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cricket wrote:I don't understand the problem, to be honest. Or, rather, I do UNDERSTAND it, I just don't agree it's worth changing.
However, the bigger concern is feasibility. The modifier is applied at the SU stage because the SU cost is a primary factor in the ORAT calculation. Applying arc modifiers at the ORAT stage would require recalculating from scratch.
My only problem with it was that I plan to use a movement system that involves separate heading and facing, where I could fly a ship around much of the game with it's tail facing the enemy if I wanted to work at it.
I decided just to live with unbalanced arc costs. It's not really that important since I'm translating existing designs from another game system.
Ozymandias wrote:Would you guys consider the SUs or the ORAT to be the more important when determining how potent a weapon is? All the traits multiply SUs so I'm leaning that way, but am unsure.
Well, I can see the traits representing weapons that require more space for larger lasing crystals or bigger particle cannon loops or more targeting arrays, so I don't really question that they modify SU. The firing arcs though, except for game balance based on the way movement is done there's not much difference in them, so it seems to me that that is more about rating the effectiveness of the ship not the amount of space used.
The more I've thought about this, the more I wonder about how tied weighted arcs are to the movemen systemt. If, for instance, I wanted to use a movement system more like the one from RL Interceptor where facing and heading can be drastically different, the weighted arcs don't really work well. And if I try to build a space station which has no thrust... I know though that these scenarios are not intended for out of the box Starmada.
I'm all for broadside fleets! I was actually in the process of translating FASA's Leviathan to SAE when Nova was announced. Now I'm trying to evaluate whether to move to Nova or not. So far, Nova's the favorite for the reduction in die rolls among other things. The construction of weapons threw me a little though. I agree that weighting the effectiveness of arcs of fire should be an ORAT mod not an SU mod.
If I'm reading the starship construction rules right, it appears that aft facing banks take up less SUs than forward facing banks that cover the same size arc (FR vs AR for instance).
Why is that? Because forward facing weapons are more likely to be brought to bear?
If so, that seems open to exploitation by building ships designed to constantly run away for their opponents (besides also being counter-intuitive that the same number and type of weapons take up more space mounted in the front of a ship than the rear.)
If I've read something wrong there forgive my questions please.
Thanks! Looking forward to taking the new system out for a spin! 
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