Collimator Phasers

[Pericles]

While going back over TNG era ships that have adapted for FASA,
one thing that struck me was the way that big honking heavy phaser
Enterprise-D used to fire from that big orange ring on the top of the
saucer is portrayed in the game. True you get a phaser with a lot of
power (30 points) and a range of 30, but under the standard rules, its
just one phaser that can do a max of 33 points of damage and is very
vulnerable to damage. After all it has an arc of f/p/s and a phaser hit
from any of those directions will disable the whole thing, two hits
leaves the ship missing its only heavy phaser, and in the case of the
Akira, with no phasers at all. Add the fact that a uprated Constitution
can deliver more total phaser damage than an Akira, this led me to
come up with the following rules:

The multiple phaser emitters of the collimator allow this array to
fire once per phase as long as the weapon has power. During the power
allocation phase, additional power can be assigned to the weapon
within the limitation of the maximum power allowed of 30 per phase and
thus an absolute maximum of 90 points of power. If not powered to the
maximum the power allocated can be expended in any amount, not to
exceed 30 per shot. (IE 50 points of power assigned. During the turn
the weapon could fire one 30 point shot and two 10 points or two 20
point shots and a 10 point, so long as no single shot exceeds the
maximum of 30).

If the weapon is damaged by incoming fire, only a bearing emitter can
be damaged and there are three emitters per bearing 3f, 3p, and 3s.
(IE if the ship is hit from shield 6, only the portside emitters can
be damaged) These emitters are not considered banked and thus no
more than one at a time is disabled per phaser hit.

As long as at least one emitter is available, the weapon can fire.
However, each firing requires a functional emitter, thus if one forward
emitter is damaged, the ship may only fire forward twice in a turn.

These rules give collimator phasers much more punch than before and a
huge amount of flexibility that matches the on screen evidence seen in
TNG and DS9.

Any thoughts?

[Meteo]

the Officer's Manual tended to use slightly larger and wider arsenals of phasers, and there were a few models of new phaser which simply had Max Beam Powers of 12, and individually weren't much more powerful.

Your rules look okay to me.

[calguard66]

True you get a phaser with a lot of
power (30 points) and a range of 30, but under the standard rules, its
just one phaser that can do a max of 33 points of damage and is very
vulnerable to damage.

Hmmm. I always thought that a beam weapon did it's "+ damage" (+1, +2, +3) for every point of energy put into it.

So, a OD-2 that does +2 damage under 5 hexes, with a max power of 3, can do a max damage of 9.

It makes sense if you figure that shields can get multiple points of protection for every point put into it. Photons do 1:8, 12 or 20 depending on the type. Even maneuver for small ships gives a better than 1:1 ratio. Getting essentially 1:1 damage makes beam weapons almost worthless.

Anyway, I don't have my Starship Combat Simulator book handy, but I thought that's how it was done. That's how I play it in my games... call it a house rule if I'm wrong.

[Pericles]

Hmmm. I always thought that a beam weapon did it's "+ damage" (+1, +2, +3) for every point of energy put into it.

So, a OD-2 that does +2 damage under 5 hexes, with a max power of 3, can do a max damage of 9.

It makes sense if you figure that shields can get multiple points of protection for every point put into it. Photons do 1:8, 12 or 20 depending on the type. Even maneuver for small ships gives a better than 1:1 ratio. Getting essentially 1:1 damage makes beam weapons almost worthless.

Anyway, I don't have my Starship Combat Simulator book handy, but I thought that's how it was done. That's how I play it in my games... call it a house rule if I'm wrong.

I have never thought of the bonus that way before. I've always played that the bonus was fixed and amount of power by the phaser did not have any effect on the bonus.