Your HG1 and HG2 Mashup
- Thread starter robject
- Start date
It's very interesting to see the different mixes of preferences people have. And some mixes are unusual or surprising, in a good way.
In fact, each person's selection set is more interesting than the poll in general, which has generally gravitated toward a mean (though that in and of itself is interesting), except in three cases.
For sure, the three elements for which there is a plain majority are:
(1) EPs in at least a limited form ought to exist in HG.
(2) Missile Salvos are cool.
(3) Secondaries with the same type as the Primary should be allowed.
In fact, each person's selection set is more interesting than the poll in general, which has generally gravitated toward a mean (though that in and of itself is interesting), except in three cases.
For sure, the three elements for which there is a plain majority are:
(1) EPs in at least a limited form ought to exist in HG.
(2) Missile Salvos are cool.
(3) Secondaries with the same type as the Primary should be allowed.
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mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
AArrrggghhh
unless EPs are made part and parcel of the combat system they are a meaningless complication at the design phase.
You lose a few weapon batteries - how many EPs does that free up to mitigate the power plant hit - I'll wait the half an hour you need to calculate it ...
Either power allocation is tracked during combat (which it never was in HG2) or get rid.
And so are massed laser turret point defence - missiles are a cloud of plasma, next turn.
Anything described as cool rather than functional should go straight in the bin or next you will be wanting fighters dogfighting around capital ships...
And have been on my HG2 data block for about twenty five to thirty years...
note that the law of unintended consequence strikes here because it allows ships to soak more weapon hits - a problem I solved by reducing factor rather than batteries on a weapon hit.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
No, just no.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
But it does raise a sacred cow question - should weapon ranges be reduced to make such engagements possible...
Looking at other games such as Attack Vector, Renegade Legion Interceptor and Leviathan and others should the game scale be scaled back to hundreds of km weapon ranges?
Looking at other games such as Attack Vector, Renegade Legion Interceptor and Leviathan and others should the game scale be scaled back to hundreds of km weapon ranges?
I found them quite appropriate in the design phase. it's so hard to squeeze everything into the hull, the ability to parse out a power plant dton by dton was very helpful. and they're quite relevant in both combat design - for example aligning it all so that an emergency jump in one turn still leaves screens and defensive weapons available - and in combat ...
... if you know your ship and know what you're doing the reapportionment takes twenty seconds.
to make such engagements possible? no. but the question is, can they be set to such ranges in a coherent and justifiable manner? and if so, would anyone wish to play the resulting system?
(it's always a two-step process. 1) can we do it? 2) will anyone play it? 1 is easy, 2 is iffy.)
Mike seems rather math-averse in play. I can throw together odd but workable Bk5 designs in minutes from the ground up. If one's careful in annotation, one can even have allocation of power in HG2 readily.
For example...
10 KTd hull monitor
1x Factor N Meson: 1000 EP
5x Factor 7 missile bays, 20 ep each.
5 Agility 100 EP each
PP 16 (100 EP each)
When it's hit for PP-2, come up with 200 EP of losses. Either -1 Agility & all 5 bays, or -2 agility but still have the bays.
Took longer to type than figure out.
If you can make the physics work.
Basically you have to do a couple of things to pull that off. You need to either get rid of light speed weapons, or make the sensors/platforms so bad that they can't hit the broad side of a barn until the ships come within visual range.
You can rely on the fusion/plasma weapons, which are simply high velocity blobs, rather than lasers, Pas, and Mesons, etc.
And you have to deal with the issue of closing velocities at "space" speeds. Hard to imagine ships closing at 10-100's of km/sec only to slow down to a creaky few 100's mph to keep in range. And if things ARE going 100's km/sec, you need to deal with the consequences of folks flinging and hitting each other with hard things at those velocities.
You can try going back to that Harry Turtledove story where you had, literally, Age of Sail starships -- wooden, kerosene lanterns, crude gunpowder weapons and…star drives. It's a great story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_story)
Then you can close in on each other and fire smoky broadsides of grapeshot at each while dancing in the rings of Saturn.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
My 'aversion' is due to:
the sloppy rules for calculating EPs lost due to power plant damage or EP rebate due to weapon, screen or maneuver drive hits;
(If a spinal factor is reduced can you now allocate less energy to it? Can you fire a spinal at a lower EP and hence lower factor by choice? Do screens reduced in factor due to damage now require less EP?) Can you power down a meson screen deliberately to get an EP rebate?)
the lack of data blocks for tracking EPs during combat (easily done by the way)
EPs breaking LBB2 designs.
Fix this little lot (which again can be done) and I can see the benefit of EPs, but if this level of detail is omitted (which it is using the RAW) then scrapping them is my choice.
the sloppy rules for calculating EPs lost due to power plant damage or EP rebate due to weapon, screen or maneuver drive hits;
(If a spinal factor is reduced can you now allocate less energy to it? Can you fire a spinal at a lower EP and hence lower factor by choice? Do screens reduced in factor due to damage now require less EP?) Can you power down a meson screen deliberately to get an EP rebate?)
the lack of data blocks for tracking EPs during combat (easily done by the way)
EPs breaking LBB2 designs.
Fix this little lot (which again can be done) and I can see the benefit of EPs, but if this level of detail is omitted (which it is using the RAW) then scrapping them is my choice.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Again I agree - go into this level of detail and EPs are useful.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Well, at the risk of fandancing, I do have this worked out, except for the spinal (gut check, it still requires the same power, just has less effective output).
Not sure what you mean by EPs breaking LBB2 designs though, you just rate the power plant as though it was outputting the same output as HG power plants at the same valuatation.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I too have house rules going back decades that solve these issues to my satisfaction, but they are house rules.
LBB2 ships designed with HG2 lack the EPs to mount the triple laser turrets that they can in LBB2.
LBB2 ships designed with HG2 lack the EPs to mount the triple laser turrets that they can in LBB2.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Oh, quite right. Not to mention the double shot option with the power plant and the right software, and the all-powerful Select program.
Most fighters are underpowered too.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
You fire all your missiles in one go and get a +4 to hit and penetrate defences.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
The functional equivalent of doubling your missiles and expending the missile factor in Imperium, another clue that HG is Imperium with ship design.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The added complication is that in HG1 you could have a missile magazine. Unfortunately they forgot to include rules for how many full reloads of missiles a magazine is capable of.
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