firing photons every round

[vecna35]

a curious thing has been happening in my game, targets have been sitting at extended or long range and just firing photons back and forth from each other. My players always maintain a distance rather get in close since they know how bad phaser fire can be especially when they know the badguy has no photons (jemhadar bugship). Has anyone else noticed this? Has anyone implemented a rule of only firing a missle every other round (effectively allowing the starship to reload their misslies thus makling a phaser fight a bit more appealing)

[Phoenix]

One round reload time is standard in my game (this also applys if you want to change your launchers load torps to probe or q-torps etc...), also I ruled you can't target locations with torpedoes.

There are some ships in my game that get to ignore the timed reload rule however, The Akira with it's uber-redundant launchers.

[Ergi]

I like the idea of having to spend one round reloading between attacks with photon torpedoes, but there are other options.

• Have the enemy start shooting at the torpedoes with their phasers. Plenty of time for aiming at long ranges.
• After several rounds the enemy might get creative. Be mean! (Picard maneouver comes to mind)
• Due to a general shortage of torpedoes available to the fleet, Starfleet will ask the crew to rely more on conventional weapons.
• Starfleet will especially frown on overkill measures like wasting torpedoes on weak targets (and weak can be very subjective. )

[Tas II]

I disagree with the 'no targetting' thing. How many times have we heard "Target their engines/weapons array" etc

Aside from that, be creative, and have the reload time.


Cheers

Tas

[Ergi]

Originally posted by Tas II
I disagree with the 'no targetting' thing. How many times have we heard "Target their engines/weapons array" etc.

Predicting the effects a torpedoe explosion will have on a vessel will be much harder than predicting those of a phaser beam fired with almost surgical precision. Remember the fate of the USS Grissom? Maybe the gunner was firing where he was supposed to but some antimatter containers were damaged as well.

[vecna35]

I guess one round to switch launchers or even reload sounds cool by everyone (it does have a canon feel to it anyways) I will have to write that in my house rules.

Cheers!

[Phoenix]

Some thing I forgot with the reload thing, creative players have found ways to get around this - by using the aft launcher (I don't know about CODA) and the self guiding effect.

[Tas II]

Predicting the effects a torpedoe explosion will have on a vessel will be much harder than predicting those of a phaser beam fired with almost surgical precision. Remember the fate of the USS Grissom? Maybe the gunner was firing where he was supposed to but some antimatter containers were damaged as well.

Hmmmmm, ergi...you may have a point. I don't know the mechanics of CODA (or the ICON system for that matter) too well. So maybe there could be some kind of modifier for targetting with Photons? Is there a critical table involved in this game? Maybe a negative modifier to hit to simulate a precision hit and a modifier to damage? I am grasping for straws a little here (too little sleep, and a little alcohol) so bear with me, whilst I grope my way to some kind of solution!

Cheers

Tas

[tonyg]

TAS

The idea of restrcting targeting to beam weapons was to reflect how the weapons work. With a phaser you are applying energy to a precise spot, but with a explosive device, like a photon, it is an omni-directional effect.

With a phaser you can slice out just the part you are aiming at, but with a photon tHere is going to be some "splash" damage. YOu might get a direct hit on what you are after, but you are bound to catch other systems in the blast.

Sort of like a sniper shooting a grenade launcher.

IF you want a way to target with missile weapons, I'd suggest just aplly half the damage to the system and the rest as general damage. You could even allow the shifting of an extra point or so for greater degrees of success.

[tonyg]

Originally posted by Phoenix
Some thing I forgot with the reload thing, creative players have found ways to get around this - by using the aft launcher (I don't know about CODA) and the self guiding effect.

THe rules for relaoding plasma wapons seem to work well for torps.

A few of ways to stop the "torp wars" are:

Start counting off torps. With modern ships shooting 10 torps a laucher at a time, most ships will run out of torps within 20 rounds. That is okay for the first combat, but if they don'T get a chance to resupply soon...

An opponent could alway use maneuvers like fast attack to close in and devestate a ship that has already fired a torp barrage.

Allow ships to shoot torps. In STII:TWOK KIrk seemed to be on the verge of ordering just that, but didn'T have the time to pull it off. If phasers can shoot torps then the ships will have to close in sp as to end the standoff.

[Tobian]

Hmm counting TORPS in CODA is problematic because more torpedo launchers gives you pluses to your damage - not extra tubes to fire from... so it's largelly abstract. It's something that is really needed though, especially in a Voyager style encounter there's nothing to represent how many you have left!

The whole self guided aspect of Torpedoes always bothered me in trek - how do you perform 'evasive manouvers' against something which has highly sophisticated sensors ! I mean you could put a sensor pallette half a sgood as the average tricorder on there and it's godlike I think to a certain degree you can argue that allot of it is 'favourable aspects' - presenting a portion of your shield or an edge of it would cause the missile to either pass throught the shields and miss your ship altogether or simply deflect off them - as they are supposed to be 'deflectors'

[tonyg]

Originally posted by Tobian
Hmm counting TORPS in CODA is problematic because more torpedo launchers gives you pluses to your damage - not extra tubes to fire from... so it's largelly abstract. It's something that is really needed though, especially in a Voyager style encounter there's nothing to represent how many you have left!

THis can be done through reverse engineeing the trop data given in the NG and STARSHIPS and figuring out the base OV for a torp and the increase for firing mutiple torps.

FOr a short-term fix 2 torps per point of PEN seems to match up well with the data we have on the ships (as well as with ICON and SPACEDOCK write-up).

All you have to do it give each ship a number of torps in storage, and that can be worked out from other sources, or a formual could be devised.
Torps = SIze x Torp OV seems so work out fairly well, as does Size^2 x # launchers. Extra torps could be purchased at something like 2x Size or Size^2 per Space.

Again, those are quick-fix ideas. I'd have to look over the rules a bit more to see how the numbes match up for all the different ship classes compared to the data we have on them.

The whole self guided aspect of Torpedoes always bothered me in trek - how do you perform 'evasive manouvers' against something which has highly sophisticated sensors ! I mean you could put a sensor pallette half a sgood as the average tricorder on there and it's godlike I think to a certain degree you can argue that allot of it is 'favourable aspects' - presenting a portion of your shield or an edge of it would cause the missile to either pass throught the shields and miss your ship altogether or simply deflect off them - as they are supposed to be 'deflectors'

THe same way sea and air craft do it today. If the tracking measures have improved, so have countermeasures. A good deal of evasive maneuvering in the real wold is trying to minimize your aspect so the weapon has a tougher time hitting you. THat is why ships turn into torpedo barrages, since most modern (21st Ce ntury)ships have a length 2, 3 or 4x thier beam.

Aircraft also do a few other things for evasive maneuvers that apply in TREK. One thing that works vey well in SPACEDOCK when you use the option that has torps on the battleboard is that a ship at distance has a very good chance of outrunning a torp, since a torpedo has a limited range (3,500,000 km or so). When torps were placed on the board the effect was to limit most torp use to phaser range, where the torps were more effecive--just like on TV.

It is also possible to "close the gap" on a missile weapon, meaning that you move your vessel in such a way that the shorten the turning radius of the missle so that it simply doesn't have enough room to make the turn. THis is real world physics and would apply in TREk. Torps don'T turn in place, and so the more time the torp spends turning around is more time for other evasive action, or for the torp to exaust it fuel, lose it'S target , or just break down.

It is even possible to move out of it's sensor arc that way (modern missiles can only "see" in a cone to thier front, a photorp probably has a better arc, but I doublt it can still see behind it).

[Tobian]

EEk that creates a whole layer of complication!

For one how do you rule if a Torpedo is moving a warp velocities or not? Yes I know that a photon torpedo has a warp field sustainer that allows it to bleed off warp fields to travel at warp but then this also seems to allow it to travel faster than the ship it came from, allot faster in some cases. So how DO you determine how fast a torpedo can move accross the battlefield?!

We've seen Photorps doing extreme manouvers - notably in Startrek 6 - of course this was a special torpedo but then they only added extra sensor clusters not thrusters so this suggests they CAN do this it's just for budget reasons and cinematography that they don't. I think in a general sense Torpedo's rarelly miss it's simply that with good deflector shields they just bounce off, and this is a factor of your shiled and your piloting (which works well in the rules!) - I guess you could argue that ships may be using false sensor echoes to help throw off simple targeting sensors.. They never say it but it's a possiblity - how do we really know what they are doing when they run 'evasive manouvers Delta 2' or whatnot

[tonyg]

It isn't as hard as you might think.

For the answer to youre first question, the TNG and DS9 TMs give the answer. A torp fired at sublight, moves at sublight, and one fired at warp moves at warp. --THis marches up very well with how ships fight in ICON, CODA and ESO.


For the second problem, SPACEDOCKI had an option .for seeking weapons, and gave the speed for a photorp, having it move very fast on the battlebord (just shy of warp 1 for the typical battle with ships all at sublight velicities).

For CODA, we could use the normal maneuver rules. Give torps skill ratings and say +5H, +2T. Give them thier normal 3.5-4 million km range and keep track of the range bands they travel through Have them perform maneuvers, starting on the action they are fired, but limit them to such manevuers as Close and Lock-on (to reacquire a target), and say Ramming Speed for the kill (or make the attack roll, or maybe just assume that the torp hits if it gets with PB range). -I'd suggest using the ESO's "wing" rules for volleys of torpedoes. I also wouldn't reccomend it for anything onther than a small battle.

This does work. It does complicate things, but it also makes eveyone get close in so the torps become direct-fire again, putting the ships within beam weapon range, which is what was desired in the first place.

Note that this also explains why on TV the ships seem to hold torp fire unitl they are within phaser range.

[tonyg]

If nothing else, the players will close into phaser range just to avoid having to track all those torp counters. (I suppose it does give those players who aren't pulling maneuvers something to do.)

A simpler method would just have torps move 3 (or maybe 4) range bands per action (automatically). THis would still give ships at range a chance to outrun a torp or try some sort of maenuver before being hit.


Personally, I don't really think that we need to devise a way to stop the ships from standinmg off out of phaser range and firing torps. There alrady are several ways to beat this using CODA'S maneuver system. Manevuers like Fast Attack are devistating under these condtions. Take the torp hit then zip in for a devistating counterattack. Most ships inflict twice the damage this way, and typically get around 3 times the damage past the shileds!

Plus everyone winds up in close...