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| Archive through December 08, 2004 | 25 | 12/08 08:38am |
| By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - 11:42 am: Edit |
David, these batteries would be usable during the turn, not just EA.
They don't get reserve warp, they store N power at the start of the turn and can't be recharged during a scenario.
The goal would be a mix of the standard type of batteries and the non-rechargeable ones.
I'd say that N=5 or 6 is about right.
| By David Slatter (Davidas) on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - 12:05 pm: Edit |
Are you serious?
Maulers will be amazing if N=5 or 6. 35 batts, 15 normal, gives a 135power alpha. I'm not even sure I'd bother having any normal batteries. A 210 power maul is just frightening.
| By Andy Vancil (Andy) on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - 01:17 pm: Edit |
One thing that would make these more interesting would be if they were more resistant to damage - say if they were only hit on "any weapon" hits.
Then a ship that was completely gutted would still be able to function minimally for a few turns on its battery reserves.
It's always bothered me that batteries are something you'd expect to be used for last-ditch emergency power, but they are not used that way in SFB at all. They are just flex power. You can't use them for emergency power because they get blown off the ship too early (and are usually empty at that point, anyway).
I wouldn't allow them in significant numbers, especially on maulers.
| By Dale Lloyd Fields (Dylkha) on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - 02:03 pm: Edit |
Noting that I know how to play F&E but not SFB, would this idea be enough to "fix" maulers in SFB to match their god-like power in F&E?
[Edit: An academic question, of course, as SFB and F&E are different games, but the ability of maulers is, from what I hear, the biggest difference between the two.]
| By Mike West (Mjwest) on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - 04:02 pm: Edit |
David,
You missed the "limited to a discharge rate of 1 per turn like standard batteries" restriction.
Don't get me wrong; these things would be great in a mauler. But, assuming their total number of batteries doesn't change, their single-turn damage output is completely unchanged. The advantage is that the mauler can shoot for N (whatever the battery charge is) turns without worrying about reloading the batteries.
An advantage, yes, but not overwhelming like you were thinking.
| By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - 06:10 pm: Edit |
Especially with shock effects...
I'd have to check the rules, but are not repeated firings cumulative with regard to suffering shock effects?
| By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - 07:31 pm: Edit |
Quote:Are you serious?
Maulers will be amazing if N=5 or 6. 35 batts, 15 normal, gives a 135power alpha. I'm not even sure I'd bother having any normal batteries. A 210 power maul is just frightening.
Quote:I'd have to check the rules, but are not repeated firings cumulative with regard to suffering shock effects?
| By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 - 07:39 pm: Edit |
Damage to the system that kills crew units, and phaser coolent is toxic:
Every 10 points of damage kills a crew unit.
Whether it's hull breaches and crew sucked into space, or damage to the phasers that leaks toxic coolent, or damage to the photons that...
It's already in the rules.
-------------
Andy wrote:
Quote:One thing that would make these more interesting would be if they were more resistant to damage - say if they were only hit on "any weapon" hits.
Then a ship that was completely gutted would still be able to function minimally for a few turns on its battery reserves.
It's always bothered me that batteries are something you'd expect to be used for last-ditch emergency power, but they are not used that way in SFB at all.
| By Andy Vancil (Andy) on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 01:14 pm: Edit |
Emergency life support is the crew putting on oxygen masks, holding their breaths, etc. It also represents the fact that, even without powered life support, the ship is not suddenly going to run out of air and lose all of its heat, and the crew can subsist on emergency rations instead of using the replicators. The amount of power it takes to maintain liveable conditions for a while on critical areas of the ship is negligible compared with the power that it takes to run life support at normal levels.
There are many safeguards (not to mention regulations) that prevent captains from cutting life support to get that extra point of power when the ship is intact. Some maverick captains (who have acquired a certain legendary status) have been known to circumvent these restrictions, however.
| By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 03:43 pm: Edit |
Andy, during battle many of these processes are put in place because you might sustain a hull breach or the like.
The bulk of the power for life support is likely Inertial Stabilizers and gravity along with the basic Structural Integrity Fields; without which the crew ends up as mush on the walls. Combat is wrought with snap turns and hard maneuvers so this energy is vital and is why if you don't put your point into Life Support you kill your crew. There are protocals in place for the protection of the crew. Legendary Captains have unusual control over their situation. I suggest that there are ways to maintain power to these system through residual power management and other processes. These come on line automatically when the ships computers sense there might be unavoidable interuption to the power flow. This is probably NOT good for the system but keeps the crew alive. Leg. Captain can with stand the trouble most Captains would get into for circomventing these protocals.
Air circulation and food are almost non-issues during the few minutes that a ship is in combat.
IMHO
| By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 05:41 pm: Edit |
If we take the speed of light as being one hex per minute ( which it's not ) and then apply centriplital force to the calculation of a ship turning ( say at speed 24 which is 4000 kilo metres per second ) we can calulate the centripital accelleration placed on the crewmembers.
a = v2 / r
If the turn mode is 5 hexes then it's 50 million metres.
So
a = 4,000,0002 / 50,000,000
a = 320,000 metres per second per second
Which is an experiance to the crew of 32,619 g.
Which would obviously kill the crew.
Thus I think the emergency life support system must be powered and must power inertial dampers or otherwise the crew will die the instant the vessels atempts to turn around.
| By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Thursday, December 09, 2004 - 07:35 pm: Edit |
mjc, you're using real physics to explain something that happens to a starship.
Warp drive doesn't work that way.
| By David Slatter (Davidas) on Friday, December 10, 2004 - 05:02 am: Edit |
Warp has nothing to do with inertia. For example, when you stop applying power to warp movement, your ship stops, just like that. Sometimes I think the best way to view it is that when you use warp, space is moving, not you. I know that that's impossible, but you certainly arn't moving in any normal kind of way.
| By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 05:06 pm: Edit |
Speed of light is 1 hex per second.
One SFB turn is 1/30th of a second.
One SFB impulse is 1/960th of a second.
So, in round numbers, a hit and run raid takes a millisecond...now on ships travelling at warp, you can argue they're in a funny reference frame that's shared (and clearly non Einstainian or Newtonian.)
How about hit and run raids onto planetary surfaces? 
Better not to go there.
| By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 05:25 pm: Edit |
1/32 of a second?!?
(assumes 32 impulses per SFB turn.)
or am I not following you correctly?!?
| By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 06:04 pm: Edit |
H&R raids are clearly a total abstract. Even if a turn is 1 minute, two (ish) seconds is not enough. However, it's enough time to determin the fate of the action and that is what is represented by the game.
A neat optional rule might be that H&R takes four impulses. Beam over on Impulse A, role result on impulse D. IF the party survives and cannot be recovered due to shield facing changes (or whatever) the party can Hole Up or strike an adjacent target (see BP diagrams) or contribute to a beach head for general boarding actions.
Another H&R option would be to allow a raid to disable a system for a turn by causing general mayhem (tying up the operators in combat). They system is not destroyed but cannot be used if succesful for 32 impulses (can be damaged during the down time). Success rates would be higher and death rate would be the same.
Maybe this should go into another thread??
Sorry.
| By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 06:49 pm: Edit |
probably another thread... but I must ask the question:
Simplified game system vs "reality"...
at what point does a more complex game rule take away from "playability"?
IMO faster game play is more important that slowing the game down to more "realistically" portray a version of reality.
| By Ed Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 07:00 pm: Edit |
Ken the actual speed is 30 hexes per impulse. Each hex is 10000k or 6200miles. Light speed is 186000mps which makes the sfb turn 1/30th of a sec and an impulse 1/960th correct.
| By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 08:27 pm: Edit |
Light speed is 186,000 MILES per second (actually, it's 186,282.396 +/-0.007 Miles per second), or 300,000 KM per second, or 30 SFB Hexes per second.
Garth L. Getgen
| By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 10:05 pm: Edit |
I use to think, in the early days, that SFB speed WAS all sublight and that you were using warp maneuvering to move faster than impulse engines could take you (which was one hex per turn and significantly slower than light speed...which fits with Trek).
Disengaging was simply jumping into warp.
| By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 01:05 am: Edit |
Quote:A neat optional rule might be that H&R takes four impulses. Beam over on Impulse A, role result on impulse D. IF the party survives and cannot be recovered due to shield facing changes (or whatever) the party can Hole Up or strike an adjacent target (see BP diagrams) or contribute to a beach head for general boarding actions.
Quote:Ken the actual speed is 30 hexes per impulse. Each hex is 10000k or 6200miles. Light speed is 186000mps which makes the sfb turn 1/30th of a sec and an impulse 1/960th correct.
| By Ed Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Friday, December 31, 2004 - 12:39 pm: Edit |
MJ, we suspended belief long ago in this game. the point is when you point out a number to use in comparisions to real life then it helps to use the correct number to complete the comparisions. As we all know real numbers have little to do with SFB
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