I fully support story line driven play.... i.e. a race comes up with a new ship based on some new advanced tech, so you have one as part of a fleet with older designs.
The issue that we had with this player is that he sat with a calculator and found that two ships at 6 hull points with advanced tech, were cheaper than a single hull 12 ship with the same tech levels..... He would sit and spend hours min/maxing every point... which, Ok, in a one off game where the objective is to win with this many overall points, was fine... but when you are doing campaign style scenarios... it became a problem.
He also has a hull 1 ship, w/ 1 shield and 1 move that is nothing but a flying hospital. He never puts it on the table.... it is considered in reserve, but he likes to count the medical on it for his restoring crew casualties. He has a hull 20 ship that is at engine 1, and shield 1 w/ no weapons, but is nothing but repair bays for the same reason...... Again, I support the mobile repair bay, and would love to see a battle where he is defending it, while the other players are trying to take it, but he either refuses to put it on the table, or suddenly has to leave and go home.....ect.
Part of this is a mild rant, I guess, and looking at it, I do apologize to the other readers.
What actually came to mind when I first saw this thread was not just the certain weapon combos, but some of the remarks. That's why I put out my Improved Life Support idea. It gives you armored crew quarters and gives the same protection to your crew that armor plating gives vs. extra hull damage, ect. Some other things I would love to see is short range weapons that maybe have a -1 vs capital ships, but roll as normal vs. fighters w/ range 3 or even 1 (think the Firelance Frigate in Star Wars.... a small size capital ship designed to take out swarms of fighters) and maybe throw out a mod to the spinal mount to give it a touch more clout.
I once had a ship with 11 hull and 5 shields killed via one hit from a hull 14 spinal mount. It happened, and that was cool.....however, later in that fight, along comes my little hull 2 corvette, which had taken a couple of ion cannon hits (no hull damage) and was reduced to 1 shield. I then was hit by that same spinal mount (I hadn't been able to do anything about it yet). I am figuring that I am so very dead there, but the player rolled a 1 on the PEN die. Next turn, he hits me again, and again rolled a 1.... other than the comedy of this itty bitty ship taking hit after hit, there was a bit of playful frustration on the other players part.... (no anger, just sort of "I can't believe this")
We talked after the game, and came up with an idea that gives some oomf to a spinal mount, without using the anime rules.......
For every 2 hull points or fraction thereof, you get 1 penetration dice, w/ dmg 2. A 10 hull ship would get 5 dice to penetrate, and up to 10 dice damage, so the damage didn't change.... he still gets the range normally associated with spinal mounts, so the advantage is still there. With odd hull values, you get a slight advantage, but not enough to unbalance the issue.
The other idea was to have the ability to add some of the weapon special values to the spinal mount.... but then again, a hull 16 ship firing a spinal mount w/ re-roll hit, extra crew casualty, and no hull damage (had to throw it in) just kind of gives me the willies. Actually his example was repeater with extra hull damage......LOL
We have tested the first way out, and it does work well, with Spinal Mounts now giving glancing blows, and not everything relying on a single penetration die. It seems to work with us, and isn't causing any real unbalancing issues that we have seen yet. I don't know if anyone else has tried any mods with the spinal mounts, but I would be very interested in seeing them.
On a side note, I like to scratch build my ships, and I like creating my own designs..... I would love to see us all get together and create our own races and ships.... I'd love to see if we could make an open game universe for play.
Nahuris