Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board

Archive through August 27, 2004

Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board: The "X" Files: First Generation X-ships: X1R The X-ship R Module: Archive through August 27, 2004

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, August 26, 2004 - 11:08 pm: Edit

MJC;

What are you talking about? You cite the last sentence of D23.223, which says "At the instant that the running total exceeds double the shock breakdown rating, the ship automatically suffers a shock breakdown."

Now, the most shock points a Mauler can accumulate from a single firing of the weapon is 6. So if that hypothetical 30-battery X-Mauler had not yet accumulated any shock points and then pushed all 90 points of power through the mauler weapon in an alpha-strike, it would take no actual damage unless the shock breakdown rating were 3 or less!!!

MJC and Mike Raper;

I mentioned the FlameHawh-X being able to absorb the full alpha-strike of a Fed CX at range 4 and be guaranteed not to take any internal damage as an example of the kinds of capabilities that an X-Mauler would have. Now Maulers, presumably including X-Maulers, don't operate alone. And Mike proposes 280 BPV for his FlameHawk-X while the Fed CX is only 240, so this is hardly an even duel. And getting that close to an X-Mauler does presuppose some... er, dubious tactical decisions on the part of the Fed commander.

But... just for giggles, let's look at the likely result if that fully armed CX did somehow find itself nose to nose at close range with a FlameHawk-X and decided to fire its alpha as soon as it got to within range to give its photons a 67% chance of hitting.

We've already seen that the FlameHawk-X is in fact guaranteed to take no damage from the alpha if it commits the batteries to shield reinforcement. But we also assumed best possible results for the Fed (every die a "one"). But even with a 2/3rds chance of hitting, the Fed hits with all 4 photons about 1/5th of the time. The most likely number of hits is 3. So let's make the more realistic assumption that the photons do 48 points of damage. And rather than assume every phaser shot was a one, let's assume the Feds did average damage (46) with the phasers. Assuming the Romulan wants to keep at least 1 shield box on his #1, he needs to commit 55 points of reserve power. This leaves him with 38 still in the batteries, more than twice the Fed CX total reserve power. The Fed has shot his bolt except for drones and shuttles. The Romulan still has two M-torps, 7 Ph-1s, a mauler with 38 points of power available, and his own shuttle craft. Likely result by the time the turn is over? A Romulan with a wrecked front shield and some accumulated shock points and zero reserve power versus a Fed with a wrecked shield, no reserve power and a bunch of internal damage! At that point, the Flamehawk-X doesn't need to worry about fully reacharging the batteries, it puts some reserve power in when it can afford to but fights like a plasma boat and easily wins the battle against the already badly damaged CX.

That FlameHawk-X can call up a total of 139 points of power in a single turn (46 generated + 93 reserve). If it uses this power wisely, it can gain such a decisive advantage over most opponents that it doesn't need to worry about fully recharging the batteries afterwards.

I stress again that the FlameHawk-X, like all Maulers, is properly a fleet support ship. But the amount of power available to it allows it to support tha fleet in ways that are simply incommensurate with most ships.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 12:32 am: Edit

John Trauger;

I've been pondering your solution, but didn't see how it actually solved the problem. For one thing, why would the Romulans use this system rather than a standard battery system as on Mike's proposed FlameHawk-X? What's the advantage to it over batteries? The second problem is that it still leaves tremendous amounts of reserve power available for non-mauler purposes, which, combined with effective non-mauler weaponry such as plasma-M torps, is where I think the real danger lies.

But that got me thinking along some different lines. What do you think of this modification to your capacitor idea?

X-Maulers have their mauler weapons totally decoupled from their batteries (which would be the normal number for an X-ship of the same size) and other power producing systems, and instead tied into a capacitor system capable of holding (well, we'll work the exact amount out later) points of power. This was done because maulers powered solely by capacitor are not subject to shock. The down side is that, like most weapon capacitors, the mauler capacitors are not available for general reserve power. They can only be used to power their associated weapons.

This seems to me to accomplish several useful things. It keeps the maulers in the game at X-tech. It solves the problem of X-batteries combined with mauler battery banks producing absolutely enormous (and potentially game-breaking) amounts of reserve power. And the "no shock" advantage explains why the Romulans (and others) went to this system. Note that since the FireHawk-X has 5 batteries/15 points of reserve power, the FlameHawk-X would have that same.

What do you (everybody, not just John) think? Is this worth exploring?

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 12:53 am: Edit

I like it. Good idea. Best idea yet.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 01:17 am: Edit

On regular maulers the actual weapon cannot be destroyed but kill it's batteries and it's effectively dead. You can even H&R the batteries.

How do you kill this new X-mauler, just kill the ship?

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 01:39 am: Edit

What if mauler research went on a completely different divergent direction to regular BTTYs and when the time came for the first X-Maulers to be built the X-BTTYs couldn't be installed.

What if X maulers stayed BTTYs stay at one point each ( except those not linked to the mauler ) but the mauler inflicted damage using a different table.

R6-12 x 1 Damage
R2-6 x 2 Damage
R1 x 3 Damage
R0 X 4 Damage

We'ld get effectively double the damage out of X-Maulers ( rather than tripple ) but we wouldn't have the HUGE amounts of improptu reinforcement that would spoil the fun.

Match it to not firing everything in a BTTY array if you don't wont to and the X-Mauler with single BTTYs becomes a very nifty weapon.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 02:15 am: Edit

Loren;

If you look at John's original suggestion for a mauler capacitor, it did have boxes for the capacitor that were still hit on battery hits. (It was different in this respect from phaser or ESG or particle cannon capacitors, which can not be hit independently of their weapon.) I was assuming that my modification would retain those capacitor boxes, so you would kill the X-mauler weapon just the same as you would any other mauler weapon. Since my suggestion also had regular X-batteries, you would need some sort of method to divide hits between the real batteries and the capacitor boxes like the phaser rules requiring every 3rd hit be on a "best" phaser rather than a phaser-3.

MJC;

I'm not sure, I'll have to think about your idea. You will need a technobabble reason why the X-mauler can only use standard (non-X) batteries, but if the idea works from a gaming standpoint, that's usually not a big problem.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 04:45 am: Edit

Quote:
Since my suggestion also had regular X-batteries, you would need some sort of method to divide hits between the real batteries and the capacitor boxes like the phaser rules requiring every 3rd hit be on a "best" phaser rather than a phaser-3.

No you wouldn't.
The Mauler-Caps would be conected by the thick black line to indicate it is a MAULER-CAP and then teh player uses his own discression about hitting regular X-BTTYs or mauler-caps.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 06:46 am: Edit

Quote:
What do you (everybody, not just John) think? Is this worth exploring?

I like it. It has a nice feel. A capacitor makes more sense, and shows some evolution of the weapon. No more stripping down the ship and slapping batteries and cables on. You say the capacitors would be denoted on the SSD?

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 09:04 am: Edit

MJC;

Fair enough. You're right that we wouldn't need a rule and could let the player decide which battery hits are allocated to real batteries (which can't supply energy to the mauler) and which to allocate to the capacitors (which can't be used for any non-mauler functions). Then the question becomes whether player allocation or a "phaser-like" damage allocation rule makes the game work better. I'm inclined to believe the "phaser-like" rule is preferable, but I'm not sure about this.

Mike Raper;

As Loren pointed out, you can't hit a mauler weapon on the DAC. You kill it gradually by killing the power systems that feed it. I think we should retain this dynamic and therefor have the capacitors represented by boxes on the SSD. If you consider the FlameHawk-X you posted on Wednesday, you could convert it to my suggestion by relabeling the batteries in the mauler-modules as capacitors, and making sure the "mauler-line" didn't connect to any systems other than the capacitors themselves. If each capacitor box, holds two points of power, the mauler would have available a maximum of 56 points to maul with when the caps were fully charged. This yields a very impressive 102 points of damage at point blank range. But since it never suffers shock, it could do this again and again, as long as the ship could slip away (cloaked/protected by other ships in the fleet) to recharge. The ship would also have 9 points of "regular" reserve power (a little light for an X-Heavy Cruiser, but even X-ships should have to make trade-offs) from the 3 batteries in the boom.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 09:26 am: Edit

Actually swapping BTTYs for 2 point caps and throwing in some alterations as well would be cool and could be justified as why the Design Baureaus didn't go for three point weapons.

If the Cap based system allows one to pick and choose how much one fires and has a slightly improved firing chart then that might be the reason "they" went for the less devistating weapon.

How about a table of...
R7-12 x 1 Damage
R2-6 x 1.5 Damage
R1 x 2 Damage
R0 X 3 Damage

In the end you get the Kah-POWWW of three point BTTYs in the mauler but you don't get the ability to shrug off huge amounts of damage prior to tractoring that enemy DN.

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 11:31 am: Edit

The thing about maulers.
how do I begin?
Let's look at the D6M and the D6.
Same number of boxes (almost, maybe off by 1)
Screw the Batteries.
Make all the Batteries (except for 3 or 4) into APR.
Now, that's a Mauler, every turn.
Honestly, why are Maulers based on batteries?
Honestly, have you priced batteries today? They are more expensive than alternators, and aren't alternators the premature version of APR's?
If you guys want a scary ship, convert 95% of batteries on a mauler into APR.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 11:57 am: Edit

Quote:
Honestly, why are Maulers based on batteries?

Because drawing power from batteries for a mauler doesn't damage the batteries, whilst drawing power from APRs for a mauler does damage the APRs. Insert whatever technobabble is required to justify it, but it's a game-balance issue, as a cruiser-sized ship that could generate 70 points of power a turn would be absolutely frightening...as would a mauler that could run around at speed 30 firing a full blast every turn.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 12:01 pm: Edit

And no, alternators aren't a premature APR. An alternator is just a gizmo for converting mechanical energy (from the fan belt of an internal combustion engine) to electrical energy; an APR is a nuclear reactor.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 12:11 pm: Edit

Glenn;

There are a couple of reasons not to change the batteries to APR. For one thing, power to the mauler-weapon that doesn't come from batteries damages the systems that supply the power. So if a Mauler with 30 batteries dumps all 30 points into the weapon, it accumulates shock points. But if the accumulated shock points are below the shock breakdown rating, the Mauler takes no actual damage. Replace those 30 batteries with 30 Apr and 15 of the APR are automatically destroyed in the firing. The battery-based Mauler at least has a chance of escaping and recharging for another attack, protected by other ships in the fleet. The APR-based Mauler loses a good chunk of its power even if all the enemy ships fire at something else.

The other advantage of the battery-based Mauler is the huge reserve power. This isn't so important for those ships that have no significant weapons other than the mauler-weapon. If they use their massive reserve power for shield reinforcement, they have little or nothing to hit the enemy with. But for a ship like the FlameHawk, it's a different matter. The FlameHawk can use the batteries for powering the mauler-weapon, or it can use them to provide massive shield reinforcement so it can survive to get in position to ram two plasma-S torps up the enemy's nose if the tactical situation makes the latter preferable. Similarly, a Lyran Mauler might use the reserve power to move at high speed with a huge brick available, to conduct an ESG overrun. Replacing the batteries with APRs would provide the same total available power but you would have to know during energy allocation whether it would be better used for the mauler-weapon, reinforcing a shield (and in a fleet battle it might not be obvious which shield was going to receive the enemy's most dangerous shot), winning a tractor-auction, or anything else reserve power could be used for.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 02:51 pm: Edit

I think a compromise would work. Use the capacitor system previously outlined. It'll work just like phaser caps; can't use the energy elsewhere, but you still get the effect of the big battery count an x-mauler would have. The major difference would be, as noted by Alan, that this capacitor system would be represented on an SSD as something you could damage. I may play with this SSD idea later, just to see how it looks and works out. Might be fun.

For the recort, though, IMHO there is no need to actually alter the mauler table. The x-mauler gets the advantage of an EW shift and much more available power. A different table doesn't seem necessary to me.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 03:55 pm: Edit

You guys have it right.

The caps would be boxes on the SSD. they just function as a single, unified entity.

I thought a lot about whether to disconnect the cap system from reserve power and ultimately decided that, since I was limiting the increase of energy to the mauler ship, we could afford to leave it as a part of reserve power.

As for whether you take X-batteries or mauler caps when the ship is damaged, well, the coin is pretty balanced.

Take a cap and you lose less reserve power, but the overall potency of the mauler goes down.

Take a bettery and the mauler's still good, but you lose 3 points of reserve power instead of 2.

For a first-draft run, I say leave it to player discretion.

I have already said all I care to about MJC's mauler proposal.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 05:08 pm: Edit

For my money, I say leave the mauler table alone. The benefit is the X-batteries/caps.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 08:14 pm: Edit

Quote:
For the recort, though, IMHO there is no need to actually alter the mauler table. The x-mauler gets the advantage of an EW shift and much more available power. A different table doesn't seem necessary to me.

I think an improved table can be justified by the mauler caps themselves.
The battery is designed to release power over a turn ( sure it can release power in an instant but it's designed to release power over a turn ) whereas the capasitor is designed to release power in an instant and only in an instant.
Therefore when maulers went to a capasitor based system they were able to focus the energy much more effectively and were able to develope a more destructive weapon.

Well that's the technobable reason.
For game balance, if the Caps hold 2 points of power per box ( and maybe they won't ) then in order to get the explosive force of 3 point BTTYs one would need to have a mauler table that was 50% more damaging than currently.
I think a lot of players will demand 3 point BTTYs if we don't.

Personnally I'm for it, at R8, maulers have half the damage to power ratio of Photons and photons are supossed to suck in damage to power ratio.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 09:29 pm: Edit

Okay,

Here's a quick draft of the X-mauler we've talked about.

R4.?? Romulan Firehawk-X Advanced Mauler Cruiser

A few points:

Capacitors are denoted as "MC" on the SSD.
Each capacitor box holds up to two points of power, and can draw this power from anywhere, just like a phaser capacitor can. Power cannot be drawn from the capacitors in any way except the mauler cannon itself.
Each mauler is seperate and distinct from the other. The capacitors for the left side cannon do not affect the one on the right, and vice-versa. I did this to make it possible to damage one in the same way a phaser or torpedo is damaged.
There are not four "banks" of power anymore. Each bank is comprised of capacitor boxes, and a given cannon may draw power from any box in its capacitor array in any way you want. You no longer have to draw from a certain number of boxes as you did with normal maulers. This is both to enhance flexibility and serves as a nod to the Andromedan maulers that influenced its design...same ability, just not as much power.
Mauler capacitor boxes have the same repair cost as a non-X battery.

A start. Maybe not perfect, but definately better than just more batteries, I think we'll all agree. It's pretty scary. You can zap away with as little power as you like due to the removal of the draw restrictions, and can do a ton of damage if you get close (128 at point blank range...sounds like alot, but it IS an X-ship after all).

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 09:39 pm: Edit

Looks good, Mike.

Quibble: I count a total of 32 capacitor boxes (16 per pod) for 64 points of power.

Do we really want to give an X-mauler that much power?

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 09:52 pm: Edit

Why not? Other X-weapons were increased by some hefty amounts as well. It may be a bunch, but it's got to get in range to use it; and unlike normal maulers, it can't use its mauler power for shield reinforcement or EW to help get in place. I think if it makes it to a good range, it ought to be worth the effort.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 10:07 pm: Edit

Fair enough.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 10:15 pm: Edit

Are you sure you don't want to attach the mauler to the engines?

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 10:39 pm: Edit

Quote:
Quibble: I count a total of 32 capacitor boxes (16 per pod) for 64 points of power.

Do we really want to give an X-mauler that much power?

Well that's to key to the debate ( as far as I can see ); that 3 point BTTYs will give you huge amounts of damage.

A mauler with 24 three point BTTYs would be looking at 72 power and 144 points of damage so you need either a heck of a lot more Mauler Caps boxes ( which frees up SSD boxes for other things like Phasers ) or a boost to the damage output of the table.

I'ld be willing to go with a mauler cap based mauler that did damage as follows to offset the fact that 2 point caps fall short of three point BTTYs...if we don't go down this path then there will be a huge out-cry from the munchkins that maulers should have just got 3 point BTTYs.

Watered Down table

R6-10	x 1 Damage
R2-5	x 1.5 Damage
R0-1	x 2 Damage

One of the problems is the immence damage output already generated by maulers. A Romulan FAL already has 36 BTTYs ( 72 damage at R1 ) so if we try anything to stop the the damage out put from being anything below 144 damage there will be a huge outcry ( because it falls short of the 216 people were hoping for ).
Double mauler Caps and 32 mauler caps for 64 points of energy and 128 points of damage may seem excessive but not compaired to what maulers with full X abilities ought have.

Therefore I would recomend raising the damage out put of the mauler table to push the mauler effective damage to something just past 144...thus the table above would do nicely ( although it only raises the effective damage not the maximum damage ).

I would also like to say, the Engines directly behind the mauler ought be attached to the mauler.

Also mauler that can generate 36 points of S.S.Reo ( the Rom FAL ) is a very different beast to a mauler that can generate 9 such points...so we need to give the Mauler a little something extra.

Also X ships have double Psuedo Plasmas...

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Friday, August 27, 2004 - 11:18 pm: Edit

Technobabble: X-bats produce 3d6 shock.

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