Federation Commander

[storeylf]

[terryoc]

Like Lee, I don't see any offensive EW function in the (5S) rules as printed in Distant Kingdoms. Is this an addition for the 6th Edition FCRRB?
_________________
"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West

[mjwest]

[storeylf]

[Dal Downing]

MJW can't find my copy of HA Rules but I did want to ask if you would consider modifying 5L2 "Orion Stealth Coating" so that Plasma that roll a 6 suffer the 25% strength reduction instead of a clean miss? That has always bothered me that Type Rs just go Poof.

Also MJW can we look at adding the Plasma Reduction function to the Playtest Scout rules from Communique 28.

Now for the Next question at what point in the Defensive Fire Stage would we roll for Scout effects? Before or after ADD and Defensive Phaser Fire? This becomes important when dealing with Plasma. Does Phaser fire reduction occur before or after the -25% Effect?
_________________
-Dal

"Which one of you is the Biggest, Baddest, Bootlicker of the bunch?"
"I am."
"ARCHERS!!! THAT ONE!!!!"

[terryoc]

Jamming seekers so that they have a 1-in-6 chance of failure seems pretty weak. So weak that I probably would not bother to use it in preference to the guaranteed kill-one-drone-prior-to-impact option. Orion stealth effects are rolled for *after* all defensive fire AFAIK, and if this is consistent with that then it's only going to affect one-sixth of those seekers which leak past defenses, which should not be many at all. My feeling is that the proposal adds complexity without actually being an option that players will use.
_________________
"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West

[Mike]

That was my take on adding a die roll to sensor-anything. Why add that much complexity?

Remember, FedCom was supposed to be a much simpler and faster game than SFB. Or are we way past talking about FedCom and totally into discussing BoM now?
_________________
Mike

=====
Sandpaper gets the job done, but makes for a lot of friction.

[terryoc]

For Borders of Madness to be successful it should IMO be kept "as simple as possible, but no simpler", like FC.
_________________
"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West

[storeylf]

I had assumed any sensor stuff was basically BoM. Whilst HA makes it clear that those rules are not the full BoM rules I didn't see them as proper FC rules either. I don't therefore see an issue with rolling dice, I wouldn't be using sensors at all if I wanted things to be kept that simple.

While I see Terrys issue with missing on a 6 (if done as per orion stealth), I would add that my initial proposal was to affect not just impacted drones, but any drones tracking that target. Seeing how many you jam up front is very useful as you plan your next move. Maybe having the sensor jamming come first, before the ADD point would solve that issue if was only for impacted drones.

Whilst using the 1 sensor per drone may be very useful in very small battles, as I noted up front, it quickly becomes almost useless in larger battles, unlike the direct fire jamming.

I'm not an SFB player, so can't say what SFB did or did not do etc. My comments are purely looking at it from the FC side of the fence. But if as MWest says, the original Comm rules were a direct translation then it appears that they did provide some reasonable seeker defense, especially for the sensor unit itself.

At any rate, my comments can be seen as just some feedback on the way the direct fire/seeker jamming seem to scale very differently. It is not inherently bad that sensor units work like that, but it does affect the way the races/games balance overall when sensors are in use.

I would however add a final note, IF MWest is correct that the comm rules are close to the SFB rules, then a HA style change will affect those races that expect to deal with seekers due to the simple fact that seeker defense was split into a seperate action, but you still only have a limited number of channels. Under the comm rules you could jam for a turn and get both seeker and direct fire jamming on just 1 channel. Under HA style rules you need 1 channel for direct fire, and more channels for seeker jamming. That sounds quite a major balance change if you are coming from SFB (I'm looking at BoM again), it certainly benefits some races a lot more than othes.

[terryoc]