Your forgetting about the reduction in the number of weapons.

With 8 capital Phasers and 4 Heaves the A.S.I.F. doesn't help to stop those hits so you need some other kind of defensive measure, particulaly when dealing with earliest X2 cruisers.


Consider...there is no point in Building an X2 CA unless it can compete with something pretty power in X1R.

An XCA should be as powerful as a BCHX and get refits to make it as powerful as a DNX.


10 sheild boxes or even 10 shield boexes plus Caps-to-SSReo only just brings us up to the BCHX level and so you'll need that A.S.I.F. to bring yourself in lkine with the DNX.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, July 01, 2003 - 01:11 pm: Edit

With 8 capital Phasers and 4 Heaves the A.S.I.F. doesn't help to stop those

Mine does.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, July 02, 2003 - 03:44 am: Edit

Yeah, we need to move away from A.S.I.F. designs and that feel like JUST ANOTHER SHIELD...otherwise why not just have more shield boxes!?!

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, July 02, 2003 - 11:51 am: Edit

Mine does.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 07:43 am: Edit

A Question of Damage allocation.


How do people allocate ( or more accurately record the allocation of ) the damage they inflict?

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 07:44 am: Edit

I do it by certain method ( unless I'm using a computer programme).

• I calculate the ammount of internal damage and write that number down.
• Then I use the horsegate method ( putting down stokes and putting a digonal line through a group of four for the fifth point ) to count the allocation ( 2D6 on the DAC ) of each individual point of damage.
• When the total of the horsegate count is equal to the number written down than I stop rolling and allocating the damage.


Now here's the thing about ease.
If a HULL boxes were to take 2 points of damage from a hit vuia the effect of an A.S.I.F., I would just put down two strokes in my horse gate count if by chance the DAC indicated a HULL and I crossed out a HULL on the SSD.


Self replenishing internal shields with numbers of boxes acting as an A.S.I.F. would actually be harder to impliment than simply letting certain box types take double damage to destroy.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 01:45 pm: Edit

MJC,

This has more wide-ranging effects than it may first seem.

The second absorbed hit is a set of dice not thrown, which means translates into a "lost" roll that has no change of coming up drone, torp or phaser. It will noticably alter damage allocation, weakening the mizia effect.

These are not necessarily bad things but it's a lot more than a bookkeeping shift. The change it would make is bigger than it sounds.


What happens when the last roll of the volly hits a hull box?

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 01:48 pm: Edit

That and it would still be a headache. Why not just slap armor on the ship?

Ick.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 03:56 pm: Edit

MJC: We use sheet protectors and wax pencils. We write the total damage on top of the DAC (that is going to be alocated). We then start rolling internals (sometimes using multiple sets of paired colered dice;2 x green, 2 x blue, etc.), checking off the internal on the DAC (using the four and one slash for groups of five method). Meanwhile the player taking the damage is checking off his internals as they are called saying "OK" or "Out of that...feed" (or something to that effect).

My ASIF would absorb hull and cargo hits (the first of every three). When taking damage the first hull hit would be checked to the side. Then two more would be checked on the SSD, and so on for each volley.

We use a single slash to mark damage. In some rare cases we might draw a continuous line through mutiple boxes when the damage is known (like of a PF taking more than three internals, the hull is marked off right away. On PF warp damage when the die is rolled we mark those in one line too.) Breakdown is another example.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 09:38 pm: Edit

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The second absorbed hit is a set of dice not thrown, which means translates into a "lost" roll that has no change of coming up drone, torp or phaser. It will noticably alter damage allocation, weakening the mizia effect.

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What happens when the last roll of the volly hits a hull box?

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That and it would still be a headache. Why not just slap armor on the ship?

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using the four and one slash for groups of five method

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By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 11:24 pm: Edit

It is in interesting idea.

It's not entirely different than my ASIF, which also alters the way the DAC plays out.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Monday, July 07, 2003 - 12:00 am: Edit

That's pretty much the Objective...the A.S.I.F. should be handy and good value for the power but unable to protect the weapons.
Then there should be some kind of shield improvement ( shield shuntting most likely ) so the question of where to put your power gets asked.

"Shall I go for the more effiecent system or the system that can protect my weapons?"

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, October 25, 2003 - 04:06 pm: Edit

Since there has been no activity on this thread for a while, I would like to throw out an alternative idea.

One way to "MAKE" the X2 type ships tougher than earlier technology hulls would be to "give" or grant them (the X-2 hull boxes) an ability that earlier hull boxes don't have.

Already the Damage control system gives ships the ability to repair systems, (which most players use to repair critical systems such as weapons, tractors or transporters) what if the X2 ship could quickly & cheaply (in battle) re-establish a hull box as a SSD box that could again "take a hit" as a result of battle damage per the D.A.C.?

Out of respect for the K.I.S.S. principle, I would suggest that since the warp drives of starships use a matter/anti matter reaction to generate the warp power of the ship, and the indications that the bussard collectors(on the warp necelles harvest hydrogen...and one safe way to store large quantities of hydrogen is to "mix it" with oxygen...and an easier way to store liquid H2O is to freeze it as Ice (solid matter)...why not use the transporters to move one SSD hull box of reaction mass (water) from the fuel bunkers/tanks or wherever on the ship it is normally kept to the destroyed hull box?

By changing the Life support settings to deep freeze the water can be kept frozen...the next "hit" from enemy fire would have to "destroy" the ice (effectively becoming a 'heat sink') and thus preventing some other system from being destroyed due to the hull box once again becoming available to take damage on the D.A.C.

It is limited to the number of transporters available (and powered) per turn, it cant be used on more hull boxes than have been previously destroyed in battle and after the battle the frozen watter could be returned to the fuel bunker so that normal repairs could be carried out on the damaged hull boxes.

There is already a partial precedent for this in the case of a destroyed shuttle bay box...a shuttle may land in the box during battle and an additional damage point could then be applied to the shuttle in the destroyed shuttle bay.

The best part (IMO) is it requires no more strenuous record keeping than erasing the grease
pencil mark on the SSD...thereby avoiding additional rules and recordkeeping.

The only problems (I think) is the premise that there is sufficient "reaction mass" that there would be tanks full of it that one could teleport to the location of the destroyed hull box in a combat situation.

The other would be the energy cost of the action...IIRC a transporter action costs 1/5 of an energy point to teleport a boarding party and equipment wich is more complicated and has less mass than a solid cube of ice...a higher cost may be appropriate but I am not sure what the upper limit should be.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Saturday, October 25, 2003 - 04:33 pm: Edit

Jeff,

Point 1:
It bears repeating that SFB cannot be contaminated by technology from the Franchise Treks or movies. The ADB doesn't have the rights to use that stuff.

Ergo, no bussard collectors. That's TNG stuff.

Point 2:
Lorek Knight proposed something very similar in practice to what you're suggesting. It was phrased differently: an advanced Structural Integrity Field that reinforced the hull boxes.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, October 25, 2003 - 09:35 pm: Edit

John, fine, scrap the color commentary, as Loren put it in other posts "handwaveum" or we could just call it smoke and mirrors if you like.

I dont care if you call the fuel hydrogen, tribbles or fiszbin...there is a commodity that is used that limits a starships performance as measured in strategic hexes (as delineated into F&E turns of 6 months duration, most star ships have a 6 hex range or, 3,000 parsecs operating radius from the closest base)

With regard to point #2, i was not repeating Lorens idea of Advanced Structural integrity field.

I was suggesting the placement of frozen fuel (be it hydrogen, tribbles or fizzbin) by use of transproters into the area that once held the Hull boxes in the same way that a destroyed shuttle box can be damaged again if it is reoccupied by another shuttle craft.

I can accept that you dislike my choice of color commentary, fine, lets change it to something that will pass muster.

As I see it, your criticism does not address the main points.

namely, does it address the issue appropriately? could it reasonably function as proposed? could a frozen mass of ice impede or obstruct one damage point of weapons fire in the same way that an undamaged hull box does?

Would a starship have some sort of fuel that could be used in that way?

A historical example might be in order here, in the late 19th century and early 20th century, wet navies ships used coal as fuel, they incorporated the coal bunkers as added protection from enemy shell fire. in world war 2, carriers and battleships had "blisters" added to the hulls to provide a third skin over the original hull plates (which were filled with fuel oil) to act as torpedo protection...the blister would absorb the shock of the torpedo hit, but the original hull would not be penetrated and the ship would continue to float and be combat effective.

finally, this would not strengthen or preserve the hull boxes, it allows the ship in combat to reconstitute the protection that so called 'free hits' provide without having to resort to fancy new technology or complicated new rules.

I submit that we should be discussing if this proposal would be good or bad for the game rather than debating totally unrelated copywrite issues in the color commentary.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Saturday, October 25, 2003 - 10:09 pm: Edit

whoa, Jeff.

A guy should be able to misread a proposal without having his head bitten off.

Restating Point 1:

It isn't a question of "disliking" your color commentary.

Color commentary isn't trivial if the wrong color gets the ADB sued by Paramount. How we phrase things IS important, if for no other reason than it shows SVC that we are thinking about these things.


Analysis

...so however we slice it, we're using the transporter to regenerate the protection offered by a hull box. You're right, what explanation we use is functionally irrlelvant. (but as I said, it is not irrelvant if it impacts the ADB's licensing).

Functionally, we're using the tranporter as a limited repair box, getting the equivalent of 1 point of extra hull-only CDR for .2 points per point of additional power.

A ship with more transporters like a Klingon is far better off because they can do a better job of regenerating themselves. I don't know how likley it would be, but in a protracted battle a Klingon might prove more durable than a Fed or Gorn. Even if true, it might not be a bad thing.

.2 per point of CDR is •••• cheap. By comparison, ships with repair boxes pay 1:1 and then must spend 2 repair points to get 1 point of self-repair. This is more efficient by a factor of 10.

Then there's the fact that the different modes of repair tend to conflict. You can't do CDR and EDR during the same turn, for example. "TDR" or maybe "THR" (Transporter Hull Repair) is for the moment independent and can be combined with one of the others.

That stacks up to being a powerful repair system.

Despite what you say, it is still very similar to Loren's ASIF and it is 5 times cheaper to run (though at the disadvantage of closing the barn door after the first volley of damage has hit) and like Loren's system can be renewed every turn.

Consider either multiple tranporters to repair a box (which doesn't completely sit right even with me) or putting the repair job on a die roll similar to EDR. Say 1-4 the transporter job is successful. 5-6 it doesn't take.


There. Is that better?

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 06:05 am: Edit

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why not use the transporters to move one SSD hull box of reaction mass (water) from the fuel bunkers/tanks or wherever on the ship it is normally kept to the destroyed hull box?

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finally, this would not strengthen or preserve the hull boxes, it allows the ship in combat to reconstitute the protection that so called 'free hits' provide without having to resort to fancy new technology or complicated new rules.

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I submit that we should be discussing if this proposal would be good or bad for the game rather than debating totally unrelated copywrite issues in the color commentary.

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By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 08:58 am: Edit

John-

Sorry, I did not mean to attack you personnally, It was my attempt to clarify what I thought the issues were.

(If it makes any difference, I had rephrased it 3 times 'toning it down' before I posted simply because in the past people objected to the way I have phrased things...It was not personal, and I did understand the circumstances that ADB operate under vis a vis Paramount.)

with regard to paramount/copywrite issues, yes there are ideas protected and at the same time, there are things that are so universal that they belong to public domain, and still more things that some other entity has/had rights to that predate Paramounts interests. It would surprise me greatly if Paramount held copywrite on 'bussard collectors' given the existance of the ramjet applications...(grin)! If paramount ever sued over the tribbles idea, they would have to explain why they felt free to appropriate Robert A. Heinlein's "Flat Cat's" from the novel "The Rolling Stones" copy write 1955 (I think thats the year...) point is not all copywrite issues are simple to resolve.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 09:07 am: Edit

John and MJC:

The ability to "repair" destroyed hull boxes with transporter costing .2 energy points IS powerful, I do agree with you.

The ability to repair hull with transporters is more powerful for ships with many transporters would give klingons a marked advantage.

If this idea were to be formally "written up" I would have to agree that limits would be needed.

Would a maximum of 1 hull box repaired per turn (32 impulses) and a cost of 1.0 energy points be reasonable?

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 09:17 am: Edit

MJC-

Not sure about this, so I may have the detail wrong...but IIRC asteroids (and commets) do have Ice as a component so I am assuming that if a compartment on a star ship is open to vacume (or 'space') and assuming the ship is not in a heat zone or in a star or something, ice would tend to remain as ice...

if the environmental controls are functioning and the damaged hull box has its temp set at freeze I would have to conclude the hot moten metal would cool rapidly (especially after the ice is beamed in!)

finally, decompression happens, why are you concluding that circuits and command centers that can operate in vacume and in combat (as in taking battle damage) would not be able to work in a wet condition? IIRC the battle damgaed USS Hood saucer survived complete immersion in a planets ocean and survived.

Shoot, its probably standard damage control procedure to use transporters to "beam" any excess water or foreign material out of those locations on the ship where it was not wanted or needed. (just a thought!)

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 11:01 am: Edit

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finally, decompression happens, why are you concluding that circuits and command centers that can operate in vacume and in combat (as in taking battle damage) would not be able to work in a wet condition?

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By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 12:13 pm: Edit

MJC,

Let's get past the method of hull repair and look at game mechanics.

The ship could just as easily be taking debris from the weapon hits and using the transporter to merge the stuff into walls and bulkheads.


Jeff,

Thanks for the clarification on your intentions. Consider the matter done and forgotten.

1 point of power per transporter sounds good especially since you're moving a lot more mass than 6 sentients' worth.

I'd still like to see a die roll of some kind. Very few things in SFB happen automatically and reproducibly without some kind of uncertainty.

As far as copyright issues go, look at the size difference between Paramount and the ADB. If Paramount objects to something done by the ADB, the court defense could bankrupt the ADB. Being right doesn't mean much if you go out of business to prove it.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 12:25 pm: Edit

How about this?

At the end of the turn, a number of destroyed hull boxes equal to the ship's DAMCON rating are automatically repaired at no cost (or maybe ½ energy or some such). If you want to extend this system: if no Hull destroyed, then Lab repaired, if no Lab then Shuttle Bay, if no Shuttle Bay then Cargo, etc. In these cases the other boxes are repaired as Hull boxes; they can later be repaired as their original box. This system requires undestroyed Damage Control boxes (and maybe energy) to work.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 01:08 pm: Edit

Yikes!! No.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, October 26, 2003 - 01:35 pm: Edit

R.Brodie Nyboer:

Not sure automatically repaired at no cost is viable...it would be different than the way most other systems function in SFB...such as CDR or shield repairs.

What seems to be a challenge here (atleast to me) is the terminology...following your suggestion on repairing other SSD system boxes such as Lab shuttle or cargo etc...

Any hull (or whatever) that gets treated by the transporter/water thing becomes a heatsink able to absorb incoming weapons fire.

We need a nifty name for it that differentiates it from whatever the original SSD box was so that #1 eliminates the chance of confusion that a player might have thinking that his destroyed lab replaced with a heatsink thingee could still function as a lab...such is not possible with the hull box stacked deck to overhead with frozen water...

Also, it would need to be stated that if a hull box lab or whatever is "heatsinked" it can not be repaired to anything during the remainder of the scenario...although campaign repairs between scenarios could be done.

not sure limiting total heatsinks (or whatever name we choose) by the damage control factor will work...after all it is limited by the amount of fuel available on board ship at the start of the scenario....

what if, instead of linking it to the Damage control rating we were to go back to the idea of the number of transporters available each turn?

Say that on the first turn, the Transporter beams 1 hull box of frozen water into the box...and on each successive turn the transporter beams out the melted water and replaces it with fresh ice...each iteration costs what every amount of energy we decide is appropriate per turn to keep the "heat sink 100% effective". It can't be 1 energy point as then it would be the same price as shield reinforcement would be (and better since that would block the fire before the DAC is referenced...but .2 point (the normal cost of operating a transporter) might be more resonable for successive turns after the heatsink is installed...suppose on the turn the heatsink is installed it costs 1 energy point to replace a sdestroyed hull box and 0.2 energy point and a transporter function to maintain the heat sink during the battle.

would that work?