Ok with the Seltorians bringing some of the old tholian technology back to fight then. Wouldn't the Tholians atleast captured atleast one PC equipped ship and been able to reverse engineer their lost technology? All facts say the should beable to, with the arrival of the NEO-Tholians they should have the ability to make their own PCs.

And of course the pirates would steal the technology and copy it! :D

Giving them access to that technology!

It sure would add a new dynamic to the tholians and orion operations.

Ok you may now start yelling "HEY YOU CAN'T DO THAT!" at the beep.

~BEEEEEP~

By Marcin Radzikowski (Warchild) on Sunday, August 29, 2004 - 04:02 pm: Edit

JT,

That is particle not partical...

By JT Gawboy (Orioneer) on Sunday, August 29, 2004 - 04:19 pm: Edit

What ever. Can't rename it now.

By James A Beggs (Cybermerlin) on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 09:27 am: Edit

There is any additional problem; orions cant copy web technology either, so there is no guarantee they would be able to copy Particle Cannons.

However.... while you are right that the Tholians should be able to copy PCs themselves, again, they now have disrupters, and re-outfitting their entire fleet, and their shipyards, when disrupters works for them just fine, would probably be more trouble than its worth.

By Daniel G. Knipfer (Dgknipfer) on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 09:47 am: Edit

In fact Disruptors work better than PCs for the Tholians. Photons even better that Disruptors. Single impulse crunch is the key to web defense.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 10:30 am: Edit

There is no reason for the Tholians to do this. By the time the Selts show up, particle cannons are no longer a weapon with which the Tholians have any tactical expertise. (The Neo-Tholians might have used them (probably did use them) during their journey to our galaxy. But their ships have been converted to disruptor technology, which the Tholians can build in quantity, and the Tholians have a long-established doctrine for using disruptors and photon torpedos. They have zero experience or doctrine for using particle cannons in the tactical situations they find themselves in in this galaxy. And even if they reverse engineer the particle cannons, there is considerable opportunity cost to re-configuring their industrial base to produce them.

The same could be said of web casters, of course. But web casters are suffciently useful and effective to make the effort worthwhile. Particle cannons are not. Even if the Tholians could build particle cannons in this galaxy, what advantage would there be for them to go through the hassle of developing the capability?

IMO, particle cannons should be kept Selt-only (and that also means no Orions).

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 10:33 am: Edit

Tech-sloshing and cookie-cutterism are two things we all say we are against. Except for our own tech-slosh/cookie-cutter idea of course, which is obviously a great idea, unlike all the other tech-slosh/cookie cutter ideas that have been suggested.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 10:35 am: Edit

I could see a unique Tholian ship armed with PC's. I mean, really...think about it. The Tholians whip a Selt cruiser, what would they do with scavenged PCs? Stick 'em on a new hull. Could work for one of the "unique ship" modules that are forthcoming. As a general practice, though, it isn't a good idea.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 11:04 am: Edit

You want Tholians with PCs just come over to the Shield Galaxy

(There I've managed to chum these waters

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 11:34 am: Edit

Mike Raper;

Fair enough. I could see a particle cannon armed "unique ship" using PCs stripped from a captured Selt and Neo-Tholian expertise to repair and maintain them.

What I can't see is the Tholians going to the effort of producing their own.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 11:50 am: Edit

I agree 100%. They do not serve their needs very well at all.

By James A Beggs (Cybermerlin) on Monday, August 30, 2004 - 07:15 pm: Edit

Kenneth: I've already posted over there and I'm waiting for a reply... ahem....

By JT Gawboy (Orioneer) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 04:30 am: Edit

Well the two shot fire in a turn and the capacitor and ability to hold the over loads AND another normal shot does have greater advantages over Disruptors. And you don't have to fire an load if you don't want to an save the power when your recharging for the next turn firing.

By James A Beggs (Cybermerlin) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 10:00 am: Edit

I disagree. Disrupters can be armed if and when needed, and left utterly empty; after all, the tholians cannot fire through their own webs with any of their heavy weapons.

Photons would be even better in some circumstances; peek out of the web just long enough for a frightening attack, then duck right back in again. But the point being, IMHO, the PC is a slightly weak weapon when compared to others; the Seltorians make up for it with, among other things, the Shield Cracker, but the Tholians, with their web, would probably prefer a one-blast crunch for when they duck out of their web, before ducking back in again.

At least, thats what I'd want.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 11:11 am: Edit

Orioneer;

This still doesn't address the issue of the Tholians having to re-configure their industrial base to produce paricle cannons in the first place. Now the effort and the opportunity costs would be worth it if the new weapon greatly improved the Tholian capabilities in some respect. The web caster itself clearly meets this criterion. But does the particle cannon? The key to Tholian base defense is heavy phaser firepower. To the extent that torpedos are used, high "crunch power" weapons are better under the conditions in which web assaults occur, as Cybermerlin has pointed out. So the only justification for particle cannon equipped ships in the Tholian fleet, is that they would make the ships better in open space combat, relative to the disruptor armed versions. Well, possibly they do, at least in some circumstances. But the improvement is minor. I do not see the level of improvement being any thing like big enough to justify the expenditure of resources necessary to develop the production capability for these weapons.

By James A Beggs (Cybermerlin) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 12:09 pm: Edit

I could see ONE ship refitted this way; the same way the Orions refitted that klingon vessel to their technology; as a political statement, perhaps, or as an experiment.

But there would be no other reason to do it; shipyards are set up to fit up ships for certain technologies, and you would have to refit a shipyard to handle the new technology; there likely just isn't enough of a reason to do so, to spend that kind of expense, without some real, solid gain.

And the PC just isn't good enough to warrant that kind of expenditure.

(Although, and correct me if I'm wrong, but they did refit some shipyards to use the Photon from the Federation, didn't they? I am gonna have to go back and read up about their photon-armed vessels....)

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 03:55 pm: Edit

Nobody has yet mentioned the obvious problem.

The PC is a sad little weapon.

All the heavy-hitting crunch power of a disruptor and all the pinpoint accuracy of the photon torpedo. It's power-hungry too, the only capacitor-driven weapon that has a hold-cost, let alone half the capacitor energy.

It was insanely bad before it was revised, when only the first shot per turn could be the overloaded.

To boil this down, the Disruptor is simply a better weapon. Why would the tholians *want* to outfit even one ship with PCs?

By JT Gawboy (Orioneer) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 04:14 pm: Edit

Firing more often at some thing stuck in a web, at close range where the to hit rolls are good, could be one reason the tholians would want them.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 04:16 pm: Edit

I could see them on a base maybe. Ships would be a waste.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 04:22 pm: Edit

JT Gawboy, why fire at more than one thing? You want to kill/cripple what you aim at and the PC is going to have a darn hard time penetrating a sheild.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 05:21 pm: Edit

The Tholians can make good use of the particle cannon if they wish to do a range-15 sabre dance against their opponent and they have webcaster support. The particle cannon is a good heavy weapon for fighting multiple small targets (fighters/interceptors/PFs) at close range. But even in these circumstances it isn't that much better than a disruptor IMO. And given the disruptor's or photon torpedo's advantages in overload range or out at range-30, this certainly isn't enough to justify re-configuring the industrial base.

Contra both Cfant and JT Gawboy, the particle cannon would be my last choice of available Tholian weapons for actually fighting in a wedding cake. For actually defending the cake, Tholian weapon priorities should be:

1. Phasers
2. Phasers
3. More Phasers
4. D*mn! We're out of phasers. Okay then, Photon Torpedos.
5. Disruptors
6. Particle Cannon.

The optimum situation for the Tholians is having the attacker trapped on one ring while the Tholians fight from behind the next ring in. The Tholians can use their phasers against the enemy ships while taking no return fire. The Tholians should attempt to shape the combat to maximize the amount of time spent in this situation.

But they can't keep it up indefinitely because the outer ring will decay without ships supporting it, allowing survivng attackers to advance to the next ring. Tholian heavy weapons will be a factor during a) the initial assault on the outer ring before the Tholians have retreated behind the middle ring, b) after several turns of fire from behind the middle ring have attritted the attackers and the Tholians attempt to push back out to the outer ring to put reinforcing energy into it, or c) the outer ring has weakened to the point that the attackers can leave it and advance to the middle ring. In all of these cases, combat takes place at such short ranges that ships will be torn apart very quickly. That being the case, the preferred weapons are the ones with huge amounts of "crunch power" since many ships will be crippled or worse before they get off a 2nd volley anyway.

(That's also why, except for the Selts, Andros, and some of the weird simulator or Omega races with special capabilities to circumvent web, the most difficult opponent for a Tholian to defend a wedding cake against is the Hydran. For a given BPV, they can get far more short range firepower into the fight than any other race. With all their fighters, they can also spread that firepower among a lot of individual units to aid in preventing "blind spots".)

By Daniel Knudtson Thompson (Brezgonne) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 07:33 pm: Edit

Personally I prefer PCs over disruptors every time.

They are a much more flexiable weapons system than the disruptor on a number of fronts.

For starters you can hold enough power in the capiciter to fire a standard and an overload shot for the same power cost as it takes a disruptor ship to charge standards.

Nearly all the arguements above seem to assume that the Tholians are defending a fixed postion behind a wedding cake type setup.

The PC can match or excede the firepower output of a disruptor with enough frequency to be a worthwhile trade.

As for availabilty; it is my understanding that the Tholians had full access to PC tech with the arrival of the 312th but chose to retain disruptors on their ships for tactical familarity reasons. Recall after all, that the origanl Neo ships that arrived with the Dyson's Sphere had opperational web casters and disruptors but the police forces lacked the engineering know how to do much more than copy replacement parts till the 312th arrived with engineers that understood how everything worked.

In otherwords, the holdfast commanders were used to disruptors and retraining them for PCs would not be cost effective.

New commanders on the otherhand could logicaly be trained in both disruptor and PC tactics but it's unlikely that sort of program could be completed till the andro war starts in which case disruptors have an added bonus VS PA panels.

Availabiltiy to pirates however, would be zero, just like the rest of their tech. There is no pirate activty within the holdfast at all and the Tholians would not sell them to pirates.

What should be considered when compairing PCs to disruptors on Tholian ships is that PCs are much more intended for open space engagements where massed PC fire can generally rip apart a target faster than disruptors can due to the higher firing rate.

It's just a matter of tactics and understanding how to use the weapon with it's own abilities as opposed to trying to use it in the same manner as a disruptor or photon.

It is a unique weapon in itself and if you try and use it in the same manner as either you will generally fail to achive your objective.

I'm not even going to get into the whole Bugs Vs. Rocks debate. Last I knew that one had been done to death lol

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, August 31, 2004 - 09:41 pm: Edit

Daniel Knudtson Thompson;

Huh?

My 5:21 pm post was my explanantion of why the particle cannon is a poor choice for a web fight. But it doesn't address my real objection as found in my earlier posts, which is that the particle cannon's advantages over the disruptor are not large enough to justify the R&D costs/retooling of factories/logistics problems associated with introducing this new weapon into the Tholian fleet.

And by this time it is a new weapon. Note E17.142, which says in part "Particle cannons cannot be used by Tholians (even Neo-Tholians) in our galaxy because the technology was lost to the Tholians." Later in the same section it says "Tholians in this galaxy treat particle cannons as extra-galactic technology." Now there is an exception to this in the Early Years rules. YE17.0 allows NDDs and NFFs particle cannons during the Early Years period and makes a comment that might be read to imply that the Tholians could have copied the technology when the Neo-Tholians arrived decades later. This might justify Tholians having particle cannons after the Neo-Tholians show up in some "Stellar Shadows" alternative reality. But for the historical SFU, the very clear E17.142 prohibition on Tholians/Neo-Tholians using the particle cannon in this galaxy seems definitive.

In my 5:21 pm post I acknowledged that the particle cannon has some advantages over the disruptor in open space. But I think you go too far if you prefer it to the disruptor "every time". Note first of all that even at the 9-15 range bracket, the particle cannon is more susceptible to EW. With no EW the particle cannon can draw 3 points of power per turn at max rate of fire and inflict an expected 3 points of damage. The comparable disruptor numbers are 2 and 2, so they have the same power efficiency but the ability of the particle cannon to draw more power means that over time it will average more damage. So far, so good. But shooting against a +1 DRM the disruptor averages 1.5 points of damage for its 2 points of power, while the particle cannon expects 2 points of damage for 3 points of power. The particle cannon is still slightly ahead on total expected damage but the disruptor wins on power efficiency. This superior power efficiency can be very important for an underpowered (by the standards of late war refitted destroyers or war destroyers) Tholian DD. And shooting against a +2 DRM the disruptor is 2 power/1 expected damage versus 3 power/1 expected damge for the particle cannon. As you move out to the 16-22 and 23-30 range bands, the particle cannon fares even worse relative to the disruptor.

We could do a similar sort of expected damage versus power requirements analysis within overload range but it would show the same thing. The particle cannon is in fact better than the disruptor in some ways and worse in others. But the necessity of firing two shots to get full damage does increase the likelyhood that the two shots hit different shields and therefor increases the likelyhood of damaging two shields but not penetrating for internals on either.

Unlike some people, I don't think the particle cannon is that bad a weapon. It is indeed better than the disruptor in some ways (including one I haven't mentioned - that it ranges to 30 even mounted on small ships). But its advantages over the disruptor are sufficiently small, and counterbalanced by other disadvantages, that it makes no sense to me that the Tholians would go through the time/effort/expense of developing the capability to produce them. Unlike the webcaster, the advantages of the particle cannon are too small to be worth the trouble. This is basically an industrial base/infrastructure issue rather than a tactical one. And I still haven't heard an argument that convinces me they would do this.

By Barton Pyle (Bart) on Wednesday, September 01, 2004 - 07:18 pm: Edit

Even if the Tholians had PC tech there should be some major restrictions on them like the WC. Maybe just restrict them to Capital ships like some DN's and maybe some CC's. I do belive it is an interesting idea. We also know that the Tholians use anything and everything they can get their hands on. They would at least experiment with their old tech to see how it faired in our Galaxy.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, September 02, 2004 - 08:04 am: Edit

I don't dislike PC's, now that the overload rules have been fixed. They have some nice advantages, like firing twice in one turn, and they have that capacitor system. They are also the only heavy weapon I know of right off hand that can be hastily repaired. The big arguments for not replacing them are as others have said; it doesn't make economical sense for the Tholians to do it.

There are only two reasons to go through such a drastic refitting program. One is if the proposed new weapon is siginificantly better than what you have, and therefore worth the presumed extra cost and hassle of changing them out. Photon refits are the obvious example. The other reason is if the new technology is significantly cheaper and easier to use, without being too inferior to existing weapons.

The switch fromd disruptors to PC's accomplishes neither of these.