You could always add the weapon mod that it MUST re-roll penetration.... that would make the shields a lot more effective....

Dan...,
What are the odds of shield mods? Maybe a shield that forces opponents to re-roll penetration?

Maybe something like Ionic shielding.... um... Gravitonic Shielding, using variations of gravity and magnetics, these shields attempt to deflect or bend an opponents shots away, resulting in all re-rolling of all Penetration rolls.......

Just an idea
John

Go with Battle Satellites, then...... or drones.

Force him to concentrate on multiple targets.

John

I have been reading them. It's pretty good. I just tend to favor hulls in the 8 - 14 range.....

But that's me......

I'm just trying to imagine running one of those larger games here and thinking it might not work.

John

I'll admit that most of my friends and I can't stand Palladium's game system.... But we do like the background material..... They do have good stuff to borrow to other systems.

I just don't want to see another big game company go under, as I prefer variety in the roleplay market.

John

How would you describe an expendable repeating weapon..... is it a cannon shell that keeps bouncing into the target??

I have also found that the higher tech levels pretty much require that the ships either have screens, or shields at 5......

John

I did find a way for fighters to handle the high rof weapons....
I used the small flight option, where each flight of fighters only had 4.
To pretty much take out a flight, my oponent had to used 2 guns per flight, and I could stack flights in a hex, or I could spread them out giving me more targets in the air than he had weapons to take them out with.

I also launched my drones in small groups of 4 per round.
Finally I used a few battle satellites, to try them out, and had them spread out individually with one per hex.... meaning he may have had a rof of 3, but only the chance to hit one item.....

John

My reading of the rules was that it automatically blocked 1, 3, or 5 rolls against shields, regardless of source. Whether it's the weapons on a fighter, or on another capital ship, to include drones, ect.

However, this is only my opinion, and I could be wrong on it.

John

Googleplex.......

You are a sick, sick, sick man..........LOL

I actually like it......LOL

John

Ok, got home and looked into it.....

Hmmmmmm....... can move 5 hexes each turn, take damage as fighters, and have a range 12 weapon that is 3+ to hit with a 360 degree fire arc....... yeah it's only 1/1/1 but you can have an unlimited number of them, as long as you only launch 3 per turn......., and as long as their carrier is up and running......  Finally, they cost only 12 points each at 0 tech level......

a range 12 weapon with a 360 arc at 3+ costs 56 when put on a ship......

The downside, they can be hit as Q hits, and also shot down as a fighter. They don't have shields, although the rules state that they are hit as fighters, so get the -1 to hit them bonus.  It doesn't state that they halve shields, so I am going to assume that they don't.....

But I am looking at the fact that you can put a batch of them on a ship, and sort of have them spreading out all over the battlefield.....albeit somewhat slow at movement 5.

I can see them being extremely vulnerable to fighter swarms.....

Any ideas from other players?

John

I was looking at the number of dice getting through while rolling from the same dice pool... in the long run, you are right, but if only one shot got through each round, and those shots were hitting weapons, the ship with fewer high rof weapons would be on the losing end of the game.

Not looking at the charts so much as examining the loss value of each weapon.

John

I was looking at the latest chart, and the rof 2 weapons only cost 25% more than in the book method of factoring, and the rof 3 weapons only 50% more.... but it leaves the one fact out, that a ship with rof 3 weapons is more vulnerable to return fire over ships with multiple rof 1 weapons......

Lets say that your ship has two rof 3 weapons firing into weapon arc A.
And my ship has 6 rof 1 weapons in my arc A.

We both roll 6 dice to hit each other (we're both in each other's A arc) and we both have the same 4+ targeting....... and at the same range.... and same shield rating.) We both hit each other, and after all is said and done, we get 1 damage through, and we both get the exact same result, a weapon bank hit.......

Next turn, I still get 5 dice to roll against you, but you are down to 3 dice to return on me.... and should we get the same results, I will have 4 dice, and you will have none........

When all is said and done, a rof 3 weapon is a bigger loss to your capability than a rof 1 weapon, if all other factors are equal......  Since capital ship fire is simultaneous, and fighters fire first, I don't see where the high rof weapons are that deadly. By the law of averages, you are going to lose them fast enough to worry about fairly quickly, and if I do to you what my fiance did to me Saturday, you are going to really have it rough.

We decided to play one of the battles from my Starlancer computer game.....

As a rule for that session, fighters did not do hull damage.....   To simulate the flack guns on some of the capital ships, I created a batch of range 3 weapons that were 3/1/1. She managed to rush 4 flights of fighters in on me while I was pounding it out with one of her capital ships...... and the next thing I knew, my ship didn't have those nice nifty flak guns..... and it wouldn't have mattered if they were the original range 9 that I had planned, because she used the fighter version that had the weapon range of 2 and fast.... giving them a 12 movement. Basically, they had a 28 inch circle of attack (we don't use hexes at the moment, we play on the living room floor (really short carpet) and run 2 inches to the "hex" // movement point.) my range 18 heavy guns reach out 36 inches on the floor.......

Anyways, she massed the wings of fighters, and then moved her Yamato battle cruiser in on me.... while I was reacting to it, she rushed the fighters in, and because they shoot first.... stripped off my flak guns, and crippled my shields and engines........ Unfortunately, I had sent my fighters to take down her gunboats (Hull 2 ships with enough punch and speed to give me fits) and they were not in position to help much.......

As a final note.... one of our house rules is that when fighters are dogfighting, any shots into their hex are randomized against both sides...... on the principle that with the fighters swirling around, it's too hard to target individual ones.  She used one flight to dogfight one of mine, and then did something truly sneaky.....LOL.  Per the rules, only one flight from either side can dogfight.... so she flew her second wing through the dogfight.... using my own dogfighting fighters as cover to make a run on my captital ships.....

Again, my high rof cannons didn't help, because she destroyed enough of them during the fighter phase to ruin my day. By the time I could fire, I only had one weapon capable of firing in the arc where her fighters were, and had to worry more about the enemy gunboats bearing down on me, rather than a single wing of fighters.........

Anyways.... to get back on topic (sorry all), she was able to score enough hits during each fighter phase, that she would destroy a bunch of my weapons before I could even fire....... Mostly due to single hits killing 3 dice from my chances to return damage.

John