ScreenShips

[Gary Carpenter]

Screen Ships, and the way the battle system works, is logical, if you think about it this way.

 

First, my screen ships are NOT manned, they are either computer controled or pilot controled from the command ship.

 

Also, I would think in space, battles would start at great distances. This means that the fire power of each fleet, would narrow like a funnel as it got closer to the enemy fleet. This is where the screen ships would be located, at the narrowest funnel point, yet far enough from the fleet, so there is no collateral damage. Also the screen ships are TRYING to get hit.

 

This is also why at warp points, the advantage is to the defender, as he can actually surround the warp point, though even at a warp point I would think there would have to be some distance, IE you would not want a ship to appear inside your ship( OR would you)

[Ur Lord Tedric]

 

We're not so sure that 'logic' has any part to play......and that doesn't matter one whit.

 

All we need is to be able to understand what happens so we can then execute various tactics against various options.

 

Whilst we wait patiently for the Naval Combat Supplement to round things out, we are, as we have alluded to before, extremely happy with how the battle system seems to be thought out.

 

It seems to give us the possibility of multiple options of DepLoc vs weapons vs defences vs ship size, let alone the hoped for understanding of the Fighter & Drone options, yet remains really rather beautifully simple.

 

That said, the concept of screen-ships fits in quite happily with a whole load of the SF writing out there whether it be manned, unmanned, drones, ships, mines or just ECM ghosts....

 

To whit, whilst it was a bit of a surprise that Fighters and Drones go through the WP with the very first ship and not with the 'carrier' - then you can suddenly translate that into some of the tactics seen in the Weber/White books.....

 

eg - Fighters through can be seen where the carriers pop through the WP, immediately turn around and go back through. Only to reappear later to pick up the fighters.

 

For Drones, think the warp capable SBMHAWK - and there's the logic......

 

But yes, we agree with you wholeheartedly. Space is big, really big , but by comparison weapon ranges are small and getting in the way of shots aimed at targets 'further away' quite reasonable - especially if your ships are travelling at an appreciable % of light-speed.....

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

[ali-t-akua]

We're not so sure that 'logic' has any part to play......and that doesn't matter one whit. 

 

All we need is to be able to understand what happens so we can then execute various tactics against various options.

 

I agree.

[Lord Uriel]

We're not so sure that 'logic' has any part to play......and that doesn't matter one whit. 

 

All we need is to be able to understand what happens so we can then execute various tactics against various options.

 

I agree.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

Ditto. Unless Ur-Lord is complaining. There seems to be alot of complaining about those who complain, and I don't want to be considered a complainer, unless that viewpoint is itself considered a complaint.

[President Guztov]

Im sure screen ships have thier niche but what I dont want to see is literally hundreds or even thousands of these screens appearing on a battle report printout. I cant imagine the length of the

report should several hundred or even thousand of these little ittle bitty screens pop up on both sides of the battle. Im actually for increasing the min size to the max that 1 shipyard can produce (10000 tons).

[WKE235]

We're not so sure that 'logic' has any part to play......and that doesn't matter one whit. 

 

All we need is to be able to understand what happens so we can then execute various tactics against various options.

 

I agree.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Ditto. Unless Ur-Lord is complaining. There seems to be alot of complaining about those who complain, and I don't want to be considered a complainer, unless that viewpoint is itself considered a complaint.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Frankly, I'm getting annoyed. Someone needs to point me to where I can file a complaint about those complainers who are complaining about others who complain about folks who publically express their complaints about the game.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

Im sure screen ships have thier niche but what I dont want to see is literally hundreds or even thousands of these screens appearing on a battle report printout. I cant imagine the length of the

report should several hundred or even thousand of these little ittle bitty screens pop up on both sides of the battle. Im actually for increasing the min size to the max that 1 shipyard can produce (10000 tons).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

We mentioned this is passing once before.....

 

We believe there is much merit in requesting a change to the actual battle result of a Naval Battle to show a summary, rather than detailing every ship.

 

We do recognise this is would require new code as currently the output program can merely print the state of each ship, but perhaps, and especially for the 'screening corvette types' it could be something like:

 

300 Mk I Junk Corvette(s) (1,000 tons) + Description

 

200 Destroyed; 50 Damaged; 50 OK

 

With perhaps the damage appearing in it's other categories.

 

That said, is there any need to know that ships are any more than just damaged as we can't get at them individually?

 

And/or, could the fleet summaries in the turn report also show the numbers of types with damage - which perhaps reduces each turn as repair teams complete their work?

 

And if we get that far, perhaps there could be a tweak to the RN order that, like the ALL choice, could be 'DAMAGED' and would only RN damaged ships - which could then be taken 'back' for full repair......

 

Chief Planner to Ur-Lord Tedric

[Ur Lord Tedric]

Ditto.  Unless Ur-Lord is complaining.  There seems to be alot of complaining about those who complain, and I don't want to be considered a complainer, unless that viewpoint is itself considered a complaint. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Nope - real complaints, if any, should always be sent to GMs.....

 

Passionate discussion may ensue, however, because this is the game we love to play......

 

Lord High Seneschal to Ur-Lord Tedric

[AKO]

I would like to keep the details, also on the screens.

I want to know who was killed by our nice weapons.

I remember the battle reports from SNII, where battles were run in 16 cycles, and you could see the details for every weapon system fired in each cycle.

One battle had over 100 pages (and this was a real print out, since .pdf's etc were not in use then).

So, the battle reports are a lot more condense now than they used to be in SNII.

Kind regards,

[Ur Lord Tedric]

I would like to keep the details, also on the screens.

I want to know who was killed by our nice weapons.

I remember the battle reports from SNII, where battles were run in 16 cycles, and you could see the details for every weapon system fired in each cycle.

One battle had over 100 pages (and this was a real print out, since .pdf's etc were not in use then).

So, the battle reports are a lot more condense now than they used to be in SNII.

Kind regards,

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Oh, we can sympathise greatly - we could probably find a couple of meaty printouts in a dusty box somewhere!

 

But at the moment we just get a very long summary, which doesn't tell us a great deal at all. It just tells us whether a ship is damaged, or not, and this could be summarised with no loss of information.

 

Now, if we could have a round by round picture, then that would be really great. But with battles lasting 100's of rounds sometimes, we understand that this is probably impractical.

 

And at the end of the day it's the result that matters with this system and not the complete detail of how we got there - provided we do understand the system enough to subsequently understand the summary........

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric