How so?
It seems that firing them in seeking mode is usually less interesting than in direct fire. Mainly because if you wait for the end phase, you could lose the torpedo during the direct fire and thus be unable to shoot it. There could be some tactical advantage to fire them in seeking mode, but then, they could be reduced by enemy firing or movement, blocked by a mere drone or shuttle, and the enemy ship may try to evade or at least present a better side.

Marc

I understand, but what I meant is, if a weapon with such a dual-mode (direct fire and seeker fire) is most of the time (if not all the time) better using direct fire, why design such a weapon?
In RA, there may be cases where plasma are more useful in seeker mode. For example, when firing at long range (ie, without any risk of losing the plasmas during the previous direct fire phase) then cloaking itself to ive it time to rearm. But usually, direct fire mode is much better.

Designing such a weapon (unless copying the existing plasmas) could be a bit difficult. For example, how do you determine the modifier if there is one?

Marc

I've been thinking along these lines as well.  I want the plasma torpedoes in RA to be a little closer to the ones in Federation Commander in terms of their damage profile.  In FC a seeking torpedo typically has the potential to do around 2.5x the damage as a bolted torpedo, whereas in RA the Bolt will statistically do about 1.33x more damage than the seeking torpedo.  I'd like to reverse the RA situation and make the seeking torpedo a weapon worth taking seriously.

Here are a few of my thoughts

1)  All Plasma Torpedoes move Speed 9 (in FC they are all the same speed - the smaller ones just run out of damage sooner).
2)  Instead of the diminishing to hit number, Plasma Torpedoes get a new Fighter Trait:  Diminishing Size -2.  Diminishing as a general trait could have value of -1, -2, or -3.  In the Fighter Phase, any Torpedo that doesn't make an attack has it's Size reduced by the listed amount.  In the case of RA Torps, an S-Torp for instance would be Size 5 if it impacts on turn 1, but if not would be Diminished and would be a size 3 torp in the next turn, etc.  A Torpedo that is diminished to size 0 is removed.  This reduction scheme results in Torpedo ranges/durations fairly consistent with those in FC.
3)  If you are basing the seeker characteristics off of the Bolt profile, then make the Torpedo Starting Size = to the Bolt Imp x Dam or some similar formula.
4)  Seeking Plasma Torpedoes should be Damage 2.
5)  In a perfect world I'd like to balance the enhanced seeker with a less imposing bolt so that the whole thing is close enough to the same overall effectiveness that I don't have to repoint every Romulan ship.  The original seeker was of such limited utility compared to the bolt that it essentially didn't count, but an enhanced seeker certainly does...

So for instance, The plasma S torpedoes might look something like this...

Plasma S - Bolt          Rng: 5/10/15  ROF: 1  ACC: 4+  IMP: 2  DAM: 3  Slow Firing
Plsma S - Seeker       Size 5, Speed 9, ACC: 4+, DAM 2   Diminishing Size -2   

Brian

That is true.  I personally am not really interested in designing a bunch of new ships and plan to stick to ships published for the Star Fleet universe, so I only have to get my torpedo internally consistent.  As I said, what I really want is for the package to be approximately equivalent to the current Super Bolt + Weak Torpedo, so I can just change the stats and not worry about repointing the ships.

Anyone else is free to take my ideas and make more generic SU modifiers

I have been trying to think of the simplest way to approach plasma torps so that the torpedo is better than the bolt, see if this makes any sense…

Step 1: Instead of having the plasma torpedo be a seeker flight and attack like one, what if you launched the torp like a seeker, it moves like a seeker, but it attacks with the statistics given in RA for the “Bolt” (with the exception being for range, which is ignored)  Bolting a torpedo is covered later…

Step 2: Torpedos all have the same speed; I'm thinking 9.

Step 3: In the first turn after launch, the seeker retains the same direct fire capabilities of its given class, but on each subsequent turn, the torp will have the attack statistics of the next class “down”. In other words, on the second turn of its time on the board, the Type R torpedo you launched last turn know attacks as a Type S, and so on…In addition, each hit from phaser fire lowers the “class” by one. This is a simple way to give the torpedo to “diminish” as others have mentioned.
Step 4: “Bolting” torpedos is supposed to be much less efficient, so create a second mode for each plasma torpedo representing a Bolt Mode, probably with the same ranges and ACC given for the plasma torps as they stand now, but with IMP & DMG reduced to 1's, and no Slow-Firing trait.

By using something like this you have large-ish weapons which are better at firing torps than bolts, and the torps “diminish” in strength as they stay on the board, which gives bigger torps a longer endurance, and therefore a greater stand-off range. I never played FC, but torps of this fashion are more like the SFB torps I remember from long long ago. Of course, this type of thing would really only be “fair” if used in the Trekmada setting, and I think there would really have to be another mechanic for generic Starmada designs to have weapons that fire seekers. Of course, there are those that might like the combination of cloaking and powerful but slow-firing bolts to simulate the cloak-shoot-cloak tactics the Romulans use…
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the issue.
Cheers,
Erik

PS next week I will mull over Hellbores! 

Well, since the R torp has an additional "Step", it has an additional turn on the board, hence more more "range". At least that was my thinking.

That is probably true. I for one do not particularly like the phaser ROF increase, which I think makes them too effective against drones and plasmas...I'm thinking it would have been better to make them dual mode with Mode 1 being Phaser 1/2 with range based IMP instead of ROF, and mode 2 being phaser 3 as is. That way you have a lot less shots that can hit plasmas/drones, and if you want them to be slightly better at hitting by selecting Mode 2 you would have to sacrifice offensive fire power for the turn. But that's really another issue altogether 

Agreed.

Awww, why wait for somebody else to do it when you can rack your own brain!   :geek: I like to pretend maulers don't exist anyway!
Cheers,
Erik

I don't have a problem with phaser-1s being ship killers at close range.  To me that's a matter of degrees and they still keep much of their flavor with range based ROF (e.g. incremental type of damage versus the more all-or-nothing aspect of the heavy weapons).  The plasma torps to me are a more pressing matter as they have a completely different feel than I was anticipating.

Brian

I think this might be a good rules change.

I set up the second fight from above (2x WE, 1x BH vs 1x CA, 1x FF, 1x BFF) again last night and tried it out with plasma launchers able to place torps during regular shooting.  Again, I tried only using the torps as seekers (and with my torp rules - Same sizes, speed 9, ACC 4+, Dam 2).  This game played out much closer.  Three times in the game one of the light Romulan ships was destroyed by Federation fire, but was able to put their torp on the table instead of losing it.  The first (an R) was directed at the FF (only target in arc), which suffered some engine damage.  Despite a favorable Emergency Thrust roll, the torpedo was just able to chase down the fleeing frigate and scored several hits and finished off the ship.  Later the battlehawk decloaked in front of the Fed CA.  Phaser fire from the BH dropped the FP shield and damaged the CA's engines, leaving it with only three engine power.  The BH dropped it's pair of G torps before disappearing under 3 overloaded photon torpedoes.  The fed cruiser could not run. but turned to present a full strength shield to the oncoming torps.  The Romulans rolled badly and only scored 3 of a possible 8 hits, all of which were absorbed by the Fed's shields.  The last War eagle decloaked and found itself at point blank range head on to the Battle Frigate.  Again the phaser fire damaged the Fed's engines while the War Eagle was crushed beneath the return phasers and a pair of OL Photons through the shield, but not before the big R torp was on the map and targeting the BFF.  The Frigate attempted Emergency Thrust, with disasterous results (3 ones and no successes) and could only fly slowly and take the hit on an up shield.  4 hits got through (Dam 2 each the way I've been playing it) and the BFF was swallowed in plasma - but I rolled six even numbers on 8 dice and although the ship was stripped of all engines, it was intact.

So in this interation, the Romulans still lost, but by being able to at least launch their torpedoes, were able to inflict damage and the Feds certainly limped away with both of the remaining ships below half hull and with the Frigate engineless and sporting a -3 Engine Rating.

Sample Size of 1 doesn't mean a lot, but I liked the feel of that game a lot better.  The Romulans didn't feel nearly as crippled and I could see that in this case there was a viable choice to make between setting up to bolt or launch torps.  I currently have the torps set to do about twice the average damage of against an unshielded target than the bolts do, but firing the torp does give the enemy a chance to accelerate away (especially using the Emergency Thrust rule, which adds some drama in that "Scotty, I need warp power now or we die" sort of way). 

The last experiment I'd like to look at is ACC 4+, Dam 2 versus ACC 2+, Dam 1.  Both put approximately the same average damage on the target, so don't know if there is much difference that would be noticable without running it a bunch of times so that you saw the high and low jackpots of the ACC 4+, Dam 2.