There are few things in SFB more tedious then a 200 turn base assault. A base becomes a major center of trade during the trade wars and it needs to be able to protect itself.

From a game playability perspective I’d like to make it so that the Base statistically wins the long range siege game but has an even fight against an aggressive opponent.

That means the base must have weapons with serious legs but without the close range spike. Similar to the damage curve of the P5. It also mean the base must have significant reserve power shield reinforcement and recharge capability. Combined these changes should force the attacker to decisively engage at close range.

By Andrew Harding (Warlock) on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 12:07 pm: Edit

Excellent suggestion Tos. "If I sit here I'm immune to your fire and on average I will jackpot and get an internal every 216 turns" doesn't make for fun games. Perhaps have the base's output spike at 2-3 hexes to allow Disr and Photon ships to assault without making the base an easy kill for fusions.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 04:47 pm: Edit

If anything, you want the base's firepower to improve relative to a ship's as distance increases (read: degrade less strongly as distance increases) than a ship's firepower.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 05:23 pm: Edit

Andrew, are you suggesting that a Base's weapons may gain their long range at the cost of a myopic zone? Interesting. I think there is an Omega plasma that get stronger before it gets weaker. A heavy plasma could to half damage out to range 4 due to instability or some such.

By Andrew Harding (Warlock) on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 05:40 pm: Edit

No, I want the base to have enough firepower at 0-2 hexes range that it doesn't just die to a fusion ship, enough at 3-4 that it doesn't just die to a photon ship, and enough at 40 hexes that it can't be seiged by a small group of Feds (or X2 plasma - some of the proposed torps are downright scary against bases.)

Bases don't move and are laredgly standardised, so they need to be as good at each range bracket as the best race at that bracket.

The best solution is probably plentiful Ph-3 equivalents and a flatter Ph-4 equivalent table. We're all saying pretty much the same thing.

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Monday, October 04, 2004 - 11:27 pm: Edit

A ph-4 at 0-3 does about a point more damage than a suicide overloaded fusion at range 0.
At 4-5, it is equivalent to an OL photon, but doesn't miss.

I'm just playing with numbers in a spreadsheet, so I don't expect this to be the final answer, but here's a starting point, for a X2 starbase phaser that's powerful up close and flat further out:

ph-8	0-4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13-15	16-22	23-30	31-40	41-50	51-60	61-75	76-100	101-125
1	50	38	30	24	21	18	16	14	12	9	6	4	3	3	2	2	1	1
2	47	35	28	23	19	17	15	13	12	9	5	4	3	2	1	1	1	0
3	44	33	26	22	18	16	14	12	11	8	5	3	3	2	1	1	0	0
4	41	31	24	20	17	15	13	11	10	8	5	3	2	2	1	0	0	0
5	38	29	23	19	16	14	12	10	9	7	4	3	2	2	1	0	0	0
6	35	26	21	17	14	12	11	10	8	6	4	3	2	1	1	0	0	0

By Martin Read (Amethyst_Cat) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 05:53 am: Edit

How much power does that thing suck from the caps?

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 08:15 am: Edit

Just my opinion, but I don't believe a phaser should do as much damage as a full strength plasma R at any range. That's just me.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 11:28 am: Edit

Hence forth the Big-X2-Base-Plasma shall be known as MOAP, Mother of all Plasma.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 12:00 pm: Edit

I STRONGLY believe that the X2 Phaser-4 should simply become more accurate, possibly using the Ph-5 style damage curve.

In addition it should be able to rapid pulse as two Ph-5 but stop there. NO going into the four Ph-6 thing. Bases have specific defenses for that. Besides the PH-4 is a giant weapon with serious kick. It should not be capable of firing such a delecate thing as a point defense beam.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 12:17 pm: Edit

I'll add my .02 Quatloos worth to those who think that Jeff Tonglet's suggested ph-8 is way too strong, especially in close. I can see the point behind significantly upgrading the weapon relative to the phaser-4 at longer ranges, to balance things like range-40 X-photons and sabot plasma-M or plasma-R. But the short/medium range improvements this thing has are over the top. At range-8, the average damage is 17.5 points per phaser - presumably shooting every turn. Who's going to want to close with that, let alone get in to really close range?

If the idea is to force attackers who wish to assault bases to close with the base rather than spend 200 turns gradually wearing it down from long range, the better solution would probably be to design a heavy phaser that is significantly better than a ph-4 at long range but only slightly better at short/medium ranges.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 12:49 pm: Edit

Could just give them three per pod too.

That's my official recomendation.

Smoother damage curve with increased range, rapid fire as two Ph-5 and 50% increase in number. No increase in top damage.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 01:33 pm: Edit

How 'bout this:

Phaser-VIII Advanced Phaser Table

		Range
	0-3	4-5	6	7	8	9	10-12	13-15	16-20	21-27	28-45	46-75	76-100
1	30	30	30	23	18	15	12	9	8	6	5	3	2
2	30	30	23	18	17	14	12	9	6	5	3	2	0
3	30	23	18	17	15	12	11	8	6	3	2	0	0
4	30	23	17	15	14	12	9	6	5	2	0	0	0
5	23	18	15	14	12	11	8	5	3	0	0	0	0
6	23	15	14	12	11	9	8	5	2	0	0	0	0

It's basically a Phaser-IV with the damage bumped by 50%, and some adjusted range bands to give it a bit better performance at mid-to-long ranges. Not perfect, but I'd be more inclined to accept this than Jeff's (no offense...it's just too powerful, IMHO).

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 01:48 pm: Edit

Most X1 things got more phaser mounts but the bases didn't. All they got was double caps.

Now, in X2 we are going for less but higher quality mounts. How about bases making modest improvements and increasing their mounts.

Consider a Starbase with three Ph-4x in each pod with slightly improved long ranged targeting. The damage output is the same as your PH-VIII but with three separate mounts it is much more flexable AND takes damage better.

The Ph-5 is a modest improvement over the Ph-1. I thnk that was a really good we did. I think we should stick with that with the Ph-4. Giving the P-4x the improvements I recomended would hugely widen the tactical flexability for the bases. BATTS would have nine Ph-4x and as such could fire them as 18 Ph-5.

That's pretty scary yet only a modest improvement (given the big picture of X2).

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 11:48 pm: Edit

As Alan says we don't need a greater damage spike, we need longer range, particularly a strong showing in the mid-range, just like the phaser 5.
I tired so figuring out charts right now doesn't grab my interest. What I envision is a P4 with the same damage but with the following range brackets:
0-5, 6-8, 9-12, 13-15, 16-18, 19-22, 23-25, 26-30, 31-40, 41-50, 51-70, 71-100.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 01:29 am: Edit

As I recall the Ph-5's sweet-spot is around range 8. What if we made the base phaser's sweet spot further out? Say range 12-15 or so. Ships would have to punch through that range and then reach their optimal range to unload on the base and then try to escape. What would that mean for a base's heavies? Fighters, PFs, other?

I agree the phaser wouldn't need to be upgunned, but maybe a nudge higher in the spirit of the Ph-5? I saw Mike R suggest Ph-8 as its name. Is there a Ph-7 that I missed? Just wondering. Double-pulse as Ph-5 under AEGIS?

Something else I was thinking about was allowing a starship to pass from one module to another through a "core tunnel" in the event that a module is critically damaged. Say it requires a "tunnel tractor" and lasts 32 impulses.

How about allowing modules to detach from the core and move (slowly) as a sort of battlepod. Maybe require a starship to be in the module so it can feed off the ship's engines in addition to its own reactors. Or you could give a module engines that will only operate while detached.

Another thing was some sort of "factory" in the core that builds things (drones, ships, transporters, whatever). This would be more a strategic thing but something to consider.

Will there be the usual paradigm of base station-battle station-starbase? Or might there be something else?

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, October 08, 2004 - 02:04 am: Edit

I'ld like to see the Ph-8 pushed out a but...If the current R8 damage was done all the way out to R12 ( even for 3 points of power ) then it would be quite a bit tougher to bust bases, particularly for the plasma boys.


The are a lot of names possible for the Ph-7...the Ph-M could be it, the gattling Ph-6 could be it, or we could even have a Ph-5 targeting computer improvement that forces the Ph-5 to fire under the megaphaser range brackets ( sweetspot R10 ) but with the current damages...we could even put room for GPD stuff by saying the Ph-7 may or may not have ever been developed and then time travelling PCs can try to find it.

By John Erwin Hacker (Godzillaking) on Saturday, October 09, 2004 - 12:02 am: Edit

To anyone:
How about an SSD showing an X2 base. My SSD8.0 is on the fritz so I can't make one right now.