Ok, when I mentioned the weapons being cheaper, I was looking at the range 9 small weapons, and comparing prices for the high rof's vs. the 1/1/1 support weapons.
To get the same number of dice in an arc, I ended up with fewer high rof weapons overall......
Also, a weapon with rof 3 is more or less, 3 seperate weapons on one mount (or rapid fire, ect... but still the equivelent of 3 rof1 weapons). One hit to that weapon bank kills the equivelent of 3 weapons, where one hit on a bank of 1/1/1 weapons only kills one die..... Hence you get more survivability out of smaller single shot weapons.
For my remark on damage, I'll see if I can explain it better.
As my ships closed with each other, one of my range 9 1/1/1 weapons hit the other ship. The hit penetrated on a 6 and did damage. When I rolled to see what was hit, I lost the following items.... 1 hull, 1 engine, 1 weapon from battery a, and the hyperdrive...... basically 4 pieces of equipment off of 1 die of damage.
What I was suggesting, was having the damage done equal the number of die rolled.... basically, I would have chosen one of those pieces of equipment to lose....
a weapon with rof 3 and pen 1 dmg 1 that hits with all 2 hits, and Penetrates with 1 (average rolls....) so only rolls 1 die for damage, gets one piece of equipment.
While another weapon with rof 1, pen 2 dmg, 2 hits and penetrates with both die and rolls 4 damage dice, each claiming one piece of equipment....
To me, and this is my opinion, it would even out the overall damage between the weapons, and would also boost the abilities of the spinal mount weapons. It also would make some of the smaller ships more survivable, as I actually have seen my hull 2 ships destroyed in one hit from a weapon that was 2/1/1..... They had an engine of 8 so when hit, both die hit, both penetrated, and the first hit did 1 hull, 1 weapon a (all the weapons) and 3 engine hits........
the second hit destroyed 1 hull (killing the ship) 2 engine hits, and a shield hit...... I could have instead allowed those two hits to take engines, or maybe a shield and an engine, and kept the ship for another turn or two..... also, that makes extra hull damage on a weapon a real power to be feared on the field.....
This way, the smaller ships have a lot of real value in the game, and you don't keep seeing nothing but heavy battlecruisers running around.
Case in point, I was looking at the random fleet tables, and noted that you don't see anything at or over a 1000 points without rolling quite high on the large fleet table. I know that I built a hull 8 carrier once, with all of the tech levels at 0 and it cost 378 points. With a fleet of 600 to 700 points, I wouldn't be able to put much else out on the board, and a hull 8 ship won't last long......
I personally like the idea of a 2 to 4 hour game.... where most of the games I have been running or playing have been lasting only 1 - 2 hours.....
I had one with my fiance, and due to the dice rolling good to hit and pen numbers, the whole game only lasted 38 minutes.... where we were hoping to make an afternoon of it........
I hope that this explains it better....
John
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Time to make sure those weapon batteries are armored, eh? *chuckles*