SFU Background History: Mirror Universe / 20-21st Century ?

[pinecone]

Thats a possibility for the mining lasers, but for the Infared phasers, I was thinking that they would be like phaser 1s at range 9-15, or similar to that. Not HUGE damage but enough to make a difference.

[pinecone]

Other possible weapons:

Pulsed Phaser Cannons: Inflict damage as if different volleys

Phaser Generators: 360 arc but cannot use directed targeting.

Also, what if instead of shuttles/drones, Ships have little "satellites" that launch and can do a vareity of things. They have little power generators that allow them to serve one purpose (but no more) each turn. Here are their uses:

Seeking Weapon: Track target like drones.

Support Shields: Stay in hex of Ship and are assigned one shield facing which they provide extra shielding for.

Phaser Emmiters: Capable of firing one Gamma Ray or Infared Phaser per turn.

Special Sensor: Acts pretty much like that, except for no energy.

Personnel/Equipment Transport: Have 1/6th the storage space of a shuttle, but still usable.

Tractor Beam: Again, like a tractor beam but not requiring energy other than it's own).

Repulsor Beam: I'm sure you can guess.

Other: You fill it in for me. Any other uses you guys can think of?

I'm thinking Frigates/Destroyers will each carry about four of these, Cruisers will have 6, and Dreadnaughts will have 8. Battleships might have as many as 12! Whatcha guys think?

[Bolo_MK_XL]

Munchkin ---

[Savedfromwhat]

Pulsed Phaser Cannons: Inflict damage as if different volleys = Bad for the attacker
Phaser Generators: 360 arc but cannot use directed targeting. = We already have 360 arc phasers

Ships have little "satellites" that launch and can do a vareity of things = This is kinda interesting but you have too many options

I like the idea of dropping little bouys in space but they would probably have very limited use (I.E. Why would you have to drop it out the ship to support your shields?, Why add a 4th seeking weapon to the game?, if used as a Phaser Emitter why not just use defsats?, special sensors only work for 12 hexes and why not just put one in the bay that holds these "sattelittes"? Tractor/Repulsor Beam... Now this is kinda neat.)


A Device that you can Drop in space and act as a tractor anchor is really a neat idea but I don't see what it could be built out of that would prevent the enemy from destroying the device before it could take effect.

[Bolo_MK_XL]

There is a device that gets dropped out into space -- its a Transporter Bomb --

Its already been removed from FC -- no need to try and enter it under an assumed identity ---

[pinecone]

My intention was that the Pulsed Phaser Cannons also inflicted more damage, and that the Phaser emitters were, well, okay that was a stupid idea, sorry.

But isn't it feasible to think that these little robot ships could perform a vareity of uses?

[Savedfromwhat]

Bolo, Pinecone has never played Star Fleet Battles I am sure his idea had nothing to do with T-Bombs, But quite frankly as a memeber of the bring every single rule from SFB to Fedcomm Party I would love to see T-Bombs added.

[Bolo_MK_XL]

I would love to see them also -- but they were left out for a reason -- Simplicity

[Savedfromwhat]

maybe it is just the nature of gaming in general but it gets to a point where you know exactly what to do as a fed or klingon or whatever to win and vice versa and then the game comes down to getting some die roll on the edge of the bell curve. Maybe as humans we just crave more rules so to keep things fresh... I am slowly making the transition to SFB... Sigh.

[ThorSilver]

I would love to see them also -- but they were left out for a reason -- Simplicity

I sort of asked this earlier in the thread too: why do t-bombs/mines need to be complex at all? Just remove all the time-consuming mine-sweeping/laying rules in SFB, and then they become incredibly simple (explody object goes here, get too close and it blows up).

They also add an additional wrinkle to the game that can be very interesting, so I really don't see why they were removed wholesale instead of just highly simplified.

Pinecone ---

Those satellite things sounded interesting at first, but the more I thought about them the more bizarre they seemed. Having an external object hanging precariously out in space reinforcing your shields seems like a fool's errand... why not spend that same amount of money/time just beefing up your pre-existing shield generator? Why have something that can become a sub-par seeking weapon, when you can just add more seeking weapons? Why offload essential ship functions to a cheap, throwaway device that can be blown up at any time, when you can keep those useful things inside the ship behind thousands of tons of metal and hefty force-fields? The only answer I could think of for these questions is too 'gamey', as in 'we have these things so we can do X/Y/Z without spending a point of power.'

Personally if we were going to go the 'let's have more interesting stuff to hurl into space' route (which I'm very much in favour of, don't get me wrong!), I'd be more inclined to make a new type of seeking weapon or two, and some kind of interesting fighter for one of the empires. Then it'd just be a matter of writing rules that say 'well it's just a drone/fighter, except these things about it are different' instead of having to write new rules for a whole new class of object.

Though of course, I wouldn't mind having a few rules like that if it got us mines/t-bombs

[Bolo_MK_XL]

Many items left out of FC aren't complex in themselves --

What they do is complicate other items/actions which were designed to simplified play --

Many think drones were pretty much castrated as is,
i.e. removal of Scatterpacks, no speed upgrades, no Type 4 and other variations --

Most of Pineys ideas are workable --- Just not within the FC system where their use just adds to the bookkeeping etc --- the design of FC was such where this was at the minimum (though personally don't believe it worked as well as they wanted it to) --

[pinecone]

Thorsilver: perhaps, but the main reason for them is that theycan do not just one but many things given the situtation.