Any cluster of phasers (boxes are joined) can be fired in this mode. This gives a higher and steadier damage output at the cost of the destruction of one of the phasers in the cluster each time it is fired in this mode.

Legendary officers can not mitigate or repair these damaged weapons. They must be repaired by cdr or edr.

If there is only one remaining phaser of a cluster it can not fire in cluster mode but only as a standard phaser.

E.G. A Federation CB has a cluster or 4 ph-1 FH, 3 sets of Ph-1 clusters of 2 2LF+L, 2 RF+R, 2 360, and ZERO clusters of Ph-3's.

The 4 Ph-1 cluster could fire 3 times in Cluster mode (unless repairs are made), each of the other sets only once (until repaired).

If fired at range Zero there is a 2point feedback damage per phaser in the existing cluster in addition to the blown mount penalty.

The phasers fire in the following damage pattern.
1D6 roll 1-3 = max damage at closest range in the bracket x #of currently existing phasers in the cluster and
1D6 roll 4-6 = 50% max damage rounded up of the closest range in the bracket x # of currently existing phasers in the cluster.

If in an original range bracket there is a chance to miss, roll 1 D6 for every chance in 6 to miss, For those dice that roll a 1 roll them again. If any of those come up a one then the shot missed and the phaser is still destroyed.

You can not mix phasers in a cluster, e.g. hasty repaired Ph-1's as Ph-2's or Ph-3's. if there is a "hasty" repaired weopon in the cluster it none of the phasers may fire in cluster mode unless ALL phasers in the cluster are fired at the hasty repaired level. For instance 3 Ph-1 and a Ph-2 in a cluster can fire as a 4 Ph-2 cluster, or a 4 Ph-3 cluster.

For a 4 Ph-1 cluster (26-75 are still broken into segment incriments of 5. It's just easier to put it in as 1 bracket.)

Range	0	1-5	6-10	11-15	16-20	21-25	26-75
Roll 1-3	36	32	16	12	8	8	4
Roll 4-6	20	16	8	6	4	4	2

For a 3 Ph-1 cluster

Range	0	1-5	6-10	11-15	16-20	21-25	26-75
Roll 1-3	27	24	12	9	6	6	3
Roll 4-6	14	12	6	5	3	3	2

For a 2 Ph-1 cluster

Range	0	1-5	6-10	11-15	16-20	21-25	26-75
Roll 1-3	18	16	8	6	4	4	2
Roll 4-6	10	8	4	3	2	2	1

etc.. for Ph-3 clusters, Ph-2 clusters.

By Kevin M. McCollum (Sfbl5r) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 06:40 pm: Edit

What is this for and what sense does it make?

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 06:42 pm: Edit

Kev you read before it was completely posted.. editing :-(..

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 06:42 pm: Edit

Less,

Have you tried this yet? It sort of reminds me of suicide overloads for fusions, in a way. You know, do more damage but blow something up? Personally, I'd just go with the narrow salvo, myself. I'd be interested in hearing your playtest results, though before rendering any kind of verdict.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 06:49 pm: Edit

I don't get it......I would blow up my own phasers why?

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 06:56 pm: Edit

Extra damage, less chance of missing.

Take a Range 10 shot for instance with a cluster of 4 phaser 1's. You could do 16 damage 50% of the time 8 damage the rest. You roll 3 dice see if any 1's come up, (say 1 does) roll any 1's again and see if another 1 comes up, if one does you miss. Where if you fired them singly max damage = 12 if you roll 4 1's. Avg damage 4, ?50%? chance of 0?

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 07:18 pm: Edit

I hate to point this out, but this will only really be effective for CA or bigger ships. There are only a few smaller ships (like the 3RX Ph-2 on a F5) that have more than 2 phasers in any one grouping.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 09:51 pm: Edit

I can't read anything that says that the Phasers must be grouped on the SSD, other than the Worked example.

Was there meant to be something along those lines?

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 09:59 pm: Edit

First line...
Any cluster of phasers (boxes are joined) can be fired in this mode.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 10:08 pm: Edit

You see to me, that's a phaser array.

If you'ds said Boxes that are joined on the SSD ,it'ld been different.

Because reading that thing in brackets, I thought you meant Phasers that are fired in the same impulse

Like, "the battle was joined."

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 11:03 pm: Edit

I think this is a counter productive weapon in that at longer rangers where it can garrenttee hits ( three tripplets can kill an SP are R75 ) you're killing your own phasers for a handful of extra points of damage.


At R0 a pair of Ph-2s will inflict an average of 11 points of damage ( minimum 10 ) but under cluster fire, they'll inflict either 12 points or 6 for an average of 9.

Making Cluster fire ineffective a closer ranges where the REAL fighting happens.


The only advantagous range R8 ( can we say, pro-klingon rule ) where you go from 5/6 chance of a hit and average damage of 2.166 points of damage situation for the Ph-1 to a garrentted hit average damage of 3 points situation.
For the Ph-2 the R8 fire goes from 4/6 chace of a hit, 1.166 damage situation to a garrentted hit, 2.5 points of damage situation.

Thus the big winner in the Traditional D7 ( not needing to be a D7k ) with UIM obliquing the CA battle because he'll loose 3 Phasers but jump his Phaser damage up form 7 points to 15 points of damage is the Unrefitted Klingon.
Where as the Fed CA fires 4 phaser 1s, looses 2 of them and dishes up 12 points of damage instead of 8.666!

For the Klingon the R8 Oblique is already the most effective Klingon attack against the Fed CA, why improve all those Ph-2s which were disigned to be marginally effect at R8 in the first place!?!
But not the Ph-1s?

And with C.D.R. one Ph-2 can be repaired each turn.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, May 01, 2002 - 11:49 pm: Edit

ALTERNATE CLUSTER PHASER RULE

E1.___.0 Cluster Fired Phaser rule.
The Cluster bomb was an antipersonnel weapon of the 20th Century and applied small explosions over a large area to destroy unarmoured and infantry targets.
Starfleet was permanently on the look out for a similar fire more for their weapons systems to protect themselves from their drone using enemies ( the Kzintis and Klingons ) and to protect them from fighter assaults.

E1___.1 Stages.
There are several stages to the Cluster Phaser Fire Mode.

Stage 1.
During the EW question step of the game, the Firing player will ask for the EW status of all the potential targets within the same hex.

E.g If the targets are 12 fighters, 4 of whom are engaged in EM and two that are protected by ECM drones. All running their 3 ECM and 3 ECCM normnally.
The player of the fighter would anounce that he has 6 fighters under 3 ECM, 2 fighters under 6 ECM and 2 fighters under 7 ECM.

Stage 2, Phaser Fire Declairation Stage.
The attacking player choose a number of targets and anounce the total ECM limit of those targets.

Stage 3, The phaser fire resolution stage.
The attacking player rolls the damage against a single target with the ECM total that was anounce as the limit.

Stage 3A, The Spacial Hit Damage Stage.
Because most of the void between seperate targets is empty space, the there is a lot of wasted phaser energy involved in this kind of fire, thus the total damage is halved, rounded up.

Stage 4 The Damage allocation Stage.
The defending player chooses of all the possible targets, which targets shall be the the units that were actually Hit.
The defending player shall allocated 1 point to each target and then another to the next and so on, unit all the elegible targets have been hit and then return to the first elegible target and apply a second point of damage, until all points of damage have been hit ( kind of like an ESG feild striking multiple targets ).

E.g. 1. If the in the fighter example above the attacker chose 5 of the 3 ECM fighters then the Defender would choose 5 of his 6, 3 ECM Fighters on which to spread the post Stage 3A damage.

E,g, 2. If in the Fighter example above the attacker chose 6 of the 3 ECM fighters then the defender would simply allocated the post stage 3A damage to each of those 6 fighters in an order of his choosing.

E.g. 3. If in the fighter example above, the attack choose to attack 7 target with an ECM limit of 6, then he would roll his damage ( as though all the targets had an ECM total of 6 ( see stage 3 ) and the defending player shall then choose 7 of the 8 elegible fighters to be the seven that he will spread damage apon.

E.g. 4. If in the fighter example above, the attacking player chose to attack 4 fighters with an ECM limit of 6 and rolled his damage based on an ECM limit of 6, then the Defender must choose 4 of the 8 elegible fighter to be the fighters on which the damage is spread.

E1.___.2 Limits.
There is no size class limit on this kind of fire.
The only restrictions are that the phasers used in the attack are all fired on the same impulse and at targets that are all in the same hex.

E1.___.3 Cost.
This Fire mode needs specialies electromagetic redirectors added to the Phaser it'self ( switched off during normal fire ) which each cost 0.25 BPV to add to the ship and specialise programing to opperate it which casts 2 BPV.

All the phasers on a ship must have the redirectors or none.

E1___.4 If using no EW question step of the impulse ( because of D17 Tac Intel or other play styles ) then attacking plkayer will just have to choose an ECM limit based on what he thinks is reasonable.

E1___.X History.
Whilst starfleet and most other galactic powers could have solved the problems involves in the operation of the weapon around the year 155, it was never adequetly funded until the X reseach project where it recieved nesseary funding to fully develop as a measure to keep the Rapid Pulse design, competetive.

However most Fleets picked up the rapid pulse design instead of the cluster phaser design.

E1___.Y Designers notes.
I liked the name and the idea of an anit small unit mode for a ship to ship weapon system made sense.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 02:31 am: Edit

If people would prefere Stage 3A to have a multiplier of;

2/3 rounded off

or

3/4 rounded down

I wouldn't be opposed to it.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 02:55 am: Edit

Ya know, this weapon modifying thing has gotten way out of hand......

Started with the photon as always...

It's starting to spread to everything like wildfire.

Stop the Madness folks.

By Andrew Harding (Warlock) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 03:03 am: Edit

Lessss, is your proposal intended as special ability for a specific race (presumably a new one using phaser-clusters rather than heavy weapons), or for everyone? I can't see it working for the latter case (phasers are are already excellent weapons).

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 06:17 am: Edit

C.E.F.:

Comming soon to a store near you.

The Rapid Pulse Pseudo PF


.


.


.


.


.


No relation to the Pseudo Fighter.

By Kevin M. McCollum (Sfbl5r) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 07:58 am: Edit

I agree with Mr. Fant. This is plain silly.

Most players don't even know the EXISTING rules and I see proposals to improve every weapon. Stop trying to destroy SFB with "power creep", something that kills almost every game (anyone play Battletech for any length of time?)

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 09:20 am: Edit

Actually it was just an idea I had. I was thinking about the long tracks for phasers on TNG vessels and then thought of this. This isn't to replicate the TNG tracks but that's where the idea had it's initial inspiration.

It could be used for a new race or as a campaign alternate x tech or something.

The fact that it isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread is what I like about it. For some small ships it's just not worth using, and for those it is useable on it's not ALWAYS the best thing to do. There are some places where it is good to use and others where it is best to use the regular firing mode.

This is good for plasma players when faced with a D&D race at long range 30+ that refuses to close. You could burn a few Ph-1's and then repair them with rolls of 2 on EDR, or use some cdr to bring them back online before they close. Or if you in a 9-15 bracket facing a down shield you can burn some phasers to assure a couple of internals on your opponnent.

If used for a new race you can increse the modifier a bit to gain more damage or as an additional advance in alt-X tech or something. more of an idea tossed to the wind than anything else though.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 09:39 am: Edit

Throwning things to the wind is okay, and it's is quite weak, but I still don't like the fact that you can auto-hit for atleast 1 damage at R75 When firing a pair of Ph-1s.


what did you think of my alternate rules?

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 09:56 am: Edit

MJC,

Is there a range limitation to this? My only concern in using it (and I've not tried it, so this may be untrue) would be that a group of ships could badly maul a fighter cluster as they launch with comparitive ease. Fighters are vulnerable enough when launching, but using this would mean you could dish out a good spread of damage to an entire squadron at once, if you had a few ships firing at the same time. I may be unclear on that, though.

By L.LeBlanc (Lessss) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 10:00 am: Edit

Well mike as soon as I saw the word FTR my eyes glazed over. :-)

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 10:30 am: Edit

Michael John Campbell:

I really could not comment on your rules since your example sent up a red flag saying "I do not play the game under the same rules as the rest of you."

"E1___.1 Stages.
There are several stages to the Cluster Phaser Fire Mode.

Stage 1.
During the EW question step of the game, the Firing player will ask for the EW status of all the potential targets within the same hex.

E.g If the targets are 12 fighters, 4 of whom are engaged in EM and two that are protected by ECM drones. All running their 3 ECM and 3 ECCM normnally.
The player of the fighter would anounce that he has 6 fighters under 3 ECM, 2 fighters under 6 ECM and 2 fighters under 7 ECM."

I hit this, and what I laughingly refer to as my brain went into reset mode.

ECM drones cannot provide ECM to fighters (FD9.16).

Leslie LeBlanc:

Exactly what purpose other than totally changing the balance of the game does your system serve? Is it your goal to force the redesign of every ship in the game to concentrate phasers in clusters? Do you really want to give the Klingon G2s (which hae two FX phaser-2s) an advantage over Kzinti Needles (that do not have any "clusters")? That is the point. You would have to review every SSD in the game and adjust the BPVs. You may have to increase shielding to account for the increased offensive power.

This is just not worth doing. There is no advantage for the tradeoff of mass adjustments that would have to be made to implement it.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 09:25 pm: Edit

Warning Gag Post


S.P.P.:


Yes.

You caught one of the Mistakes Deliberately placed in those ( gag ) rules.

Now if you can spot the other 16, you can win a BMW.


Serves me right for not checking with the rules.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, May 02, 2002 - 09:38 pm: Edit

Mike Raper:


No one point isn't appled to all the targets, it's applied to one target.

It doesn't work like a T-bomb, it works like an ESG.


Its a system that only really works when the attacked units need about 1 or 2 points of damage to destroy.
E.g The drone of an SP that have passed through an R3 ESG feild.
The six Type-Is would be ( assuming 5 points of power into the ESG ) 3 with one point and 2 with two points.
Then 2 Ph-1s and 2 Ph-3s which could only destroy 4 of the six drones, generate 19 points of damage ( rounded up ) which yeilds ten; 1 point hits.
The 6 drones each take a point,; destroying three drones, then the remaining 3 drones take the remaining 4 points, destroying the last three drones and wasting a point of damage.

Yes, I realise that 1Ph-1 at one drone coupled with an R0 ESG would be a better way to deal with the SP's contents.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Friday, May 03, 2002 - 08:13 am: Edit

Just checking. It reads like that could be the case:

---

Quote:

If in the Fighter example above the attacker chose 6 of the 3 ECM fighters then the defender would simply allocated the post stage 3A damage to each of those 6 fighters in an order of his choosing

---

By Robert Eddy (Tar_Zhay) on Tuesday, January 20, 2004 - 10:57 pm: Edit

If the intent was to give the phasers a new ability why not say: Cluster phasers: for every phaser added to a “Cluster attack” subtract one from the die roll. The Phaser need not be in a group or attached boxes, its just that how the phaser pattern is fired. One after another in long steady beams, maybe it should be called a CBA (Continuous beam attack) Instead of individually (standard fire) or at a single point (Tight)