Would thinking that if the GP player "directed" on a Sat-Ship factor, that it is at 3:1 ratio?

Reflecting the Uncrippled+Crippled sides? Instead of a Cobra for 5, 5 Sat-Factors that take 15 to DD on?

That would prolong the life of Sat Ship factors

(edit) What I want to make clear, this is because any other time, the Sat-Ships are swarming around so much, that it's hard to get the shot on the one you want, and get enough damage to destroy/one-shot it.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:21 pm: Edit

are specialty sat-ships any more expensive to produce then combat ones? if so how do you reflect the increased cost to the andros for the galactics killing every (fill in the blank) that they see.

or on the other hand how do we show the galactics getting overrun with mauler sat-ships if they never kill any of them?

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:26 pm: Edit

Here's what I have from my MSC about Andro Sat Ship costs:

Courier (Viper-Scout) 70 BPV, Asp (Viper-Mauler 85 BPV), Viper 60 BPV
Eel (Cobra-Scout) 92 BPV, Terminator (Cobra-Mauler) 102 BPV, Cobra 83 BPV
Anaconda (Mamba-Scout) 142 BPV, Eliminator (Mamba-Mauler) 170 BPV, Mamba 130 BPV

Not much differnce (except the Eliminator), and the Andro's should not obviously have a "limit" on any type of sat ships that are made, because then you could have a Galactic "Get the Mauler" fest.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:28 pm: Edit

Scott, would we say that sat factors can absorb 1.5 points of damage for every point as well? otherwise you hae a 8 point ship (mamba) that if it voluntarily takes 8 points of damage is gone rather then just crippled.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:29 pm: Edit

I wonder if we can convince SVC that the Andro's tried (and did) make numerous "Light Battleships", that were eventually destroyed in Capital Assaults, and then the Andro's turned to the Devestator to get going?

A battleship program (similar to the B10 program for the Klingons) for the Andros to invest their ill-gotten EPs in.

Since, it seems from the background of OpU, that the Devestator was started at the begining of OpU.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:32 pm: Edit

actually I think a galactic 'get the mauler' fest would be just fine. if the galactics are always directing they are wasting a lot of their damage and not being able to direct on anything else (they loose the EW war for example)

it's no worse then 'kill the EFF'

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:33 pm: Edit

scott, when was the first B-10 historicly started compared to when players are allowed to start it?

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:34 pm: Edit

David, that's a good idea, about the Sat-Ships taking 1.5 damage when just letting the damage fall.

That, or if when you "let the damage fall" on your sat-ships 1-1, you could possibly get back 1D6 sat-ships after every battle round. (?)

So I have 2INT+30Sat-Ship factors. "Take 15 Scott." I take 15 Sat-Factors. Then after the round roll 1D6 and get that many back.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:36 pm: Edit

David, who says that 'build a local LBB' is not the Andro's normal Mode of Operation?

Maybe a LBB is the thing that is supposed to conquer everything.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 04:38 pm: Edit

the other thing I don't really like about the sat-ship factors is that they loose a lot of the flavor, for someone who doesn't know SFB sat-ships are just another name for fighters (possibly without free replacements, poosibly with, and possibly with some ability to convert some of their compot to other functions)

it looses the flavor of it being a bunch of ships. it's like the F-111 'take 2/3 of a F-111 as damage' but there it's very similar situation, here it's 'take 1/12 of a mamba as damage'

By Geoff Conn (Talonz) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 07:26 pm: Edit

Has anyone considered yet that the PA panels and their ability to dump and regenerate needs to be represented? Not in anything like SFB terms, but the capacity for an andro ship to move off, clear panels and refill batts, makes for a superior defensive sylstem and the ability to return to battle nearly fully regenerated, something GP ships simply cannot do within a battle.

Therefore, shouldn't a crippled (flipped over sat ship) be able to withdraw to the protected (formation bonus) box and next turn flip back over to the original counter status.

Even better, allow motherships to use regular formation bonus, and sat ships a superior formation bonus by virtue of retreating to within the mothership?

Just some general ideas from a non-F&E'er who is intrigued with the thought of an actual Andro conquest campaign.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, April 04, 2003 - 07:43 pm: Edit

Geoff, yes we have been considering that.

the three proposals that ahve been put forward are

1. x points of damage absorbion that just make that much damage disappear (this is assuming that the clearing of panels happens during the combat round.

2. SIDS like damage steps instead of normal crippling, with some sort of repair between combat rounds

3. give each andro ship a low D-compot, but give them a PA panel rating, each round they are in combat they can clear X points from their panels, if the ship isn't in combat that round it completly clears it's panels.

I think we seemed to be favoring #3, but I'm not sure.

the followup question is should this apply to only motherships, or to sat-ships as well, that lead us into the current discussion about if sat-ships should be treated as ships or factors, and how the different types of sat-ships will be handled

By Edward Reece (Edfactor) on Monday, April 07, 2003 - 09:20 am: Edit

I don't see a good reason for the PA panel thing in any form. Motherships are going to be overwhelmed or not fired upon at all.

By Dave Fowler (Davefowler) on Monday, April 07, 2003 - 09:51 am: Edit

As big a fan as I am of Andro's I have to also agree that trying to rep the PA panels in that fashion doesn't make much sense. You stated 'something GP ships simply cannot do within a battle' but you have to remember the battle may be taking place over several days or weeks as each turn is 6 months. So a ship with most of it's shields stripped off but not cripped could retreat and be fixed up in time to return to the on going battle.

I do beleive that the panels should be represented somehow in the direct damage adustment or regular damage adjustment part of the combat round tho. Just simply not a free uncrip option. :-)

By Edward Reece (Edfactor) on Monday, April 07, 2003 - 11:17 am: Edit

Frankly I'm not sure any Andro ship should be crippled at all. I mean it takes a lot to cripple a ship and that much will often set off a PA cascade.

How about maybe very small crippled sides.

An Intruder could be a 15/5 and a Dominator 24/8

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Monday, April 07, 2003 - 12:07 pm: Edit

Without other changes to combat a small crippled side has the opposite of the desired effect, the Andro never self kills, so there are fewer Andro's killed and more crippled.

Possibly the Andros need something like the shock rules but for cripples, any Andro crippled (but not destroyed) in a combat round rolls a d6, on a 1-2 it is destroyed when the panels cascade. Then give the Andros a HIGH crippled defense and the Andro has an incentive to kill so as to avoid these roles.

Increase the Andro crippled defense factors by about half to compensate (i.e. a Dominator would be a 24/12-18 unit) and this might work for PA panels and generates the few crippled, many killed feel of the Andros. (It also makes the mother ships a bit less vulnerable to directed damage, which is probably good.)

DougL

By Edward Reece (Edfactor) on Monday, April 07, 2003 - 12:15 pm: Edit

I like that I think

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, April 07, 2003 - 07:15 pm: Edit

it's hard to generate enough damage to direct on a mothership (when was the last time you saw a B-10 killed by directed damage? the're about the same)

part of the PA panel discussion was to keep the same flavor, but some of it is also how do you make the andros viable without just giving them tons of motherships.

essentially every andro is a carrier, but they have a very limited supply of backups to feed 'fighters' forward into the battle.

this leads to the andros running out of compot quickly as the attrition units are killed off, after that the andros are at a very significant compot disadvantage and can't continue fighting without crippling the motherships.

second, if you provide enough motherships to feed factors forward to the Dom's in the battle line then you will never see the others in combat. with a carrier group you can drive the good ones off the line by killing escorts and end up facing poorer ones in later rounds, with the andros there is no way to do that short of crippling the big ships (which is rather hard to do)

so with the PA panel proposal we are trying to end up with a way that the big ships can be damaged slightly to drive them off the line, but without it being crippling damage. the free clearing of the PA panels is to represent the fact that it's a lot easier to clear the panels then to repair shields. and make it so that the andros have more staying power without needing lots of backup motherships

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Monday, April 07, 2003 - 07:21 pm: Edit

I still think we should try and get Sat Ship counters. And give then a huge amount of them to start.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Monday, April 07, 2003 - 07:30 pm: Edit

duplicate post deleted

By Edward Reece (Edfactor) on Monday, April 07, 2003 - 10:30 pm: Edit

How about this as a change for the motherships; their dfenseive compot doesn't change but its reduced from what it is right now.

Say a Dom is 24/12 well lets make it a 24-18/12-18.

This is a variation of Douglas idea.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Tuesday, April 08, 2003 - 04:38 am: Edit

Edward, the problem with reducing the defensive compot of the motherships without adding PA panels is that it makes the ships easier to kill then they are in SFB.

I went through and counted the number of points nessasary to kill a Dom and to kill a B-10 in a single volley, in both cases it's roughly 320 points (the Dom takes a few more points to kill, but has the PA panel cascade problem, unless it has something in it's hangers) a B-10 has a D-compot of 20/10 so a Dom should be just as hard to direct on.

if the damage is spread across more then one impulse then the Dom comes out ahead fairly quickly. while the B-10 can put another ~70 point shield in the way, given a little time the Dom can empty the 130 points of PA panels before going back in.

if the two ships take 150 point hits on seperate turns in optimal conditions (barring reinforcement) the B-10 will have taken ~150 internals, the Dom could have only taken ~40

that being said it is recognised that once a andro has been crippled it's much easier to kill them, this is why we were discussing possibly making a dom 24-10/12-5 with 15 points of PA panels on the uncrippled side. this would make it exactly the same to direct on as a B-10, but make it so that if you don't direct on it it can absorb a lot more damage over time

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Tuesday, April 08, 2003 - 06:32 am: Edit

David

We should make it 13 points - 1 for each PA panel on the front of the DOM in SFB. We should strive to be elegant where possible.

Try this

We have SatShip counters. All Andro ships have a smallish defense rating as discussed, and a PA rating.

Dirdam requires (PA rating + defense)*2 to cripple and an additional (crippled defense)*2 to kill any andro ship.

If the Andros self-cripple a ship, the ship is automatically killed at a 2:1 dirdam ratio if there is enough damage remaining.

After Dirdam, if the PA rating of any Andro ship is more than a quarter of the orginal damage done, the Andros can absorb damage on the PA panels on that ship without having to cripple it.

Otherwise, any ship that the Andros take PA damage on must also be crippled.

This will seem somewhat convoluted, but let me give an example.

Say, an Dom is 24-10/12-5 with 13PA
an Int is 12-6/6-3 with 8PA
a Cobra is a sat ship, 7-4/4-2 with 6PA.

(NB PA factors can be put where one would have fighters as the Andros don't use fighters).

The Andros have a fleet of
DOM, INT, 9COB.

e.g
They take 40 damage. No Dirdam is done

1) The Dom can take 13 damage on its PAs. as 13*4 is greater than 40. This leave 27 to take.
2) The Int cannot do this without crippling, as 8*4 is less than 40. So, the Andro takes damage on COBs now.
3) 1st COB - the Andros take 6 on the PAs, 4 to cripple, leaving 17 damage.
4) 4 of the 17 damage remaining automatically kills the COB, leaving 13.
5) 2nd COB - takes 10 to cripple, but cannot be killed with 3 damage.
6) remaining 3 damage is absorbed on the PAs of a third COB (or the INT).

Net effect - 1 COB dead and 1 crippled for 40 damage. Without the DOM, the first 28 would have gone on 2 COBs, and a third would have been crippled.
PAs regenerate for next round, of course.

Basically, what has happened is that the DOM's panels were big enough for the DOM to engage safely. As it would lead the attack, the filling of its panels represents a general ineffectiveness imposed on the galactic powers because they can't take out a big ship in their middle in one volley- only drive it off by filling its panels.

An INT trying the same ploy would die, as the GP damage would be enough to breach its panels in one volley.

Also, note that this ruling makes the Andros VERY resistant to damage, basically refleting the fact that the GP must kill Andro ships in one volley. One cobra killed, and one crippled may seem very poor return, for 40 damage, but then, the Andro fleet in return will do 30 if it is lucky, and 20 or so of that will bounce on fighters unless they direct. With directing, they will kill maybe one cruiser.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Tuesday, April 08, 2003 - 06:34 am: Edit

Addendum

Note that in the Above example, if the GP do 23 damage or less, it all bounces on PA panels. Andros will be amazingly good unless a decent fleet opposes them.

By Edward Reece (Edfactor) on Tuesday, April 08, 2003 - 09:23 am: Edit

David L. said - "if the two ships take 150 point hits on seperate turns in optimal conditions (barring reinforcement) the B-10 will have taken ~150 internals, the Dom could have only taken ~40"

Thats exactly my point! you'll never see a GP fleet unload 150 points of damage on a Dominator. If the GP fire at the Dominator at all expect 250 MINIMUM. That means a crippled Dominator. But the Dominator can repair and clear its PA panels so if it comes back why should its defensive compot be any lower then it was the first time?