Ways to fight stealth

[Green_Knight]

we have always played that AD on a weapon system are
to represent the one waepon and so aimed all the dice to
one target and fiered them all.

I have seen the "splitting fire" rule in 2nd Edition, is it new
or was it in ACTA also ?

Think it came from the Dag'Kar which had multiple EMines
in its front arc and made sense back then.

 

[Burger]

Splitting fire was always allowed in 1e too, but not for e-mines.

 

[Locutus9956]

hang on can you split emines now? I seriously hope not....

 

[Greg Smith]

But ACTA rules don't distinguish between several small weapons, or one large one. For example an Avioki's beam, surely fluffwise that would still count as fired of you only passed one stealth check?

I would think splitting fire was the way ACTA allowed for multiple small weapons. However, I would concur with the Avioki beam example.

 

[H]

hang on can you split emines now? I seriously hope not....

I don't think so, I'd have to mooch through the rules again, but nope, I can't see it, if you could, you could cover such an area of space to reduce stealthed ships it would be ridiculous.

 

[Shadow Queen]

A nuke minefield hidden in a bunch of asteroids

 

[Locutus9956]

thank Jeebus! Nearly gave me a heart attack there Also thinking of what you could do to a fighter heavy fleet like EA or evern worse, Gaim!

 

[H]

oh you can still do enough with the pulsar mines thank you

 

[Burger]

Splitting fire was always allowed in 1e too, but not for e-mines.

Reading 4tw

 

[Locutus9956]

Splitting fire was always allowed in 1e too, but not for e-mines.

Implies that splitting fire was allowed in 1st edition but it wasnt allowed for emines, which kind of makes it sound like this was different from how it is now...

 

[Burger]

Doesn't imply that to me, if you take Green Knight's post into account... he asked if splitting was allowed in 1e, and mentioned the Dag'Kar.

 

[Locutus9956]

Id still read it as refering to the state of things in 2nd Ed. Greenknights post actualyl was partly WHY I thought it might have changed since the Dag Kar has gone down to a single emine launcher from several in 1st ed.

In any case you cant split emines and the general consensus seems to be slow loading weapons that fire ANY of their AD count as reloading fully next turn so all's well

 

[tneva82]

(which frankly despite some players whinging about it made sense to me, if you fail stealth you dont decide you cant see the target and not fire, you MISS).

You have no lock so why would you shoot? Blind firing into empty space isn't best tactic to hit something. You need computer controlled firing solutions to have any realistic chance to hit so unless you get that lock-on there's no point firing.

That was very good change in 2nd ed. Made no sense that ship would just fire empty space knowing they would miss with those shots.

 

[Burger]

That was very good change in 2nd ed. Made no sense that ship would just fire empty space knowing they would miss with those shots.

It might make sense in fluff terms, but in game firepower terms it is a very broken change. Slow-loading weapons have become one of the best ways of defeating stealth now!

SL weapons generally have double the ADs of their non-slow-loading equivalents - to balance out the fact that they can only fire every other turn. Yet when firing against stealth ships they can try to break stealth every turn, until they succeed.

Example:

With a 50% chance to break stealth, a normal weapon with 6 ADs... will get on average 6 ADs every other turn. That is 3 ADs per turn on average.

Slow-loading weapon would have 12 ADs, in 1e it would get to fire 12 AD once every 4 turns, that is still 3 AD per turn on average.

In 2e that 12 AD weapon will break stealth once every three turns... fail, pass, loading, fail, pass, loading... therefore average ADs is 4 per turn.

 

[H]

I wonder if it is ever possible for a discussion not to come down to maths?

 

[Burger]

I wonder if it is ever possible for a discussion not to come down to maths?

What do you want us to use, rough guesswork??

 

[H]

it's supposed to be a fun game, not a bloody accounting excercise

 

[Burger]

Some cheese, to go with your whine

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Hiff's right, this game isn't solely for maths degree students. Give the sodding probability a rest and stop shitting on everyone that disagrees with you...

 

[H]

*Walks away from the discussion now that the bottles are being thrown*