Screens - February Update

[Nerhesi]

Lets take a look at actual numbers

Example:

Fusion Bay, Small, 1DD. 50 tons. 50 power. MCr 8.
Fusion Bay, Medium, 2DD. 100 tons. 50 power. MCr 8.
Nuclear Dampener. 2D times effect. 20 tons. 20 power. MCr 30.

At minimum you need an 11+ to get 2D on the screen effect (10+ is base difficulty. you multiply effect by 2D. So perhaps 0 effect success is like 1D...)
To counteract a 1DD weapon, you would need an 11 with 5 screens. Or a 12 with 3 screens. A 13/14 with 2 screens. Or a 15 with 1 screen.

If you want to take an veteran crew with a total DM of +3 for example. Rolling a 8 on 2D angle Screens, would result in an 11. This would mean you technically need 5 screens per small bay to intercept that fire. That is double the tonnage, the power, and a TON more cost.

Now for Mesons... The TL15, 3000 ton Meson gun, puts out on average, 21,000 points of damage.
It would take 3000 screens to stop 21,000 points of damage. This is assuming our lovely 8 is rolled on 2D, and the screen operator(s) have a 3+. At TL15, this means 3,000 x 14 ton (reduced size) Meson Screens. 42,000 TONS of meson screens. Wooooo lol. That is some lovely screening you need.

Now even if you assume some crazy skilled operator, the legendary "Smooth Operator" with a +6 to screens. He would be able to counter the best meson weapon with only 750 tons of screens.

Thoughts? Should we simply make it 1D x effect but lower effect to 8+?

 

[Chas]

I was just going to post this question - as to how we see Meson screens affecting spinals. That will be important in the final wash

 

[Nerhesi]

I was just going to post this question - as to how we see Meson screens affecting spinals. That will be important in the final wash

I think this puts a lot of power in the hands of one person. Logically it makes sense to allow 1 person to use all screens.

To preserve balance, we want screens to obviously be, on average, less powerful than the weapon. This is the case. So technically, you can't just a normal ship immune to mesons. However, if you have dedicated MEson-Screeners using screen software, then that is tactically sound, and opens up a lot of tactical options.

However, with our "Smooth Operator" legendary screener, it currently allows some amazing screening. I see 1 thing required and 1 thing as optional here.

Reduce the 2D times effect. If we make it 1D times effect (but lower the difficulty from 10+) then it does scale as fast.
Perhaps limit the amount of screens to be linked at once? forcing you to get more "Smooth operator"/Legendary screeners?

 

[Chas]

Actually not sure where you are coming from with the 21,000 pts above Nerhesi. The 3000 ton Meson spinal does 3DD at TL15 i.e. 3x3.5x1000=10500 average. Right?

 

[Nerhesi]

My 21,000 is based on the 6DD Particle or Meson. Obviously the particle is much lighter, but affected by armour now.

The 6DD meson will be clocking in near around the 18,000 tons or so, and depend on the screen operator skill, it can be stopped by anywhere between 42,000 and.. oops, 10,500 tons of screens Right?

 

[Chas]

Plus a ton and half / screen for power plant at TL15.

But the 3000 3DD Meson A is the likely weapon of choice for many, clocking in at 10500 hull points a bang.

Pretty much however you cook it with the current design paradigms you'd be better off spending the weight of meson screens on more or bigger spinal mounts for yourself regardless in the sense offense is the best defense.

But I'm not sure what Matt wants from meson screens for spinal attacks in terms of balancing the bigger picture. It's nice to have the screens vs. bay weapon mesons if we want to play gunner angle screens, but it seems a bit off as a game mechanic vs. the massive massive spinals on a fleet scale. Unless there's something we're not seeing in the rules as is.

 

[Nerhesi]

There is a weird sense of balance/imbalance about it... as it stands now:

What about the 75,000 ton Fleet Screener ship with 4 or so legendary screen operators? Like PD, Fleet screening for other ships is in, so that means... I can probably have a ship loaded with something like 3,000 Meson Screens.

Each 600 screens are tied to one guy with a Skill 4, Characteristic bonus of +2 (thank you Dex implant), and a skill wire (+1). +7 to my screening rolls.
Each of them operating 600 screens will prevent around 5DD of spinal Meson damage. That is an amazing investment - that one ship can intercept 6 spinal attacks! That opens up new tactical options (e.g. Send fighter to take out that screening ship! Launch torpedoes! Bring it down so our spinals are of use! Use your bays! lol) - meanwhile it is just running the most evade and EW software it can, with reinforced hull and crapload of PD!

The imbalance I sense comes from the fact that the ships entire ability is based strictly on the 4-hotshot screen operators If they're just like 2 skill, +1 stat graduates, then you're done - useless ship

Legendary operator - 8D per screen
Regular operator - maybe 2D per screen
Veteran operator - 2D per screen

If we go to a 8+ angle screens, and the screens are 1D Times effect:
Regular operator: 2D per screen
Legendary operator: 6D per screen
Veteran operator: 3D per screen

Top end craziness is reduced, generic guys can actually use screens, and better scaling.

This is assuming of course Chas that my calcs are correct in how much damage we are screening per ship

 

[Chas]

The whole thing's a bit meh Nerhesi if we're down to considering operator skill as the make or break of a game mechanic.

For mine, to be frank, I'd be a lot happier if meson screens were pushed into the high technology chapter, to go with the meson bay weapons they protect against, and we leave the core rules where you cannot affect spinal meson weapons. It would save everybody, designers, players and refs an awful lot of headache. The meson spinals are pretty much there anyway, you'd just need to rejig the weights of the Meson A to be a chunk higher (which it needs regardless) and you'd have a balanced system. The particles have a range advantage, Meson's become by the end of the technology curve at TL15 the weapons of choice for the super dreadnoughts and it all makes sense.

 

[Nerhesi]

The whole thing's a bit meh Nerhesi if we're down to considering operator skill as the make or break of a game mechanic.

For mine, to be frank, I'd be a lot happier if meson screens were pushed into the high technology chapter, to go with the meson bay weapons they protect against, and we leave the core rules where you cannot affect spinal meson weapons. It would save everybody, designers, players and refs an awful lot of headache. The meson spinals are pretty much there anyway, you'd just need to rejig the weights of the Meson A to be a chunk higher (which it needs regardless) and you'd have a balanced system. The particles have a range advantage, Meson's become by the end of the technology curve at TL15 the weapons of choice for the super dreadnoughts and it all makes sense.

I'm going to investigate T5... Mesons there are restricted to "spinal" and "main" weapon types (the categories above bays), and the screens are there too. Im curious as to the interaction.

However, I should point Chas that PD, gunnery, dodge, technically everything is heavily modified by operator skill

 

[Chas]

Sounds good, I'll be interested in what you find and how easily that'll be transferable to fleet action rules...

 

[Nerhesi]

Sounds good, I'll be interested in what you find and how easily that'll be transferable to fleet action rules...

Nope - you wouldn't, and neither would I. Dusted off the book and double checked the latest errata. Now I'm putting it neatly back down to collect dust... and I have another reason to remember why I gave up.

A meson screen (as little as 1-ton, size determines the radius of coverage if I'm not mistaken) completely inhibits Meson decay within that area. Yes, that means your TL-13 Meson screen ignore all incoming meson fire according to T5. I'm confirming my understanding with others now.

So anyways, back to MGT2 (warm, fuzzy, feeling again), as long as we stop the Radiation, we can find a way to make the damage reasonable. But otherwise, no golden gems of insight from T5 (no surprise).

 

[Chas]

Sounds good, I'll be interested in what you find and how easily that'll be transferable to fleet action rules...

Nope - you wouldn't, and neither would I. Dusted off the book and double checked the latest errata. Now I'm putting it neatly back down to collect dust... and I have another reason to remember why I gave up.

A meson screen (as little as 1-ton, size determines the radius of coverage if I'm not mistaken) completely inhibits Meson decay within that area. Yes, that means your TL-13 Meson screen ignore all incoming meson fire according to T5. I'm confirming my understanding with others now.

So anyways, back to MGT2 (warm, fuzzy, feeling again), as long as we stop the Radiation, we can find a way to make the damage reasonable. But otherwise, no golden gems of insight from T5 (no surprise).

:lol:

You could have nuclear dampers seriously reducing any sort of radiation. Either by default or on a power point basis.

Edit: and the current rules meson radiation is reduced by a Radiation Shielded Ship which every capital ship will be.

Radiation Shielding (TL7): Radiation shielding improves the crew’s protection against radiation from both natural sources (such as solar flares and pulsars) and artificial (including nuclear bombs and meson weapons).

 

[Chas]

Let's come back to this using the Screen Optimizing Software and the straight power point burn method.

Screen Optimiser: The Screen Optimiser package takes control of any screens mounted on a ship, and automatically configures them on the fly to best degrade enemy attacks. It automatically performs the Angle Screens (Gunner) action (see page XX) against any attack and can use any number of screens simultaneously.

Let's interpret this to mean that the software can use a screen against any number of attacks and automatically succeed. So at the maximum a ship only needs to use 5 dampers and 5 meson screens and then after that everything becomes power point burn.

So we have 5 meson screens reducing average 35 hull points at cost of 150 power points.

So for the 3DD Meson weapon doing 10500 hull points you need:

10500 / 35 * 150 = 52,500 power points to reduce it completely. That's 2,625 tons of dedicated power plant at TL15. Not out of reach at TL15 for a cruiser and up if you've kept power in reserve and not used it all for powering your maneuver drive.

Now supposing you also had some high efficiency batteries available:
The fusion plant creates 20 power for 1 ton, the batteries store 60 power for 1 ton, a significant saving.

Now consider you probably don't need to stop the damage completely, but only need to reduce the damage to keep you up and fighting, and the power point paradigm becomes attractive.

So this is a workable mechanism, except that it's probably tipped in favor of particle weapons at the moment, the power point burn is not quite high enough - but that is easy to configure (though the implication will be meson bays never get put in capital ship combat, they will be too easily negated...).

If we flip this around and look at nuclear dampers for the power cost for damage reduction:
Yep, fusion bays are negated easily at capital ship combat levels (though permutations with ion weapons become interesting, and situations where a ships used their spare power on a spinal attack and now vulnerable)
Yep, nuclear missiles bite the dust at the capital ship level

But is that a bad thing? For mine fusion weapons are too much simply better than everything else in standard usage. And nuclear missiles will still have their place in smaller ship/older tech combat.

 

[Nerhesi]

It just becomes an investment.

Meson and ignore armour and the target better have some good screening?

Or go with fusion ,and overpower armour and screens, and make sure their TL is high enough to have increased range and so on. Not to mention they're probably worse on efficiency when you factor in tonnage, hardpoints, power, etc.. (especially adding crew quarters the like)

 

[Chas]

The good point if just a power burn mechanism is used, is that it is easily balanced. You could come back to this after everything else is done and then say... hmmm... I want nukes and fusions to be more effective, let's triple the power drain and require 10 screens to be linked to affect fusion bays.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Hi guys,

I am keeping a close eye on this thread, so please continue!

A couple of things...

I think screens should be slightly inefficient at handling damage, i.e, you should need more power and tonnage to stop 1D damage than to deal it. However, cost I could be moved a great deal on, if you think screens should be cheaper.

Second, fleet screeners - no. Let's avoid that.m Screens protect the ship carrying them only (I like the idea of the massive battleship screening the close formation-flying merchant, but that may be a referee fiat thing, rather than standard fleet tactic).

 

[Nerhesi]

Hi guys,

I am keeping a close eye on this thread, so please continue!

A couple of things...

I think screens should be slightly inefficient at handling damage, i.e, you should need more power and tonnage to stop 1D damage than to deal it. However, cost I could be moved a great deal on, if you think screens should be cheaper.

Second, fleet screeners - no. Let's avoid that.m Screens protect the ship carrying them only (I like the idea of the massive battleship screening the close formation-flying merchant, but that may be a referee fiat thing, rather than standard fleet tactic).

Well, if you can't fleet-screen Matt then I think we're good to go as is because they are pretty damn inefficient - unless you have that legendary operator. Only a couple of minor changes then:

a) A maximum on how many screens can be run by the same person... unless we're ok with having 1 screen operator (similar to 1 pilot). Dont know if you want the "shields-ace elite dude" or the "shields-ace elite team"
b) May want to consider fleet-screening for Fleet tactic as it was in MGT1 and is in T5 as well. Perhaps it just requires amazing piloting rolls for someone flying in adjacent range.

 

[MongooseMatt]

a) Remember that one screen operator can only defend against one attack, so more than one may be a good idea

b) I think this is more like the Narn Cruiser protecting the ship heading to the jump gate from the Centauri - maybe more a ref fiat thing than a standard rule...

 

[Nerhesi]

Ok let me understand:

So screens can be used only once a round.
An operator can use any # of screens. They can only do so once a round.
Any screens not used by the above operator, must be used by another - the same operator can't protect against multiple attacks.

Correct?

 

[MongooseMatt]

Correct!

You will need multiple screens and operators for best protection. But if you have a hot operator, you can probably defend against the worst attack every round, in the very least.