Demo ship combat

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 3:20 pm

When a torpedo is fired the launcher puts an energy field around it to, one push it forward, two allow it to travel at warp. When this field is tuned right it will allow the torpedo to pass through shields but the torpedo stays solid, until it goes BOOM that is.

sunnyside · Post by **sunnyside** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 9:48 pm

Alright I'm trying to decide how to handle ablative armor, "high" structural integrity and the defiant.

I'm thinking ablative armor would just allow the extra damage capacity a ship gets from hull armor to act like an extra shield. So the ship, in principle, doesn't take any more TJ of damage to blow, however with regular armor there will be crits and damage all over the place while the ship with ablative is running just fine. And then when the ablative armor is gone it'll take very little to trash the unarmored stuff beneath.

In DITL high sturctural integrity gets you +10 to hull armor. Not even enough to bother with. Maybe increase the +90,000 part of calculating capacity to 120,000 or some such?

And the defiant. It's pretty small but armored. Maybe only give it 5 sections, but give -1 to all attempts to hit it?

Also deep still likes the idea of using tractor beams wot weaken others attacks. Any ideas for rules for this?

Finally instead of minuses for relative con I'll just give +1 for every thousand CM a ship has? rolls will max in effectiveness at 12 (there is only so much a ship can do to dodge) rolls higher than that will work to counter what a different ship might be trying to do against you.

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 9:49 pm

Ablative armor helps reduce the effect of energy weapons.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 9:51 pm

Sounds pretty good to me.
Perhaps giving the ablative armour 1/2 of the actual shields power?
And I have no idea about using the tractors as a weapon...

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 9:53 pm

The tractor beam isn't a weapon, its a defense. Use it to throw off a PT in some random direction that its thruster wouldn't be able to save it from.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 9:54 pm

Hmm, perhaps taking a roll for it.
You could say if he passes the role, the torp goes away from the ship (just dosen't hit), but if he fails, the torp hits the emmiter.

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 9:58 pm

Sounds right.

sunnyside · Post by **sunnyside** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 10:06 pm

Wasn't it used against phasors?

And again is there some special condition why the defiant used them that way and nobody else ever did after that? Some new kind of tractor beam on the defiant? Extreme proximity maybe?

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 10:10 pm

It doen't stop phasers, just interfers with their targeting and power levels. The closer you are, the more effect you have. With phasers that is.

sunnyside · Post by **sunnyside** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:28 pm

Alright here's another, biggish, issue.

Ramming/self destructing. I'm inclined to say that if tractor beams are active they can prevent a different ship from ramming them. If they aren't maybe have a ram do damage equal to 1/2 the TJ capacity of each of it's sections to itself and the other ship.

Ok that seems not so bad. The trick is when you throw a self destruct on top of that. On screen it seems like that's nearly an unbounded force. (though I'm sure I'd get tons of requests for remote piloted shuttles if that was the case).

Actually the Enterprise D survived a warp core breach when the shuttle was only a little ways away from the stardrive. So maybe it's a short ranged effect that isn't so bad?

Maybe somebody self destructing at tractor beam distance only does 100,000TJ of damage to whatever is facing it, 200,000 TJ if it hits a shield (shields work really well against some things, maybe this is something they do well against), and 1,000,000 TJ if it achieves contact at time of self desturct. Smaller things like shuttlecraft would be good for 1/50th of that. That still makes the kamikazi attack a little more viable than I'd like though.

Also shooting phasers at torps. Maybe -4 to hit such a little thing and 10,000TJ of damage required to pop one (so higher power phasers can try splitshots). Also I'll only make that an option at over 300,000m ranges otherwise they just hit too fast.

Granitehewer · Post by **Granitehewer** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:30 pm

couldn't we just behave within the remits of trek, and try to avoid such 'out of the box tactics' when dogfighting? or am i being boring?

sunnyside · Post by **sunnyside** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:37 pm

Granitehewer wrote:couldn't we just behave within the remits of trek, and try to avoid such 'out of the box tactics' when dogfighting? or am i being boring?

I'd be fine with that. I'm especially eager to avoid the tractor beam thing as if I give rules for that i'm sure to get battles with the tractors going the whole time which we never ever see. I'd like to say it was some special genius thing worf did, maybe with special info (wasn't it a Klingon ship, maybe he knew something). And everybody else just can't pull it off.

Ramming just shows up a lot know. Rochey already wanted to do it.

sunnyside · Post by **sunnyside** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 12:35 am

Oh a couple more things.

In combat with fleets I'm not tracking the exact XYZ coordinates of each ship. With impulse engines as powerful as they are if you aren't at least 100,000m away than you're in the same place. And facings and the like will be determined by the con rolls.

If you want a specific result relative to other people, like "I want to be on the opposite side of the enemy ship with respect to our Akira" just say so and that will be what your con roll will be trying to do. We'll see how it all tracks out.

If ships are 100,000m apart I think I'll give Coords from something as +-1 in X, Y, and Z which each integer coresponding to 100,000 meters. Hopefully even in big battles there will only be 1 or 2 melees and a couple ships off in the wings.

sunnyside · Post by **sunnyside** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 12:49 am

Oh right. Almost forgot. Multifiring. With lots of ships around you may be inclinded to want to fire both fore and aft launchers.

Now I think we've never seen that. But in theory I don't see why it shouldn't be possible unless there isn't enough power to go around. However it's hard to get ships in multiple torpedo arcs.

So I'm thinking of the following rules.

Multifiring torps applies a -1 modifier to both or a -2 modifier to one of them. And obviously there have to be valid targets.

Phasers are known to have it easier, but you could have ships all around you.

Something else I probably should have accounted for it that while fed ships have phasers for every possible angle most are designed to be able to fire forward, at least with a little jinking. Of course in 1 v 1 battles one could assume the ships bob and weave a little to let more phasors get their shots off. Not so in a fleet.

So I'm thinking for most ships they can fire only at 1/2 power into any arc other than forward if they are also fireing forward at full power. Additionally total phaser output is twice the DITL listed value. So you could fire full forward, than 1/2 rear and 1/4 and 1/4 port and starboard. I expect that to come up when fighters are involved.

I think that's every issue we need to deal with. Now we just need to reach a consensus and we'd be ready to try the next fight.

Deepcrush · Post by **Deepcrush** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 2:41 am

Sunnyside, i think could speak for everyone here in that you've got the game plan down and what ever you call on, we'll follow. Its your game, you're just kind enough to let us join in on it. Your the boss in here.