That’s exactly the visualization that led me to it, along with the aim point of the sphere of destruction can differ and so one hit might detonate near the edge of the ship and only shear off the opening of the spinal weapon and fuel tanks, while another goes off in the guts and ruins the power plant and hull.
High Guard 1.5 (<1979 edition)
- Thread starter robject
- Start date
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
In HG'79 a ship will be destroyed by too many surface M-drive hits.
Enough lasers will completely kill any ship...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Hmm...
I hadn't really studied the damage tables as of yet but there are some interesting things -
to blow up the ship you would need to reduce the M-drive to 0 and then get a weapon -3 damage result
or could it be cumulative?
why is it a ship only explodes due to the surface explosion damage table and only the maneuver drive can explode - nor the power plant or jump drive will explode,
there are no rules for jump capacitor explosions due to filling up from the black globe
finally the crew result is not as disabling as it is in HG80
I hadn't really studied the damage tables as of yet but there are some interesting things -
to blow up the ship you would need to reduce the M-drive to 0 and then get a weapon -3 damage result
or could it be cumulative?
why is it a ship only explodes due to the surface explosion damage table and only the maneuver drive can explode - nor the power plant or jump drive will explode,
there are no rules for jump capacitor explosions due to filling up from the black globe
finally the crew result is not as disabling as it is in HG80
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Not cumulative, as far as I can see. You need a M-drive-3 result, but those are not particularly uncommon.
Quite, lasers blows ships up, mesons are fairly harmless...
Presumably this needs a bit of rethink?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
There are only two M-3 results, and one of them would only occur if the target ship has a configuration high enough
I agree it needs looking at, I much prefer spinals inflicting multiple hits, the one saving grace of HG79 - you are much less likely to mission kill a ship with a crew 1 or a fuel tanks shattered result.
I agree it needs looking at, I much prefer spinals inflicting multiple hits, the one saving grace of HG79 - you are much less likely to mission kill a ship with a crew 1 or a fuel tanks shattered result.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
As you increase config, the first result gets less likely, but the second more likely.
The end result is that all configs have 5 or 6 chances in 36 to get M -3 result.
Rocks have less armour, as you can't add armour to them, so are more likely to get hit (penetration).
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
With the errata crew hits are basically meaningless, but Fuel Tanks Shattered is the common mission-kill.
Without the instant mission-kill, it's difficult to motivate big spinals. In the current draft a 7000 Dt spinal is about the same tonnage a factor C missile or meson bay battery. OK, you want a spinal.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Thinking a bit about making this fit T5.
Is it worth trying to fix the number of hardpoints issue that has existed in most versions of the rules?
If hardpoints are limited by hull size surface area then the one hardpoint per 100 tons can be got rid of and use a look up table or a simple formula (ok it involves raising to the power of 0.667 but it isn't difficult) to get the number of hardpoints.
Weapon installations then have a hardpoint cost
spinal mount harpoint cost it tonnage /1000
Is it worth trying to fix the number of hardpoints issue that has existed in most versions of the rules?
If hardpoints are limited by hull size surface area then the one hardpoint per 100 tons can be got rid of and use a look up table or a simple formula (ok it involves raising to the power of 0.667 but it isn't difficult) to get the number of hardpoints.
Weapon installations then have a hardpoint cost
| 1 hardpoint | turret | barbette | 10t bay | 50t bay | 100t bay |
| 2 hardpoints | 200t large bay | 200t main |
spinal mount harpoint cost it tonnage /1000
So, not paying a lot of attention, but it seems HG '79 is quite different from HG '80. Why did they redo so much in the makeover vs just "fixing" '79?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
That's a question that has never been answered, at least I am yet to see an answer to it.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
I have no idea, but from what I have seen HG'79 is comically bad. It needed a lot of fixing...
I
(Of course, Lenat won the TCS tournaments, which all used HG2, not HG1)
The following is a completely made-up and non-realistic conversation. Imagine the debugging session ike this:
(M)arc, (J)ohn Harshman, and (F)rank.
M: Let's take a look at the rules and see what we need to fix.
J: Well first off, what's with this 1,000 ton normalization rule?
F: Looking at the CRT... well there is no critical hits table. So we're missing that.
J: Yeah, and the only way to explode the ship is to... destroy the maneuver drive?
M: Well that's because it's a Fusion Rocket, so what's happening is it's an out of control fusion explosion.
J: What about the power plant?
F: No, the power plant is ruled to be safe.
J: Okay fine, but... alright I won't argue the point here. Anyway back to the weapons. I like those bay weapons, but you have to total up points and then divide and then index into a table? That's complicated. Why not just index directly into a battery factor?
F: Yeah, and in Book 2 every weapon can score a hit. But you can't do that here? I want to see those bay weapons each hitting, so larger ships get more hits.
J: That's a great point! We should do that! But what about big ships? Won't that cause a lot of dice rolling?
F: Well we can put in a batteries bearing rule or something to force an increasing costs effect. Then if things are too messy we can always add a statistical CRT later.
M: Okay. But wait, that still unbalances the spine. It gets one hit, and then all the other weapons get a hit. If you let every emplacement get a hit, then the spine is nearly useless.
J: Face it. The spine is pretty much useless now. It can hit, but it doesn't do any worse than a bank of bay weapons. What's the point?
M: Well it's supposed to be the badass weapon of the ship.
F: So let's MAKE it the badass. Give it supreme power. We can still let bay weapons have their own hit rolls, but if you limit them to a Factor 9, and beef up the Factor A-Z spines, then you've got your monster weapon.
J: Yeah, turn the spine into a one-hit killer and you've got a reason for it to exist. While we're at it, let's separate the bays from the turrets. Your text SAYS the turrets are for point defense, but the tables suggest quite the opposite.
M: And we really should be able to build small craft from this system. I mean why not? We don't currently HAVE a system to do that.
F: Of course. I've been arguing that since the first edition.
M: OK ok, then, here's the changes I'm seeing:
(a) replace the attack points, scaling, and mapping to tables that directly index battery factors.
(b) let each battery make its own attack.
(c) separate the bay factor tables from the turret factor tables.
(d) make the spine do critical hits --
J: Hey, maybe the spine can do multiple hits, too.
M: OK
(d) make the spine do multiple hits and let it score crits.
(e) add a page specifically for small craft construction.
What about the hull codes, hull config, and drive tables?
F: Nah, they're fine.
M: How about the defenses? Armor, dampers, screens, and globes?
F: Well.... armor is a bit disorganized. Can we make it more like the drive tables? Make them percentage based by TL? That way you don't have to use up three factors just to represent three levels of capability in armor.
M: Okay, that's fine.
J: Then we can reorganize the CRTs to balance the effects.
F: Yeah!
Last edited:
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Eurisko was in the 1981 tournament, well after HG'80.
And it was TCS. Caught it after the fact. Thanks.
I see that this is largely a game of attrition, where each side wears down weapons of the other.
Spines are little more than specialized bays that get a DM on the damage roll.
One solution is to give them more damage rolls. That might be OK, but do we want more rolling?
A thought I had was to increase the severity of each hit. For instance, add 1 to each damage. So a Computer-2 result would turn into a Computer-3 result.
But then, surely there's a benefit to having a better spine. Surely a 4000t TL15 spine is better than a 4000t TL9 spine, yet the tables don't do this justice. On the other hand, spines don't live in isolation -- if you have a TL9 spine you've got a TL9 ship with a Model/3 computer, and the TL15 ship will toast you.
In other words, there's a benefit to having better technology overall. It's not just the spine. So OK that takes care of spine TL.
Now how about spine size? Those letter codes should MEAN something.
And they do: they are the toughness of the spine. A higher letter code can take more punishment. That's its damage track. OK.
So what now? Are spines truly that underpowered?
Spines are little more than specialized bays that get a DM on the damage roll.
One solution is to give them more damage rolls. That might be OK, but do we want more rolling?
A thought I had was to increase the severity of each hit. For instance, add 1 to each damage. So a Computer-2 result would turn into a Computer-3 result.
But then, surely there's a benefit to having a better spine. Surely a 4000t TL15 spine is better than a 4000t TL9 spine, yet the tables don't do this justice. On the other hand, spines don't live in isolation -- if you have a TL9 spine you've got a TL9 ship with a Model/3 computer, and the TL15 ship will toast you.
In other words, there's a benefit to having better technology overall. It's not just the spine. So OK that takes care of spine TL.
Now how about spine size? Those letter codes should MEAN something.
And they do: they are the toughness of the spine. A higher letter code can take more punishment. That's its damage track. OK.
So what now? Are spines truly that underpowered?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
For spinals just take the rules form HG80.
One extra hit per size code difference. PA hits are reduced by armour (note that's only 9 hits max
). And add the rule that meson extra hits are reduced by screen factor.
By the way I have been messing around with keeping HG79 by the book (mostly) but adding the universal size DM.
when calculating final weapon factor normalise as per the rules as written and then add the USDM to the rating
use relative USDM as a DM on the penetration tables.
add USDM to number of hits (not spinal).
One extra hit per size code difference. PA hits are reduced by armour (note that's only 9 hits max
). And add the rule that meson extra hits are reduced by screen factor.By the way I have been messing around with keeping HG79 by the book (mostly) but adding the universal size DM.
when calculating final weapon factor normalise as per the rules as written and then add the USDM to the rating
use relative USDM as a DM on the penetration tables.
add USDM to number of hits (not spinal).
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Only Spines can achieve a crit hit.
Remove the "ship exploded" from M-drive hits and replace the crit result Frozen Watch with Ship Destroyed? Now we have a small risk of destroying a ship with spinals and nothing else, in line with canon.
