tunnelled out of the rock not just twoed in and attached.

The ability of an asteroid base to dock and repair ships would be limited. An asteroid base would dock ships inside, outside or not at all If ships are docked on the outside of the base, they're like shuttles on a balcony and take damage ahead of the asteroid armor. They would probably not be able to share power with the base. ships docked internally would use the starbase rules for same. Each size of base could be given an amount of docking points it can hold.

By Randy Buttram (Peregrine) on Saturday, May 10, 2003 - 12:52 pm: Edit

Or augmentation modules have to be mounted outside the armor. Heck, we already have special damage rules for starbases; adapting them wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Saturday, May 10, 2003 - 09:19 pm: Edit

There is a problem with constructiong rules to require destruction of augmentation modules prior to armor being damaged (especially in this case where the armor is the primary defense on the base). All those external pods become armor that protects the armor. Cargo pods would become an incredibly cheap and effective protective system.

By Randy Buttram (Peregrine) on Saturday, May 10, 2003 - 10:05 pm: Edit

Good point.

As I am too lazy to check, how are augmentation modules handled in the special starbase damage system?

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Saturday, May 10, 2003 - 11:56 pm: Edit

The augmentation modules take damage at the same time as the module of the starbase to which the attachment is mounted. All that outer section and attached modules get damaged before the damage passes to the core armor.

The crucial difference is that for the starbase is once the shields drop, the module's weapons are rapidly stripped off even though there is a huge number of extra cargo, hull and shuttles added to the modules repair, hull and shuttles. In the external module followed by armor, all the damage would hit the modules and it would take a long time to move through the cargo to start burrowing the armor. During that time, the inner base behind the armor is unblemished. It would be necessary to double or triple the BPV cost of cargo pods to reflect the increase in protection.

I did design some units around an exposed module unprotected by armor. After several tries, I finally got good results by having the damage rolled. Cargo pods would take damage on a 7; the remaining damage passed through. But in practise, was it really worth rolling for 24 damage if 4 will be cargo and the remaining 20 passed onto the armor? I found that simply placing the modules behind the armor while unrealistic was such an improvement on speed of resolution that it was the better method for handling pods and armor.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, May 11, 2003 - 09:21 pm: Edit

That assymetrical asteroid-base SSD gives me a cool idea for a player-configuable SSD. Create a symetrical SSD with "too many" boxes, including directional armor, and before the game begins, the player must cross off "X" number of systems of each type however the wish.


Garth L. Getgen