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why dont romulans have carronade
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ncrcalamine
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 11:34 pm    Post subject: why dont romulans have carronade Reply with quote

Romulan plasma-F do not have carronade; Orion plasma-F have carronade, as do the Feds and the Gorn. Orion bought their plasma-F from the Gorn as do the Feds. Why has not the Romulan Empire bought Gorn made plasma-F from the Orions and either reverse engineered it, or just bought a lot of them from the Orions. The Orions are pirates and will sell to anyone who has the cash.

Nicole
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Dal Downing
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Because the Carronade was never intended to be a weapon. It was developed by the Gorns to hunt cloaked ships. Since good little Romulans do not hunt each other why would they buy a weapon designed to defeat thier cloaks?

The fact it is not suppose to be a weapon is probably one of the reason why we have not seen a Gorn Carronade Cruiser as well.
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Monty
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good little Romulans would have a need to hunt bad little cloaked Orion ships.

Apparently it's a pretty effective non-weapon weapon.
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storeylf
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Joined: 24 Jul 2008
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 9:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Its an incredibly good non weapon weapon in the hands of orions.

Close, carronade, double engines carronade again, repeat until enemy dead or your engines give up.
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Kang
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

storeylf wrote:
Its an incredibly good non weapon weapon in the hands of orions.

Close, carronade, double engines carronade again, repeat until enemy dead or your engines give up.


Very nice vs. Andros too, especially when combined with a Phas-G Twisted Evil
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storeylf
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 7:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
The Orions are pirates and will sell to anyone who has the cash.


The more relevant question is why has everyone not bought Phaser Gs from the orions and reverse engineered them, and PPDs, and combined them with stealth + IPG designs. One imagines it is to keep the empires reasonably different.

Quote:
Very nice vs. Andros too


Actually, I don't think it works so well against Andro. It may depend on what Andro ship(s) you face with what, but between those larger starting panels and displacement tricks carronades may not be so hot.

The other pain of course is Patrick Doyle (by which I mean the Tholians in the current online tourney!), I'm not sure how my death by carronade orions will work against someone I can't shoot at!
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Bolo_MK_XL
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 8:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
The more relevant question is why has everyone not bought Phaser Gs from the orions and reverse engineered them, and PPDs, and combined them with stealth + IPG designs. One imagines it is to keep the empires reasonably different.


Because every weapon would have to be put up for sale, along with the 10,000 SSDs to support the game.
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m1a1dat
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 9:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You wouldn't need 10,000 new SSD's, just reprint each one with orion option mounts; and pages of rules saying what can go where. It would make a more boring game and most players would be maxing things out.

Realisticly, say you buy something off the Orions, they are not going to sell for cheap. Then you have to put more money and time into figuring out how to make the things work and to build them to your races needs. Then you have to spend even more time and money making new factories and then refitting your ships. Stocking even more spare parts for all kinds of different weapons and not having enough of what you need when you need it. There is a reason why the Romulans mostly kept the Klingon bought hulls on one front instead of having them all over the place.
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mjwest
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 10:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

With SFU technology, it isn't just as simple as "copy and distribute". There are a whole host of complications and economic assumptions that the Steves use to manage the SFU that are invisible to us gamers, but still shape the way the SFU works.

So, for example, why don't all empires just use Ph-1s instead of Ph-2s? The reason is maintenance costs. A Ph-2 and a Ph-1 are very similar, but a Ph-2 is just a "cheaper version". So, the Klingons (and Lyrans and Hydrans) make extensive use of Ph-2s because it saves on maintenance and maintenance costs, while the Federation (and Kzintis, etc.) choose to shoulder the costs for the better performance.

With Ph-Gs, who knows the reason? It is obvious that the Feds have the technology, and that the Klingons, Lyrans, WYNs, and (probably) the Kzintis all have access to the technology, if not a few working examples. It is also obvious that, despite having and deploying the technology, the Feds have some difficulty with it, resulting in limited distribution of Ph-Gs in their fleet. Only the Hydrans are able to use it widely with seemingly little difficulty. In light of that, perhaps it is something about Hydrans (maybe their extreme environment) that allows them to more fully take advantage of it. Perhaps the Klingons and Kzintis could also use it like the Feds, but they aren't willing (or able) to shoulder the very large maintenance costs that the Feds can.

(Orions are different. They don't really make their "odd" weapons, like Ph-Gs and cloaks, but rather have to traffic in stolen items. Ph-Gs, despite occurring on nearly every single player-controlled Orion ship, are actually extremely rare and will very seldom be encountered in Orion ships.)

Is that the "real" reason that only Hydrans get to widely use Ph-Gs? I don't know; maybe ADB will give a different reason later. But the point is that there are lots of unseen connections and assumptions on how the SFU works that players don't get to always see, but that still exert influence on who uses what and when.

Besides, at a meta-level, it is done for play balance and interest. If everyone had just phasers, drones, and photons, the game gets significantly less interesting, and the empires start to slurry into one indistinguishable mess.

As for the carronade, the Romulans don't have it because they have cloak. Yes, that is a meta-level reason, but it is still the base reason. I don't have a technical in-game reason for the "deficiency", but it is what it is. (Also, don't forget that the ISC doesn't have it either.) As for why the Gorns can keep it locked down, I don't know that either. But, that is how it works.

The Feds and Orions have it, not because they know or understand the technology, but simply they are using Pl-F launchers that were built by the Gorns. Technically speaking, I would imagine that only those Orions using Gorn manufactured Pl-F will have carronade functionality. Orions using Pl-F manufactured by Romulans or ISC won't have it. However, instead of trying to make that type of artificial distinction, the rules just say "Orions use carronade functionality".
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Spacecowboy87
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 12:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A different Trek game system (which is out of print and shall remain nameless) was built around a player's ability to build a starship from scratch, but each system -- engines, weapons, and shields -- had an "availablity rating" that had to be die-rolled against. If you failed the roll, you could not use that system and you had to try something else. POINT IS: what if there were a chart that prohibited every Orion from building the ultimate hotrod?
For example: Forward Option Mounts-- Roll D6: 1= Phaser 1, 2= Drone, 3,4= Disruptor, 5= Photon, 6= Something bigger. Just an example, and there should probably be different charts for different areas of the galaxy.
It might give a more accurate representation of what weapons were actually deployed.
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Dal Downing
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 2:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Spacecowboy87 wrote:
A different Trek game system (which is out of print and shall remain nameless) was built around a player's ability to build a starship from scratch, but each system -- engines, weapons, and shields -- had an "availablity rating" that had to be die-rolled against. If you failed the roll, you could not use that system and you had to try something else. POINT IS: what if there were a chart that prohibited every Orion from building the ultimate hotrod?
For example: Forward Option Mounts-- Roll D6: 1= Phaser 1, 2= Drone, 3,4= Disruptor, 5= Photon, 6= Something bigger. Just an example, and there should probably be different charts for different areas of the galaxy.
It might give a more accurate representation of what weapons were actually deployed.


Those rules already exsist as a entire section in the SFB rulebook and were ignored in FedCom because one thing they are not is simple or stream lined. I really doubt we could.convince SVC to add them or anything kitbashed to resemble them back in now.
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mjwest
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 3:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As Dal points out, that is something we don't really want to add back into Federation Commander.

That said, it might be worth an article somewhere sometime. The base idea is that the Orions that operate in the territory of an empire will tend to use the common weapons of that empire. So, an Orion operating in Klingon/Kzinti/Lyran/WYN territory will tend to use just disruptors, drones, and phaser-1s*. An Orion operating in Gorn/Romulan/ISC territory will tend to use just Pl-G, Pl-F, and phaser-1s**. Fed territory is photons, drones, and phaser-1s.

Obviously, there are always exceptions. (Maybe a freelancer that was working in Fed territory moved to Klingon space, but still has photons.) Also, allowing weird combinations provides more fun and players like that more. So, that is how the Federation Commander rules are written. But, in general, the weapons loads would be as described above.

[*] Yes, Lyrans could use ESGs, too. However, they take two forward boxes, which is probably a bad idea 99.9% of the time. As such, they would just use disruptors and drones like their Klingon and Kzinti neighbors.
[**] Same thing here. ISC territory could use PPDs, and any of them can use Pl-S, but the two-box requirement really kills their effectiveness. More likely they will just stick with Pl-G and Pl-F, except for maybe the huge boys like the BCH and DN.
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Zyffyr
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 4:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mjwest wrote:
I don't have a technical in-game reason for the "deficiency", but it is what it is. (Also, don't forget that the ISC doesn't have it either.)


Random off the top of my head attempt to PSB it... The equipment added to a Pl-F that gives it the Carronade ability can only be made using the somewhat rare Element Zz. Unfortunately for the Romulans, that same Element Zz is also critical for making Cloaking Devices. Their supplies are limited enough that adding Carronades would mean having to leave some ships without cloaks. Romulans, being who they are, find that to be an unacceptable tradeoff.

The ISC, on the other hand, got very unlucky and haven't managed to find ANY of it in their territory.
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terryoc
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 12:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Less than 10% of all Orions use cloaks, so there's presumably not a lot of payoff to installing carronades on all your ships on the off chance it may possibly wind up fighting a cloaked Orion. Gorns and Feds were continually dealing with raids by so-called Romulan 'privateers'.

I note that all of the later X-ships had carronades, whatever empire they came from. I infer from that fact that they simply decided to spend the extra money for carronades since they were upgrading the ship so much anyway.
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Monty
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 06, 2012 1:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

0% of the Orion's actually purchase and use cloak, in the FC version of SFU.

100% of the Orion's could use it if they wanted to.

There are essentially two versions of an F torp in the game (FC history). One of them costs more resources to develop than the other. Those extra resources and availability aren't reflected in the option mount rules.

For a weapon system that works just as good if not better against non-cloaked ships, the rationalization for restricting them from one cloaked plasma-centric empire is not "internally consistent". Though the cat is out of the bag, it would've probably been best to limit Carronades to a Gorn only technology. It would be an easy rule change and reduce the size of the rule book by one sentence.
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