Yet another G'Quon idea
- Thread starter Da Boss
- Start date
Nightmares about Minbari
Mongoose
Personally I like the e-mine as they are. Yes they are good against several of the more powerful fleets, ISA and Minbari, because of the e-mine. but then every fleet should have a fleet that it's afraid of. And it's better when it's different fleets that scare different fleets.
That more and more races are getting e-mines does annoy me a little, as they started out as the 'big-thing' for the Narns. But then technology does creep over time so i can't really complain.
That more and more races are getting e-mines does annoy me a little, as they started out as the 'big-thing' for the Narns. But then technology does creep over time so i can't really complain.
It's direct fire at the moment, in that you can specify where you want it to explode. But it doesn't need a target lock, which is why you can put it next to a stealth ship. I'd like to see it become like artillery; you decide where you want it to explode, then roll to see where it actually does explode. It doesn't need to scatter as far as artillery in other games, just enough so you can't guarantee to put it in the exact spot you want. (It is, after all, advanced technology 250 years in the future, so it can be aimed fairly accurately - just not as accurately as a weapon with a target lock. 
)
As for technology creep, that doesn't seem to happen with other technologies, e.g. stealth (except on scouts) or gravitic shifters, and quite rightly too - they give different races their unique abilities. Spread them around too much and you may as well have a generic SF game with identical fleets that just happen to borrow a few names from B5.
)As for technology creep, that doesn't seem to happen with other technologies, e.g. stealth (except on scouts) or gravitic shifters, and quite rightly too - they give different races their unique abilities. Spread them around too much and you may as well have a generic SF game with identical fleets that just happen to borrow a few names from B5.
Foxmeister
Mongoose
AdrianH said:
It does have a target lock - it just so happens that its target is a point in space rather than a physical ship. If anything, given that point in space isn't "moving" (yes, I know that it is in reality, but we're talking abstractions here), it should actually be easier to target a fixed point reliably rather than a moving ship.
Regards,
Dave
The discussion is how it can target the exact right spot in space to just clip a stealth ship but can't target the same stealthed ship as easily. It obviously know exactly where it is.
Secondary issue, is that it can judge to ship (or more) in motion in such a way to catch them just at the edge of the blast, even though they may be altering speed randomly.
Ripple
Secondary issue, is that it can judge to ship (or more) in motion in such a way to catch them just at the edge of the blast, even though they may be altering speed randomly.
Ripple
That's not a target lock. The firing ship has not locked sensors onto a target, hence the phrase "target lock". Instead, it feeds a set of co-ordinates into the weapon system and tries to put a shot at those co-ordinates. This is basically what artillery does.Foxmeister said:
Foxmeister
Mongoose
AdrianH said:Instead, it feeds a set of co-ordinates into the weapon system and tries to put a shot at those co-ordinates. This is basically what artillery does.
Who says? You're applying the mechanics of a contemporary real world weapon system to fictional technology some 200+ years in the future. Such technology could quite possibly "lock" onto a fixed point in space.
Regards,
Dave
Foxmeister
Mongoose
Ripple said:
IIRC from the show, and I could be very wrong, when they talk of the Earth-Minbari war they say that the EA ships could not get a weapons lock on the Minbari vessels - they didn't say they were cloaked or otherwise invisible to sensors. Therefore, they knew where they were, they just couldn't fire on them with their weapons systems, because those weapons system needed active targeting information.
The energy mine doesn't have such problems since you don't need to actually strike the target directly, so as long as you know where your enemy is (i.e. you can see them), you should be able to hit them.
Of course, with the current implementation of boresight, boresighted ships shouldn't need to get a weapons lock either since they have to be pointed directly at the target, but that's just another reason why boresight sucks so badly!
I think you are trying to apply too much of the real world to the abstractions in the game here. The point is the result, not the action - you fired an area effect weapon and certain ships were caught in the area of effect *at the point the shockwave reached them*. Where they were milliseconds before, or milliseconds after is immaterial.
Regards,
Dave
Foxmeister said:AdrianH said:Instead, it feeds a set of co-ordinates into the weapon system and tries to put a shot at those co-ordinates. This is basically what artillery does.
Who says? You're applying the mechanics of a contemporary real world weapon system to fictional technology some 200+ years in the future. Such technology could quite possibly "lock" onto a fixed point in space.
How it puts the shot at that point is irrelevant. What is significant is that the system is given a set of co-ordinates and told to put a shot there. And then you should roll for it, same as you roll to hit with direct fire weapons. The difference is that if you miss, you get to see where it went - in the game, direct fire weapons either hit the target or disappear.
Foxmeister said:
Indeed you can, if you're just trying to put the e-mine somewhere near a single target. You don't care if you're dead on, it just needs to be somewhere within the blast radius. Which it will be, if the scatter is 0.5" and the blast radius is 3", and you're just after one target. Trying to place and time the blast just when two or three ships are on opposite sides of the blast - that's the neat trick.
Boresight needs a weapons lock as well; you're just aiming the entire ship at the target. Fighters do it all the time, but they're super manoeuvrable and always move after capital ships, so they're guaranteed to get their boresight locks. Fail to get the lock and you're pointing your ship somewhere near the target but not quite on it, which is also what happens if a fighter shoots at a stealth target, isn't in base contact and fails its stealth check.
That's fine if you're just aiming at one ship and others happen to be in the area. What we're talking about is deliberately aiming to get multiple targets in the blast. Otherwise the shockwave is just as likely to arrive milliseconds after the second target has moved out of its range.
Foxmeister
Mongoose
AdrianH said:
Yo *do* roll to hit - you roll the AD against each ship in the blast area. Note that the "to hit" rolls in ACTA also include armour (i.e. Hull) where you may physically hit, but fail to penetrate. Note that hitting a fixed point in space is almost certainly going to be a lot easier than hitting a moving target (though ACTA doesn't make it easier to hit if a ship isn't moving).
Who placed those ships exactly 6" apart so that they could both be hit? IMHO, stupidity should be punished!
No, that's what happens when you have to move a boresighted ship before its desired target moves!
Again, *who* put those ships in such a position such that they could all be hit by an area affect weapon??? Note that in the vast majority of cases (adrift, lumbering issues etc not withstanding) , you can make it impossible for someone to get more than ship under the template *if you so choose*.
What you seem to be saying (correct me if I'm wrong) is that it's somehow "cheesy" to shoot at a target of opportunity that your opponent actually created themselves.
Regards,
Dave