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	Archive through February 26, 2005	25		02/26 11:31am

MJC - You did not address SPP's point.

(and besides...who gave you any guarantee that SPP's comments had to comply with your definition of "fair"!?!)

The point you failed to address is the Federation overloaded Photons being used as a basis for mandating or compelling a change in the existing rules.

(the hint, IMO, was SPP's choice of phrase "Using a Federation Destroyer as your means of proving the system works and is balanced is a famous gambit here at ADB." ... the implication being that any attempt to justify a change based on the Fed DD is not acceptable. IMO the reason that it is not a good gambit is because the Fed vanilla DD is not by definition "a well balanced design" as say the Fed CA or Fed NCL would be due to the deficient power curve and the energy requirements of 4 photons in such a small hull... but I am willing to defer to more experienced players judgement on that issue.

Secondly, you are ignoring SPP's point about relative speeds of the ships in the example... your point is hinged on your supposed opponent doing what you want him to do... and that does not happen in SFB's or real life or anything else that one encounters in social contexts.

Third, your point about "( what kind of Fed DD commander would arm every ture if he came up against an F5 !?! )" once again demonstrates that your knowledge of Star Fleet Battles is Academic, and not borne out in practice, (IMO).

Every battle is different, and situations come up in one battle and do not occur in others... to be ignorant and assume that a Fed DD will always, forever and ever go into battle with only 3 tubes loaded, held or loading misses the point about Star Fleet Battles.

That advantage can (in one aspect) be boiled down to choice. players may choose to go for full overloads, partial overloads or even no loads at all in any tubes (see the scenario where the USS Hood goes down, the recommendation is to attempt to escape by not paying for photon tube energy, instead using it for movement and anti tractor beam energy to deny a Klingon tractor attempt.)

Finally, I should point out (again) that you fail to understand the basic issue involved here.

It is not that improvements can't be made to weapons... it is that some suggestions do not improve the playing of the game.

Incorporating disrupted fire control into the combat section (where it is an enhancement to a direct fire weapon) destroys the integrity of the rules system.

That is one of the reasons (IMO) there is such a thing as the Auto Reject List.

Your proposal violates atleast 2 provisions of it (perhaps more).

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica) on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 12:15 pm: Edit

For the love of Bast, why is this even still being discussed? MJC's "True Disruptor" is quite possibly the worst idea submitted for SFB since I did a quad-hull Lyran Battleship back in '91. It's utter and complete drivel, and makes as much sense from a design standpoint as adding photon torpedoes to Battletech. You've been told exactly why and how it stinks on ice by a variety of folks including SPP, and you keep pushing it...why?

MJC, stop tinkering with the rules and try actually playing the blasted game.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 07:03 pm: Edit

Hmmm .... "worst idea submitted since" ... does that mean that Jessica still holds the record as having submitted the worst SFB idea ever????


Garth L. Getgen

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica) on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 08:16 pm: Edit

Quite possibly; you should have seen the list of engineering problems with the thing.

By William Curtis Soder (Ghyuka) on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 09:24 pm: Edit

Actually, I think the worst was the Rotary Plasma Launcher. C'mon, 5 full strength plasma torpedos coming out of each launcher has got to beat all that.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 09:54 pm: Edit

This sounds like a contest...we ought to have a set of rules in place and recruit one or both of the steves to act as impartial judges....maybe make it into a captains log feature...

(on second thought, maybe not... I myself would have a number of entries in that competition...)

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 10:01 pm: Edit

Bad rules submissions? Anyone remember the whole gatling phaser 1 thing? It doesn't get worse than that.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 10:14 pm: Edit

Mike....'Et tu Brute?'



wait until you get a load of the....phaser 4 gatling rules!

It'll just slay ya!

By Jeff Tonglet (Blackbeard) on Saturday, February 26, 2005 - 11:13 pm: Edit

And the stinger that fires the ph-4 gatling?

Does he have to immediately change speed from 12 forward to 10 backwards?

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica) on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 08:17 am: Edit

Heh...sounds like the Snipe-R from SFT#33....

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 03:54 pm: Edit

Sigh.

I do not think anything can beat the "early years" of SFB, particularly when played by a player learning the game, and with the old ship modification rules.

Can anyone say "Tholian Patrol Corvette with a Plasma-R-RA"?

I think I would hold top honors for that one (and, yes, it was illegal, but I was just learning the game and missed the rule that said plasma-Rs could not be mounted on size class 4 ships . . . but then it did eventually lead to the "Snipe-R" . . .)

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 05:36 pm: Edit

Steve, you were nominated as one of the judges.... are you now "officially" declining the "honor" of sitting in judgement of the various proposals to actualy compete with the likes of Orsini, West, Raper and... MJC?!?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 05:46 pm: Edit

Jeff Wile:

I do not find myself qualifed to serve as a judge.

I would not be able to separate new submissions on this board against so many old submissions still floating around in the back of my head. Plus there are submissions that arrive by mail that might become confused with those in a topic. Further, I just cannot see such a thing being an article for Captain's Log outside of the existing "Propoals Board" articles that already appear.

So, yes, I fear I must decline the honor.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 05:52 pm: Edit

I think my worst submission (done up more as a joke than reality) came after watching The Last StarFighter .... the Kzinti "Star Blossum" was a small freighter with all Cargo replaced with Drone racks, quadruple drone control, and special rules that made it highly likely the thing would launch every drone it had as rapidly as possible at random targets. Darn near put SVC into convulsions.


Garth L. Getgen

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 05:52 pm: Edit

Actually, the gatling P1 wasn't my submission. I've never submitted a rule before; well, not just a rule, anyway. I have submitted a couple of new weapons for new races, but nothing like a gatling P1. I just remember reading about it, somewhere.

I do remember making some funky proposals for improving photons back in the day, though, when I thought they sucked. I've since learned how to use them right, and don't think they need any change.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, February 27, 2005 - 06:09 pm: Edit

Actually, for The Worst Of All Bad Ideas Ever, I nominate the Mid Range Phasers and Long Range Phasers from the "made for SFB" modules published by a certain unmentionable company. The designer refused to see that these turn the game into a foot-race because his ships would try to stay outside range 12-15 to snip standard SFB ships to death.

I played against one of those once. I was able to close with a D7C at high speed to get to knife-fight range and gutted it like a fish. Then when we swapped ships and played again, I didn't bother charging main weapons at all, kept my speed up and circled at range 20 or so, and turned the Klingon into Swiss Cheese.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, February 28, 2005 - 11:11 am: Edit

Steve Petrick:

I think the last few posts on this topic have been in a humorous vein... and That was my intention with the "nomination".

That said, I would like to point out that a nice advantage of the "Proposals Board" feature in Captains Logs is the explaination given for why a proposal is rejected as well as what characteristics compose a succesful one.

To be honest, the Proposals board is the second section I turn to after perusing the SSD's!

By Gary Bear (Gunner) on Monday, February 28, 2005 - 01:03 pm: Edit

My first SFB group used to threaten people that were being...annoying...with the "Gatling Hellplasma Device" (GHD).

This fired 4 shots, damage allocation as a Hellbore, using the R-Torp damage (not Bolted) at range, and the To-Hit and Wavelock features of the PPD.

It generally shut people up when we brought out the chart for it. But, we never considered submitting it.