I know we already had this discussion during the Starmada X days....
I have always been for having weapons that can fire on fighters during the fighter phase - however, there are arguments against it that make just as much sense.

I always wanted to list it as special equipment -- i.e. interceptor turret similar to B5 - but not let it do any damage to capital ships -- I'd also consider a range cap of 3.... anything larger would end up creating enough overlap of the different ship's fire that it would more or less eradicate fighters completely, and capping it at a range of one makes it unusable for anything other than the ship it is on.... which eliminates it's usage on escort ships.

For that matter, we could also specify that each unit covers 3 arcs in a 180 degree arc... so a ship that wants 360 coverage would need to buy at least 2 of them.... and that would also limit how many could be concentrated on a fighter flight.....

Nahuris

That's why I run Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay when I want a fantasy game. Although if MJ12 was to design a fantasy game, it would have my attention.

Nahuris

OK.... you've got my attention.... especially since I have a couple of the coalition cruisers partially done on my scratch build table......

Nahuris

No, the White Sox are the team that always LOSES to Boston........LOL

Nahuris

Actually, it has to do with an idea I was using a while back. In the game I was currently playing at the time, one of the races used some Hull 6 and Hull 8 ships with spinal mounts. When they would hit... the damage was pretty much overwhelming, especially since spinal mounts out-ranged everything else in Starmada X -- we came up with the idea of "Light Spinal Mounts" -- basically, the hull 6 ship would have 2 spinal mounts, but each only did 3 die of damage, ect. for the Hull 8 ship, I either used 2 at 4 die damage, 4 with 2 die of damage, or in once case 2 at 2 die with a single mount with 4 die of damage.
As long as the final damage was still the same as the hull, we left the total cost for the spinal mounts at the base 10 percent.
One of my players likes the Earth Alliance, and Narn, ships from B5 -- so he used these to simulate the battle lasers both of those fleets tend to have. We would use the overall hull of the ship to factor the range, and since they were listed in the special equipment section of the rules, allowed them to be taken out with Q hits.

I am reading through the "How To" PDF at this time, so I'll PM you later if I have trouble with any of it...

Thanks Much for answering my questions, though, it is much appreciated.
Nahuris

Thanks Much OldnGrey !!!!

I am definitely looking into this.

Nahuris

I actually like ablative armor for some of my starships -- I had a race designed that had poor shielding technology -- most of their ships either had no shields, or occasionally, a shield at level one.....

I used the rules for ablative armor with that particular race, and it fit wonderfully.... I was hoping that someone would make it available in AE

Nahuris

Thank You Marcus Smythe for being far more articulate than I am.

Nahuris

Jygro, you are right, the tech levels do not change the point value of the ships per se.... but they do change options.

Ships at the higher tech levels tend to have larger fire arcs per weapon, and the ability to have better shields. Most ships tend to favor foward arcs with weapons, unless you have the SU to add more arcs. The only exception I ever saw to that was a person in Starmada X who faced all his weapons to the rear on a fast ship, and then only played on floating maps......LOL

High tech allows you to add more options to a weapon, and to add increased fire arcs.... that's where it starts to get nasty. A range 30 weapon with a single 60 arc is only a cone shaped area of the table. A range 30 weapon that has a 360 arc means that you can get targeted anywhere within a 60 hex wide circle of the table..... which pretty much covers most playing areas.

I don't believe the range is "broken"..... but that maybe we could use something like decoys, or the Starmada X Sunbursts, to create "terrain" that can be used to balance things out. The ability to block a line of sight for a period would go very far towards dealing with an opponent that can hit you anywhere on the table you are.......

I do know that in B5Wars, ships had an EW (electronic warfare) rating that could be used to interfere with accuracy on their side.... maybe we could consider the addition of EW fighters? shuttles? that add a -1 or -2 penalty to ranges over 18? 24? while they are out and functioning. Maybe give them an range.... i.e. all ships withing 9 hexes of the EW shuttle enjoy a +1 bonus to the chances of being targeted?

Nahuris

Sounds almost like we need to add a fire control system that allows the extended range... with range being reduced if it is damaged..... That would put range on par with movement....

One thing we need to look at is what Silvaris specifically mentioned... the higher tech will tend to kill lower tech. Any ship with a +2 in each category is going to be vastly superior to any of the book ships in the same way that a modern soldier with a machine gun will hold an advantage over a 12th century spear unit.

Even when there are equal points worth of ships on a table, with large tech disparities, there is rarely equal points facing each other..... Either the high tech ship can control the range due to it's greater engine strength, or the lower tech ship ends up unable to fire due to limits in fire arcs.....ect. When I ran my test battle, I used tech level zero ships as my attackers..... and they suffered terrible losses, even without the escorts that could have been available to the defender. 

The issue is not with range so much, as it is with the fact that any system, no matter how balanced, can be nerfed when extremes become the norm. I recently was putting together another battle, this time BeowulfJB's designs against the B5 designes recently posted here...... I chose 2 of his Mississippi class ships, with some escorts..... and BeowulfJB's ships as the attacker.....

(I'm not picking on BeowulfJB, as I actually find his designs to be well thought out... but as they are the best example of a design with serious range advantages, I have found them useful)

Anyways, what struck me right off was the fact that the EA fleet facing BeowulfJB's ships was vastly larger.... and due to that and due to the slight disparities in speeds, I was never able to concentrate the firepower of the fleet in a meaningful way against any specific target..... Basically, no matter how the overall battle is balanced, the high disparity in tech meant that none of BeowulfJB's ships ever faced an equal opponent..... nor even a situation where a specific ship was out-cost by it's opponents.

My conclusion is that while range is an issue... the ships themselves are so superior in every way that  it also makes a major difference.... they have massive fire arcs, high enough speed to control range, long range, and solid defenses..... they have no weakness that an opponent can exploit....
There is no power allocation to limit fire, no other means than using a stealth generator to minimize the impact of range, and no major advantage to high speed other than getting to a different spot quickly (since all of the ships are on a simiar maneuverability limitation... thrust vs. speed....)

Then there are the limitations based on the fact that this is a turn based game as well... range is factored after all movement is done, and only from the point that the movements are done.... meaning the ship that does not move at all has the same chance to be hit as the one that zig -zagged or flew in a big curve.

Anything we look into is going to have to take these variables into account, or our attempts to tweak one thing may just disrupt it all...

(sorry about the novel lengthed post)

Nahuris

Ok.... it looks like I killed another thread......

Nahuris

Actually, I recently ran a self game with a couple of BeowulfJB's ships guarding an installation, against an equal value of small strike ships, plus a large slow carrier with a good number of seekers and fighter wings......

Although his designs gave a good account for themselves, and both survived... they failed their objective of defending the installation..... although they do have range, they do have a definite difficulty with scenario driven battles......  or at least what would be a common scenario, "Guard a foward supply base".

This is not so much an attack on the design, nor a complaint about the long range, ect. From everything I have seen, Starmada AE is very balanced, but still tends to be a quick burn game.

Googleplex does have a good idea in that it adds some additional modifiers to the table. They don't add any additional die, so wouldn't necessarily add more complications.... but they would make maneuver and open space battles a little more interesting. Unlike ground based games, where you can duck behind a hill, or some trees, there isn't a whole lot of terrain in space..... especially in campaign driven games, things tend to crash out quick due to the fact that once one player achieves an advantage on the board, the other tends to start jumping out.... if I played in an extended campaign against BeowulfJB, I would tend to put my ships on the edge, and if there were no asteroids to use, nor a definite need, such as guarding one of my own installations, ect....I would then immediately run and start jumping..... my goal as an admiral is to win battles with the least loss of my own forces, not die gloriously for the cause. That was why I suggested some modifiers for speed.....

Maybe we can strike a balance... such as limit the IMP or DMG of weapons over range 18? If you remember, this ties back to my light spinal mounts from Starmada X.... I had some issues with the all or nothing type weapons that they were.... so instead of one really large mount on a cruiser (approximately hull 12 or so... at that time) I would instead have 4 with the range based on my hull size, but each at damage 3..... ect. The only other option that I can think of is maybe the use of the ablative armor we worked on in Starmada X. Therefore, a slow ship with short ranged weapons can survive long enough to bring it's guns to bear.

I agree that while Starmada is not supposed to be an arms race, there will be development in a game.... all races should have the option of learning from an enemy..... (BeowulfJB, what changes have you made to adjust your designs against your opponents, or do you expect them to always change to match yours? ..... might want to think on that one a bit......again, I am not criticizing, but have been on both sides of similar situations, and had to learn these lessons as well)

As of now, I don't see anything "broken" in SAE... but we might have a few pulled muscles or sprains as we go through....LOL

Nahuris