Hello all

[sabrina]

I been away for a couple of months, but I had an idea for fleeting. Though it would require an overhaul of ship template, but it make ships easier to stay and rp.

Give each class, so many hard points. These can be used as forward or aft deflector shields. Weapons forward aft or starboard or portside. Then the play would have, rp turning the guns to fire.

I will elaborate tomorrow

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="sabrina"]
I'm interested!

 

[Tellos]

I'll give it a listen thats for sure.

 

[sabrina]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] [member="Tellos"]
The base idea, would be the ship designer would have to be a little more detailed on where things are. This would only be on active ship parts, like gun batteries, torpedoes, deflector shields, tractor beams and anything else they might use in an rp against someone. This in turn would influence the writer of the ship, as if they put guns all the front of ship they would have to post things like this.

Sabrina saw ship begins to pass her on the starboard side, she turned to her ships captain and calmly order him to Cut starboard thruster. The captain nodded, and sent the command relay to cut starboard thruster. As the ship thruster was cut leaving just the portside thrust active, the ship began to spin to carry on facing the enemy cruiser. She needed to keep the front of her facing it otherwise she would not be able to return fire. The weapons became active again, and she gave the order Open fire! .......

Obviously the hardpoints need to basic working out
1: How many per ship class.
2: What each item is worth, and some base idea of how much damage they can take.
3: how much damage each weapon type can give
4: How many extra hard point should someone have for minor, limited and unique ships.

For guns basic idea would be something like this
Forward Arc has 180 degrees on the front
The flank guns have 180 degrees off center by 45 degrees, so they can still see part of what's in front, but they can't fire backward so the rear is vulnerable.
Then rear turrets can fire 45 degree angle just covering the rear of the ship

Deflector shields Should be divided into equally into 90 degrees for larger ships, but just front and aft for small ships. This would give small ships a tactical advantage, in efficiency hardpoints. Though they still have less guns to bring to bear.

 

[sabrina]

This would affect how the ships are designed, say you want a troop carrier.
Then you would put more hardpoints into life support and shields, and cargo space.
Carriers would do something similar, by putting hard points into hangar bays.
Then assault ships, would be all weapons and shields.
This would give each designer, a free hand at making their ship.
This inturn would enable them to be rped out more, as they have more designed strengths and weakness.


Shields/Armour
Standard shields should say deflect one turbo cannon per turn, armour can take a total of ten shots.
Also 3/4 of all shots fired from a ship are assumed to hit, all shots from a fighter are assumed to hit a larger ship. Though the weapons are classed as pd lasers, though bombs are considered normal making them deadlier. Dog fighting ships are only hit 1/4 of the time, unless good reason is given.
This would be subject to review, after testing

 

[sabrina]

So when armour starts to take damage, the rp can comment about the ship hull shaking. Also once it has been penetrated, then they can start removing hardpoints in damage. This can be done by the defender, though they have to choose hardpoints based on that side that is being struck. So guns, cargo, shuttle bays and deflector shields could go. Though if the rear of the ship is being struck, they have give good reason why it`s not the ship's engines, since they are a big target. This is where things like fighters and bomber come into there own, as they more likely to get into the rear of the ship and do crippling damage. Also would give rise rping formations, as this would prevent ships from being shot in the rear.

So a base idea for power ranks would be this,
point defence weapons = 1/4 dam (I shall assume each fighter has two of these)
standard turbo laser = 1 dam (They can't target fighters)
heavy turbo laser =1.5 dam (this would damage armour)

Torpedoes and missiles = 3 dam (but can be stopped by pd weapons, chaff or ew)
Heavy missiles and torpedos = 5 dam (but can be stopped by pd weapons, chaff or ew)

Long range means they can shoot from round two, for half dam. Until they have closed the gap, then they are just same as normal.

ion cannons would disrupt the shields in the next round, but can't damage the hull
so you don't do any damage, but carry over anything for next combat phase

this bit can`t be rped out by mentioning get more power to deflector shields

Adding power to deflector shields can be done, by stating where your routing power from
i.e.
Sabrina ship was being hit hard by ion cannons, she turned to the her captain Route power from rear deflector shields to forward shields, and get them stabilized asap! Her voice had sense of urgency in it as she feared with her forwards shields, she soon become dead in space...

 

[sabrina]

rping this idea

each ship must be named
each one must have minimum of one paragraph for it, so everyone knows what they are doing with that ship
There should be an overall post describing the fleet action from there admirals view point, this would be overall formation, and what they see the enemy doing.
And end of it should be a list ships and damage sustained.

this is base idea, any criticism is welcome.
also clarifications are also welcome

 

[Gir Quee]

I'd really like to see a system like this in place for creating ships, though I don't know if we could ever get the board to go over to it.

Full Thrust has a very similar system for dealing with basic weapon types and fire arcs (see here on page 11), and even has a few computer programs(such as here that can do all of those calculations automatically. The way Full Thrust plays out also includes battle damage in a very similar way to how you have described.

The old version of the Star Wars D20 "Starships of the Galaxy" also has a system for relating hull size, weapons, carried craft, and the like via a hardpoint system (there's an online version here).

But the problem with those two systems is that they're probably both too complicated for use by the board.

I'd suggest that each size category of a ship (corvette, frigate, etc) be allotted a certain amount of hardpoints that could be used for things like weapons, increased speed, hangar capacity, and so forth. With that, I'd suggest making weapons with limited or fixed fire arcs cheaper than those with a lot of movement (in other words, I'd think that that rear arc gun with 45 degree transverse should cost less than a similarly sized fore gun with a full 180 degree fire arc). I think that would provide more incentive for people to be more interested in their fire arcs.

 

[sabrina]

[member="Gir Quee"]
Thank you, as mentioned part working things out, would be assign hard points to each ship class. Also what hardpoints can buy you

 

[Gir Quee]

[member="sabrina"]

By hardpoints, I mean spaces set aside in the ship for upgrades or subsystems, in a manner kind of similar to how the Starship 2.0 guide has "capital guns" to count weapons.

For example, we could say that a corvette has 20 hardpoints that can be spent however the designer wants.

For example, a capital gun could cost 1 hardpoint, a defensive emplacement could cost 0.5, but to carry a single starfighter might cost 2 hardpoints.

Using a system like that, someone then might make an assault corvette that has 15 turbolasers, 10 defense guns, and no carried craft. Or they might make a carrier corvette by ditching their guns for starfighters. A carrier corvette would then have something like 4 turbolasers, 8 defense guns, and carry 8 starfighters.

In either case, the hardpoints spent add up to 20.

Other systems people might use hardpoints on might be back-up shield generators, better engines, and so forth.

 

[sabrina]

Yes also use it as empty cargo space and life support, so they can house a lot of troops.
Also tractor beams would use them.
[member="Gir Quee"]

 

[Gir Quee]

[member="Sabrina"]

Exactly.

It would give designers a lot of flexibility, especially for making specialty craft like a tug (which would use tractor beams instead of normal weapons) or a troop transport (which would use hardpoints to carry people instead).

The key to this is making it in an easy enough system for people to want to use because they understand it. (The hardpoint costs also have to be balanced correctly too, but that shouldn't be super hard).

 

[sabrina]

[member="Gir Quee"] I am happy you like the basic idea, will see what others make of it before advancing.

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

The hardpoints idea has merit. There are three big issues though.

First, one would need to test and balance a list of costs and hardpoint amounts for each class of ship. That’s not a simple thing to do, but possible.
Second, one would need to find a way to convert current ships to this new system.
Third, actually getting this officially approved would be likely impossible. The drive in the factory is for simplifying, and no system with specified damage would ever be taken on.

The best you could hope for, officially, is to get people on board with the hardpoint system, with the ability to expand the amount of hardpoints a ship has through dev threads.

I just think in the end it’ll be a hard battle.

 

[Gir Quee]

Second, one would need to find a way to convert current ships to this new system.
Third, actually getting this officially approved would be likely impossible. The drive in the factory is for simplifying, and no system with specified damage would ever be taken on.

I'd agree that probably we wouldn't be able to get the whole thing approved, but we could maybe do elements of it.

My solution to that would be to make a simpler version of this, and make it backwards compatible (as in older designs would already fit, at least by the 2.0 guide)). I think it wouldn't be too hard to consolidate the offensive power of a ship by coming up with equivalents between weapons and carried craft. From the looks of it now, it appears that roughly 1.5 capital guns is equivalent to a single starfighter based on the old 2.0 guide numbers. And while we likely would not be able to get all of the systems we would want to fit the hardpoint scheme, future tech submissions could be made that would fit the hardpoint scheme.

But you're probably right, it would still be a longshot even with refinement.

 

[sabrina]

[member="Gir Quee"] [member="Valiens Nantaris"]

Think we should start by trying to make hard points, fit the current ship setup. It would atleast give us a chance, in the factory side of things.
Then see what other think on the main board

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

[member="sabrina"]
Good idea.

 

[sabrina]

[member="Valiens Nantaris"] I think [member="Ayden cater"] may be very useful in this