How you're supposed to apply screens in the fleet combat rules is really unclear I think. as far as I can tell, except for the part where you assemble your screen defence pool, no explanation is given. Perhaps the most raw reading is that you should take the base damage and go through the whole damage determining process:
Sutract defensive dm from offensive (implied by example)
Add result to base damage
Subtract armor
Multiply by damage multiple
Multiply by weapon count
Then the attack effectiveness process:
Add up situation dms
Table lookup
Multiply determined damage
Apply damage
then perhaps you apply screen defence?
it could instead be in between the two processes but I think that doesn't make a lot of sense
either way, both of these methods render screens very weak and the cannon ships don't make a lot of sense, you might expect a single large meson bay to take just over 10 screens to block entirely.
I think this scheme is kind of ridiculous and doesn't really jive with the cannon ships, you might expect a 10kt ship with 6 large meson bays to basically dismantle a tigress, over a few turns but basically unopposed.
the other relatively RAW interpretation is to lean on the non-fleet damage sequence to fill in the gaps, this would place screen reductions in the middle of the damage determining process, after subtracting armor but before multiplying by the damage multiplier. This has sort of the opposite effect, where you would expect a single screen to block an entire meson spinal up to factor 9, and any number of meson bays from a single ship/squadron. This essentially turns meson guns into nerf guns, your spinal mount is being block by something that is 0.015% of it's size. I think this also doesn't really jive with the cannon ships because they equip meson guns in the face of this
I can only conclude that this was an oversight, the thing that I think actually works reasonably is to lift the weapon count multiplier step to after the armor step, and place screen reductions after that, this leads to a single screen blocking about 11 small bays, 9 medium or large bays, or, again 9 factors of spinal mount, this works well for bays but still means spinals are just not worth using, the fix for this is that you could require the factor number screen defense points to neutralize a damage point from spinals, so a factor 1 spinal would take 6 screen points to block entirely, while a F2 would take 24, a F9 486, F12 864. This yields spinals that are really quite threatening, at least at large sizes, I suppose all the ships equiped with F1 meson spinals remain kind of SoL in this case, but that would not be the only very strange design choice in these ships.
Sutract defensive dm from offensive (implied by example)
Add result to base damage
Subtract armor
Multiply by damage multiple
Multiply by weapon count
Then the attack effectiveness process:
Add up situation dms
Table lookup
Multiply determined damage
Apply damage
then perhaps you apply screen defence?
it could instead be in between the two processes but I think that doesn't make a lot of sense
either way, both of these methods render screens very weak and the cannon ships don't make a lot of sense, you might expect a single large meson bay to take just over 10 screens to block entirely.
I think this scheme is kind of ridiculous and doesn't really jive with the cannon ships, you might expect a 10kt ship with 6 large meson bays to basically dismantle a tigress, over a few turns but basically unopposed.
the other relatively RAW interpretation is to lean on the non-fleet damage sequence to fill in the gaps, this would place screen reductions in the middle of the damage determining process, after subtracting armor but before multiplying by the damage multiplier. This has sort of the opposite effect, where you would expect a single screen to block an entire meson spinal up to factor 9, and any number of meson bays from a single ship/squadron. This essentially turns meson guns into nerf guns, your spinal mount is being block by something that is 0.015% of it's size. I think this also doesn't really jive with the cannon ships because they equip meson guns in the face of this
I can only conclude that this was an oversight, the thing that I think actually works reasonably is to lift the weapon count multiplier step to after the armor step, and place screen reductions after that, this leads to a single screen blocking about 11 small bays, 9 medium or large bays, or, again 9 factors of spinal mount, this works well for bays but still means spinals are just not worth using, the fix for this is that you could require the factor number screen defense points to neutralize a damage point from spinals, so a factor 1 spinal would take 6 screen points to block entirely, while a F2 would take 24, a F9 486, F12 864. This yields spinals that are really quite threatening, at least at large sizes, I suppose all the ships equiped with F1 meson spinals remain kind of SoL in this case, but that would not be the only very strange design choice in these ships.
