Federation Commander

bcantwell · Lieutenant JG Joined: 10 Jan 2011 Posts: 32

What is the radiation burst if a base is drawn into a black hole?

At first glance, I would say to treat it as a large asteroid since neither can be moved by a tractor beam, but if there is a better answer somewhere that I missed...

Steve Cole · Site Admin Joined: 11 Oct 2006 Posts: 3807

Bases are ships.

Count a BATS as a heavy cruiser (1.00), a base station as a light cruiser (0.75), a mobile base as 0.5, any of the one-pod bases as 0.25, anything bigger as a dreadnought (1.5).
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mjwest · Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:31 pm Post subject:

First, know that a base with positional stabilizers (the reason it can't be tractored and moved) won't be moved by the black hole at all.

Assuming, however, it did fall in for whatever reason, the transporter rules actually help us answer this question. Since the power cost for transporters is based on the movement cost, the rules on what a base pays to operate its transporters gives us a close enough equivalency. So, battle stations, base stations, and mobile bases have a 16 point burst, star bases have a 32 point burst, and commercial platforms have an 8 point burst.
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bcantwell · Lieutenant JG Joined: 10 Jan 2011 Posts: 32

Thanks. That works for me.

I am doing a solo play through Scenario 8C23 (Mis-Fire). The Lyran base does have positional stabilizers, but has taken a whole series of weapons row internals and has lost a bunch of phasers and both ESGs and is facing a scad of incoming Kzinti drones, so is soon to be turned into a floating wreck, which I would assume is no longer held in place by the positional stabilizers and will drift into the black hole. I don't expect this to fundamentally affect the outcome, but I was thinking about the situation.

Sgt_G · Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 2:31 am Post subject:

Well, if not even a black hole can move a starbase due to the positional stabilizers, perhaps the black hole will pull ITSELF towards the base, no?? Shocked

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mjwest · Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 12:27 pm Post subject:

I am discussing this with Steve, since our answers are different, and since his mentioned rates don't match (5E2) or SFB.

However, the point about positional stabilizers not working after the base is destroyed is a good point. I do agree with that, and, since the black hole rule specifically mentions keeping the ships on the map after they are destroyed, I think it also applies to them, too.

So, yes, if a base is destroyed in the presence of a black hole, the counter remains on the map and the positional stabilizers fail. At that point it will be sucked into the black hole and cause a radiation burst. We'll get what that burst is in a few days.
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Steve Cole · Site Admin Joined: 11 Oct 2006 Posts: 3807

5E2 has to trump what I made up on the spur of the moment.

Sigh, when answering a question the rule book doesn't cover the first step is always to see if the rule book actually has already answered it. It's just too easy to assume that if the guy asking the question couldn't find the answer it must not be there. Most of the time it already is.
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bcantwell · Lieutenant JG Joined: 10 Jan 2011 Posts: 32

I checked through the tractor section looking for clues, but never thought to look in transporters for an equivavlency.

And this line of reasoning leads me to another thought (a somewhat random thought that has little to do with the particular scenario)...

If a medium-sized base is ~equivalent to a starship, then can we assume that the reason you cannot tractor a base is due to the same positional stabilizers that keep them from being sucked into a black hole? Further along those lines, could you tractor a destroyed ship/base to prevent it from falling in and releasing a radiation burst?

mjwest · Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 7:57 pm Post subject:

The real reason you cannot tractor a base is because they would suffer from all kinds of silly tractor tricks, like pushing them off the map, moving them into things (asteroids, seeking weapons, planets), and just doing things not intended. The in-game solution to this are the "positional stabilizers". I don't think they are explicitly named as such in Federation Commander, but that is the SFU reason, yes.

So, to actually answer your question, yes, if you ran into the extremely unusual situation where a base was next to a black hole and was destroyed, then, yes, you could tractor the hulk (like you could tractor a ship's hulk) to keep it from getting pulled into the black hole and creating a burst. It all seems to flow fairly naturally from the base situation, and it doesn't hurt anything, so, yes, that all seems completely reasonable.
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