Dumb question about ACTA:SF and Drones + Plasmas

[billclo]

I have what is probably a dumb question, but I was curious.

Why are drone armed ships restricted to 3 attacks on a given target ship, but there are no restrictions on how many plasma armed ships may attack a given target ship?

I mean, I would think the fire control scanners are similar enough that if more than 3 plasma ships attacked, there would be the same interference with controlling more plasmas, just like drones.

Or was this an interaction that was not considered? :lol:

NO, I am definitely not advocating that plasma ships be restricted to 3 plasma armed ships per target ship; plasma ships have enough handicaps as it is.

 

[Focke-Wulfe]

I have what is probably a dumb question, but I was curious.

Why are drone armed ships restricted to 3 attacks on a given target ship, but there are no restrictions on how many plasma armed ships may attack a given target ship?

I mean, I would think the fire control scanners are similar enough that if more than 3 plasma ships attacked, there would be the same interference with controlling more plasmas, just like drones.

Or was this an interaction that was not considered? :lol:

NO, I am definitely not advocating that plasma ships be restricted to 3 plasma armed ships per target ship; plasma ships have enough handicaps as it is.

that is probably the exact reason why

 

[Rambler]

Well the obvious is play balance.

But if you want to dig deeper Drones and Plasma use two cometely different guidance methods in the Star Fleet Universe.

Plasmas are truly self guiding. Before they leave the launch tube the firing ship has to archive a lockon to target. It then downloads that data into the Plasma Torpedo. With this information the Torpedo is launched where it doggedly purses its target until it either runs out reaction mass or detonates. This also means once you launch a Plasma there is no calling it back or self destructing it.

Drones on the other hand require constant telemitry or a control channel. Most ships can only guide 6 drones at a time. If a drone ever loses this data stream it losses it target and tumbled off some where to run out of fuel. This is why scouts can can jam drones in flight but not plasmas.

So it really is not a dumb question it just trying to understand the background. Feel free to keep asking questions.

 

[storeylf]

As I remember it was, as above, to try and represent that ships in FC can only control so many drones at once. In ACTA with them as direct fire weapons you get to fire lots of drones every turn. In FC someone like Kzinti fires 4 drones at long range on turn 1 then can only fire 2 the next turn unless he aborts a couple, they are shot down or hit.

It's not a particularly good way of doing it, but when it was introduced I'm sure they gave that drone control thing as the rational - they couldn't really fit in limiting by firer but they could by target. But really it was an attempt to play balance a bit.

 

[billclo]

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks guys.

 

[Myrm]

The sheer number of drones in SFB at least is limited by the number of drone control channels, which is 6 for most ships, more for double control drone.

THe adaptation of Drones to direct fire weapons and abstracting the launch/fly/reload cycles out of the game meant that your wall of drones or holding of fire due to control limits on the way in didn't need to be managed and had no limits in ACTA meaning that fire of drones effectively had too many drones being represented in the abstraction. It definitely meant that drone ships in ACTA were more effective than their counterpart on and so if points were based on the original points did step outside that conversion so intriduced a potential imbalance.

So a limit needed to go in, a control limit on the firing ship doesnt work well. You'd have to do extensive testing to work out the effective average fire rate of the racks on the ship at different ranges and adjust the AD of the ship to an average somewhere. Hard to convert.

THe 3 ship limit firing gives a measure of that limitation concept - its not perfect but then its parsing through an abstraction so it doesnt need to be. It is more flexible than preplanning targetting of drones but thats acceptable in a quick play game because it allows quick play and it does slap a limit on the number of drones in one place at one time in the same concept at least that drone control limits in the original games. Its not a perfect analogue but its thinking in the same area and it matched the game balance needs.

The other option was to accept the difference in gameplay and power level from the previous game versions in a large swathe of ships and bump drone armed ship points a large amount to rebalance.