about the universe forum commander Shop Now Commanders Circle
Product List FAQs home Links Contact Us

Sunday, November 04, 2007

What is That Worth?

This is Steven Petrick posting.

In designing things that are made of other things, you run into the conundrum that things are not worth the same thing in different combinations.

In Star Fleet Battles, for example, many people assume that the combat BPV of a scout is not affected by the cost of the Special Sensors.

This is not so.

The thing is that a Special Sensor in order to be fully operational needs to have a least one dedicated lab box to perform some functions. So a small scout, like the Klingon E4S, is not assessed full value for its two special sensors because it has only one "lab" box (and that is a control box that is performing the function).

But that one is probably esoteric.

Consider "hull" boxes. Surely you would think that a hull box is a hull box is a hull box. Not so. "Center Hull" boxes are far better (the famous Hydran "seventh shield"). If you do not think so, consider that there are players who honestly believed that Gorn BCs were larger (in terms of internal volume) than Federation CAs. They are not, but the fact that you have to destroy every hull box (16 of them) on a Gorn BC before you can start crunching on the things that really matter makes them seem larger because the Fed CA will start losing interesting things after losing only four Aft Hull boxes.

How about a phaser? A phaser that can only fire into a 120 degree arc (most of them) is not as valuable as an identical phaser that can fire into a 180 degree arc (and thus able to fight behind four shields rather than three).

Adding a few cargo boxes to a design does not matter much (seven is the most common result of a two-die roll). But having a lot of cargo pads that seven row, and can help keep the ship from blowing up as all cargo must be destroyed before an excess damage hit can destroy the unit.

A single impulse engine box is pretty standard, but on a ship with a movement cost of less than one, any additional impulse boxes are really only "APRs", as using them for their other function (like erratic maneuvers) costs too much energy. (A movement cost 1/3rd ship still has to use six impulse engines to do erratic maneuvers, something it could normally do at a cost of two warp power). On the other hand, ships with a movement cost of more than one gain a tactical benefit from using a point of impulse to move (saving a fraction to a full point of power). The saving it more if they use impulse for erratic maneuvers. Ships are not always moving speed 31. So impulse power is not a simple "adding an extra point of impulse increases BPV by precisely this amount regardless of the unit you are adding it to" item.

The upshot is that BPV is not a straight progression of "Ten hull boxes, four lab boxes, 12 warp, and four phasers" or what have you. There are a lot of a other factors that weigh into the cost of a unit.