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Faster plasma?
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terryoc
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 4:50 am    Post subject: Faster plasma? Reply with quote

I've just listened to the SFU Origins seminar that Paul Franz posted on the SFU talkshoe site, and one issue mentioned is the weakness of plasma, mostly due to the increased speed of ships in FC. (ETA: so weak that plasma ships lose every time.) Late-war ships (like the ones featured in FC) often have "sabot plasma" which is a higher speed (40). Early-war ships usually fly at ~20 hexes per turn, and plasma is 32 hexes per turn, about 12 hexes/turn faster. So it seems to me that increasing plasma speed to 40, so it moves twice in one of the sub-pulses of each impulse, would make launching seeking plasma more viable. You'd be about 16 hexes/turn faster than a ship at Baseline Speed 24, and even able to catch up to something at 24+1. Running out the plasma some would still be an option.

Does anyone have any thoughts, or experiences, with this idea?
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Savedfromwhat
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 6:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have played a game using a KR against a fed CA using speed 40 plasma. It was a ton of fun, I still lost but was much more competative against the fed. It was a much bloodier game. I haven't seen the other side of that match up though so maybe I am biased.
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phul
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 7:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Speaking purely from an FC standpoint. I've never played SFB.

My experience initially with plasma was that they were likely to lose. After further playing, my experience has dictated to me that it's not that they are weaker ships, it's that they required entirely different tactics from Direct fire ships. Specifically, forethought. They are harder to play, but I think my last 3-4 games (that I can remember) with plasma, I have been about 50% success. Personally, I'd be against 'faster' plasma in FC.

Also... a KR vs a Fed CA, I'll take the KR every time.
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DirkSJ
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 7:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It's so easy to speed up in FC....that really does "feel" like the problem but I don't nearly have enough games under my belt to be able to say for sure.

Faster plasma may be the answer i others thing speed really is the issue. It sure seems like it.
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storeylf
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 9:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

For what ever reason I never liked the plasma races, no obvious reason, they 'just didn't do it for me'. Never played them in SFB, I have played them 3 times in FC so far;

gorn vs rom
rom vs hydran (lots stingers)
rom vs klingon

and won each time in a tourney style game. On that basis I'm not convinced they need any help. On the other hand I can see they are difficult and require totally different thinking to other ships, and maybe I got lucky. The klingon game in particular would have seen me in trouble if it wasn't for the time limit. The other 2 games were possibly odd ball games and not good for concluding anything, one being a plasma vs plasma and the other was the last of a series of games to see what could beat mass hydran stingers in a tourney setting.

I think the main issue that probably changed the balance between FC and SFB is the removal of all those things you had to spend power on in SFB, I remember shields needed a point or 2, and there were a couple of other things I don't remember, but I have a vague memory of a CA having to spend 4 power just to operate at the beginning of a turn, then there was ECM/ECCM. It may not sound much, but (even ignoring ECM) those few points of power do make a very significant difference. A fed CA paying 8 power for photons and 4 for 'stuff' would never do 24+ on any impulse without battery power, that would make life more interesting vs a plasma thrower. A D7 firing 4 disr and 3 ph1 would also have run out of accel power unless he had battery power left.

I certainly don't want to see those things reintroduced (maybe a BoM rule), and it is far to late to do anything about it, but I would have prefered to see the ships themselves with less power to balance out the loss of things they were required to spend power on. i.e. Still less rules/bookkeeping but keep the ships at about the same discretionary power limit.
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Savedfromwhat
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 3:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

phul wrote:

Also... a KR vs a Fed CA, I'll take the KR every time.


Really? You would prefer the ship with 3 p1s and 4 p2s to the ship with 8 p1s. Also you would prefer to have Two plasma S launchers then 4 photon torpedoes? Even with speed 40 plasma that was a game that I lost as the romulan... I hope you meant the K7R or the KRC because I don't think it makes since to take a ship with light cruiser armament over the most balanced ship in the game.

Storyelf. I think that plasma needs a change but at the same time we are still so far along in the game development cycle of fc that it just isn't viable to make a massive change like speed 40 plasma, we have experimented with some smaller increases like speed 36 and speed 34 and it wasn't quite as powerful but a little better, as it stands now a direct fire ship can close to range 1 fire everything and HET to escape. Most direct fire weapons are autohits at range 1 and the plasma bolt has a 33% chance of missing. With speed 36 we sped the plasmas up the first 4 impulses, but with speed
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Dan Ibekwe
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 3:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Are ships faster in FC?

Compared to SFB you don't pay 'housekeeping' - typically 4 points for a cruiser, 2 for shields, 1 for life support, 1 for firecontrol.

On the other hand, in FC you have to power phasers each time you wish to fire them. In SFB all ships have a 'phaser capacitor', essentially a dedicated battery holding enough power to shoot each phaser on the ship once. In most scenarios, it starts the game full, and managing the power it holds is one of the black arts of the game.

Some ships clearly *are* faster in FC - any frigate whose move cost went from 1/3 in SFB to 1/4 in FC, for example. But then there are war cruisers that have gone from 2/3 to 3/4.

I have not played enough FC games involving plasma ships to form an opinion, except that without pseudo-plasmas and wild weasels they will handle very differently from SFB.
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Savedfromwhat
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 3:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It isn't that ships have more power dan, the problem is that one turn they can go speed zero and the next turn speed 24 +1 for 8 impulses, effectively.
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Dan Ibekwe
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 5:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

True enough. There again, it applies both to the target and the launcher.

From SFB experience, I'd like to see plasmas generally more useful on floating maps; a higher speed might reduce the importance of 'map edge effects'.
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DirkSJ
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 5:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Savedfromwhat wrote:
It isn't that ships have more power dan, the problem is that one turn they can go speed zero and the next turn speed 24 +1 for 8 impulses, effectively.

Also the +1's can start the moment the plasma fires. In SFB if you didn't have a pile of reserve warp you couldn't just HET and speed up in the middle of the turn and even if you could you generally didn't have enough battery to add 8 speed.
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Nerroth
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 5:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If I have my way, there will be a form of plasma in the game someday that (for a time at least) can go as fast as Speed 64!

Quite useful when bringing the HEAT to your opponent.


As regards sabot plasma, I might say that it could perhaps be akin to the speed-32 drone rules; allowed only in Late Era battles, when the likes of the Andromedans really get their invasion going. (Presumably there'd be a similar Point Value premium for plasma ships getting such an upgrade.)
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terryoc
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 5:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
With speed 36 we sped the plasmas up the first 4 impulses


My idea is that on one sub-pulse of the impulse (the first? the fourth?) the plasma would move two hexes instead of just one. I think that your version of Speed 36 would be the same as Speed 40, especially for smaller plasmas. The only plasma that would move the whole 40 hexes would be Type-R, because it lasts for 8 impulses.

ETA: It's not so much that ships are faster overall, it's that they are faster when it counts. If I know someone's torps are hot I'm setting Baseline Speed 24. As soon as those suckas get launched, I'm HETing and pouring on the antimatter in the other direction. And then I have two turns to get turned around and hit him while he reloads.

It's true I don't get phaser capacitors in FC - but on the other hand, I don't need to decide at the beginning of the turn whether to load my phasers or go for speed. I can wait until the very last second to shoot or go fast, know the target of the plasma, and know all the torps are real. I don't waste any power allocating for HETs "just in case". I don't waste any power plotting high speed "just in case". I don't get suckered by a pseudo. I don't waste power holding weasels. There is no inefficiency in the response of my squadron.
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terryoc
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 6:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Neroth wrote:

As regards sabot plasma, I might say that it could perhaps be akin to the speed-32 drone rules; allowed only in Late Era battles, when the likes of the Andromedans really get their invasion going. (Presumably there'd be a similar Point Value premium for plasma ships getting such an upgrade.)


For FC Main Era, all the ships are pretty much late era ships anyway. This may not be something that players who don't play plasma often have noticed. But I'm beginning to think it is real.
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DirkSJ
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 6:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

terryoc wrote:
It's true I don't get phaser capacitors in FC - but on the other hand, I don't need to decide at the beginning of the turn whether to load my phasers or go for speed. I can wait until the very last second to shoot or go fast, know the target of the plasma, and know all the torps are real. I don't waste any power allocating for HETs "just in case". I don't waste any power plotting high speed "just in case". I don't get suckered by a pseudo. I don't waste power holding weasels. There is no inefficiency in the response of my squadron.

Terryoc says it very well. These things plus the lack of upkeep costs (fire control, life support, etc) far outweigh phaser capacitors in terms of flexibility with respect to plasma.
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rulesjd
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 17, 2010 7:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This type of conversation is almost as old as SFB.

I don't think that Plasmas need changing. Perhaps, plasma ships need slight tweaking of BVP.

It is already well covered here that ships typically operate faster than in SFB. It is also true that the phaser capacitor gave more gross power to ships in SFB but, that fails to take into account that SFB skippers were more conservative with their phasers to preserve that capacitor. In FC, firing phasers on impulse 8 is a no brainer to avoid "wasting" energy. This is why the smaller phaser suites of the Romulans and dispersed phaser suites of the Gorns may present a slight disadvantage.

On the other hand, Plasmas are still very powerful weapons. The fact that they can't "catch" enemy vessels in nothing new. The key to using plasmas were always forcing the enemy to accept a plasma in order to close to effective range. Thus, you launch a plasma at range 12-15 as the Fed closes into photon range. He'll either have to charge through the plasma or keep the range open trying to avoid. The lack of pseudos and upgunned envelopers is a bigger loss but, your ships are also faster and can use excess energy to cancel forward movement and thus stay out of overload range until the plasma hits.

Cycling plasma is also key. Don't launch all your eggs at an enemy that can move 24+. Hold some back so he can't avoid and circle back on you. Keep firing phaser ones and focus on shield one. The Fed HAS to show you the number 1 shield to get all his phasers into arc.

Finally, consider the map. On a closed map, which is common for tournaments, you want to try and box your opponent into a corner. Speed 24 does nothing for you if there is no place left to go. Take the center of the map using the plasma threat to keep your opponent out. Launch one plasma S that they'll, either avoid toward a corner or, have to eat on a shield. Your phaser strike on a down shield will be plenty effective. If they run, follow at a leisurely pace and launch again when the geometry will prevent escape.

On an open map, you've got trouble. Against disruptor races, in particular, the plasma users have to either run away or accept disrupter reduction of shields with lots of long range phaser sniping and the occassional hail mary plasma bolt.

In either case, plasma weapons reward patience and subtelty in maneuver. Photons reward aggression and risk.
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