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Looking in the books it seems that the smallest Cruise missile (if you go by the ships) weighs 10 TONS.
Which is insane considering that they are only slightly tougher than an LRM, that most have less range, and that on the whole their damage isn't significantly greater.
For the weight of a single CM you can carry and entire VOLLEY of LRMs

I'm at a loss here.

Not sure what you are looking at here, but DB2, Phase World, pg p157, has the SF69A and SF69B variants - adding 2 cruise missiles added 1 ton to the weight of the fighter. Thus, 1 cruise missile = 1/2 ton...

pad300 wrote:Not sure what you are looking at here, but DB2, Phase World, pg p157, has the SF69A and SF69B variants - adding 2 cruise missiles added 1 ton to the weight of the fighter. Thus, 1 cruise missile = 1/2 ton...

Oh yeah, the weight in Phase World is pretty low
The listed weights in Fleets of the Three Galaxy though are just absurd.
All pages from Fleets of the Three Galaxies unless stated otherwise
Anti-Ship Torpedo. (Fleets pg. 41) 12 tons
Anti-Matter Missile (Fleets pg. 77) 10 tons
Anti-Matter Missile (Fleets pg. 100) 2,000 lbs
Anti-Matter Missile (Phase World pg. 157) 1,000lb
Ion Torpedo (Fleets pg. 59) 10 tons
Ion Torpedo (Fleets pg. 57) 12 tons
Nerzam Torpedo (Fleets pg. 36) 10 tons
Nuclear Missile (Fleets pg. 100) 3,000 lb
Nuclear Missile (Phase World) pg. 157 1,000 lb
Nuclear Missile Fleets appears to ALSO say 10 tons (multiple ships say 10 tons for various warheads... there are only 2 'various' choices)
Singularity Missile (Fleets pg. 84) 50 tons
Splinter Missile (Fleets pg. 74) 30 tons

I know that Palladium isn't internally consistent… but this is bad, even for them.

Yeah, palladium's numbers a pretty much inevitably goofy. Try and figure out how much an LRM weighs from the Mark X MRLS vehicle in mercenaries ...

But for some real world perspective, a Trident II D-5 ( https://fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/slbm/d-5.htm ) weighs in a 130,000 lb = 65 tons. I suspect the #'s in Fleets are more realistic.

Yea. More or less in Phase World, C.J. Was just making up numbers and going "Super advanced tech can make really light missiles" so he jotted down some numbers without thinking about it.

The one writing Fleets actually tried to consider a bit more Hard sci-fi in that yes lighter materials will make them much lighter than modern day Cruise Missiles, but they're still going to be multi-ton affairs because of the fuel alone.

I took fleets as less of a consistancy error but more a formal retcon of various aspects of ship design.

Of course, Phase World still assumes that in space, constant thrust equals constant velocity, so it still is incredibly silly and unrealistic.

I really did try to come up somewhat plausible super-high-tech...

Braden Campbell wrote:I really did try to come up somewhat plausible super-high-tech...

I have to ask, did you ask Kevin if you could have ships with Delta-V rather than Mach? Or...anything other than Mach?

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Yea. More or less in Phase World, C.J. Was just making up numbers and going "Super advanced tech can make really light missiles" so he jotted down some numbers without thinking about it.

The one writing Fleets actually tried to consider a bit more Hard sci-fi in that yes lighter materials will make them much lighter than modern day Cruise Missiles, but they're still going to be multi-ton affairs because of the fuel alone.

The problem is that logic doesn't "fly"
The Cruise Missile has just the same fuel (or less) than an LRM.
Adding in that modern day Cruise Missiles ARE 'just' LRMs (canonical as per both Underseas and CS Navy) it seems absurd that a more advanced CM will be less compact and do little more damage.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:I took fleets as less of a consistancy error but more a formal retcon of various aspects of ship design.

That doesn't help here in the slightest though.
That SAME BOOK has the exact same cruise missile weight 10 tons in one spot and 3,000lbs in another spot.
Seriously. The missiles weight in the ship entry is 10 tons. The weight in the weapon entry? 2,000lb for nuclear and 3,000lb for anti-matter.
oops?

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Of course, Phase World still assumes that in space, constant thrust equals constant velocity, so it still is incredibly silly and unrealistic.

Oh yeah, that and the tiny ranges and slow speeds are problems. But that's setting.
I can't blame the writer of a book for the setting, that isn't their fault and they have no control over that. I can blame the writer of a book for not being internally consistent in their own book (aka parts of the book contradict other parts... repeatedly) because that is by definition the one thing they have control over.


Having done a deep dive through the books on what missiles exist...
I can totally see why the first cruise missiles were so small.
They were just a specialized LRM (this is from Underseas and CS Navy)
Which is how come we have a canonical MRM with 1d4x100 warheads and LRMs with 1d6x100 warheads and CMs with 2d6x100 were launched from MRM and LRM racks.
Thus when Phase World was written the 2d6x100 nuclear CM was simply ported over wholesale...

The problem is that, as usual... there is no guide book for the authors so they really have no way of knowing what has already been written. Thus unless they do extensive research themselves (which, based on the published material seems to be fairly rare) they end up writing stuff based off of what they remember and filling in the 'blanks' with their tables house rules and material...
which results in so many of the retcons, and why we have five different fragmentation mini-missiles (two different ones in Fleets of the Three Galaxies alone!!) four different silver mini-missiles and seven different nuclear LRMs (not counting the first generation ones that are supposedly also on the market). Or why so the weapon that the ships use in Phase World have less range and damage than many systems in use in Rifts Earth... seriously, railguns in PW are totally outclassed by railguns in Rifts. I would take the Rifts Flack Cannons for my point defense any day of the week... they have better range, better damage and do area effect damage.

So my guess here is that it is the result of the typical "author 1 wrote X. Author 2 didn't know that author 1 wrote X and thus wrote Y." problem that seems to plague the books.

thus the new missiles look fine... in the isolation of the individual Fleets book. It is only once you start comparing the stuff in that book to the rest of the material out there that it starts to look bizarre and wildly out of synch.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Yea. More or less in Phase World, C.J. Was just making up numbers and going "Super advanced tech can make really light missiles" so he jotted down some numbers without thinking about it.

The one writing Fleets actually tried to consider a bit more Hard sci-fi in that yes lighter materials will make them much lighter than modern day Cruise Missiles, but they're still going to be multi-ton affairs because of the fuel alone.

I know I have said this a million times but C.J. created some great settings but he was NOT a stats person. We saw that a little in Mercs, a lot in SA, and massively in PW.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:I took fleets as less of a consistancy error but more a formal retcon of various aspects of ship design.

Braden Campbell wrote:I really did try to come up somewhat plausible super-high-tech...

I think the biggest problem with this approach is that every single author seems to take it. If Fleets had retconned all the old ships with a few pages of changed stats that would have been great but all the new tech just kind of unbalanced and makes all the original ships obsolete.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Of course, Phase World still assumes that in space, constant thrust equals constant velocity, so it still is incredibly silly and unrealistic.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:I have to ask, did you ask Kevin if you could have ships with Delta-V rather than Mach? Or...anything other than Mach?

While I have always found the use of "Mach" in space to be silly I really think you do need a maximum speed in a sci-fantasy setting. They have it in Star Wars and other settings and it really is the only way to make space fighters any kind of option or magic having any effect. You can still have some realistic movements and maneuvering rules even with a maximum speed but it would be nice to have it a little more realistic.

Warshield73 wrote:

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Yea. More or less in Phase World, C.J. Was just making up numbers and going "Super advanced tech can make really light missiles" so he jotted down some numbers without thinking about it.

The one writing Fleets actually tried to consider a bit more Hard sci-fi in that yes lighter materials will make them much lighter than modern day Cruise Missiles, but they're still going to be multi-ton affairs because of the fuel alone.

I know I have said this a million times but C.J. created some great settings but he was NOT a stats person. We saw that a little in Mercs, a lot in SA, and massively in PW.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:I took fleets as less of a consistancy error but more a formal retcon of various aspects of ship design.

Braden Campbell wrote:I really did try to come up somewhat plausible super-high-tech...

I think the biggest problem with this approach is that every single author seems to take it. If Fleets had retconned all the old ships with a few pages of changed stats that would have been great but all the new tech just kind of unbalanced and makes all the original ships obsolete.

Err... not sure i agree with that. The ships in Fleets are FAR less structurally sound than the older ships. The Emancipation-class Dreadnaught is tissue paper compared to the Protector-Class Battleship. Even if you total up the three hull sections of the Dreadnaught as "Main Body", its only roughly equal to the Protector (252,000 for the DN and 250,000 for the BB), and they have the same shields (15,000 per side). The Protector is a better ship, full stop. Its also far less costly, you can field SEVEN Protector-class BBs for the cost of one Emancipation.

Similarly, the Aranae-class Interdictor is oddly fragile for a vessel of its size (a full-up Battlecruiser); the Warshield-class Heavy Cruiser is 45,000 MDC main body, while the MUCH larger Aranae (roughly 3 times as large, and about 2/3 the size of a Protector-class BB), if you total up all three hull segments only maths out to 82,000. And the ship can be KO'ed by destroying one of the three segments, that only has 25,000, making it easier to punch out than a Heavy Cruiser. Now.. the Aranae i COULD handwave away as "its an Interdictor, the special equipment means its not as tough, etc"... except that it carries a weapons package that is clearly meant to wade into the line of fire.

The Golgan cruisers are an outright joke, with the Bindas-class Cruiser only topping out at 18,000 combined, and 5,000 damage to the midships section will basically take the ship out. The Battleship fares a little better, topping out at 230,000, but the weapons are ho-hum. Its tough, but little else.

The Altess Ships really only have their slightly-more-advanced weaponry going for them, being relatively light on MDC, but they punch hard above their weight since even their super-heavy anti-ship guns can fire every melee and sometimes more than once. The vaunted "Nezsam" Torpedos (at least, they are talked up in the description).... are kinda a joke. I guess being smart munitions makes them better than most, but...

The Kittani ships at least make sense... as we know the Splugorth deliberately limit their minions. But they do have pretty much THE most baller Cruise Missiles (Splinter Missiles).

The Etherium seems about on-spec for a Destroyer-weight vessel, with its added Stealth features making it a potential holy terror, but the Executioner BB is... meh. Again, far weaker than previous ships (165,000 combined MDC vs a Protector-class's 250,000); really light Force Fields for a BB, and carries extremely mediocre armament for its displacement.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Of course, Phase World still assumes that in space, constant thrust equals constant velocity, so it still is incredibly silly and unrealistic.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:I have to ask, did you ask Kevin if you could have ships with Delta-V rather than Mach? Or...anything other than Mach?

While I have always found the use of "Mach" in space to be silly I really think you do need a maximum speed in a sci-fantasy setting. They have it in Star Wars and other settings and it really is the only way to make space fighters any kind of option or magic having any effect. You can still have some realistic movements and maneuvering rules even with a maximum speed but it would be nice to have it a little more realistic.

Max speed in space can be a concern of hull stresses, shielding against particle impacts, and other factors, rather than a factor of bad science/we cant go any faster. Like, yeah, in theory the engines can keep piling on the acceleration and we can accelerate to ludicrous speeds, but the hull might rip apart, tiny particles might hull the ship, etc. So while the engines can theoretically make us go really fast, our practical max speed is something more manageable.

As to accleration vs "mach" - meh.

I dont really see the point in statting out fleets at all. Palladium's system is not meant for ship to ship, or fleet-to-fleet combat, its not a particularly good game experience to do that anyway as by and large a bunch of players sit around doing nothing, etc.

Im kinda a space-navy nerd and i enjoy the books, but.. if they had never been printed, precisely nothing would have changed for Phase World. They aren't necessary.

If you want to re-enact big giant space battles, there are other games for that.

I actually find the wild disparities in Naval catagories to be a sign of more realism and not less. The quality of various ships historically can vary quite a bit depending on who built them, and even prestegious navies have managed to turn out absolute failures of design they don't like to talk about now and then. Some navie's idea of ships ARE a joke compared to others because of the difference in technological base and industrial capacity. It'd be unrealistic if the Golgan's ships could compare to the CCW's or TGE's.

One, I think you're missing a few things if your only comparing the Protector and the Emancipator's MDC value. Yes, one's MDC is divided into three sections, but that falls under the more realistic retcon. Taking out one section won't knock the ship out of the fight, it just makes it easier for the GM to determine what kind of damage has occured, especially useful if players are on the ship if your running a CAF officer game.

Secondly, did you even LOOK at the weapons loadout? The Emancipator's guns are far more powerful with 2d6*1000+3000 per hit instead of 2d6*1000 only. Which doesn't mean much until you consider what this does to averages, it makes low rolls into decent rolls and high rolls into nasty hits and it has 4 of them. Furthermore it's got 8 secondary cannons that are the Protector's main cannons. Again, the main cannon on the Protector is the numerous *secondary* battery on the Emancipator, and it's got twice as many of them plus the more powerful main cannons on top.

((Nevermind that means the Emancipator cannot properly be called a dreadnought because a dreadnought is an "All big gun loadout" and thus there shouldn't BE any secondary batteries at all just more primary and some point defense guns...))

And last but not least, the reason it's not an even badder Battleship than it is is because it's actually designed as a Battleship/Carrier. the Protector can only carry 2500 Combat troops and some fighters. the Emancipator has 1560 fighters, PLUS a feild army of 12,000+ ground troops and supporting Tanks, PA, and such.

So your right, it's not that much more MDC than the first. but it's overall capability is much greater. Don't judge by MDC alone, those 1560 fighters should even the odds nicely if an Emancipator and Protector ever go toe to toe, even if there is more than one protector, that's enough fighters with heavy Torpedo's to make a difference.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:I actually find the wild disparities in Naval catagories to be a sign of more realism and not less. The quality of various ships historically can vary quite a bit depending on who built them, and even prestegious navies have managed to turn out absolute failures of design they don't like to talk about now and then. Some navie's idea of ships ARE a joke compared to others because of the difference in technological base and industrial capacity. It'd be unrealistic if the Golgan's ships could compare to the CCW's or TGE's.

I actually wasnt saying they should all be great; i was refuting the claim from the guy i was quoting about how the ships in Fleets were just so much better. They aren’t, by and large. That was all i was saying.

One, I think you're missing a few things if your only comparing the Protector and the Emancipator's MDC value. Yes, one's MDC is divided into three sections, but that falls under the more realistic retcon. Taking out one section won't knock the ship out of the fight,

Actually, it will. The middle section goes down and all the ship can do is maneuver.

it just makes it easier for the GM to determine what kind of damage has occured, especially useful if players are on the ship if your running a CAF officer game.

Secondly, did you even LOOK at the weapons loadout? The Emancipator's guns are far more powerful with 2d6*1000+3000 per hit instead of 2d6*1000 only. Which doesn't mean much until you consider what this does to averages, it makes low rolls into decent rolls and high rolls into nasty hits and it has 4 of them. Furthermore it's got 8 secondary cannons that are the Protector's main cannons. Again, the main cannon on the Protector is the numerous *secondary* battery on the Emancipator, and it's got twice as many of them plus the more powerful main cannons on top.

Sure, i never said the ship was under-armed. I said it was a waste of money given that you could field SEVEN Protector-class ships in its stead. Or Six Protector’s and THREE Packmasters.

Lets call it 6 Protector BBs and 3 Packmaster FCs. Those six Protectors mount TWENTY FOUR of the “secondaries” (2d6x1000) and 12 more “light” batteries (1d6x1000) among them. The Protectors (without the Packmasters) also field 252 Fighters, 288 Silverhawks, 36 Battlerams, and 24 CAF Assault Shuttles (which make pretty decent heavy fighters).

So even WITHOUT the Packmasters along, the Protectors aren’t exactly outclassed. Yeah, theyll take their lumps from the large Aerospace wing, but theyll gut the Emancipation in two rounds of fire... a feat it CANNOT repeat against them. WITH the Packmasters along, the Emancipation’s Aerospace strength is outmatched as well (by quite a distance).

((Nevermind that means the Emancipator cannot properly be called a dreadnought because a dreadnought is an "All big gun loadout" and thus there shouldn't BE any secondary batteries at all just more primary and some point defense guns...))

Depends entirely on who you ask. If you ask the Brits, who coined the term (it is, after all, named after HMS Dreadnaught), its simply a primarily gun-armed (or missile armed in the modern day) vessel of a tonnage well above a Battleship.

And last but not least, the reason it's not an even badder Battleship than it is is because it's actually designed as a Battleship/Carrier. the Protector can only carry 2500 Combat troops and some fighters. the Emancipator has 1560 fighters, PLUS a feild army of 12,000+ ground troops and supporting Tanks, PA, and such.

So your right, it's not that much more MDC than the first. but it's overall capability is much greater. Don't judge by MDC alone, those 1560 fighters should even the odds nicely if an Emancipator and Protector ever go toe to toe, even if there is more than one protector, that's enough fighters with heavy Torpedo's to make a difference.

Again, i never said it was a “bad ship” - i was merely pointing out that it isn’t automagically better than the stuff that came before it, as the guy i was replying to intimated.

Now, as it happens, i DO think its not a great ship, merely because its trying to be every ship rolled into one, which is a great way to do all of them badly, or at least, at a cost that makes it less than worthwhile.

Its not flying trash or anything, but fielding a fleet of the same cost composed of Protector-class BBs and Packmaster-class FCs is better pretty much across the board.

If it were a purpose-built gunship (a “True Dreadnaught” going by your statement), it’d be a lot better at that job than it is, and should (probably) be quite a bit tougher. It should have ~120-130,000 MDC per section (if we’re calling that 3-hull-spots a “retcon” as it only appears in one book) vs the Protector-class having ~75,000 per location (splitting up its current 240k into 3 locations) and be a floating mountain of guns and cruise missile batteries that can tear apart entire fleets of lesser ships.

Right now.. its a really expensive bid for “its a fleet in one ship” role... and that will be expensive and likely beaten soundly by a fleet of cheaper, purpose-built ships.

FWIW, again, im not super duper invested here, because i think fleet battles in Palladium is a joke all the way around. The few times ive run them, li just design a scenario for the PCs to take part in that determines the outcome of the battle, with degress of success/failure leading to casualty numbers.

Palladium is NOT the system for large fleet battles, or, really, even ship-to-ship battles.

There are other game systems for that, including the hard-to-find and complex but insanely-complete Starfire game by David Weber. (Which was also adapted into Novels written with Steve White).

Oh, I agree it's not the greatest, nor was I trying to say it was. I was just going to say that it's not as terrible as you seemed to be implying.

That said, remember one thing: It's bleeding edge technology, with an entirely new drive. That alone is probablly responsible for most of the cost. the Admiralty didn't know what to do with the increased tonnage capacity and decided to try to do everything at once. It's not a great ship, but give it time i'm sure they'll come up with better designs.

Basically I don't think the actual new cost is all that much, it's more like the advent of the Steam engine, a radical increase in drive ability has most of it's costs frontloaded into the first generation which has to be a big showy thing to justify the cost. if anything the CCW's Lucky it's as capable as it is and politics didn't turn it into a COMPLETE joke.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:I think the biggest problem with this approach is that every single author seems to take it. If Fleets had retconned all the old ships with a few pages of changed stats that would have been great but all the new tech just kind of unbalanced and makes all the original ships obsolete.

Err... not sure i agree with that. The ships in Fleets are FAR less structurally sound than the older ships. The Emancipation-class Dreadnaught is tissue paper compared to the Protector-Class Battleship. Even if you total up the three hull sections of the Dreadnaught as "Main Body", its only roughly equal to the Protector (252,000 for the DN and 250,000 for the BB), and they have the same shields (15,000 per side). The Protector is a better ship, full stop. Its also far less costly, you can field SEVEN Protector-class BBs for the cost of one Emancipation.

Similarly, the Aranae-class Interdictor is oddly fragile for a vessel of its size (a full-up Battlecruiser); the Warshield-class Heavy Cruiser is 45,000 MDC main body, while the MUCH larger Aranae (roughly 3 times as large, and about 2/3 the size of a Protector-class BB), if you total up all three hull segments only maths out to 82,000. And the ship can be KO'ed by destroying one of the three segments, that only has 25,000, making it easier to punch out than a Heavy Cruiser. Now.. the Aranae i COULD handwave away as "its an Interdictor, the special equipment means its not as tough, etc"... except that it carries a weapons package that is clearly meant to wade into the line of fire.

Actually you stumble on one of the problems in FTG and you missed the actual totals for these ships MDC on pages 22-28. The Emancipator's total MDC is 300,000. You are also not taking the total ship. Yes ship vs. ship the Protector would win 7 out of 10 times. But you have not looked at the fighter compliment where the Emancipator caries over 1,400 combat fighters plus 960 Battleram Robots and 1,200 Silverhawk PA's. With just fighters, robots, and PA alone the Emancipator could swat 2 Protectors and 2 Packmasters without even firing it's own guns.

To really see how unbelievably over powered the Emancipator is you really need to compare it to it's only peer, the Doombringer.

- MDC: This is only place where the Doombringer wins. It has 350,000 to Emancipators 300,000 while having identical shields.

- Beam Weapons: While the Emancipator has twice the actual guns the rate of fire is half so total beams fired is equal, range is the same, and the damage is comparable. The one advantage here is that the Emancipator can bring more fire to bear in one melee to overwhelm shields or damage a vulnerable hull.

- Secondary lasers: Emancipator is clear winner. It has 8 batteries to the Doombringer's 6, but has a 2 to 1 rate of fire advantage of 16 blasts 6 and those blasts are 3 times more powerful which is death to any escorting berserkers that might be trying to aid the Doombringer. Now the Doombringer has 8 pathetic p-beam cannons to add in but at 4 mile range they are not doing much accept keeping destroyers at range.

- Cruise Missiles: The Emancipator has 2,506 total now no total is given for the Doombringer but assuming it carries 20 reloads it would have 4,000 which seems unlikely but just say it does. The Emancipator can unload all 128 missiles in a single volley while the maximum volley from the Doombringer is 40. now Say the Doombringer could empty its launchers in one melee (5 attacks not unreasonable) it has an average reload time of 2.5 minutes compared to the Emancipator's 2 melees. This means in the time it takes a Doombringer to fire 400 missiles the Emancipator can fire 640. So point to Emancipator.

- Point Defense: Is clearly a victory for the Emancipator. It has 16 mile to 2 mile range advantage and the cannons are twice as powerful. The missiles on the Emancipator are also SR guided compared to the dumb mini-missiles of the Doombringer. (Note: this is also a huge advantage over Protector and Packmaster) With the range and missile advantage this means that the Emancipator's defense grid is 3 to 5 times more effective than that of doombringer in eliminating missiles and fighters.

- Fighters: Again the Emancipator caries over 1,400 combat fighters plus 960 Battleram Robots and 1,200 Silverhawk PA's while the Doombringer carries just 900 fighters and 2000 flying PAs. Without even taking into account the qualitative difference between the fighters and PAs the Emancipator has an enormous edge.

Now I do have to say that the Emancipator is a more thoughtfully designed ship than those in the PW SB so again it would have been better to maybe do a retcon on the older ships.

As for the Aranea you are correct, it is not overpowered it is actually kind of useless. It's I-field has no range and with it's limited speed means it has very limited utility especially since the FTL limit of an individual planet is in the thousands of miles a 60 mile range is pointless. Now the long range torpedoes are one of those weapons that break the system a little since they don't fit in the existing weapons categories.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:The Golgan cruisers are an outright joke, with the Bindas-class Cruiser only topping out at 18,000 combined, and 5,000 damage to the midships section will basically take the ship out. The Battleship fares a little better, topping out at 230,000, but the weapons are ho-hum. Its tough, but little else.

The Altess Ships really only have their slightly-more-advanced weaponry going for them, being relatively light on MDC, but they punch hard above their weight since even their super-heavy anti-ship guns can fire every melee and sometimes more than once. The vaunted "Nezsam" Torpedos (at least, they are talked up in the description).... are kinda a joke. I guess being smart munitions makes them better than most, but...

The Kittani ships at least make sense... as we know the Splugorth deliberately limit their minions. But they do have pretty much THE most baller Cruise Missiles (Splinter Missiles).

I am going to largely agree with you here accept that the Golgan ships are supposed to be a joke and again you missed the actual MB MDC values given for the ships in pages 22-28. The Yannar has 11,000 MB MDC which is almost triple the average Destroyer and it's speed means it acts more like a fighter so the proper comparison for it in your average battle would be a Katana or Black Eagle fighter. Now it is light on weapons but is more than a match for any destroyer or frigate but since it is from an advanced race it should be. Just like the Naruni ships should be.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:The Etherium seems about on-spec for a Destroyer-weight vessel, with its added Stealth features making it a potential holy terror, but the Executioner BB is... meh. Again, far weaker than previous ships (165,000 combined MDC vs a Protector-class's 250,000); really light Force Fields for a BB, and carries extremely mediocre armament for its displacement.

The problem is that you have a stealth ship dropped in a system with no clear rules on sensors much less stealth systems, to say nothing about the whole Hunt for Red October...similarities. I put stealth into PW before the SB came out but I homebrewed some rules, we needed better ones in this book.

Executioner has 175,000 MB MDC but I agree with you it is nor a great ship but when you add in it's fighters, shuttles and PAs it is close to a match for a protector and a serious threat to anyone smaller.

The one ship I noticed that you didn't talk about was the Dominator ship. In the PW books we know that modern fleets (TGE, CCW and especially Splugorth) can and have defeated single dominator ships but this ship is impossible to defeat. When this book first came out a friend of mine and I ran the numbers and just using average damage we sent 50 DooomBringers against it and not one of them even got in range to fire a shot. The nearly 50,000 fighters we sent against it did no appreciable damage to it's hull before they exhausted their munitions (and we gave 1/3 of those fighters 4 AM CMs each). In a system where the fastest fighters only go 15,224 MPH a ship with a 5,100 weapons with 200,000 mile range (allowing for at least 8 hours and closer to 16 hours for capital ships). The PW book describes I believe it was Splugorth ships doing kamikaze runs on one of these and destroying it but how that is supposed to work I don't know.

This is a comically overpowered ship that if it has a use other than to scare your players away or kill them I don't know what it is. Now again if we had clear rules on sensors and stealth and maybe a few other systems this might change but as is.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Of course, Phase World still assumes that in space, constant thrust equals constant velocity, so it still is incredibly silly and unrealistic.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:I have to ask, did you ask Kevin if you could have ships with Delta-V rather than Mach? Or...anything other than Mach?

While I have always found the use of "Mach" in space to be silly I really think you do need a maximum speed in a sci-fantasy setting. They have it in Star Wars and other settings and it really is the only way to make space fighters any kind of option or magic having any effect. You can still have some realistic movements and maneuvering rules even with a maximum speed but it would be nice to have it a little more realistic.

Max speed in space can be a concern of hull stresses, shielding against particle impacts, and other factors, rather than a factor of bad science/we cant go any faster. Like, yeah, in theory the engines can keep piling on the acceleration and we can accelerate to ludicrous speeds, but the hull might rip apart, tiny particles might hull the ship, etc. So while the engines can theoretically make us go really fast, our practical max speed is something more manageable.

This is largely how I did it in my PW and Rifts space games but still, the speeds need to be much higher.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:As to accleration vs "mach" - meh.

I dont really see the point in statting out fleets at all. Palladium's system is not meant for ship to ship, or fleet-to-fleet combat, its not a particularly good game experience to do that anyway as by and large a bunch of players sit around doing nothing, etc.

Im kinda a space-navy nerd and i enjoy the books, but.. if they had never been printed, precisely nothing would have changed for Phase World. They aren't necessary.

If you want to re-enact big giant space battles, there are other games for that.

I think this is the point I disagree with you the most on. Even if your players never serve on any of these ships you need them to populate your space ways. Are your players going to do battle with a Doombringer, probably not (and if they do it won't be for long). But, if your players arrive to rescue a stranded agent on a TGE planet and a Doombringer is orbiting it well you the stakes go up dramatically. It is the same reason you needed stats for Star Destroyers in the old WE SW game.

Now I have a few minor house rules to be sure but I have had large scale battles going on as part of my games and the system works just fine, the ships not so much. And I mean all of them, the Naruni ships in Dimensional Outbreak are even more overpowered than the ones in Fleets. But, most of the time a giant space battle is more of a backdrop to your adventure. A FWC fleet duking it out with a Doombringer while your players try to sneak onto a space station or planet can be great atmospherics for a game.

But, I will say that I would have preferred a book of what I call hero ships. Light freighters, corvettes, small destroyers that can be used by a small PC group or for pirates and other small threats. But again if you have ships like this, plus fighters and shuttles, than you really need rules for sensors, stealth and acceleration. Can your group light freighter outrun the TGE patrol ship to the FTL limit? Good question and it would have been nice to answer it.

Now I love a lot of stuff in Fleets (especially the descriptions of the various space navies) but we still do not have a good set of rules for how space travel works in PW.

Warshield73 wrote:Actually you stumble on one of the problems in FTG and you missed the actual totals for these ships MDC on pages 22-28. The Emancipator's total MDC is 300,000.

By what logic do you think that the stats in a "Brief Summary" override the stats in the actual description of the ship itself? Which is meaningless anyway, since a little over 70k damage amidships takes her out of the fight and all she can do is maneuver.

You are also not taking the total ship. Yes ship vs. ship the Protector would win 7 out of 10 times. But you have not looked at the fighter compliment where the Emancipator caries over 1,400 combat fighters plus 960 Battleram Robots and 1,200 Silverhawk PA's. With just fighters, robots, and PA alone the Emancipator could swat 2 Protectors and 2 Packmasters without even firing it's own guns.

As discussed, i never said it was inferior to the Protector. I said you could field 7 Protectors for one Emancipator. Or, more evenly, 6 Protectors and 3 Packmasters. The Packmasters have an Aerospace wing that can stand off the Emancipator's wing, (though the number of Battleram Robots is literally impossible - that many is more mass and space than the ship, and you most certainly aren't cramming 1400 fighters in there too; take a look at the silhouttes in the Phase World Sourcebook, and realize the Emancipation is only 3x the size of the Packmaster, and the Packmaster is quite a bit wider/deeper along its hull axes), and the 6 Protectors will hull the Emancipator in just one or two rounds. They SUBSTANTIALLY outgun her.

To really see how unbelievably over powered the Emancipator is you really need to compare it to it's only peer, the Doombringer.

- MDC: This is only place where the Doombringer wins. It has 350,000 to Emancipators 300,000 while having identical shields.

- Beam Weapons: While the Emancipator has twice the actual guns the rate of fire is half so total beams fired is equal, range is the same, and the damage is comparable. The one advantage here is that the Emancipator can bring more fire to bear in one melee to overwhelm shields or damage a vulnerable hull.

- Secondary lasers: Emancipator is clear winner. It has 8 batteries to the Doombringer's 6, but has a 2 to 1 rate of fire advantage of 16 blasts 6 and those blasts are 3 times more powerful which is death to any escorting berserkers that might be trying to aid the Doombringer. Now the Doombringer has 8 pathetic p-beam cannons to add in but at 4 mile range they are not doing much accept keeping destroyers at range.

- Cruise Missiles: The Emancipator has 2,506 total now no total is given for the Doombringer but assuming it carries 20 reloads it would have 4,000 which seems unlikely but just say it does. The Emancipator can unload all 128 missiles in a single volley

No, it can fire four volleys of 32 missiles.

while the maximum volley from the Doombringer is 40. now Say the Doombringer could empty its launchers in one melee (5 attacks not unreasonable) it has an average reload time of 2.5 minutes compared to the Emancipator's 2 melees. This means in the time it takes a Doombringer to fire 400 missiles the Emancipator can fire 640. So point to Emancipator.

- Point Defense: Is clearly a victory for the Emancipator. It has 16 mile to 2 mile range advantage and the cannons are twice as powerful. The missiles on the Emancipator are also SR guided

it doesnt say any such thing. The missiles are just missiles. Read the whole ship description back and forth. No mention of smart mini missiles.

compared to the dumb mini-missiles of the Doombringer. (Note: this is also a huge advantage over Protector and Packmaster) With the range and missile advantage this means that the Emancipator's defense grid is 3 to 5 times more effective than that of doombringer in eliminating missiles and fighters.

- Fighters: Again the Emancipator caries over 1,400 combat fighters plus 960 Battleram Robots and 1,200 Silverhawk PA's while the Doombringer carries just 900 fighters and 2000 flying PAs. Without even taking into account the qualitative difference between the fighters and PAs the Emancipator has an enormous edge.

The Emancipator doesn't have the interior volume to hold all that. I know that the stats say it has it, so thats how it is, but there's no possible way theyd all fit. Not to mention the 5000+ PA and tanks and other stuff. The ship simply isnt big enough. If it were actually a solid ship instead of that absurd broad-head arrow shape, it could easily hold it all, but those "blade" hulls are absurdly thin and have no interior volume. Yeah, the beam is 2000ft, but when most of that is just empty, non-contained space, its worthless. Its not like its a 2000ft x 2000ft square worth of decks.

Not to mention all of those fighters and Battlerams dont do you much good if the ship itself is dead. All they could do then is win a phyric victory.

Now I do have to say that the Emancipator is a more thoughtfully designed ship than those in the PW SB so again it would have been better to maybe do a retcon on the older ships.

Well, also consider that the two ships are massively different tonnages. The Doombringer masses 40 million tons. The Emancipation is over 100 million tons. I would hope that all that tonnage made a difference. Its almost 3 times as massive. In reality, the Emancipation is a Super Dreadnaught (SD) or Monitor (MN), not a Dreadnaught (DN).

As for a "more thoughtyfully designed ship" - yeah, well agree to disagree completely. Navies dont build "one ship that does it all" ships. Its both expensive, and leads to it not being really good at any of the things it does.

Dreadnaughts should be ships-of-the-line, wading into the heat of the battle and dishing out punishment. Carriers hang back from the fight with a screen so that the fighters can come back and re-arm, get repaired, or retire from battle. Good luck doing that in the middle of a close-in fight. (Its one of the things about the Doombringer that didnt make sense, either).

The fleets of the Three Galaxies have notable holes, but i think thats just because none of the authors are super into Space Navies.

There should be Destroyer Escorts with heavy point-defense armaments to screen Carriers. There should be Escort and Assault Carriers, Light and Heavy Cruisers (with different roles), Battlecruisers for middle-weight heavy combatants.

The Emancipator is a product of runaway cold war one-upsmanship. Its existence is more important than its functionality.

Braden Campbell wrote:The Emancipator is a product of runaway cold war one-upsmanship. Its existence is more important than its functionality.

So it is more of a political statement than a warship? (And they are sort of fortunate that it is a semi-decent warship?)

Braden Campbell wrote:The Emancipator is a product of runaway cold war one-upsmanship. Its existence is more important than its functionality.

Much like HMS Dreadnaught herself. Which was, after all, sunk without ever doing much.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Braden Campbell wrote:The Emancipator is a product of runaway cold war one-upsmanship. Its existence is more important than its functionality.

Much like HMS Dreadnaught herself. Which was, after all, sunk without ever doing much.

HMS Dreadnought was sold for scrap after becoming obsolete...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dread ... %281906%29

More to the point with regards to this thread, palladium "physics" is what makes the 3 galaxies ship designs so very silly. Weapons ranges are extremely small relative to ship speeds (except, of course, the dominators). Combine that with devastatingly effective weaponry being available on fighter sized platforms... Fleet engagements are settled by fighter engagements, long before the "gun" ships get in range. This should lead to carrier designs at all levels - from small escort carriers in place of frigates/destroyers up to fleet carriers. You might see some debated between large fleet carriers vs. multiple cruiser sized carriers.

pad300 wrote:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Braden Campbell wrote:The Emancipator is a product of runaway cold war one-upsmanship. Its existence is more important than its functionality.

Much like HMS Dreadnaught herself. Which was, after all, sunk without ever doing much.

HMS Dreadnought was sold for scrap after becoming obsolete...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dread ... %281906%29

I am, perhaps, confusing her with the Bismarck. I just remember there being a large famous dreadnaught that was sunk without ever really accomplishing much. WW1-2 history is not my speciality. My degree is in the Dark - Middle Ages with a side of the Reniassance (largely because i like and study period weaponry).

pad300 wrote:More to the point with regards to this thread, palladium "physics" is what makes the 3 galaxies ship designs so very silly. Weapons ranges are extremely small relative to ship speeds (except, of course, the dominators). Combine that with devastatingly effective weaponry being available on fighter sized platforms... Fleet engagements are settled by fighter engagements, long before the "gun" ships get in range. This should lead to carrier designs at all levels - from small escort carriers in place of frigates/destroyers up to fleet carriers. You might see some debated between large fleet carriers vs. multiple cruiser sized carriers.

I dont disagree.... sorta? If you have an effective enough screen (either your own equivalent Aerospace Wing or a solid screen of DD(E)’s or even CL’s with effective anti-fighter point defense, you could easily find yourself in a situation where both aerospace wings are depleted and its going to come down to gunships.

Starfire deals with this; the fighters in that setting can pack both Anti-matter anti-ship Missiles as well as “Primary Beam” packs (“Primary” beams are basically a focused-gravity funnel; they destroy anything caught in the beam, but cause almost no collateral damage, so itll punch a six inch hole straight through even a Monitor-sized ship (Monitors being basically 2-4x the tonnage of a Superdreadnaught), but anything outside that hole is unharmed) that can seriously threaten any ship.

So, fleets in that setting make use of Carriers of all sizes, from Escort Carriers that are basically cheap, nearly unarmed flight decks, to SD-sized Fleet Carriers (and later, Monitors), and BB-sized Assault Carriers (only carry the flight wing of a Heavy Cruiser hull, but are designed with massive armor and to re-arm and recover fighters in the heat of a Warp-Point assault, which is a knife-range slugging match)....

Initially, humans didnt field a lot of Fighters, but ISW-1 (fought between the Humans and cat-like Orions, who are fighter-savants - oh, did I mention that Wing Commander is basically ripped off from Starfire?) taugh them that they needed them. While they were developing their own Fighters, they had to come up with a defense, which was DD(E)’s and CL(E)’s armed with heavy point defense (blisters ofmlasers and light primary beams, and pods of AF-HAWK missiles (Anti Fighter, Homing All the Way Killer) - a single pod of 30+ missiles would be flushed at a single fighter.

This basically won them the war. The Orions couldnt field ships of the line fast enough, and couldnt get their fighters through without massive losses, and once their fighters were out of commission, the humans’ BBs and DNs could just wade in and execute the Orion Carriers. Pinned down to targets they HAD to defend, there was nowhere and no way for them to run.

TL:DR - balanced fleets win wars. If you go fighter-heavy, the very first enemy who develops na effective counter to your fighters is the one who takes you out.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

pad300 wrote:More to the point with regards to this thread, palladium "physics" is what makes the 3 galaxies ship designs so very silly. Weapons ranges are extremely small relative to ship speeds (except, of course, the dominators). Combine that with devastatingly effective weaponry being available on fighter sized platforms... Fleet engagements are settled by fighter engagements, long before the "gun" ships get in range. This should lead to carrier designs at all levels - from small escort carriers in place of frigates/destroyers up to fleet carriers. You might see some debated between large fleet carriers vs. multiple cruiser sized carriers.

I dont disagree.... sorta? If you have an effective enough screen (either your own equivalent Aerospace Wing or a solid screen of DD(E)’s or even CL’s with effective anti-fighter point defense, you could easily find yourself in a situation where both aerospace wings are depleted and its going to come down to gunships.

Starfire deals with this; the fighters in that setting can pack both Anti-matter anti-ship Missiles as well as “Primary Beam” packs (“Primary” beams are basically a focused-gravity funnel; they destroy anything caught in the beam, but cause almost no collateral damage, so itll punch a six inch hole straight through even a Monitor-sized ship (Monitors being basically 2-4x the tonnage of a Superdreadnaught), but anything outside that hole is unharmed) that can seriously threaten any ship.

So, fleets in that setting make use of Carriers of all sizes, from Escort Carriers that are basically cheap, nearly unarmed flight decks, to SD-sized Fleet Carriers (and later, Monitors), and BB-sized Assault Carriers (only carry the flight wing of a Heavy Cruiser hull, but are designed with massive armor and to re-arm and recover fighters in the heat of a Warp-Point assault, which is a knife-range slugging match)....

Initially, humans didnt field a lot of Fighters, but ISW-1 (fought between the Humans and cat-like Orions, who are fighter-savants - oh, did I mention that Wing Commander is basically ripped off from Starfire?) taugh them that they needed them. While they were developing their own Fighters, they had to come up with a defense, which was DD(E)’s and CL(E)’s armed with heavy point defense (blisters ofmlasers and light primary beams, and pods of AF-HAWK missiles (Anti Fighter, Homing All the Way Killer) - a single pod of 30+ missiles would be flushed at a single fighter.

This basically won them the war. The Orions couldnt field ships of the line fast enough, and couldnt get their fighters through without massive losses, and once their fighters were out of commission, the humans’ BBs and DNs could just wade in and execute the Orion Carriers. Pinned down to targets they HAD to defend, there was nowhere and no way for them to run.

TL:DR - balanced fleets win wars. If you go fighter-heavy, the very first enemy who develops na effective counter to your fighters is the one who takes you out.

You can say that in the "Starfire" world, but I said palladium "physics".

Palladium "physics" is goofy. For RPG narrative purposes, fighters are effective(Yay! Knights of the Air!). Thus, computers are not better than fighter pilots, big weapons are at most fractionally superior to smaller ones, big guns can't shoot effectively at "small" targets, fighter weapon packages can damage the "big boys", fighters are significantly faster than the big boys (obviously not for aerodynamics, and for a contra-gravity drive, mass shouldn't matter...). At "standard" 3 Galaxy tech levels, by the book, the max range for a gun is 100 miles. For a missile 2000 miles. Fighters have pilot-limited endurance, and can do more than 10000 mph. A fighter can easily fly a mission of 1 hr out, 10 minutes strike time, 1 hr back, for combat radii of 10000 miles... Point defense against fighters is a terrible proposition in the 3 galaxies, as the ships are not built for it. Fighters can mount guns with a 16 mile range (Scorpion, DB Phase World), while point defense systems are very limited (for example, the point defense systems on a doombringer top out at 2 miles! 4 if you count the particle beam guns as point defense). I can't remember any printed 3 galaxies ship (not fighter) with medium range missiles... Now this isn't how I would build ships, (and I assume not you either) but it's clearly how they build ships....

For a real world perspective, not having a "balanced" fleet - very few ships of the line for a couple of years after Pearl Harbor - didn't stop the US from winning the naval war in the pacific. Do you think not having a "balanced" fleet (again, no big-gun ships) is going to hinder the US Navy against current opponents?

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote: - Point Defense: Is clearly a victory for the Emancipator. It has 16 mile to 2 mile range advantage and the cannons are twice as powerful. The missiles on the Emancipator are also SR guided

it doesnt say any such thing. The missiles are just missiles. Read the whole ship description back and forth. No mention of smart mini missiles.

They are SRMs (Short Range Missiles) which are automatically guided missiles instead of the usual Mini-Missiles which are automatically NOT guided.
SR guided... Short Range guided

Now they will only be smart missiles if they buy them from the Naruni at double cost... but they still get the +3 strike for being guided AND get to use the volley rule for guided missiles that unguided missiles (like mini-missiles) don't get to use.

pad300 wrote:You can say that in the "Starfire" world, but I said palladium "physics".

Ehh, none of what you're describing is physics.

Palladium "physics" is goofy. For RPG narrative purposes, fighters are effective(Yay! Knights of the Air!). Thus, computers are not better than fighter pilots,

Explained in-setting.

big weapons are at most fractionally superior to smaller ones,

Because people get blinkered by damage numbers and ignore range, rate of fire, and payload.

big guns can't shoot effectively at "small" targets,

rather like real life.

fighter weapon packages can damage the "big boys",

Like real life.

fighters are significantly faster than the big boys (obviously not for aerodynamics, and for a contra-gravity drive, mass shouldn't matter...).

Since a CG-drive reduces the effects of Gravity on an object, not eliminates, Mass still matters.

At "standard" 3 Galaxy tech levels, by the book, the max range for a gun is 100 miles.

More like 120 to 150 for the big stuff, but, sure, point taken.

For a missile 2000 miles. Fighters have pilot-limited endurance, and can do more than 10000 mph. A fighter can easily fly a mission of 1 hr out, 10 minutes strike time, 1 hr back, for combat radii of 10000 miles... Point defense against fighters is a terrible proposition in the 3 galaxies, as the ships are not built for it.

Sure they are. Against masses of hundreds of fighters against a single ship? No, not really, but in that situation you were pooched anyway.

Fighters can mount guns with a 16 mile range (Scorpion, DB Phase World),

Which is the only fighter with a gun with this kind of range. It also doesn't do enough damage to really be a threat to even the shields of a Hunter-class Destroyer (which carries MRMs and can blow Scorpion's out of space in job lots).

while point defense systems are very limited (for example, the point defense systems on a doombringer top out at 2 miles! 4 if you count the particle beam guns as point defense).

Point defense systems on ships Cruiser-sized and bigger include their LRM launchers. Look at most of the ships, if they have LRMs, their listed purpose is "anti-fighter, anti-missiles". Thats 2000 miles of point-defense range (in theory, its a bad theory, but its there.)

I can't remember any printed 3 galaxies ship (not fighter) with medium range missiles...

Ships armed with MRMs or SRMs ("better than Mini-Missiles")
Hunter-class Destroyer
Arcane Mk.2 Patrol ship (unspecified, either LRMs or MRMs due to listed ranges; also has the Death Cloud Cannon which can just put up a wall of ice for incoming missiles to slam into)
Dwarven Iron Ship (Bottle Demon Missiles are MRMs, but also have an "unlimited" range once they pop open)
Explorer-Class Cruiser (SRMs, not MRMs, but 10 miles is better than 2 miles for mini missiles).
Zhokil-class BC (SRMs)
Naruni Audit Ship (MRMs)

The following ship types have LRM batteries (and all are called out as for anti-fighter purposes, or, in a few cases, simply "defense")
Warshield-class Cruiser
Dwarven Iron Ship (Bottled Demon Missiles are technically MRMs but have unlimited range)
Protector-Class Battleship
Arcane Mark X Battleship (this bad boy also has several gun emplacements of a gun that hits everything in a 30 degree cone out to 5 miles! Its basically immune to missiles, as each missile in any volley will get hit for enough damage to destroy it)
Explorer-Class Cruiser
Espandon-Class Frigate
Conquistador-Class Cruiser
Zhokil-Class Battlecruiser (Nezsam Torpedos make great missile interdiction - they are Smart munitions with an immense blast radius)
Raider-Class Combat Shuttle

If your theory, as i understand it, is that Fighters will simply "fire from stand-off range" with heavy missile salvos (and then retire to re-arm, presumably)

Thats a dead theory.

Missile salvos are absurdly easy to shoot down, especially if you try it from stand-off range with LRMs. And a lot of those ships? Theyll be shooting back. The likelihood of most of those missile salvos actually hitting any of their targets 2000 miles later is very low. Missiles in Palladium are really only effective if they are launched close enough that the defensive gunners only get a single (or zero, in the case of point-blank range (1 mile, or 3 miles for CRMs) action to shoot them down. You launch from anything past a few miles out, and theyre going to have dozens of actions to launch counter-salvos of LRMs and MRMs to shoot down incoming fire.

Theyll never get through. And you better hope to whatever gods you follow i didnt arm my fighters for Space Superiority, or Your Guys(tm) are going to have a really rough day.

Now this isn't how I would build ships, (and I assume not you either) but it's clearly how they build ships....

For a real world perspective, not having a "balanced" fleet - very few ships of the line for a couple of years after Pearl Harbor - didn't stop the US from winning the naval war in the pacific.

Several reasons for that:

-We threw Destroyers and Cruisers at Battleships (and lost them in job lots)
-We very carefully avoided being pinned down to any target we "had" to defend. Retreat was ALWAYS an option, and one Admiral Nimitz employed liberally.
-We lost a CRAPLOAD of Escort Carriers, and the planes that were on them. Japan simply couldn't match the output of an angry, fully industrialized America. We were building Liberty-ship Escort Carriers in as little as four months. We lost a LOT more tonnage than the Japanese did.
-We had an extremely brilliant Admiral in charge of the Pacific Fleet (Nimitz), who used his assets in ways that no one had yet imagined. Remember, the fighter was relatively new during WW2. Yes, there were fighters in WW1, but they were NOWHERE near as capable as those of WW2. People were still feeling out what kinds of uses they had. In addition to -Nimitz being a brilliant officer, the Japanese commander was ... not as forward thinking. He often retreated when he should have pressed, and still believed (even after using fighters to sink the bulk of the Pacific Fleet's heavy ships) that Battleships were paramount.

It was nowhere near as simple as "we did it without a balanced fleet anyway"; at the time, the exact constitution of a 'balanced fleet' was fluctuating anyway because of Naval Aviation. In the Three Galaxies, fighters and their capabilities are known issue. And in WW2, the very few times the Japanese managed to bring US Warships to close action... it was over quickly, and not in our favor.

Do you think not having a "balanced" fleet (again, no big-gun ships) is going to hinder the US Navy against current opponents?

We -have- a balanced fleet now. You simply dont need a Battleship to deliver that kind of firepower anymore. A DD(G) can put more, and more accurate and powerful, firepower down-range than any Battleship could have.

Every Carrier Battlegroup is screened by subs, DD(E)s, DD(G)s, and frigates. For every Carrier we field, there are dozens of other ships protecting it.

And if you are wondering why i keep bringing up Starfire...

Its because Starfire was CJ's inspiration for how Ships in the 3Gs work.

I noticed the similarities back as early as the Phase World Sourcebook. (And i confirmed it with him when i met him) Other than FTL technology (which does not exist in Starfire; interstellar travel there is between gravitational 'weak points' - Warp Points - and instantaneous) its basically a straight up lift.

CG Drives? Work the same as the Traction-Drives of Starfire.
Comparative weapon ranges? (hugely truncated, by as a percentage of one another) Straight up lift. In Starfire, its hundreds of thousands of kilometers for starship weapons (instead of hundreds) and millions of kilometers for missiles (instead of thousands), but there's rough parity of percentages of one another.
Same types of weapons by and large (with the exception of the Primary Beam) - the Cruise Missile is a straight up lift of the Strategic Bombardment Missile from Starfire (shorter ranged than other, much lighter Anti-ship missiles).
Ships are built along the same lines.
Fighters are useful (because they can pack Primary Beams and heavy anti-matter warhead anti-ship missiles, which can gut a Superdreadnaught if you can get your squadron close enough to launch them).

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Actually you stumble on one of the problems in FTG and you missed the actual totals for these ships MDC on pages 22-28. The Emancipator's total MDC is 300,000.

By what logic do you think that the stats in a "Brief Summary" override the stats in the actual description of the ship itself? Which is meaningless anyway, since a little over 70k damage amidships takes her out of the fight and all she can do is maneuver.

By the logic that it is in the books and placed there to be put in context of earlier ships that had one MB total. Where did you find the idea that you total the three sections to get a comparison since that is exactly nowhere in the book? Now don't get me wrong, breaking the MB up was one of the things I liked in fleets and was something that I had already been doing due to the influence of the 1st ed. Robotech but the total MDC is listed in that section so my logic is you know it's there.

If you are going to compare ships from two different books we need common values. So we need 1/3 breakdowns for the earlier ships (which we don't have) or we use single MB numbers for them all (which thanks to the numbers in the book we do have). As I said earlier I would have preferred if they did publish a simple change of stats at the front of the book giving the 1/3 breakdown for the old ships but they didn't do that so this is what we are left with.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

You are also not taking the total ship. Yes ship vs. ship the Protector would win 7 out of 10 times. But you have not looked at the fighter compliment where the Emancipator caries over 1,400 combat fighters plus 960 Battleram Robots and 1,200 Silverhawk PA's. With just fighters, robots, and PA alone the Emancipator could swat 2 Protectors and 2 Packmasters without even firing it's own guns.

As discussed, i never said it was inferior to the Protector. I said you could field 7 Protectors for one Emancipator. Or, more evenly, 6 Protectors and 3 Packmasters. The Packmasters have an Aerospace wing that can stand off the Emancipator's wing, (though the number of Battleram Robots is literally impossible - that many is more mass and space than the ship, and you most certainly aren't cramming 1400 fighters in there too; take a look at the silhouttes in the Phase World Sourcebook, and realize the Emancipation is only 3x the size of the Packmaster, and the Packmaster is quite a bit wider/deeper along its hull axes), and the 6 Protectors will hull the Emancipator in just one or two rounds. They SUBSTANTIALLY outgun her.

First, you are correct that it is impossible to fit all of those things in any of the ships. I hate to say it because I love PB but it is sort of there thing. You want a real laugh, go take a look at what some of the CS Navy ships can carry in that SB. I mean the number of weapons on the Protector is ridiculous in and of itself so if we are going to start modifying numbers we can't forget to cut that down. But I am going by what is in the book since that is all we have in common to work with, if we are going to start inventing our own numbers this conversation becomes rather pointless, or potentially just more pointless.

Now, Looking at the numbers as given you are correct for what this ship costs you could do more with it that is why I compared it to it's only peer the Doombringer. Now 6 Protectors and 3 Packmasters is actually 360 billion so it is really two and half Packmasters or you give a quartet of Warshield cruiser to the Emancipator. But lets keep it 9 to 1 they barely have an edge in fighter numbers (1752 to 1560), no advantage in Silver Hawks (1248 to 1200), and are comically outnumbered in Battlerams (126 for the Protectors/Packmasters to 960 for the Emancipator). And I have to tell you that Battlerams and silverhawks sent after the Carriers will ruin the day of those ships completely elimintating, or even inverting, the fighter advantage as massive numbers will need to be retained for defense.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

To really see how unbelievably over powered the Emancipator is you really need to compare it to it's only peer, the Doombringer.

- MDC: This is only place where the Doombringer wins. It has 350,000 to Emancipators 300,000 while having identical shields.

- Beam Weapons: While the Emancipator has twice the actual guns the rate of fire is half so total beams fired is equal, range is the same, and the damage is comparable. The one advantage here is that the Emancipator can bring more fire to bear in one melee to overwhelm shields or damage a vulnerable hull.

- Secondary lasers: Emancipator is clear winner. It has 8 batteries to the Doombringer's 6, but has a 2 to 1 rate of fire advantage of 16 blasts 6 and those blasts are 3 times more powerful which is death to any escorting berserkers that might be trying to aid the Doombringer. Now the Doombringer has 8 pathetic p-beam cannons to add in but at 4 mile range they are not doing much accept keeping destroyers at range.

- Cruise Missiles: The Emancipator has 2,506 total now no total is given for the Doombringer but assuming it carries 20 reloads it would have 4,000 which seems unlikely but just say it does. The Emancipator can unload all 128 missiles in a single volley

No, it can fire four volleys of 32 missiles.

No, it can fire 32 "per launcher" (see the description on page 45) which always means they can be one volley. But, even if it were four separate volleys that means that the Doombringer can only fire 4 of 10 so the comparison is still valid. Now I did make one mistake here, the description of the Doombringer says clearly that each launcher can only launch 10 missiles per melee so it would take 5 melees to fire it's payload of 200, 10 melees to reload (average) and then 5 more to fire another 200. In that 20 melees the Emancipator could fire 896 so the whole thing of reload time makes the Emancipator even more unreal. But worse that that, you can use the "Random Missile Assualt" rules (PW SB pg. 106) and this becomes an overwhelming nightmare for any ship. Especially with the crappy point defense that the old ships had.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

while the maximum volley from the Doombringer is 40. now Say the Doombringer could empty its launchers in one melee (5 attacks not unreasonable) it has an average reload time of 2.5 minutes compared to the Emancipator's 2 melees. This means in the time it takes a Doombringer to fire 400 missiles the Emancipator can fire 640. So point to Emancipator.

- Point Defense: Is clearly a victory for the Emancipator. It has 16 mile to 2 mile range advantage and the cannons are twice as powerful. The missiles on the Emancipator are also SR guided

it doesnt say any such thing. The missiles are just missiles. Read the whole ship description back and forth. No mention of smart mini missiles.

eliakon wrote:They are SRMs (Short Range Missiles) which are automatically guided missiles instead of the usual Mini-Missiles which are automatically NOT guided.
SR guided... Short Range guided

Now they will only be smart missiles if they buy them from the Naruni at double cost... but they still get the +3 strike for being guided AND get to use the volley rule for guided missiles that unguided missiles (like mini-missiles) don't get to use.

Thank you. And I never said smart I said guided.

The other thing you have to remember is that range equals rate of fire. If a cruise missile is launched at a ship and a point defense weapon has say a 2 mile range, like the Doombringers, than it gets only one shot at those missiles which will most likely be dodging as most references have these as smart missiles although some people dispute this.Now a 16 mile range, like the Emancipator, gives you at least 2 but probably 3 and maybe as many as 5 shots before it hits (I have always said 3 or 4 depending on how many attacks the PC had) so the advantage in depth is added to the volley rules to make this even tougher.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

compared to the dumb mini-missiles of the Doombringer. (Note: this is also a huge advantage over Protector and Packmaster) With the range and missile advantage this means that the Emancipator's defense grid is 3 to 5 times more effective than that of doombringer in eliminating missiles and fighters.

- Fighters: Again the Emancipator caries over 1,400 combat fighters plus 960 Battleram Robots and 1,200 Silverhawk PA's while the Doombringer carries just 900 fighters and 2000 flying PAs. Without even taking into account the qualitative difference between the fighters and PAs the Emancipator has an enormous edge.

The Emancipator doesn't have the interior volume to hold all that. I know that the stats say it has it, so thats how it is, but there's no possible way theyd all fit. Not to mention the 5000+ PA and tanks and other stuff. The ship simply isnt big enough. If it were actually a solid ship instead of that absurd broad-head arrow shape, it could easily hold it all, but those "blade" hulls are absurdly thin and have no interior volume. Yeah, the beam is 2000ft, but when most of that is just empty, non-contained space, its worthless. Its not like its a 2000ft x 2000ft square worth of decks.

Not to mention all of those fighters and Battlerams dont do you much good if the ship itself is dead. All they could do then is win a phyric victory.

Again, we can only go by the numbers in the books. I don't disagree with you but this is the case for all of the ships. Talk to Carl Gleba about all the trouble he had creating deck plans for a hunter destroyer with the 4 fighters it was supposed to carry.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Now I do have to say that the Emancipator is a more thoughtfully designed ship than those in the PW SB so again it would have been better to maybe do a retcon on the older ships.

Well, also consider that the two ships are massively different tonnages. The Doombringer masses 40 million tons. The Emancipation is over 100 million tons. I would hope that all that tonnage made a difference. Its almost 3 times as massive. In reality, the Emancipation is a Super Dreadnaught (SD) or Monitor (MN), not a Dreadnaught (DN).

As for a "more thoughtyfully designed ship" - yeah, well agree to disagree completely. Navies dont build "one ship that does it all" ships. Its both expensive, and leads to it not being really good at any of the things it does.

Dreadnaughts should be ships-of-the-line, wading into the heat of the battle and dishing out punishment. Carriers hang back from the fight with a screen so that the fighters can come back and re-arm, get repaired, or retire from battle. Good luck doing that in the middle of a close-in fight. (Its one of the things about the Doombringer that didnt make sense, either).

The fleets of the Three Galaxies have notable holes, but i think thats just because none of the authors are super into Space Navies.

There should be Destroyer Escorts with heavy point-defense armaments to screen Carriers. There should be Escort and Assault Carriers, Light and Heavy Cruisers (with different roles), Battlecruisers for middle-weight heavy combatants.

Everything here I agree with and in fact I have changed for my own games but again I am going just by what is in the books and in the books there is a very noticeable power creep. As I have said before the Narumi ships in Dimensional Outbreak are even worse. I mean if the Naruni are building ships like the Conquistador and Esperanda every other cruiser and destroyer/frigate is just junk.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

pad300 wrote: fighter weapon packages can damage the "big boys",

Actually, according to Fleets... they can't.
Page 15 says that fighter class weapons (point and light) can not do any damage to 3,500 MDC or larger ships.
So once you get past a small frigate/destroyer fighters can't damage the ship unless they mount Cruise Missiles (yes I know that their SRMs, MRMs and LRMs should be just as effective as ship mounts... but there it is)

Since this as segued into a discussion about ships in general (and since the answer for the missile question appears to be 'because the authors did no research whatsoever')

The tech differentials are absurd.
For instance the Golgans have old tech, a thousand years out of date... except of course that they have one of the very few AoE energy weapon in the 3Gs! Those disruptors are a major game changer for point defense as an AoE attack on a missile volley can destroy most of the swarm before you check for fratricide.

No one uses flak-guns for their point defense. Even though we have several canonical railguns with multi-mile ranges and large AoE bursts.

The UWW has that lovely Volcano Rifle...one of the few AoE energy weapons in galaxy (AoE plamsa)… which would be fabulous for point defense... but isn't used.

No one uses chaff, or decoys, or sand casters/Alumina, or pin-point shields, or ECM, or Stealth, or even apparently tactics.

Braden Campbell wrote:The Emancipator is a product of runaway cold war one-upsmanship. Its existence is more important than its functionality.

It does come off this way and it really does fit with the political and economic situation that you continue in Thundercloud.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:So it is more of a political statement than a warship? (And they are sort of fortunate that it is a semi-decent warship?)

Actually, as I described before it is a beast of a ship.

pad300 wrote:More to the point with regards to this thread, palladium "physics" is what makes the 3 galaxies ship designs so very silly. Weapons ranges are extremely small relative to ship speeds (except, of course, the dominators). Combine that with devastatingly effective weaponry being available on fighter sized platforms... Fleet engagements are settled by fighter engagements, long before the "gun" ships get in range. This should lead to carrier designs at all levels - from small escort carriers in place of frigates/destroyers up to fleet carriers. You might see some debated between large fleet carriers vs. multiple cruiser sized carriers.

Most of this doesn't come down to just the PB system, it is also due to the simplicity of the ship designs. I tried to start a discussion about this Fixing Phase World Spacecraft Combat to get an idea about what people would add to the system. The problem is the more you add the more complex the system becomes and some people already think the PB system is too complex.

The reason I have created whole fleets of ships for each side (including corvettes, various destroyers and frigates, light cruisers and host of CVE's of cruiser and battle cruiser sizes) is to make it seem more real. It gets really boring when your flying around the giant TGE and coming across the same 4 ships and 1 fighter.

eliakon wrote:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

pad300 wrote: fighter weapon packages can damage the "big boys",

Actually, according to Fleets... they can't.
Page 15 says that fighter class weapons (point and light) can not do any damage to 3,500 MDC or larger ships.
So once you get past a small frigate/destroyer fighters can't damage the ship unless they mount Cruise Missiles (yes I know that their SRMs, MRMs and LRMs should be just as effective as ship mounts... but there it is)

Reading the entire description this is more a statement of Math than some sort of new rule or blanket immunity to MDC weapons. It clearly says that it can blow holes in the ship, it is just saying that realistically they can not fire enough, while dodging PD fire, to do real damage. I think he is conveying more tactics than some sort of immunity.

eliakon wrote:Since this as segued into a discussion about ships in general (and since the answer for the missile question appears to be 'because the authors did no research whatsoever')

The tech differentials are absurd.
For instance the Golgans have old tech, a thousand years out of date... except of course that they have one of the very few AoE energy weapon in the 3Gs! Those disruptors are a major game changer for point defense as an AoE attack on a missile volley can destroy most of the swarm before you check for fratricide.

No one uses flak-guns for their point defense. Even though we have several canonical railguns with multi-mile ranges and large AoE bursts.

The UWW has that lovely Volcano Rifle...one of the few AoE energy weapons in galaxy (AoE plamsa)… which would be fabulous for point defense... but isn't used.

No one uses chaff, or decoys, or sand casters/Alumina, or pin-point shields, or ECM, or Stealth, or even apparently tactics.

Yes to all of these. If someone was going to create warships for a game you need to start with the weapons. What are the different kinds of energy weapons and missiles, what are the effects and uses for each. After that you need to determine what the purpose for each ship and what weapons they would use. An escort frigate has no need for heavy weapons but would want piles of SRMs, MRMs, and point defense weapons all stacked on a ship that wouldn't need to go any faster than BBs or CVs. An attack destroyer would want heavy weapons, cruise missiles with high volume of fire and it would need to be fast. You then go through each ship making a fleet. But, this is science fantasy so there is a place for the 'do it all' ships. Battle Cruisers, Cruisers, Light Cruisers, Destroyers and even corvettes that can go out on there own. Yes I am once again talking about hero ships.

Warshield73 wrote:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Actually you stumble on one of the problems in FTG and you missed the actual totals for these ships MDC on pages 22-28. The Emancipator's total MDC is 300,000.

By what logic do you think that the stats in a "Brief Summary" override the stats in the actual description of the ship itself? Which is meaningless anyway, since a little over 70k damage amidships takes her out of the fight and all she can do is maneuver.

By the logic that it is in the books and placed there to be put in context of earlier ships that had one MB total. Where did you find the idea that you total the three sections to get a comparison since that is exactly nowhere in the book? Now don't get me wrong, breaking the MB up was one of the things I liked in fleets and was something that I had already been doing due to the influence of the 1st ed. Robotech but the total MDC is listed in that section so my logic is you know it's there.

If you are going to compare ships from two different books we need common values. So we need 1/3 breakdowns for the earlier ships (which we don't have) or we use single MB numbers for them all (which thanks to the numbers in the book we do have). As I said earlier I would have preferred if they did publish a simple change of stats at the front of the book giving the 1/3 breakdown for the old ships but they didn't do that so this is what we are left with.

Problem with that theory is that the general stat block earlier in the book for the Emancipation-class is wrong. Its the only one that doesn't add up (the others all correctly add up the 3 hull segments, the Emancipation does not add up correctly), AND it has incorrect stats for the ship itself (cutting its size down by nearly a mile).

Ergo, the stat block earlier in the book for the Emancipation is incorrect and invalidated by the data in the actual ship description.

And I have to tell you that Battlerams and silverhawks sent after the Carriers will ruin the day of those ships completely elimintating, or even inverting, the fighter advantage as massive numbers will need to be retained for defense.

Theyll never reach the Packmasters. They are slow as pigs compared to fighters, and no sane Admiral is going to deploy his CVs in the line of battle with his Battleships. Theyll be loitering WAY back from the fight. The Silverhawks cant even hurt the carriers. (See below) Even if they could catch them.

Especially with the crappy point defense that the old ships had.

See my above response to the other poster; MOST of the older ships have LRM batteries that are intended for point defense. The Doombringer is a notable exception. They also carry more LRMs than almost any ship carries CRMs. They can literally afford to missile-for-missile, shoot down your CRMs, and have missiles in reserve to also blow your fighters out of space far beyond their own range.

Also, remember that fighter/power armor weapons that are not Missiles cannot damage ships whose main (starting/full) body is over 3500MDC or any part of that ship whose full MDC value is 3500MDC or over). (Fleets, page 15)

Unless ALL of those fighters are coming heavy with LRMs and CRMs, theyre dogmeat. And you better hope MY fighter wing isn't fitted for Space Superiority.

- Point Defense: Is clearly a victory for the Emancipator. It has 16 mile to 2 mile range advantage and the cannons are twice as powerful. The missiles on the Emancipator are also SR guided

it doesnt say any such thing. The missiles are just missiles. Read the whole ship description back and forth. No mention of smart mini missiles.

eliakon wrote:They are SRMs (Short Range Missiles) which are automatically guided missiles instead of the usual Mini-Missiles which are automatically NOT guided.
SR guided... Short Range guided

Thank you. And I never said smart I said guided.

They aren't that either. They are mini missiles. Im looking at it right now. 2 Mile range for the missiles, they are NEVER called SRMs. Theyre mini missiles, and not guided. Not that +3 to strike matters one way or the other; when you counter-fire, you (if you can) fire enough missiles to just counter the volley, or fire at least 4 so they cant dodge if they are smart munitions. Either way, your chances of missing are absurdly low, given the +2 to strike for LIDAR (Fleets, somewhere in the descriptions of ship types; all point defense weapons get +2 to strike on DD's and bigger) and +1 for Weapon Systems, you literally have to roll a 1 to miss.

The other thing you have to remember is that range equals rate of fire. If a cruise missile is launched at a ship and a point defense weapon has say a 2 mile range, like the Doombringers, than it gets only one shot at those missiles which will most likely be dodging as most references have these as smart missiles although some people dispute this.

Within 3 miles, CMs hit automatically (and cannot be interdicted) anyway. Within 1 mile, ALL missiles hit automatically and instantly. (PWSB) - Against ships, not small craft like fighters. Ships are just "too big to dodge".

However, most ships (and fighters in particular) cant fire big enough volleys not to simply have them completely counter-volleyed by point defense. So if point defense gets a chance to fire, unless they roll a 1, they win.

Again, however, i think you're missing/overlooking that other ship classes have missile batteries (see above post, MRMs and LRMs) that are called out as point defense weapons/anti-fighter weapons. Some of the TGE ships are notable exceptions, but that rather reflects the TGE's "crunch all you want, well conscript more" philosophy of not caring a great deal about their troops.

Point defense ranges on a lot of ships, all the way down to the Hunter-class Destroyer, are well into the 50-2000 mile range.

Long-range missile bombardment against most ships is non-viable.

I mean if the Naruni are building ships like the Conquistador and Esperanda every other cruiser and destroyer/frigate is just junk.

The Hunter would hold its own against an Espandon fairly well, actually, particularly given that it is half the cost of an Espandon. It wouldnt necessarily win (the two ships can inflict roughly the same damage with their main guns, their smaller guns are roughly equal, and the Espandon's better Cruise Missile capacity is largely nullified by the Hunter's ability to simply counter-volley MRMs missile for missile. The Espandon probably wins in the end, but itll know its been in a fight.

Given the relative age of the Hunter to the far newer Espandon, it's a pretty solid matchup. Given that you can field 2 Hunters to an Espandon, its not a bad comparison. (The market cost is 320 million on a Hunter; cost to produce for the CCW is surely lower).

The Conquistador is... interesting. Without the Espandons, its not very compelling. Even with them...

It has no force field. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Thats a MAJOR weakness. Its main gun is finicky and not particularly overpowered when youc onsider the low rate of fire. Its secondaries (the 8 heavy plasma cannons) are more dangerous, IMO, due to the high rate of fire.

The CRMs are... eh, again, depending on who you're fighting, unless you're getting up super close and launching them point blank, theyll just get counter-volleyed against a lot of the ships itd be fighting.. However, it has SIX LRM emplacements, meaning its got a serious backup punch and can put enough missiles into space that a lot of other ships WOULDNT be able to successfully countervolley EVERYTHING its throwing out.

Still, given its cost, its not too far out of whack. Its a LOT more expensive than other heavy cruisers.

Warshield73 wrote:Reading the entire description this is more a statement of Math than some sort of new rule or blanket immunity to MDC weapons. It clearly says that it can blow holes in the ship, it is just saying that realistically they can not fire enough, while dodging PD fire, to do real damage. I think he is conveying more tactics than some sort of immunity.

No, its being quite clear. Non-missile weapon systems cannot damage the structural MDC of any ship or part of a ship whose max MDC is 3500 or more. The referrence to being able to blow holes in the hull is because the ships list an "MDC per Hull section" - fighters can blow holes in the hull, allowing people to enter, etc, but they cant damage the ship itself with their built-in weapons.

If you have any confusion about this, it should be immediately cleared up by the following fact/rule that they CAN damage Force Fields, regardless of their MDC.

Its that simple. Built in fighter weapons dont hurt big ships. The example says straight up that even thousands of fighters firing away at a carrier will NOT be able to destroy it. They can blow off weapons emplacements, shield generators, etc (as long as their max MDC is below 3500), and they can leave the outer hull a tattered holey mess, but they CANNOT damage the structural MDC of the ship.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Reading the entire description this is more a statement of Math than some sort of new rule or blanket immunity to MDC weapons. It clearly says that it can blow holes in the ship, it is just saying that realistically they can not fire enough, while dodging PD fire, to do real damage. I think he is conveying more tactics than some sort of immunity.

No, its being quite clear. Non-missile weapon systems cannot damage the structural MDC of any ship or part of a ship whose max MDC is 3500 or more. The referrence to being able to blow holes in the hull is because the ships list an "MDC per Hull section" - fighters can blow holes in the hull, allowing people to enter, etc, but they cant damage the ship itself with their built-in weapons.

If you have any confusion about this, it should be immediately cleared up by the following fact/rule that they CAN damage Force Fields, regardless of their MDC.

Its that simple. Built in fighter weapons dont hurt big ships. The example says straight up that even thousands of fighters firing away at a carrier will NOT be able to destroy it. They can blow off weapons emplacements, shield generators, etc (as long as their max MDC is below 3500), and they can leave the outer hull a tattered holey mess, but they CANNOT damage the structural MDC of the ship.

This is made even MORE clear by the fact that they explicitly state that the reason Fighters carry CMs is so that they CAN hurt ships...
which if their weapons besides CMs were hurting the ships they wouldn't need to do in the first place! (especially given the existence of nuclear MRMs and LRMs with nearly as much punch as a CM that take up far less space and thus let you fire more of them)

Honestly... fighters appear to be one of the main justifications of CMs in many ways... as they can bring them in, dodging the heavy weapons then use the CMs to methodically blow away first the heavy point defense and missile batteries of a ship, then the main turrets allowing the ships of the line to close and finish it off unopposed with their big guns.

Which is a Silly rule. MDC is supposed to represent the immunity of really heavy material to light fire. Now we have MDC that apparently is more than just MDC. it's completely silly. Even Robotech with city-sized transforming spaceships didn't need a rule saying you can't damage a Zentradi Battleship with a puny light mech gun.

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Which is a Silly rule. MDC is supposed to represent the immunity of really heavy material to light fire. Now we have MDC that apparently is more than just MDC. it's completely silly. Even Robotech with city-sized transforming spaceships didn't need a rule saying you can't damage a Zentradi Battleship with a puny light mech gun.

I agree it is silly.
But we have this rule for both this and in AUGG (battleship armor)

Just because a rule is silly doesn't mean that they don't get published. Look at the AP rules in Sovietski! They can be fixed via house rule easy enough... but RAW is RAW

eliakon wrote:

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Which is a Silly rule. MDC is supposed to represent the immunity of really heavy material to light fire. Now we have MDC that apparently is more than just MDC. it's completely silly. Even Robotech with city-sized transforming spaceships didn't need a rule saying you can't damage a Zentradi Battleship with a puny light mech gun.

I agree it is silly.
But we have this rule for both this and in AUGG (battleship armor)

Just because a rule is silly doesn't mean that they don't get published. Look at the AP rules in Sovietski! They can be fixed via house rule easy enough... but RAW is RAW

I didn't say it wasn't a rule. I just said it was silly.

Before I get into this I want to restate my main point, a consistent power rise that makes ships from older books kind of if not useless much less useful.

To this purpose I have tried to compare the Emancipator to the Doombringer, it's only peer. I understand and agree that it is expensive and you can buy all these other ships for the same price but that is not the same thing as saying it is not fundamentally more powerful than it's one and only peer.

Now the Doombringer is only 50 billon while the Emancipator 350 billion. Now it is a much better ship but it is not 7 times better. They even mass in the same at 100 million tons so while you are looking at numbers that don't make sense compared to the earlier source material, like the number of Battlerams, the cost of this ship is one that should be looked at.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Actually you stumble on one of the problems in FTG and you missed the actual totals for these ships MDC on pages 22-28. The Emancipator's total MDC is 300,000.

By what logic do you think that the stats in a "Brief Summary" override the stats in the actual description of the ship itself? Which is meaningless anyway, since a little over 70k damage amidships takes her out of the fight and all she can do is maneuver.

By the logic that it is in the books and placed there to be put in context of earlier ships that had one MB total. Where did you find the idea that you total the three sections to get a comparison since that is exactly nowhere in the book? Now don't get me wrong, breaking the MB up was one of the things I liked in fleets and was something that I had already been doing due to the influence of the 1st ed. Robotech but the total MDC is listed in that section so my logic is you know it's there.

If you are going to compare ships from two different books we need common values. So we need 1/3 breakdowns for the earlier ships (which we don't have) or we use single MB numbers for them all (which thanks to the numbers in the book we do have). As I said earlier I would have preferred if they did publish a simple change of stats at the front of the book giving the 1/3 breakdown for the old ships but they didn't do that so this is what we are left with.

Problem with that theory is that the general stat block earlier in the book for the Emancipation-class is wrong. Its the only one that doesn't add up (the others all correctly add up the 3 hull segments, the Emancipation does not add up correctly), AND it has incorrect stats for the ship itself (cutting its size down by nearly a mile).

Ergo, the stat block earlier in the book for the Emancipation is incorrect and invalidated by the data in the actual ship description.

Accept I am pretty sure you are wrong. We noticed this problem when the book come out, remember I was trying to take old ships and break the MDC into thirds, so we made a spreadsheet to try and determine percentages or values. Couldn't find a consistent variable. Examples
- Yannar is 2,00+2,000+2,800=6,800 but the stat block says 11,000
- Zhokil is 27,000+27,000+34,000=88,000 the stat block for it is 135,000
- You want some funny from this the Bindas totals to 18,000 and the stat block says 40,000 but the Sylonar totals to 230,000 and the stat block actually goes lower giving it just 200,000
- The only ship where the total of its parts equals the stat block, unless my spreadsheet is mistaken, is the Servitude. All others are much higher except 2 which are lower.

When it was asked earlier we were told that they were given an official MB MDC for comparison sake. Again, I hate this. I would much rather that they had gone in and given 1/3 or even 1/4 breakdowns for really big ships but they didn't.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

And I have to tell you that Battlerams and silverhawks sent after the Carriers will ruin the day of those ships completely elimintating, or even inverting, the fighter advantage as massive numbers will need to be retained for defense.

Theyll never reach the Packmasters. They are slow as pigs compared to fighters, and no sane Admiral is going to deploy his CVs in the line of battle with his Battleships. Theyll be loitering WAY back from the fight. The Silverhawks cant even hurt the carriers. (See below) Even if they could catch them.

I specifically said earlier that I was simply looking at an attrition model. If you want to get into strategy the Emancipator can simply deny the Protectors battle more easily than the Packmasters can. Silverhawks are faster than Proctors and as fast as Star Ghosts. In the scenario you lay out with the Packmasters hanging back an Emancipator could simply jump in and out of FTL every time the CVs commit there fighters. For the sake of a simple comparison I did a simple attrition based comparison. In any situation you name where the CVs can simply leave I can name another where they can't or where the Emancipator can leave as well and this is complicated enough.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Especially with the crappy point defense that the old ships had.

See my above response to the other poster; MOST of the older ships have LRM batteries that are intended for point defense. The Doombringer is a notable exception. They also carry more LRMs than almost any ship carries CRMs. They can literally afford to missile-for-missile, shoot down your CRMs, and have missiles in reserve to also blow your fighters out of space far beyond their own range.

This is a solid point and the single biggest problem with the Emancipator but most fighters are armed with mini-missiles and given the short magazine and the 1D6 minute reload time I'm going to give odds the Emancipators 30 second reload time.

Again you have to take reload time into consideration but I will also remind you that I am saying the Emancipator is better than the Doombringer, its only peer, not 6 Protectors.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Also, remember that fighter/power armor weapons that are not Missiles cannot damage ships whose main (starting/full) body is over 3500MDC or any part of that ship whose full MDC value is 3500MDC or over). (Fleets, page 15)

Unless ALL of those fighters are coming heavy with LRMs and CRMs, theyre dogmeat. And you better hope MY fighter wing isn't fitted for Space Superiority.

I will cover this in my next post, I want it all together.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

- Point Defense: Is clearly a victory for the Emancipator. It has 16 mile to 2 mile range advantage and the cannons are twice as powerful. The missiles on the Emancipator are also SR guided

it doesnt say any such thing. The missiles are just missiles. Read the whole ship description back and forth. No mention of smart mini missiles.

eliakon wrote:They are SRMs (Short Range Missiles) which are automatically guided missiles instead of the usual Mini-Missiles which are automatically NOT guided.
SR guided... Short Range guided

Warshield73 wrote:Thank you. And I never said smart I said guided.

They aren't that either. They are mini missiles. Im looking at it right now. 2 Mile range for the missiles, they are NEVER called SRMs. Theyre mini missiles, and not guided. Not that +3 to strike matters one way or the other; when you counter-fire, you (if you can) fire enough missiles to just counter the volley, or fire at least 4 so they cant dodge if they are smart munitions. Either way, your chances of missing are absurdly low, given the +2 to strike for LIDAR (Fleets, somewhere in the descriptions of ship types; all point defense weapons get +2 to strike on DD's and bigger) and +1 for Weapon Systems, you literally have to roll a 1 to miss.

You are correct on the missiles and I don't know why my notes on the ship said SRM so sorry for my confusion I should have double checked it after your initial post.

My point about the point defense of the Emancipator being superior to the Doombringer still stands though. The 16 mile range on the guns give 2 or 3 more chances to hit an inbound missile than the 2 mile range, also ALL the cannons are 4D6X10 compared to half the doombringers being 3D4X10 and half being 3D6X10 with everything about the missiles being equal. So all else being equal if you fire 100 missiles, or fighters, at the Emancipator and the Doombringer the Emancipator is going to hit more of them than the Doombringer and more of what they hit is going to die.

Take a CM, it has 60 MDC according to most sources. with those 24 3D4X10 lasers just under half of all its shots will fail to take out even one missile in a volley and even the rail guns with fail a few times. The Emancipator will rarely hit a CM with out killing it and it will get 2 or 3 more shots compared the Doombringer.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

The other thing you have to remember is that range equals rate of fire. If a cruise missile is launched at a ship and a point defense weapon has say a 2 mile range, like the Doombringers, than it gets only one shot at those missiles which will most likely be dodging as most references have these as smart missiles although some people dispute this.

Within 3 miles, CMs hit automatically (and cannot be interdicted) anyway. Within 1 mile, ALL missiles hit automatically and instantly. (PWSB) - Against ships, not small craft like fighters. Ships are just "too big to dodge".

However, most ships (and fighters in particular) cant fire big enough volleys not to simply have them completely counter-volleyed by point defense. So if point defense gets a chance to fire, unless they roll a 1, they win.

Everything you say here is correct and it proves my point. A Doombringers PD is completely incapable of destroying a CM volley launched at 3 miles and can not even touch the fighter that launched it. By contrast the Emancipator will get 3 or 4 shots against that fighter before it can launch and with the heavy stopping power of it's cannons a large number of them will not make it to launch range.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Again, however, i think you're missing/overlooking that other ship classes have missile batteries (see above post, MRMs and LRMs) that are called out as point defense weapons/anti-fighter weapons. Some of the TGE ships are notable exceptions, but that rather reflects the TGE's "crunch all you want, well conscript more" philosophy of not caring a great deal about their troops.

Point defense ranges on a lot of ships, all the way down to the Hunter-class Destroyer, are well into the 50-2000 mile range.

Yes with missiles but I am not comparing it to the Hunter, I wasn't even comparing it to the Protector, although I covered how those missiles are not that much of an equalizer due to reload speed. Also according to the book most LRM are guided but CMs are always smart. This means to guarantee a kill on a CM, +5 to dodge, the LRM launchers will need to launch 4 missiles meaning each LRM launcher can counter 15 fighters or CM volleys before a 6 minute reload. With it's PD turrets getting just 1 shot for all the ones getting through they will get swamped.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Long-range missile bombardment against most ships is non-viable.

Yeah I'm sorry but we have played this out more than a few times in my games and for big ships, like the Protector or Emancipator, it is very effective and the advantage is almost always to rate of fire.

Here is one thing I will give you. Put smart LRM in the Protector and that is a ship is way more deadly. Give it LR smart multi-warhead were each single missile turns into a volley of 4 medium range, that ship is armed to F- all. But, since the book says these ships are armed with standard guided, the effectiveness is limited.

If I, the Emancipator, Launch 1/6th of my fighters at your protector and then concentrate my CM fire on first one until it dies then switch to the next you have a choice of kill the fighters, of which 1/3 will have 2 CMs each, or shoot the CM volleys. The fighters of course can fire back with mini-missiles which again they only get one shot but if they hit the missile volley is almost certainly dead. Also with each dead Protector more fighters can move to the next. Again Rate of fire, including reload speed, means something here.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

I mean if the Naruni are building ships like the Conquistador and Esperanda every other cruiser and destroyer/frigate is just junk.

The Hunter would hold its own against an Espandon fairly well, actually, particularly given that it is half the cost of an Espandon. It wouldnt necessarily win (the two ships can inflict roughly the same damage with their main guns, their smaller guns are roughly equal, and the Espandon's better Cruise Missile capacity is largely nullified by the Hunter's ability to simply counter-volley MRMs missile for missile. The Espandon probably wins in the end, but itll know its been in a fight.

I am not sure what you are looking at but here is the matchup:

Advantages for Espandon:
- MB 5,500 to 4,500
- Shields 7,200 to 6,000. This is a huge advantage when you factor in recharge
- Mach 15 to Mach 9.5
- Main Cannon the damage for Esp is half that of the hunters 3 cannons but it has twice the rate of fire and ten times the range. Factor in the speed advantage and the Esp doesn't have to let the Hunter even get a shot at it.
- CMs the Esp has 60 to the Hunters 50 but it can fire 30 everytime the Hunter fires one. If the Esp decided to charge in, nose to nose with main cannon and CM against the Hunter the Hunter dies 9.9 times out of 10 and the hunter can't escape. This gets worse as the Esp carries reloads for a total of 300 while the hunter does not.
- Secondary missiles Esp with 2LRM of 80 each capable of volleys up to 20 each. Hunter 2 MRM of 160 each with volleys of just 8 each that means it is incapable of the random missile assault with the Esp would excel at it.

Advantages for the Hunter:
- Point Defense the Hunter has 4 rail guns which are better than the Esp's 6 lasers and also has 4 lasers which is not as good in range or damage as the Esp's but it has 2 more cannons the Esp's laser are not significantly better so this is solidly for the Hunter.
- Fighters - The Hunter can, according to the book, carry 4 fighters compared to the Esp's dozen Power Armors. If you give them Scoprions or black eagles, like the book says this is an advantage but not a huge one and given the LRM threat there just aren't enough to make a difference. However, there are few PAs that can keep up with the Esps burst of Mach 15 speed so those PA can't keep up but most are way faster than the Hunter so they can harass it and force it to dedicate MRM or point defense fire until they are killed.

In every respect the Esppandon is far superior to the Hunter and the Hunter would do far better than the Scorpion or Berserker.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Given the relative age of the Hunter to the far newer Espandon, it's a pretty solid matchup. Given that you can field 2 Hunters to an Espandon, its not a bad comparison. (The market cost is 320 million on a Hunter; cost to produce for the CCW is surely lower).

You keep doing this, I am talking ship quality the price is of limited import here for power creep. But no you could not field two full Hunters. At max cost you could field just 1.56, at average cost it is 1.4 and where do you get that the CCW would pay less per ship. I mean yes I agree it would make sense but there is nothing in the books to support it.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:The Conquistador is... interesting. Without the Espandons, its not very compelling. Even with them...

It has no force field. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Thats a MAJOR weakness. Its main gun is finicky and not particularly overpowered when youc onsider the low rate of fire. Its secondaries (the 8 heavy plasma cannons) are more dangerous, IMO, due to the high rate of fire.

At first I did not understand this. I assumed that since you knew the Packmaster had an FTL speed of 6, which is not in the book, that you knew about all the corrections. The lack of Force Fields was just an error not a feature. The same thing is true of the Commodity from Fleets.

Here is Carl Gleba's answer to this from nine years ago. The Conquistador has the most powerful shields in its class and you can poo-poo it's weapons all you want but it can swat any ship in it's class especially because of the 24 fighter capacity. The smasher carries 50% more fighters but those fighters crap and barely faster than the Conquistador.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:The CRMs are... eh, again, depending on who you're fighting, unless you're getting up super close and launching them point blank, theyll just get counter-volleyed against a lot of the ships itd be fighting.. However, it has SIX LRM emplacements, meaning its got a serious backup punch and can put enough missiles into space that a lot of other ships WOULDNT be able to successfully countervolley EVERYTHING its throwing out.

Still, given its cost, its not too far out of whack. Its a LOT more expensive than other heavy cruisers.

No, they can not counter Everything. You have to take the full ship into account. If it launches 24 fighters against the 12 of the Warshield combined with the weapons fire it will overwhelm it and the Smasher is even more over matched.

Hey Braden, since you weighed in earlier would you like to correct this?

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Which is a Silly rule. MDC is supposed to represent the immunity of really heavy material to light fire. Now we have MDC that apparently is more than just MDC. it's completely silly. Even Robotech with city-sized transforming spaceships didn't need a rule saying you can't damage a Zentradi Battleship with a puny light mech gun.

I agree it is silly.
But we have this rule for both this and in AUGG (battleship armor)

Just because a rule is silly doesn't mean that they don't get published. Look at the AP rules in Sovietski! They can be fixed via house rule easy enough... but RAW is RAW

I didn't say it wasn't a rule. I just said it was silly.

First, this is flavor text, it is not a rule. I just spent 20 minutes scanning the forums and found nothing so if this is the rule you are the first to find it. By comparison the before mentioned Sovietski issue has been discussed to death and likely will continue to be discussed until the heat death of the universe.

This is not written as a rule. There are no requirements listed for what weapons can and which can't damage said ship. It also makes no sense as its weapons can damage a force field of say 90,000 MDC but they are helpless against a Scimitar's MB of 5,000 MDC. No, it is just a description of tactics and math.

Examples: The Katana can carry 2 plasma cannons that do 1D4X100 each and the Draygon has a 1D4X100 P-beam both listed as anti-large ship and are described as being able to damage cruisers.

Just to add this, it also means that fighters can no longer destroy the TGE Rain of Death troop shuttle which has 3,700 MDC even though in it's description it describes it as vulnerable to fighters and that was the reason for all the guns.

Now, if I'm wrong and he did mean this as a rule then the Palladium MDC system which, on its best of days, is troubled is now completely shattered. If PA weapons of 4D6X10, like a Silverhawk, can not damage anything over 3,500 MDC than what about gods, adult dragons and other such monsters that frequently top 5,000 MDC.

Murex and Kreewar Carapace top 5,000 MDC and the Volute are 4,200 MDC. They would no longer be vulnerable to almost any weapon on Rifts Earth.

If this was meant as a rule, MDC is done and none of anything discussed here means anything.

Warshield73 wrote:Hey Braden, since you weighed in earlier would you like to correct this?

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Which is a Silly rule. MDC is supposed to represent the immunity of really heavy material to light fire. Now we have MDC that apparently is more than just MDC. it's completely silly. Even Robotech with city-sized transforming spaceships didn't need a rule saying you can't damage a Zentradi Battleship with a puny light mech gun.

I agree it is silly.
But we have this rule for both this and in AUGG (battleship armor)

Just because a rule is silly doesn't mean that they don't get published. Look at the AP rules in Sovietski! They can be fixed via house rule easy enough... but RAW is RAW

I didn't say it wasn't a rule. I just said it was silly.

First, this is flavor text, it is not a rule.

I really dislike it when people try to argue that anything they don't like is 'flavor text'. Especially since it requires misusing the term.
Flavor text is when something says "The Smurf 1000 is the best rifle on the market". That is flavor text. It is text that exists solely to provide flavor.
Game text that talks about how the game works... that is not, can not, and never is flavor text.
There is a game rule in the game that the CCW does not use AIs at all. Because the book says they do not. That is not 'flavor text' that is a flat out "this is a game information about this group". You can't simply call every part of the book other than the stats of the ships, weapons and spells "flavor" that's not how it works people.

Warshield73 wrote:I just spent 20 minutes scanning the forums and found nothing so if this is the rule you are the first to find it. By comparison the before mentioned Sovietski issue has been discussed to death and likely will continue to be discussed until the heat death of the universe.

And your point is? No really your point is? Just because we were the first to bring it up doesn't mean that it isn't a rule. It just means that we were the first to bring it up. No more, no less.
There is always a first time for everything after all.
Heck I am not aware of any previous discussion of Shocks training in her super powers on the forum... does that mean that it doesn't exist because it wasn't brought up on the forums fast enough for some arbitrary period?
Nope. It was published, and that means it is canon. Like it or not what gets published is the canonical Rules As Written.

Warshield73 wrote:This is not written as a rule.

It very much is a written rule. It flat out states "that as a general rule of thumb their weapons can only hurt space craft whose MDC is 3,500 points or less." It literally doesn't get more "this is a rule" then when it is discussing the rules around fighters and flat out says "and this rule right here is why you can't just swarm a ship and blow it up"

Warshield73 wrote:There are no requirements listed for what weapons can and which can't damage said ship.

It is totally clear "weapons mounted on fighters' It doesn't get much clearer than that.
What are those? Page 21 tells us
All Point Weapons
All Light Weapons
Short Range Missiles
Medium Range Missiles
Mini-Missiles

What does it NOT apply to?
Long Range Missiles
Torpedoes
Heavy Bombs
Medium Weapons
Cruise Missiles
Heavy Mines
Smart Bombs

Step one. Is the weapon mounted on a fighter?
If no then rule doesn't apply.
If yes is the weapon a Point or Light weapon?
If yes then rule applies
If no the rule doesn't apply
Couldn't be simpler.

Warshield73 wrote: It also makes no sense as its weapons can damage a force field of say 90,000 MDC but they are helpless against a Scimitar's MB of 5,000 MDC. No, it is just a description of tactics and math.

Um no. Just no.
It specifically states that they can NOT hurt the ship but they CAN hurt the force field. Why? Who knows, probably some handwavium about how force fields work.
It literally states that exact thing "It should be noted that fighters can damage variable force fields, regardless of the fields MDC level. Thus fighters are also good for swarming attacks that whittle down an enemy targets shields so that their battleships can fire directly onto an enemy's hull."
It doesn't get any clearer than "you can knock down the shield but cant hurt the ship"

Warshield73 wrote:Examples: The Katana can carry 2 plasma cannons that do 1D4X100 each and the Draygon has a 1D4X100 P-beam both listed as anti-large ship and are described as being able to damage cruisers.

Welcome to the wonderful world of "specific text trumps general" where a specific items special text can trump a general rule.
Which is why it said "as a general rule" not "in all circumstances what so ever, even the absurd ones that might be trotted out to try argue the rule"
In this case... those are medium weapons and thus not considered 'fighter weapons' (as per page 21)
Which is why a fighter can hurt a ship with them... because the rule does not attach.
Easy peasy.

Warshield73 wrote:Just to add this, it also means that fighters can no longer destroy the TGE Rain of Death troop shuttle which has 3,700 MDC even though in it's description it describes it as vulnerable to fighters and that was the reason for all the guns.

Again specific text vs general rule. In this case that specific ship is NOT covered by the general rule (guess they make them cheaper or something) and it can be hurt by fighters.

Warshield73 wrote:Now, if I'm wrong and he did mean this as a rule then the Palladium MDC system which, on its best of days, is troubled is now completely shattered. If PA weapons of 4D6X10, like a Silverhawk, can not damage anything over 3,500 MDC than what about gods, adult dragons and other such monsters that frequently top 5,000 MDC.
Murex and Kreewar Carapace top 5,000 MDC and the Volute are 4,200 MDC. They would no longer be vulnerable to almost any weapon on Rifts Earth.

If this was meant as a rule, MDC is done and none of anything discussed here means anything.

Nothing you mentioned is a spaceship. So a rule about spaceships wouldn't apply.
This would be like trying to cite a rule about tanks and saying that it applies field mice...
The rule does not say "any object with 3,500" it says "any spacecraft"
The rule only applies to what it says it applies. No more, no less.
This rule does not apply to tanks, boats, mecha, gods, dragons, monsters, spells, walls, cities, or anything else that is not a spacecraft.

I want to point out that in my post I stated specifically that I could be wrong and I have enough humility to admit that I still could be, but I don't think so.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Hey Braden, since you weighed in earlier would you like to correct this?

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Nekira Sudacne wrote:Which is a Silly rule. MDC is supposed to represent the immunity of really heavy material to light fire. Now we have MDC that apparently is more than just MDC. it's completely silly. Even Robotech with city-sized transforming spaceships didn't need a rule saying you can't damage a Zentradi Battleship with a puny light mech gun.

I agree it is silly.
But we have this rule for both this and in AUGG (battleship armor)

Just because a rule is silly doesn't mean that they don't get published. Look at the AP rules in Sovietski! They can be fixed via house rule easy enough... but RAW is RAW

I didn't say it wasn't a rule. I just said it was silly.

First, this is flavor text, it is not a rule.

I really dislike it when people try to argue that anything they don't like is 'flavor text'. Especially since it requires misusing the term.
Flavor text is when something says "The Smurf 1000 is the best rifle on the market". That is flavor text. It is text that exists solely to provide flavor.
Game text that talks about how the game works... that is not, can not, and never is flavor text.
There is a game rule in the game that the CCW does not use AIs at all. Because the book says they do not. That is not 'flavor text' that is a flat out "this is a game information about this group". You can't simply call every part of the book other than the stats of the ships, weapons and spells "flavor" that's not how it works people.

I'm sorry about this and I can relate. I have a similar problem with people who take every stray bit of text as some game breaking new rule. I don't want to call it picking nits but yeah it drives me nuts.

First PB has plenty of rules that I don't like. For instance every time you see "no bonuses apply, straight role of the dice" I think this is the dumbest thing in the world. So a SEAL sniper and the 400 pound WoW aficionado has the exact same chance of hitting the zombie? Really. Is it a rule, yes clearly. It is stated in clear unambiguous language in a section of the book with rules. Does it break the system, no it's just stupid. I acknowledge it is a rule I just don't care. If you had found something that was stated as a rule I would simply say "well that is the dumbest thing in the world, I'm not using it" and move on as I do with everything else.

Flavor text has certain tells, one of those is often beginning with generic phrases like "in some instances" or "as a general rule of thumb" which is of course how this begins. Rules also don't begin with massive inconsistancies like you can't damage this section but you can blow holes in it. So if my Katana shoots at the command tower and does 140 MDC I can punch a 40 foot hole in it but I didn't damage it?

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:I just spent 20 minutes scanning the forums and found nothing so if this is the rule you are the first to find it. By comparison the before mentioned Sovietski issue has been discussed to death and likely will continue to be discussed until the heat death of the universe.

And your point is? No really your point is? Just because we were the first to bring it up doesn't mean that it isn't a rule. It just means that we were the first to bring it up. No more, no less.
There is always a first time for everything after all.
Heck I am not aware of any previous discussion of Shocks training in her super powers on the forum... does that mean that it doesn't exist because it wasn't brought up on the forums fast enough for some arbitrary period?
Nope. It was published, and that means it is canon. Like it or not what gets published is the canonical Rules As Written.

What it means is exactly what I said, I compared it to the before mentioned Sovietski issue, nothing more nothing less. It does slightly undercut your argument that in the 10 year since this book came out 3 different posts asked about the missing shields from the Commodity class cruiser but no one posted "Hey this new rule about fighters on page 15 does that mean my Katana Plasma cannons don't do anything anymore?" It is not proof and I didn't say it was just a statement of fact.

Now you are correct everything has a first time but is the first time for something this big, something that makes several vehicles and accessories useless (the katana plasma cannons), is it really going to be 9 years later?

Now I have no idea who Shock is but this sounds like character trivia and you are comparing it to what is a system destroying rule. Plenty of trivia is discussed on these forums, hello "Why are cruise missiles so BIG?", but rules clearly get more so your comparison here seems dismissive especially because it was earlier compared to the Sovietski rule which is far more similar. It seems to me you would want to try for as close as possible to an apples to apples comparison as opposed to what appears to be apples to orangutans.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:This is not written as a rule.

It very much is a written rule. It flat out states "that as a general rule of thumb their weapons can only hurt space craft whose MDC is 3,500 points or less." It literally doesn't get more "this is a rule" then when it is discussing the rules around fighters and flat out says "and this rule right here is why you can't just swarm a ship and blow it up"

Rules are not written with "As a general rule of thumb" rules are if the ship is this large to this large then the bonus to strike is X.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:There are no requirements listed for what weapons can and which can't damage said ship.

It is totally clear "weapons mounted on fighters' It doesn't get much clearer than that.
What are those? Page 21 tells us
All Point Weapons
All Light Weapons
Short Range Missiles
Medium Range Missiles
Mini-Missiles

What does it NOT apply to?
Long Range Missiles
Torpedoes
Heavy Bombs
Medium Weapons
Cruise Missiles
Heavy Mines
Smart Bombs

Step one. Is the weapon mounted on a fighter?
If no then rule doesn't apply.
If yes is the weapon a Point or Light weapon?
If yes then rule applies
If no the rule doesn't apply
Couldn't be simpler.

None of what you said here is in the "rule" that you found. In fact if you follow the "rule" then the only way for a fighter to damage any spaceship over 3,500 MDC is with a cruise missile. It makes no mention of medium weapons, or LRM or MRM just cruise missiles. If it is a rule you are reading way too much into it. If it was a rule everything you just listed would have been in it.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote: It also makes no sense as its weapons can damage a force field of say 90,000 MDC but they are helpless against a Scimitar's MB of 5,000 MDC. No, it is just a description of tactics and math.

Um no. Just no.
It specifically states that they can NOT hurt the ship but they CAN hurt the force field. Why? Who knows, probably some handwavium about how force fields work.
It literally states that exact thing "It should be noted that fighters can damage variable force fields, regardless of the fields MDC level. Thus fighters are also good for swarming attacks that whittle down an enemy targets shields so that their battleships can fire directly onto an enemy's hull."
It doesn't get any clearer than "you can knock down the shield but cant hurt the ship"

You can say no all you want but no it doesn't make the slightest sense and even if I am wrong, which I have already stated I might be, it still makes zero sense.

I'm surprised that you even argued this point since you said

eliakon wrote:I agree it is silly.
But we have this rule for both this and in AUGG (battleship armor)

Just because a rule is silly doesn't mean that they don't get published. Look at the AP rules in Sovietski! They can be fixed via house rule easy enough... but RAW is RAW

Because I'm sorry it sounded hear like you at least agreed with this point.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Examples: The Katana can carry 2 plasma cannons that do 1D4X100 each and the Draygon has a 1D4X100 P-beam both listed as anti-large ship and are described as being able to damage cruisers.

Welcome to the wonderful world of "specific text trumps general" where a specific items special text can trump a general rule.
Which is why it said "as a general rule" not "in all circumstances what so ever, even the absurd ones that might be trotted out to try argue the rule"
In this case... those are medium weapons and thus not considered 'fighter weapons' (as per page 21)
Which is why a fighter can hurt a ship with them... because the rule does not attach.
Easy peasy.

I would love to visit the world of specific text, might you have some? Again you are, to barrow a phrase, assuming facts not in evidence. There is nothing about medium weapons in the "rule" you found just Cruise Missiles.

Also you are shaving this awfully thin. There are identical weapons systems in the books were it sometimes says Anti-ship and other times no.

But here is a question: The Hunter's weapon 2 are Rail guns, 3D6X10, just like most fighters, in fact it does less damage and has less range than the Rail gun on the Scorpion fighter. By this rule would the Hunters RG damage the ship over 3,500 and the scorpion wouldn't? But wait, the Scoprion description says that it is there to " to strafe larger ships" is that enough specific text for it to do damage or not? The primary purpose is listed as Anti-spacecraft not anti-fighter or anti-aircraft like other vehicles so does that mean it can damage it? The mini-missile pod for the Katana says it can be used against ships, is that good enough because many of the other mini-missiles systems don't say this even though they are the same weapon.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Just to add this, it also means that fighters can no longer destroy the TGE Rain of Death troop shuttle which has 3,700 MDC even though in it's description it describes it as vulnerable to fighters and that was the reason for all the guns.

Again specific text vs general rule. In this case that specific ship is NOT covered by the general rule (guess they make them cheaper or something) and it can be hurt by fighters.

I honestly feel like I'm being trolled. Again in this case I was arguing how game breaking this would be if it is a rule and nothing you said here refutes that, and as I pointed out you already agreed with me.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Now, if I'm wrong and he did mean this as a rule then the Palladium MDC system which, on its best of days, is troubled is now completely shattered. If PA weapons of 4D6X10, like a Silverhawk, can not damage anything over 3,500 MDC than what about gods, adult dragons and other such monsters that frequently top 5,000 MDC.
Murex and Kreewar Carapace top 5,000 MDC and the Volute are 4,200 MDC. They would no longer be vulnerable to almost any weapon on Rifts Earth.

If this was meant as a rule, MDC is done and none of anything discussed here means anything.

Nothing you mentioned is a spaceship. So a rule about spaceships wouldn't apply.
This would be like trying to cite a rule about tanks and saying that it applies field mice...
The rule does not say "any object with 3,500" it says "any spacecraft"
The rule only applies to what it says it applies. No more, no less.
This rule does not apply to tanks, boats, mecha, gods, dragons, monsters, spells, walls, cities, or anything else that is not a spacecraft.

Again, this shows how game obliterating this would be if it was a rule and you do not refute it. If this is a rule you would literally have to go through each and every weapon on every ship and decide what it can and cannot damage. Anyone using this as a rule invites chaos onto there table and players pouring over every description to find one little detail to make a ship immune to a weapon or a weapon exempt from it.

Here is one last little thing for your rule what about demon ships. They are spaceships but they are also demons. I can point to specific text in Dimensional Outbreak where they are both so is this a specific text that adds them to the rule or is it like the specific text that excludes them from it like Rain of Death?

Warshield73 wrote:I want to point out that in my post I stated specifically that I could be wrong and I have enough humility to admit that I still could be, but I don't think so.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Hey Braden, since you weighed in earlier would you like to correct this?

Nekira Sudacne wrote:

eliakon wrote:I agree it is silly.
But we have this rule for both this and in AUGG (battleship armor)

Just because a rule is silly doesn't mean that they don't get published. Look at the AP rules in Sovietski! They can be fixed via house rule easy enough... but RAW is RAW

I didn't say it wasn't a rule. I just said it was silly.

First, this is flavor text, it is not a rule.

I really dislike it when people try to argue that anything they don't like is 'flavor text'. Especially since it requires misusing the term.
Flavor text is when something says "The Smurf 1000 is the best rifle on the market". That is flavor text. It is text that exists solely to provide flavor.
Game text that talks about how the game works... that is not, can not, and never is flavor text.
There is a game rule in the game that the CCW does not use AIs at all. Because the book says they do not. That is not 'flavor text' that is a flat out "this is a game information about this group". You can't simply call every part of the book other than the stats of the ships, weapons and spells "flavor" that's not how it works people.

I'm sorry about this and I can relate. I have a similar problem with people who take every stray bit of text as some game breaking new rule. I don't want to call it picking nits but yeah it drives me nuts.

First PB has plenty of rules that I don't like. For instance every time you see "no bonuses apply, straight role of the dice" I think this is the dumbest thing in the world. So a SEAL sniper and the 400 pound WoW aficionado has the exact same chance of hitting the zombie? Really. Is it a rule, yes clearly. It is stated in clear unambiguous language in a section of the book with rules. Does it break the system, no it's just stupid. I acknowledge it is a rule I just don't care. If you had found something that was stated as a rule I would simply say "well that is the dumbest thing in the world, I'm not using it" and move on as I do with everything else.

Flavor text has certain tells, one of those is often beginning with generic phrases like "in some instances" or "as a general rule of thumb" which is of course how this begins. Rules also don't begin with massive inconsistancies like you can't damage this section but you can blow holes in it. So if my Katana shoots at the command tower and does 140 MDC I can punch a 40 foot hole in it but I didn't damage it?

I would disagree that either of your examples are "flavor text" they are not. They are exactly what they say on the tine... rules of thumb, aka general rules. But they are still rules. They do not provide "just flavor"

Warshield73 wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:I just spent 20 minutes scanning the forums and found nothing so if this is the rule you are the first to find it. By comparison the before mentioned Sovietski issue has been discussed to death and likely will continue to be discussed until the heat death of the universe.

And your point is? No really your point is? Just because we were the first to bring it up doesn't mean that it isn't a rule. It just means that we were the first to bring it up. No more, no less.
There is always a first time for everything after all.
Heck I am not aware of any previous discussion of Shocks training in her super powers on the forum... does that mean that it doesn't exist because it wasn't brought up on the forums fast enough for some arbitrary period?
Nope. It was published, and that means it is canon. Like it or not what gets published is the canonical Rules As Written.

What it means is exactly what I said, I compared it to the before mentioned Sovietski issue, nothing more nothing less. It does slightly undercut your argument that in the 10 year since this book came out 3 different posts asked about the missing shields from the Commodity class cruiser but no one posted "Hey this new rule about fighters on page 15 does that mean my Katana Plasma cannons don't do anything anymore?" It is not proof and I didn't say it was just a statement of fact.

Now you are correct everything has a first time but is the first time for something this big, something that makes several vehicles and accessories useless (the katana plasma cannons), is it really going to be 9 years later?

I agree that it is a long time. But often things get overlooked or simply not brought up.
How many people commented about the 1d4x100 nuclear medium range missiles in Underseas for example?

Warshield73 wrote:Now I have no idea who Shock is but this sounds like character trivia and you are comparing it to what is a system destroying rule. Plenty of trivia is discussed on these forums, hello "Why are cruise missiles so BIG?", but rules clearly get more so your comparison here seems dismissive especially because it was earlier compared to the Sovietski rule which is far more similar. It seems to me you would want to try for as close as possible to an apples to apples comparison as opposed to what appears to be apples to orangutans.

First off it isn't 'system destroying'. It just makes it a little bit harder to blow up really large spaceships with star fighters... that hardly seems 'system destroying'
And second off the ability to gain strike bonuses to super powers is a pretty big deal considering that as of right now it is PP + d20 + whatever the power itself gives... which doesn't give you good odds against being dodged or parried. So yeah, the ability to add +1 or +2 is pretty big.

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:This is not written as a rule.

It very much is a written rule. It flat out states "that as a general rule of thumb their weapons can only hurt space craft whose MDC is 3,500 points or less." It literally doesn't get more "this is a rule" then when it is discussing the rules around fighters and flat out says "and this rule right here is why you can't just swarm a ship and blow it up"

Rules are not written with "As a general rule of thumb" rules are if the ship is this large to this large then the bonus to strike is X.

It states the rule though. And we can even go to page 21 and see why it is just a rule of thumb (because a few fighters mount weapons that are not 'fighter weapons' by this books definition)

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:There are no requirements listed for what weapons can and which can't damage said ship.

It is totally clear "weapons mounted on fighters' It doesn't get much clearer than that.
What are those? Page 21 tells us
All Point Weapons
All Light Weapons
Short Range Missiles
Medium Range Missiles
Mini-Missiles

What does it NOT apply to?
Long Range Missiles
Torpedoes
Heavy Bombs
Medium Weapons
Cruise Missiles
Heavy Mines
Smart Bombs

Step one. Is the weapon mounted on a fighter?
If no then rule doesn't apply.
If yes is the weapon a Point or Light weapon?
If yes then rule applies
If no the rule doesn't apply
Couldn't be simpler.

None of what you said here is in the "rule" that you found. In fact if you follow the "rule" then the only way for a fighter to damage any spaceship over 3,500 MDC is with a cruise missile. It makes no mention of medium weapons, or LRM or MRM just cruise missiles. If it is a rule you are reading way too much into it. If it was a rule everything you just listed would have been in it.

The fact that the rule here uses a rule somewhere else as part of it is not really an issue. I don't have to point to the rules on ranged combat when I want to talk about what a disruptor does...
The rule on page 15 is simply applying the rule on page 21 and extending it.

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote: It also makes no sense as its weapons can damage a force field of say 90,000 MDC but they are helpless against a Scimitar's MB of 5,000 MDC. No, it is just a description of tactics and math.

Um no. Just no.
It specifically states that they can NOT hurt the ship but they CAN hurt the force field. Why? Who knows, probably some handwavium about how force fields work.
It literally states that exact thing "It should be noted that fighters can damage variable force fields, regardless of the fields MDC level. Thus fighters are also good for swarming attacks that whittle down an enemy targets shields so that their battleships can fire directly onto an enemy's hull."
It doesn't get any clearer than "you can knock down the shield but cant hurt the ship"

You can say no all you want but no it doesn't make the slightest sense and even if I am wrong, which I have already stated I might be, it still makes zero sense.

I don't see any reason why it makes no sense. We know that force fields, by their nature are not as rigid and durable as armor plates. Thus the idea that a force field is ablative and armor plate isn't at all a contradiction. It is simply a clairification on the difference between force fields and armor.
Especially since we know that force fields are ablative, and that variable ones are able to 'flow' their M.D.C. around strengthening and weakening different areas...which is a much different dynamic than "slabs of highly refractory battle armor" which instead are designed to soak direct hits from strategic nuclear weapons...

Warshield73 wrote:I'm surprised that you even argued this point since you said

eliakon wrote:I agree it is silly.
But we have this rule for both this and in AUGG (battleship armor)

Just because a rule is silly doesn't mean that they don't get published. Look at the AP rules in Sovietski! They can be fixed via house rule easy enough... but RAW is RAW

Because I'm sorry it sounded hear like you at least agreed with this point.

Oh I agree that the rule is silly... but that doesn't make it any less of being the rule.

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Examples: The Katana can carry 2 plasma cannons that do 1D4X100 each and the Draygon has a 1D4X100 P-beam both listed as anti-large ship and are described as being able to damage cruisers.

Welcome to the wonderful world of "specific text trumps general" where a specific items special text can trump a general rule.
Which is why it said "as a general rule" not "in all circumstances what so ever, even the absurd ones that might be trotted out to try argue the rule"
In this case... those are medium weapons and thus not considered 'fighter weapons' (as per page 21)
Which is why a fighter can hurt a ship with them... because the rule does not attach.
Easy peasy.

I would love to visit the world of specific text, might you have some? Again you are, to barrow a phrase, assuming facts not in evidence. There is nothing about medium weapons in the "rule" you found just Cruise Missiles.

The rule on page 21 that I mentioned previously that tells us what a "fighter weapon" is

Fleets of the Three Galaxies page 21 wrote:Space fighter weapons "Fighters are usually armed with a number of weapon systems that are generally of proportion to their small size. When designing a new type of fighter, these systems are divided into Primary, Secondary, and Missile systems. All of these are selected from the Light category of weapons (Phase World, pages 153-155), with short and medium-range missiles counting as Light weapons."

"Fighter-Bombers" Some fighters, like the Naruni Fire-Eater or Draygon Industries Nova are designated as attack craft dubbed "fighter bombers". They are usually larger and slower than the traditional fighter by 20%=30% and are designed to carry high-yeilf, long-range missiles or torpedoes. The primary mission of fighter-bombers is the destruction of space stations and capital and sub-capital ships."

Okay then... seems pretty cut and dried.
Fighters mount Light Weapons, Short Range Missiles, and Medium Range Missiles.
And page 15 tells us that this stuff doesn't hurt Capital Ships main body

Fighter-Bombers/Attack Craft get Long-Range Missiles, Torpedoes (and by extension those bombs based off of the warheads of LRMs)
And the text also tells us that this stuff does hurt Capital Ships main body.

Additionally, and unique fighter that mounts a weapon that is NOT a Light weapon (like say a Medium class plasma gun) is not carrying the weapons that page 15, by way of page 21 is referring to. The inference being then that such weapons are treated identically to the other Medium weapon (LRMs, CMs, Torpedos, Heavy bombs)

Warshield73 wrote:Also you are shaving this awfully thin. There are identical weapons systems in the books were it sometimes says Anti-ship and other times no.

Two things here
1) anti-ship and anti-capital ship are not synonyms. All fighter weapons are anti-ship
However
2) if a specific weapon says that it is anti-capital ship, or the text of the fighter or weapon states that it is used against capital ships... then that particular weapon gets an exception to the general rule by dint of having its own rule in its specific text.

Warshield73 wrote:But here is a question: The Hunter's weapon 2 are Rail guns, 3D6X10, just like most fighters, in fact it does less damage and has less range than the Rail gun on the Scorpion fighter. By this rule would the Hunters RG damage the ship over 3,500 and the scorpion wouldn't? But wait, the Scoprion description says that it is there to " to strafe larger ships" is that enough specific text for it to do damage or not? The primary purpose is listed as Anti-spacecraft not anti-fighter or anti-aircraft like other vehicles so does that mean it can damage it? The mini-missile pod for the Katana says it can be used against ships, is that good enough because many of the other mini-missiles systems don't say this even though they are the same weapon.

1) that would be up to the GM to interpet the rule. It could be interpreted either way (either weapons on fighters, or fighter class weapons). If the GM rules that it is fighter class weapons mounted on fighters... then yes the Hunter would damage a capital ship and the Scorpion wouldn't.
2) strafeing a larger ship is explicitly part of the fighter rule. They can damage things like weapons arrays, antenna, hatches, landing bays... so strafe away. You just won't deplete the main body M.D.C.
3) As for the rest... nope. Because as I stated before Anti-Ship =/= Anti-Capital-Ship

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Just to add this, it also means that fighters can no longer destroy the TGE Rain of Death troop shuttle which has 3,700 MDC even though in it's description it describes it as vulnerable to fighters and that was the reason for all the guns.

Again specific text vs general rule. In this case that specific ship is NOT covered by the general rule (guess they make them cheaper or something) and it can be hurt by fighters.

I honestly feel like I'm being trolled. Again in this case I was arguing how game breaking this would be if it is a rule and nothing you said here refutes that, and as I pointed out you already agreed with me.

No I am not trolling you. I am pointing out that your example of "this is game breaking" isn't game breaking in the slightest because the situation you desire (fighters shooting down the Rain of Death as per the text in the RoD) still happens even under the page 15 rule.

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Now, if I'm wrong and he did mean this as a rule then the Palladium MDC system which, on its best of days, is troubled is now completely shattered. If PA weapons of 4D6X10, like a Silverhawk, can not damage anything over 3,500 MDC than what about gods, adult dragons and other such monsters that frequently top 5,000 MDC.
Murex and Kreewar Carapace top 5,000 MDC and the Volute are 4,200 MDC. They would no longer be vulnerable to almost any weapon on Rifts Earth.

If this was meant as a rule, MDC is done and none of anything discussed here means anything.

Nothing you mentioned is a spaceship. So a rule about spaceships wouldn't apply.
This would be like trying to cite a rule about tanks and saying that it applies field mice...
The rule does not say "any object with 3,500" it says "any spacecraft"
The rule only applies to what it says it applies. No more, no less.
This rule does not apply to tanks, boats, mecha, gods, dragons, monsters, spells, walls, cities, or anything else that is not a spacecraft.

Again, this shows how game obliterating this would be if it was a rule and you do not refute it. If this is a rule you would literally have to go through each and every weapon on every ship and decide what it can and cannot damage. Anyone using this as a rule invites chaos onto there table and players pouring over every description to find one little detail to make a ship immune to a weapon or a weapon exempt from it.

Yes a rule that said you can not damage anything over 3,500 points would be game breaking... good thing there isn't such a rule though.
Your example of why this is game breaking is literally a straw man. Because you are raising up a totally different rule (the straw man) and then knocking down that different rule to try and show that the rule in the game is bad.
You need to demonstrate that the published rule is bad, not some hypothetical other rule that has NOT been published.
As for your chaos? Again all you have to do is...wait for it... use the rules found on page 15 and 21.
No seriously it really is that simple.
We have a list of what constitutes 'fighter weapons' and we know what fighters are.
Pretty clearly if something is on the list of fighter weapons and mounted on a fighter then page 15 attaches
If something a fighter weapon and mounted elsewhere... that is a GMs call due to the vagueness of the rule (that said judging by the precedent from the Aliens Unlimited Galaxy Guide Battleship Armor which this rule is the Rifts adaption of... it would seem that the intent was that only Medium class or greater weapons can harm them and it was just badly written. But again that is simply what it looks like based on the Battleship Armor and the text of this rule)

Warshield73 wrote:Here is one last little thing for your rule what about demon ships. They are spaceships but they are also demons. I can point to specific text in Dimensional Outbreak where they are both so is this a specific text that adds them to the rule or is it like the specific text that excludes them from it like Rain of Death?

[/quote]
A spaceship is a spaceship.
Even if it is also something else.
Thus the rule attaches to demon ships of 3,500 M.D.C. or more. Note that this is ships, not demons in general, just spaceships.

Warshield73 wrote:Before I get into this I want to restate my main point, a consistent power rise that makes ships from older books kind of if not useless much less useful.

To this purpose I have tried to compare the Emancipator to the Doombringer, it's only peer. I understand and agree that it is expensive and you can buy all these other ships for the same price but that is not the same thing as saying it is not fundamentally more powerful than it's one and only peer.

Except it isn't a "peer"; its an older, much cheaper design. You keep trying to ignore cost and just compare raw stats in a vacuum. It doesn't work that way. If you have an ultimate-uber-ship (barring it having a "blows up anything" gun) that costs trillions, and i can field hundreds of ships that are 30% less powerful for the same cost, your uber-ship is totally irrelevant. Its just a floating target waiting for me to shoot it down. This would be like saying that if we built a new Battleship (lets call them "Texas" Class, since we like to name our BBs and their classes after States) in 2020, of the relatively same displacement and tonnage, that it wouldn't absolutely OBLITERATE the Iowa-Class ships. Its absurd on its face.

Now the Doombringer is only 50 billon while the Emancipator 350 billion. Now it is a much better ship but it is not 7 times better. They even mass in the same at 100 million tons so while you are looking at numbers that don't make sense compared to the earlier source material, like the number of Battlerams, the cost of this ship is one that should be looked at.

Seven Doombringers would utterly crush the Emancipation.

- Yannar is 2,00+2,000+2,800=6,800 but the stat block says 11,000
- Zhokil is 27,000+27,000+34,000=88,000 the stat block for it is 135,000
- You want some funny from this the Bindas totals to 18,000 and the stat block says 40,000 but the Sylonar totals to 230,000 and the stat block actually goes lower giving it just 200,000
- The only ship where the total of its parts equals the stat block, unless my spreadsheet is mistaken, is the Servitude. All others are much higher except 2 which are lower.

When it was asked earlier we were told that they were given an official MB MDC for comparison sake. Again, I hate this. I would much rather that they had gone in and given 1/3 or even 1/4 breakdowns for really big ships but they didn't.

"We were told" is 100%, grade-A, utterly irrelevant. If it isn't in print, either in official, published eratta where any new player can see it, or in a revised printing of the book, you might as well use it as toilet tissue.

Also, it doesn't change the fact that the stat block in the early part of the book is wrong. It lists the Emancipation class as being 10,500 feet long, for instance. It is more than 15,000 ft long.

And I have to tell you that Battlerams and silverhawks sent after the Carriers will ruin the day of those ships completely elimintating, or even inverting, the fighter advantage as massive numbers will need to be retained for defense.

Theyll never reach the Packmasters. They are slow as pigs compared to fighters, and no sane Admiral is going to deploy his CVs in the line of battle with his Battleships. Theyll be loitering WAY back from the fight. The Silverhawks cant even hurt the carriers. (See below) Even if they could catch them.

I specifically said earlier that I was simply looking at an attrition model. If you want to get into strategy the Emancipator can simply deny the Protectors battle more easily than the Packmasters can. Silverhawks are faster than Proctors and as fast as Star Ghosts. In the scenario you lay out with the Packmasters hanging back an Emancipator could simply jump in and out of FTL every time the CVs commit there fighters. For the sake of a simple comparison I did a simple attrition based comparison. In any situation you name where the CVs can simply leave I can name another where they can't or where the Emancipator can leave as well and this is complicated enough.

Oh, we're having this fight in the "works for my argument best" field of battle. If the Emancipation can jump into FTL whenever it wants, so can the opposition. This is... you're literally making the space-faring equivalent of "all engagements between characters happen on flat plains with totally clear lines of sight and no cover". Dont be absurd. Though that seems to be the general modus operandi here.

Again you have to take reload time into consideration but I will also remind you that I am saying the Emancipator is better than the Doombringer, its only peer, not 6 Protectors.

Only if this fight is being had at ranges that a longer reload time means my counter-missile batteries will completely lose the opportunity to fire on your incoming fire.

Yes with missiles but I am not comparing it to the Hunter, I wasn't even comparing it to the Protector, although I covered how those missiles are not that much of an equalizer due to reload speed. Also according to the book most LRM are guided but CMs are always smart. This means to guarantee a kill on a CM, +5 to dodge, the LRM launchers will need to launch 4 missiles meaning each LRM launcher can counter 15 fighters or CM volleys before a 6 minute reload. With it's PD turrets getting just 1 shot for all the ones getting through they will get swamped.

Only if the Emancipation is sitting at -exactly- the right range to somehow exploit the variable reload times. Again, if we're having this battle in "best situations for my argument" land, then we can just stop having the argument, because we have nothing left to discuss. At that point, you're arguing in bad faith and moving the goalposts every time you post just to be right.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Long-range missile bombardment against most ships is non-viable.

Yeah I'm sorry but we have played this out more than a few times in my games and for big ships, like the Protector or Emancipator, it is very effective and the advantage is almost always to rate of fire.

Again, only if rate-of-fire happens to give one salvo a chance of getting through with NO counter-battery fire. This is ... lets just say itll happen maybe one out of every few hundred volleys.

Here is one thing I will give you. Put smart LRM in the Protector and that is a ship is way more deadly. Give it LR smart multi-warhead were each single missile turns into a volley of 4 medium range, that ship is armed to F- all. But, since the book says these ships are armed with standard guided, the effectiveness is limited.

Their effectiveness is in the high likleyhood that 4 or 8 missiles will destroy your 200 missile CM barrage. Your CMs cant dodge, and 70% of the time, the entire volley goes. The chances that the defending ship has to fire more than one or two volleys of 4 countermissiles is extremely low, and given that LRMs outrange CRMs, its not likely you will get missiles through.

If I, the Emancipator, Launch 1/6th of my fighters at your protector and then concentrate my CM fire on first one until it dies then switch to the next you have a choice of kill the fighters, of which 1/3 will have 2 CMs each, or shoot the CM volleys. The fighters of course can fire back with mini-missiles which again they only get one shot but if they hit the missile volley is almost certainly dead. Also with each dead Protector more fighters can move to the next. Again Rate of fire, including reload speed, means something here.

Except the Protectors will have hulled the Emancipation in about the 3rd or 4th round unless we're just assuming that we're ONLY fighting at Max range all the time, every time, always.

The way you move goalposts is rapidly approaching Olympic levels of skill.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

I mean if the Naruni are building ships like the Conquistador and Esperanda every other cruiser and destroyer/frigate is just junk.

The Hunter would hold its own against an Espandon fairly well, actually, particularly given that it is half the cost of an Espandon. It wouldnt necessarily win (the two ships can inflict roughly the same damage with their main guns, their smaller guns are roughly equal, and the Espandon's better Cruise Missile capacity is largely nullified by the Hunter's ability to simply counter-volley MRMs missile for missile. The Espandon probably wins in the end, but itll know its been in a fight.

I am not sure what you are looking at but here is the matchup:

Advantages for Espandon:
- MB 5,500 to 4,500
- Shields 7,200 to 6,000. This is a huge advantage when you factor in recharge

No it isnt.

- Mach 15 to Mach 9.5

Okay? It can either rush into range faster or escape. In the case of "Escape", thats a "Hunter Wins" as the Espandon has left.

- Main Cannon the damage for Esp is half that of the hunters 3 cannons but it has twice the rate of fire and ten times the range. Factor in the speed advantage and the Esp doesn't have to let the Hunter even get a shot at it.

Ahh, the vaunted "battlefield is always best for me" defense.

- CMs the Esp has 60 to the Hunters 50 but it can fire 30 everytime the Hunter fires one.

And them promptly destroyed by the MRMs on the Hunter.

If the Esp decided to charge in, nose to nose with main cannon and CM against the Hunter the Hunter dies 9.9 times out of 10 and the hunter can't escape. This gets worse as the Esp carries reloads for a total of 300 while the hunter does not.

This engagement was never going to be decided by missiles anyway.

- Secondary missiles Esp with 2LRM of 80 each capable of volleys up to 20 each. Hunter 2 MRM of 160 each with volleys of just 8 each that means it is incapable of the random missile assault with the Esp would excel at it.

Its like i mentioned the LRMs of the Espandon being its major benefit. And Random Missile Assault. Seriously. I dont even...

In every respect the Esppandon is far superior to the Hunter and the Hunter would do far better than the Scorpion or Berserker.

The Scorpion is a Fighter, so i certainly hope so. The Berserker is also WAYYY cheaper than the Espandon.

You keep trying to imply that cost is never relevant, and quite honestly, thats absurd on its face. If you can have one of your Awesome Thing, but i can have 10 of my Pretty Great thing, your Awesome Thing is dead.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Given the relative age of the Hunter to the far newer Espandon, it's a pretty solid matchup. Given that you can field 2 Hunters to an Espandon, its not a bad comparison. (The market cost is 320 million on a Hunter; cost to produce for the CCW is surely lower).

You keep doing this, I am talking ship quality the price is of limited import here for power creep.

No it isnt. Price and availability is extremely important. Quantity has a Quality all its own.

But no you could not field two full Hunters.

Not if we're both non-government entities buying ships on the open market (which you cant even really buy the Hunter). But we're not. The CN doesn't pay market price for its ships.

At max cost you could field just 1.56, at average cost it is 1.4 and where do you get that the CCW would pay less per ship.

Warshield Class Cruiser, under Cost "2.4 Billion; this is the Cost to the Consortium; these ships are sold only to Consortium member planets at three times their cost" The Consortium doesn't pay market value.

I mean yes I agree it would make sense but there is nothing in the books to support it.

You were saying?

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:The Conquistador is... interesting. Without the Espandons, its not very compelling. Even with them...

It has no force field. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Thats a MAJOR weakness. Its main gun is finicky and not particularly overpowered when youc onsider the low rate of fire. Its secondaries (the 8 heavy plasma cannons) are more dangerous, IMO, due to the high rate of fire.

At first I did not understand this. I assumed that since you knew the Packmaster had an FTL speed of 6, which is not in the book, that you knew about all the corrections. The lack of Force Fields was just an error not a feature. The same thing is true of the Commodity from Fleets.

Here is Carl Gleba's answer to this from nine years ago. The Conquistador has the most powerful shields in its class and you can poo-poo it's weapons all you want but it can swat any ship in it's class especially because of the 24 fighter capacity. The smasher carries 50% more fighters but those fighters crap and barely faster than the Conquistador.

1, Flying Fangs, for how cheap they are, are actually pretty tough and dish out LOTS of damage.
2, we're at the "if it isn't in the book (a revised printing is fine), and/or official erratta in a Rifter or somewhere a player who doesnt obsessively search forums can read it" - its toilet tissue. It doesn't exist.

Nor you can you even try the "well its an obvious mistake, all other ships have shields" - no, they dont. There are several other large(r) - non fighter - Ships that dont have shields.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:The CRMs are... eh, again, depending on who you're fighting, unless you're getting up super close and launching them point blank, theyll just get counter-volleyed against a lot of the ships itd be fighting.. However, it has SIX LRM emplacements, meaning its got a serious backup punch and can put enough missiles into space that a lot of other ships WOULDNT be able to successfully countervolley EVERYTHING its throwing out.

Still, given its cost, its not too far out of whack. Its a LOT more expensive than other heavy cruisers.

No, they can not counter Everything. You have to take the full ship into account. If it launches 24 fighters against the 12 of the Warshield combined with the weapons fire it will overwhelm it and the Smasher is even more over matched.

Again, you're ignoring cost.

Great, you have a Conquistador. All THREE. POINT. FIVE. BILLION. Credits worth.

You can field a Warshield and a complete screen of Hunters for that.

Or the TGE could field a PAIR of Smashers for that. Or a Smasher and a complete screen of Berserkers.

If you try to field the entire weapon system, which is a Conquistador AND Four Espandons, (just shy of FIVE Billion Cr), you could field a task force from either navy (we wont even get into the UWW) that would obliterate them in a few minutes of action.

Cost is not irrelevant.

There are already, before this even, instances of 'X is better than Y' - but the costs tell the tale.

The Emancipation doesn't invalidate the Protector or Doombringer. No one is going to send a lone Doombringer against a lone Emancipation. Nor a Protector. Etc.

This doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Warshield73 wrote:First, this is flavor text, it is not a rule.

No, it's a rule.

It isn't unclear, vague, or saying "for cinematic purposes" or any of that nonsense.

The only reason this particular phrase, which you try to base your entire flawed argument around, exists:

As a general rule of thumb, their weapons can only hurt spacecraft whose M.D.C is 3,500 points of less.

That "as a general rule of thumb" (see, it even calls itself a rule), is there because there are specific instances of fighter weapons that CAN damage large starships. These exceptions to the GENERAL RULE, are just that - exceptions - and are covered in the specific rules text for those weapons.

I just spent 20 minutes scanning the forums and found nothing so if this is the rule you are the first to find it.

No, i caught it the very first time I read the book. Since it was clear and unequivocal, and not particularly broken (unlike the Sovietski thing you bring up below) i never saw a reason to run to the forums and post about it. The forums are not the be-all, end-all of the universe. A lot of people probably simply didn't care since they dont run big space battles and its never come up in their game.

By comparison the before mentioned Sovietski issue has been discussed to death and likely will continue to be discussed until the heat death of the universe.

This is not written as a rule. There are no requirements listed for what weapons can and which can't damage said ship.

Uh.. wut m8?

However, if the same fighters are rigged to carry a full-size nuclear or anti-matter cruise missile, they can inflict damage to any M.D.C. structure whose original M.D.C. is grather than 3,500

.

Says it right there. If it isn't a full-size Cruise Missile.. it cant hurt a starship or starship structure whose original value was 3,500 MDC or higher.

This rule can be "broken" - if the weapon stat block says it can hurt starships (as several do), because specific rules always override general rules.

It also makes no sense as its weapons can damage a force field of say 90,000 MDC but they are helpless against a Scimitar's MB of 5,000 MDC.

Sure it does. Force Fields are volatile energy constructs. Any slight damage to them is damage. We've just handwaviumed the reason, it took 2 seconds. Moving on.

No, it is just a description of tactics and math.


Examples: The Katana can carry 2 plasma cannons that do 1D4X100 each and the Draygon has a 1D4X100 P-beam both listed as anti-large ship and are described as being able to damage cruisers.

Just to add this, it also means that fighters can no longer destroy the TGE Rain of Death troop shuttle which has 3,700 MDC even though in it's description it describes it as vulnerable to fighters and that was the reason for all the guns.

Now, if I'm wrong and he did mean this as a rule then the Palladium MDC system which, on its best of days, is troubled is now completely shattered. If PA weapons of 4D6X10, like a Silverhawk, can not damage anything over 3,500 MDC than what about gods, adult dragons and other such monsters that frequently top 5,000 MDC.

Murex and Kreewar Carapace top 5,000 MDC and the Volute are 4,200 MDC. They would no longer be vulnerable to almost any weapon on Rifts Earth.

If this was meant as a rule, MDC is done and none of anything discussed here means anything.

Didn't read the part where the rule applies to Starships and their subordinate structures?

Warshield73 wrote:But here is a question: The Hunter's weapon 2 are Rail guns, 3D6X10, just like most fighters, in fact it does less damage and has less range than the Rail gun on the Scorpion fighter. By this rule would the Hunters RG damage the ship over 3,500 and the scorpion wouldn't? But wait, the Scoprion description says that it is there to " to strafe larger ships" is that enough specific text for it to do damage or not? The primary purpose is listed as Anti-spacecraft not anti-fighter or anti-aircraft like other vehicles so does that mean it can damage it? The mini-missile pod for the Katana says it can be used against ships, is that good enough because many of the other mini-missiles systems don't say this even though they are the same weapon.

Im responding specifically to the spot i bolded up there, and not the rest.

1 - you're trying to insert "well logically it must..." into a situation where the rule has obviated logic and been stated as an absolute.

So, no, the Hunters' railguns can damage a starship. Because they aren't mounted on a fighter. Is this "logical" - not really, no, but the rule isn't unclear. The hunter can, the Scorpion cant. Its a binary question. "Is the weapon system mounted on a fighter; if yes, then it cannot damage a ship unless it is X or a specific rule for that weapon allows it to". That simple. If the (same) weapon system is mounted on a ship, it can damage a ship. That simple. Logical? Not entirely. The rules? Yep. Unclear? Not remotely.

2 - you're confusing "cannot damage the main body MDC of targets with more than 3,500 original value" with "cannot damage the ship". The Scorpion can strafe starships quite well - blowing off missiles, guns, sensors, you name it. None of those are over 3,500 MDC in most cases (except the really big guns perhaps) so they are perfectly vulnerable, and doing so is still a perfectly needed and viable tactic. You're also implying that the mini-missile Pod for the Katana saying "it can be used against ships" means "to damage their main body MDC". This isnt what is being said. There is nothing preventing ANY mini-missile from being used against a ship - to blow off point defense emplacements, hangar doors, airlocks, blow a hole in the hull for boarders, take out guns, sensors, etc. Just like any gun on a fighter strafing a hull. If the part of the ship it is being used against didn't have 3,500 MDC or more to start/at max, its vulnerable. I dont see why you're so confused.

Warshield73 wrote:Now, if I'm wrong and he did mean this as a rule then the Palladium MDC system which, on its best of days, is troubled is now completely shattered. If PA weapons of 4D6X10, like a Silverhawk, can not damage anything over 3,500 MDC than what about gods, adult dragons and other such monsters that frequently top 5,000 MDC.
Murex and Kreewar Carapace top 5,000 MDC and the Volute are 4,200 MDC. They would no longer be vulnerable to almost any weapon on Rifts Earth.

If this was meant as a rule, MDC is done and none of anything discussed here means anything.

Nothing you mentioned is a spaceship. So a rule about spaceships wouldn't apply.
This would be like trying to cite a rule about tanks and saying that it applies field mice...
The rule does not say "any object with 3,500" it says "any spacecraft"
The rule only applies to what it says it applies. No more, no less.
This rule does not apply to tanks, boats, mecha, gods, dragons, monsters, spells, walls, cities, or anything else that is not a spacecraft.

Again, this shows how game obliterating this would be if it was a rule and you do not refute it. If this is a rule you would literally have to go through each and every weapon on every ship and decide what it can and cannot damage.

No you dont. Why would you even think that? This rule is about weapons carried by fighters doing damage to starships. It doesnt apply to anything else.

Anyone using this as a rule invites chaos onto there table and players pouring over every description to find one little detail to make a ship immune to a weapon or a weapon exempt from it.

Here is one last little thing for your rule what about demon ships. They are spaceships but they are also demons. I can point to specific text in Dimensional Outbreak where they are both so is this a specific text that adds them to the rule or is it like the specific text that excludes them from it like Rain of Death?

The Demon ships are Spaceships, this rule applies to them.

What you are trying to imply in your desperation, is that because they are Demons as well as Starships, they are somehow not covered by this rule.

That is not the case.

The rule doesn't say "and anything that happens to be classified as more than one thing isn't covered by this rule"'; the rule doesn't have to.

Its really simple:

Is the Object ONLY a Demon? If yes, then it can be harmed by fighters' weapons.
Is the Object ONLY a Starship? If yes, then it cannot be harmed by fighters' weapons except as noted.
Since the object is both a Starship AND a Demon, it cannot be harmed by fighters' weapons except as noted, because while being a Demon does not protect it from damage by fighters, being a Starship DOES.

I was wrong, It was meant as a rule.

I reached out to Braden and he gave an explanation of it and then agreed with one of my earlier points criticisms. I hope he comes on and addresses a few concerns here, I don't post PMs.

I do, however, stand by my every criticism of this rule, it was not stated in a way that makes it easy to use.

I have shortened this down because wow is the post getting long, I hope no one thinks I'm taking them out of context and if you do LMK and I will edit the post.

eliakon wrote:I would disagree that either of your examples are "flavor text" they are not. They are exactly what they say on the tine... rules of thumb, aka general rules. But they are still rules. They do not provide "just flavor"

I totally concede this point as the author said I was wrong. I still maintain that this was a badly written rule and that it is game obliterating as, and to use your phrase, say it with me Palladium is supposed to be a universal system.

eliakon wrote:I agree that it is a long time. But often things get overlooked or simply not brought up.
How many people commented about the 1d4x100 nuclear medium range missiles in Underseas for example?

If you're talking about the missile launcher on the small freighter a lot actually. I think I discussed it here on the boards but that was either under my hold handle or the post has since been pruned because I couldn't find it. But more importantly a couple of my players made jokes about taking the CS Navy out with a small fleet of small freighters. They were not serious though as we all accepted it as a likely misprint. My players Brian and Fred LOVED to make fun of the misprints and inconsistencies.

By contrast I run PW more than any other game. Since this book has come out I have run at least 4 or 5 at POH's, 3 at Gencon, and dozens at local cons. Many of those 100+ players no the system better than me and in all that time of players attacking big ships or having there big ship attacked no one has brought this rule up.

Again, this is NOT proof that it is not a rule but it does go a long way towards showing that it was a well concealed one.

eliakon wrote:First off it isn't 'system destroying'. It just makes it a little bit harder to blow up really large spaceships with star fighters... that hardly seems 'system destroying'

It is system destroying because it is incredibly vague and eliminates MDC as a concept. This is not laser resistance or energy resistance where you might have to parse this weapon or that weapon it is a vague rule applying to only one type vehicle and not even uniformly.

A rule that said "a weapon needs to be able to do 400 MDC damage (so minimum 1D4X100, 2D4X50, etc.) to damage anything over 3,500 MDC would actually be easier to deal with.

Here is an even better version " a weapon must have a minimum damage of 100 MDC to damage anything over 3,500 MDC - so this would mean a 1D4X100 weapon is good but 8D6X10 wouldn't. Again a silly rule that I would ignore and which does eliminate the universality of MDC but does not break the game.

If he went back and reprinted every old ship with a scale of the weapons this would still be a problem when bringing in vehicles and equipment from other games which I should be able to do in a universal system.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Now I have no idea who Shock is but this sounds like character trivia and you are comparing it to what is a system destroying rule. Plenty of trivia is discussed on these forums, hello "Why are cruise missiles so BIG?", but rules clearly get more so your comparison here seems dismissive especially because it was earlier compared to the Sovietski rule which is far more similar. It seems to me you would want to try for as close as possible to an apples to apples comparison as opposed to what appears to be apples to orangutans.

And second off the ability to gain strike bonuses to super powers is a pretty big deal considering that as of right now it is PP + d20 + whatever the power itself gives... which doesn't give you good odds against being dodged or parried. So yeah, the ability to add +1 or +2 is pretty big.

When I post something, I mean it. I have no idea what you are talking about, where it comes from, or how it effects the game and you're explanation does not help. If you want to use this as a point you will need to explain but from the sounds of it this applies to one power while this rule applies to every single ship in 7 books 5 of which were written with a straight MDC system in mind. Again until you elaborate it sounds more and more like apples to orangutans.

eliakon wrote:It states the rule though. And we can even go to page 21 and see why it is just a rule of thumb (because a few fighters mount weapons that are not 'fighter weapons' by this books definition)

I concede it is a rule, but now that you are brining page 21 are you trying to say Fighter Bombers are immune from this rule and where on page 15 are you getting that immunity? Again according to page 15 the only weapon a fighter has that is exempt from this rule is cruise missiles. No other exemptions from this exist.

Now here is a fun fact, according to page 21 neither the Katana nor the Scorpion are fighters. The Katana has force fields of 300 MDC and the Scorpion can go Mach 18. Both of these are outside the parameters given for fighters. Is the ridiculous and nit picky(?) yes. I am embarrassed just typing it out but it is exactly what you are doing here.

eliakon wrote:The fact that the rule here uses a rule somewhere else as part of it is not really an issue. I don't have to point to the rules on ranged combat when I want to talk about what a disruptor does...
The rule on page 15 is simply applying the rule on page 21 and extending it.

First, what is this about? Ranged combat and disruptors? This has nothing to do with what we are talking about. But, if you are trying to imply that two rules can be connected that is absolutely true but again there is nothing in a disruptor that completely contradicts the ranged combat rule. Now, if the disruptor said that it automatically hits on the roll of 1 on a 20 sided then you might have a comparison but this?

On page 15 it specifically says that the only fighter weapons that can damage large ships are CMs. Period, full stop. Nothing on page 21 contradicts this. It says that fighters can carry these weapons but it says nothing about them being able to violate this damage rule so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up and I still have no idea where you got that list since it is not on page 21 so please give me a reference.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:It also makes no sense as its weapons can damage a force field of say 90,000 MDC but they are helpless against a Scimitar's MB of 5,000 MDC. No, it is just a description of tactics and math.

Um no. Just no.
It specifically states that they can NOT hurt the ship but they CAN hurt the force field. Why? Who knows, probably some handwavium about how force fields work.
It literally states that exact thing "It should be noted that fighters can damage variable force fields, regardless of the fields MDC level. Thus fighters are also good for swarming attacks that whittle down an enemy targets shields so that their battleships can fire directly onto an enemy's hull."
It doesn't get any clearer than "you can knock down the shield but cant hurt the ship"

You can say no all you want but no it doesn't make the slightest sense and even if I am wrong, which I have already stated I might be, it still makes zero sense.

I don't see any reason why it makes no sense. We know that force fields, by their nature are not as rigid and durable as armor plates. Thus the idea that a force field is ablative and armor plate isn't at all a contradiction. It is simply a clairification on the difference between force fields and armor.
Especially since we know that force fields are ablative, and that variable ones are able to 'flow' their M.D.C. around strengthening and weakening different areas...which is a much different dynamic than "slabs of highly refractory battle armor" which instead are designed to soak direct hits from strategic nuclear weapons...

You literally just said one post earlier that it doesn't make any sense:

eliakon wrote:Why? Who knows, probably some handwavium about how force fields work.

and now you are saying you don't see why it doesn't make any sense. One thing has now popped up though with your emphasis on variable. You are correct the rule specifically says variable, so does this mean that a standard force field over 3,500 is immune to fighters weapons? Because the Arcane X Battleship has a magical force field of 5,000 so it must be immune. Now it's magical true but still a spaceship force field and not variable and since a demon ship is still a space ship a magical non-variable FF must still count. So the Nexus X is now less vulnerable than a Doombringer?

Also where do you get that the shields are ablative? where is that stated because I missed it and need to read up.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:I'm surprised that you even argued this point since you said

eliakon wrote:I agree it is silly.
But we have this rule for both this and in AUGG (battleship armor)

Just because a rule is silly doesn't mean that they don't get published. Look at the AP rules in Sovietski! They can be fixed via house rule easy enough... but RAW is RAW

Because I'm sorry it sounded hear like you at least agreed with this point.

Oh I agree that the rule is silly... but that doesn't make it any less of being the rule.

But you are arguing that the rule makes sense and works as is. If you were just arguing that it was intended as a rule this back and forth would be a lot shorter.

Definition sil·ly
adjective
having or showing a lack of common sense or judgment; absurd and foolish.
synonyms: foolish, stupid, unintelligent, idiotic, brainless, mindless, witless, imbecilic, imbecile, doltish

You are arguing and have been arguing at length that this rule makes sense while at the same time is silly. Which is it?

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Examples: The Katana can carry 2 plasma cannons that do 1D4X100 each and the Draygon has a 1D4X100 P-beam both listed as anti-large ship and are described as being able to damage cruisers.

Welcome to the wonderful world of "specific text trumps general" where a specific items special text can trump a general rule.
Which is why it said "as a general rule" not "in all circumstances what so ever, even the absurd ones that might be trotted out to try argue the rule"
In this case... those are medium weapons and thus not considered 'fighter weapons' (as per page 21)
Which is why a fighter can hurt a ship with them... because the rule does not attach.
Easy peasy.

I would love to visit the world of specific text, might you have some? Again you are, to barrow a phrase, assuming facts not in evidence. There is nothing about medium weapons in the "rule" you found just Cruise Missiles.

The rule on page 21 that I mentioned previously that tells us what a "fighter weapon" is

Fleets of the Three Galaxies page 21 wrote:Space fighter weapons "Fighters are usually armed with a number of weapon systems that are generally of proportion to their small size. When designing a new type of fighter, these systems are divided into Primary, Secondary, and Missile systems. All of these are selected from the Light category of weapons (Phase World, pages 153-155), with short and medium-range missiles counting as Light weapons."

"Fighter-Bombers" Some fighters, like the Naruni Fire-Eater or Draygon Industries Nova are designated as attack craft dubbed "fighter bombers". They are usually larger and slower than the traditional fighter by 20%=30% and are designed to carry high-yeilf, long-range missiles or torpedoes. The primary mission of fighter-bombers is the destruction of space stations and capital and sub-capital ships."

Okay then... seems pretty cut and dried.
Fighters mount Light Weapons, Short Range Missiles, and Medium Range Missiles.
And page 15 tells us that this stuff doesn't hurt Capital Ships main body

Fighter-Bombers/Attack Craft get Long-Range Missiles, Torpedoes (and by extension those bombs based off of the warheads of LRMs)
And the text also tells us that this stuff does hurt Capital Ships main body.

Additionally, and unique fighter that mounts a weapon that is NOT a Light weapon (like say a Medium class plasma gun) is not carrying the weapons that page 15, by way of page 21 is referring to. The inference being then that such weapons are treated identically to the other Medium weapon (LRMs, CMs, Torpedos, Heavy bombs)

Yeah, no if it was easy to do this we wouldn't be jumping between 7 different books and hinging which weapons can do what based on a brief description of what a fighter can carry vs. a fighter bomber, a description that conflicts with half the existing fighters I might add.

A lot of holes here but your two biggest:
1) You have still not pointed to any text on page 15 or 21 that says Fighter-Bombers are immune to this rule. The only thing according to the text that is immune are CMs. Fighter Bombers are still fighters under page 15. They can carry CMs to attack big ships, as can almost every fighter listed in the previous books, but it says nothing about those other weapons doing jack,
2) Medium Range Missiles are carried by fighter bombers, it says so in the description on page 22 were is says they can carry. In the PW book page 153-154 it does not list any missile as light, medium or heavy so if all you are using to distinguish is what it says a fighter-bomber can carry then medium range count and can now damage large ships.

But let us just say for a moment that I agree with you. Mediums can't and Longs can. No reason in text to think so but I now agree. You have just pointed out better than I have as to how game breaking and ridiculous this rule is.

A MR military grade plasm does 5D6X10 (now before you say that is CS I will point out that all missiles available on Rifts Earth are available on PW - DB3: Phase World page 155 and while it gives a RMB page number now that RUE is in it still applies)

A standard LR Frag missile is 2D6X10

Now by your rule, which again is found nowhere, the 5D6X10 plasma fire will not damage the ship but the 2D6X10 MDC anti-personnel round will. That is just nuts and I can't think of a single player I've had in a game that wouldn't loose their s@#t over it.

Now as for your "Light is this Medium is that" ruling again nowhere in the text but let us say I agree. PW page 154 has light and medium P-beams listed together with no clear delineation and no distinction is made for GR guns. Now Three-Galaxies page 128 has a better organized list but it won't help you because a 4D6X10 GR gun is listed as Medium while a 1D4X100 MDC P-beam is listed as light.

Now this is not a problem a these were really meant to denote weight not damage but now you seem to be trying to shoehorn this list into this new rule and it just won't work.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Also you are shaving this awfully thin. There are identical weapons systems in the books were it sometimes says Anti-ship and other times no.

Two things here
1) anti-ship and anti-capital ship are not synonyms. All fighter weapons are anti-ship
However
2) if a specific weapon says that it is anti-capital ship, or the text of the fighter or weapon states that it is used against capital ships... then that particular weapon gets an exception to the general rule by dint of having its own rule in its specific text.

When I read this part I realized I made two more mistakes:

One is simple, It does not say that the RoD can be shot down by fighters in it's description. I went back and reread everything after I made the SR missile error above and couldn't find it. That is under a general statement about planetary assault so the RoD would be covered by this rule and can not be damaged.

Central Argument Here

Two the reason this is a game obliterating rule is that it completely changes the game system under which all the previous books operated.

To my knowledge Campbell is the fourth writer to take up PW and has written the two most recent of 7 books. Carella 2, Coffin 1, Gleba 2, Campbell 2.

All of those other books and all of the ships in them were written under the assumption that MDC damages MDC. You have just hung everything for this rule on anti-ship vs. anti-capital ship but not a single weapon in Pw or PW SB is listed as anti-capital. The horn cannons on the Doombringer says the same thing that the lasers on the Black Eagle fighter says anti-ship. Every author that came before created ships, power armor and robots under a standard MDC rule that no longer applies and players come into a game believing it is universal and it no longer is.

One of the whole points of fighters is to shoot down troop shuttles and bombers before they can get to there targets. The RoD is dripping with tiny weapons to protect it from sharp shooting fighters but none of that is necessary now. 50 scorpion fighters can dive in on a RoD raining thousands of MDC in GR and mini-missile fire and it does jack all. If you can not look at that and say "yeah that probably breaks the game a little" then I have no idea what would break it for you. I know Carella intended for the scorpions mini-missiles to be able to damage the Doombringer dreadnought, we all know it, because he made it MDC.

If this rule had been in existence maybe the scorpion would carry LRMs or the GR gun would be capable of a melee burst that could damage it or, and this is the most ridiculous, he would have just given the RoD 3,499 MDC.

If this rule was 10,000 MDC and over or 35,000 MDC and over it would be an annoying idea that I would promptly ignore and while it would be one more thing that makes the MDC system just a little more broken and the PB system less universal it would not be game breaking. 3,500 MDC is such a low number that it fundamentally alters the premise under which the previous books were written and if the only difference between your game and mine is that you use this rule and I don't we are playing very different games. Now this is true for a lot of rules but outside of some things in RUE when it first came out I can not think of a single thing in a book that fundamentally changed the Phase World setting like this.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:But here is a question: The Hunter's weapon 2 are Rail guns, 3D6X10, just like most fighters, in fact it does less damage and has less range than the Rail gun on the Scorpion fighter. By this rule would the Hunters RG damage the ship over 3,500 and the scorpion wouldn't? But wait, the Scoprion description says that it is there to " to strafe larger ships" is that enough specific text for it to do damage or not? The primary purpose is listed as Anti-spacecraft not anti-fighter or anti-aircraft like other vehicles so does that mean it can damage it? The mini-missile pod for the Katana says it can be used against ships, is that good enough because many of the other mini-missiles systems don't say this even though they are the same weapon.

1) that would be up to the GM to interpet the rule. It could be interpreted either way (either weapons on fighters, or fighter class weapons). If the GM rules that it is fighter class weapons mounted on fighters... then yes the Hunter would damage a capital ship and the Scorpion wouldn't.
2) strafeing a larger ship is explicitly part of the fighter rule. They can damage things like weapons arrays, antenna, hatches, landing bays... so strafe away. You just won't deplete the main body M.D.C.
3) As for the rest... nope. Because as I stated before Anti-Ship =/= Anti-Capital-Ship

No wait #1 should not be up to the GM, I mean of course the GM can ignore anything he wants, but RAW is RAW so if specific text trumps general rule then the Hunters 3D6X10 MDC GR guns will damage frigates that come within range. But, it probably can't damage any other type of ship or ship part of 3,500 because it's not mentioned in the specific text so the general rule will apply.

Your #2 is honestly why I think you are trolling me. Listen to yourself it can blow holes in the MB of a large ship but it can not damage the MB? Can you find me something that gets holes blown in it without taking damage? Again, you were absolutely right this was a rule and I, like apparently 90% of people including you of two days ago, missed it because of how vague it was but you have to see how game breaking this is.

Also for #2 it is not just the MB it is any part that is 3,500 and over so fighters can not damage Bridges, fighter bays, engines, the main lasers of a protector are 5,000.

#3 again you are requiring a term for weapons to be immune to this rule that appears nowhere in at least the first 5 books. This is useless to the discussion.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Just to add this, it also means that fighters can no longer destroy the TGE Rain of Death troop shuttle which has 3,700 MDC even though in it's description it describes it as vulnerable to fighters and that was the reason for all the guns.

Again specific text vs general rule. In this case that specific ship is NOT covered by the general rule (guess they make them cheaper or something) and it can be hurt by fighters.

I honestly feel like I'm being trolled. Again in this case I was arguing how game breaking this would be if it is a rule and nothing you said here refutes that, and as I pointed out you already agreed with me.

No I am not trolling you. I am pointing out that your example of "this is game breaking" isn't game breaking in the slightest because the situation you desire (fighters shooting down the Rain of Death as per the text in the RoD) still happens even under the page 15 rule.

Actually you haven't. you have given me your beliefs, some backed up by the book others just your supposition, about how the rule works but nothing about how this isn't game obliterating. In my games I frequently bring in stuff from other setting, deciding what can and can't damage things under this rule would be a full time job and I already have one.

MDC is supposed to be Universal and what this does is completely change that system with only the most vague reasons attached to it.

For more than a decade and across 5 other books players could mass fire to destroy bridges, engines all sorts of things and then after one book they can't and there is no clear rule about what in those books are immune to that rule. That is game breaking.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Now, if I'm wrong and he did mean this as a rule then the Palladium MDC system which, on its best of days, is troubled is now completely shattered. If PA weapons of 4D6X10, like a Silverhawk, can not damage anything over 3,500 MDC than what about gods, adult dragons and other such monsters that frequently top 5,000 MDC.
Murex and Kreewar Carapace top 5,000 MDC and the Volute are 4,200 MDC. They would no longer be vulnerable to almost any weapon on Rifts Earth.

If this was meant as a rule, MDC is done and none of anything discussed here means anything.

Nothing you mentioned is a spaceship. So a rule about spaceships wouldn't apply.
This would be like trying to cite a rule about tanks and saying that it applies field mice...
The rule does not say "any object with 3,500" it says "any spacecraft"
The rule only applies to what it says it applies. No more, no less.
This rule does not apply to tanks, boats, mecha, gods, dragons, monsters, spells, walls, cities, or anything else that is not a spacecraft.

Again, this shows how game obliterating this would be if it was a rule and you do not refute it. If this is a rule you would literally have to go through each and every weapon on every ship and decide what it can and cannot damage. Anyone using this as a rule invites chaos onto there table and players pouring over every description to find one little detail to make a ship immune to a weapon or a weapon exempt from it.

Yes a rule that said you can not damage anything over 3,500 points would be game breaking... good thing there isn't such a rule though.
Your example of why this is game breaking is literally a straw man. Because you are raising up a totally different rule (the straw man) and then knocking down that different rule to try and show that the rule in the game is bad.
You need to demonstrate that the published rule is bad, not some hypothetical other rule that has NOT been published.

I did not straw man anything. First, I was showing how inconsistent the rule is since my 4D6X10 MDC Silver Hawk weapon can damage fricking Ahriman with his 78,600 MDC but I can't damage a Rain of Death trop shuttle and second I was comparing this rule to other circumstances. None of those are straw men. Now here is an inconsistency on your end, you keep saying that a sudden change to the rules for this one instance in no way breaks the game but you say that if it was a general rule it would. Why? If it doesn't break phase world to give space ships, and these are not large ships the Rain of Death is smaller than a deaths head transport, this immunity why would it be game breaking to give it to other items, that just doesn't make sense.

eliakon wrote:As for your chaos? Again all you have to do is...wait for it... use the rules found on page 15 and 21.
No seriously it really is that simple.

The rule on page 15 says only CMs, you're right that is simple. But wait, then why are you saying that plasma cannons and LRMs can also do damage. No, apparently not simple since you can't consistently apply the rule across a single post and you keep calling it silly.

And I'm sorry there is no list of fighter weapons and the list we do have shows 4D6X10 GR gun as a medium weapon so I guess it works but the 5D6X10 MDC laser is SOL. There is a list of fighter traits that excludes half the existing fighters in the game for one trait or another but no list of actual weapons. Again, if there was this would still be a game breaking rule but that list does not exist.

eliakon wrote:We have a list of what constitutes 'fighter weapons' and we know what fighters are.
Pretty clearly if something is on the list of fighter weapons and mounted on a fighter then page 15 attaches
If something a fighter weapon and mounted elsewhere... that is a GMs call due to the vagueness of the rule (that said judging by the precedent from the Aliens Unlimited Galaxy Guide Battleship Armor which this rule is the Rifts adaption of... it would seem that the intent was that only Medium class or greater weapons can harm them and it was just badly written. But again that is simply what it looks like based on the Battleship Armor and the text of this rule)

OK first you were all upset and claiming "straw man" because I asked what would happen if we apply this rule uniformly across Rifts and then you bring up stuff from AU, a different setting and an SDC one at that. Please demonstrate how the rule as written doesn't break the game by rendering the 5 previous books obsolete because they lack a phrase (anti-capital) that does not appear in the rule or anywhere in the before mention 5 books.

eliakon wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Here is one last little thing for your rule what about demon ships. They are spaceships but they are also demons. I can point to specific text in Dimensional Outbreak where they are both so is this a specific text that adds them to the rule or is it like the specific text that excludes them from it like Rain of Death?

A spaceship is a spaceship.
Even if it is also something else.
Thus the rule attaches to demon ships of 3,500 M.D.C. or more. Note that this is ships, not demons in general, just spaceships.

What happened to specific text trumping a general rule. These are demons, reshaped and magically transformed to be used as ships but they are demons.
Now Demon Planets are not spaceships so clearly they would not be covered by this rule but then that means I can hurt Cormal with my SRMs but not a demon converted to a troop carrier just because he fly's through space? I mean I could see your point if this was a demon possessing or just powering a ship built by demons that is not the case.

I fully admit, I made a mistake this is a rule. But I'm sorry nothing you have said refutes the idea that this is game breaking.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Before I get into this I want to restate my main point, a consistent power rise that makes ships from older books kind of if not useless much less useful.

To this purpose I have tried to compare the Emancipator to the Doombringer, it's only peer. I understand and agree that it is expensive and you can buy all these other ships for the same price but that is not the same thing as saying it is not fundamentally more powerful than it's one and only peer.

Except it isn't a "peer"; its an older, much cheaper design. You keep trying to ignore cost and just compare raw stats in a vacuum. It doesn't work that way. If you have an ultimate-uber-ship (barring it having a "blows up anything" gun) that costs trillions, and i can field hundreds of ships that are 30% less powerful for the same cost, your uber-ship is totally irrelevant. Its just a floating target waiting for me to shoot it down. This would be like saying that if we built a new Battleship (lets call them "Texas" Class, since we like to name our BBs and their classes after States) in 2020, of the relatively same displacement and tonnage, that it wouldn't absolutely OBLITERATE the Iowa-Class ships. Its absurd on its face.

It is roughly 75 years older yes, but in a setting that very specifically says that technology is advancing slowly - Phase World page 114 - and older tech is not replaced by newer at any great speed. As for peer it is, it is a dreadnought separated by 1/5th of the estimated life of a ship like this judging by the Packmaster. Now in a real world setting with rapidly changing technology would you be correct, absolutely no question. In game context are, no not even remotely.

As for ignoring money, yes I can. you are talking about building fleets in some imaginary real world-ish situation but I am talking in game. In game this ship is a clear, basically ridiculous, power explosion. You have even commented on how ridiculous the fighter compliment is so not sure why this is so hard.

If we were talking about a fleet battle game were you bought your fleet and set them against each other, you would be absolutely right, but this is not that.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Now the Doombringer is only 50 billon while the Emancipator 350 billion. Now it is a much better ship but it is not 7 times better. They even mass in the same at 100 million tons so while you are looking at numbers that don't make sense compared to the earlier source material, like the number of Battlerams, the cost of this ship is one that should be looked at.

Seven Doombringers would utterly crush the Emancipation.

Agreed, but not even remotely the point. This is a role playing game not a fleet battle simulator and while the Emancipator is the most obvious expression of this power creep it is by no means the one I actually care about.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote: - Yannar is 2,00+2,000+2,800=6,800 but the stat block says 11,000
- Zhokil is 27,000+27,000+34,000=88,000 the stat block for it is 135,000
- You want some funny from this the Bindas totals to 18,000 and the stat block says 40,000 but the Sylonar totals to 230,000 and the stat block actually goes lower giving it just 200,000
- The only ship where the total of its parts equals the stat block, unless my spreadsheet is mistaken, is the Servitude. All others are much higher except 2 which are lower.

When it was asked earlier we were told that they were given an official MB MDC for comparison sake. Again, I hate this. I would much rather that they had gone in and given 1/3 or even 1/4 breakdowns for really big ships but they didn't.

"We were told" is 100%, grade-A, utterly irrelevant. If it isn't in print, either in official, published eratta where any new player can see it, or in a revised printing of the book, you might as well use it as toilet tissue.

Also, it doesn't change the fact that the stat block in the early part of the book is wrong. It lists the Emancipation class as being 10,500 feet long, for instance. It is more than 15,000 ft long.

You are absolutely right, told is useless here. But since the numbers are printed in the book that is all I have to go by. As for the misprint of the length, you might have a case if every other ship in the book matched what was in the stat block, but it doesn't. Your assertion that an entire section of a book should be disregarded because you don't like what it says, well you can use it as toilet paper.

I also want to point out that previously you said:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Problem with that theory is that the general stat block earlier in the book for the Emancipation-class is wrong. Its the only one that doesn't add up (the others all correctly add up the 3 hull segments, the Emancipation does not add up correctly), AND it has incorrect stats for the ship itself (cutting its size down by nearly a mile).

Ergo, the stat block earlier in the book for the Emancipation is incorrect and invalidated by the data in the actual ship description.

Now you were dead wrong about this, only one ship in the entire book has the 3 sections add up to the MB in the stat block. You are saying that about 3 pages of a book is filled with useless and incorrect information based on nothing but one figure, the length, having a typo (yes if you switch the 5 and the 0 it would be correct so probable typo) even though all the other stats match up and the MB MDC being more than the 3 sections is totally consistent with all the others.

Now I could be wrong. Maybe Campbell will come on and say that those stat blocks are a mistake and part of some early draft that should have been thrown out. But, since it is not in an official errata or reprinting of the book then I'm sorry by the rules you have set out for this conversation we have to use these numbers. It's in the book.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote: And I have to tell you that Battlerams and silverhawks sent after the Carriers will ruin the day of those ships completely elimintating, or even inverting, the fighter advantage as massive numbers will need to be retained for defense.

Theyll never reach the Packmasters. They are slow as pigs compared to fighters, and no sane Admiral is going to deploy his CVs in the line of battle with his Battleships. Theyll be loitering WAY back from the fight. The Silverhawks cant even hurt the carriers. (See below) Even if they could catch them.

I specifically said earlier that I was simply looking at an attrition model. If you want to get into strategy the Emancipator can simply deny the Protectors battle more easily than the Packmasters can. Silverhawks are faster than Proctors and as fast as Star Ghosts. In the scenario you lay out with the Packmasters hanging back an Emancipator could simply jump in and out of FTL every time the CVs commit there fighters. For the sake of a simple comparison I did a simple attrition based comparison. In any situation you name where the CVs can simply leave I can name another where they can't or where the Emancipator can leave as well and this is complicated enough.

Oh, we're having this fight in the "works for my argument best" field of battle. If the Emancipation can jump into FTL whenever it wants, so can the opposition. This is... you're literally making the space-faring equivalent of "all engagements between characters happen on flat plains with totally clear lines of sight and no cover". Dont be absurd. Though that seems to be the general modus operandi here.

I'm sorry this upsets you and that you feel the need to denigrate everyone on these forums. Please try to follow along this is the only way we have to compare them.

Can you come up with battle scenarios where the Emancipator would get absolutely crushed, yes you can. Can I create scenarios where the Emancipator would dominate while the fleet of 7 would die, yes. That, if you will pardon me just seems ridiculous. All I am talking about here is a comparison of power and capabilities and you seem to agree with me that this ship is a massive escalation. Now in fleets page 11 it talks about how most battles occur in open space because of the FTL limit of CG engines. Now, this is a rule that I think is silly, have known about since the book came out, and have ignored. But, it is in the book so yes this is where a battle like this would take place. In this situation the Emancipator is even more powerful because it can launch fighters and move. FTL fighters can jump around the battle field to harass those carriers. 240 LR Proctors, 6 cruise missiles each, Packmasters go bye.

A battle in a Gravity well would actually be a good one for you as once I engage your protectors I could not escape fast enough and they would likely kill me. But in the book most of these battles take place in open space.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Again you have to take reload time into consideration but I will also remind you that I am saying the Emancipator is better than the Doombringer, its only peer, not 6 Protectors.

Only if this fight is being had at ranges that a longer reload time means my counter-missile batteries will completely lose the opportunity to fire on your incoming fire.

"Space is big, really big" Douglas Adams.

Yes engages in the void of space will probably start the second one ship has an advantage over another at range. Now regardless of range your point defense, there really is no counter missile batteries here which I agree with Eliakon that is just dumb, get the exact same amount of time to fire whether those missiles are fired from 1,000 miles or 10 miles. It all depends on the range of the weapon you are using to counter. So depending on your number of attacks per melee a 2 mile range will get you one shot and as previously discussed many of those shots will miss as the CMs can dodge and many of the hits will fail to destroy a missile. If one missile in a volley is destroyed by a mini-missile (or a LRM but that is for later) it has decent chance of destroying the entire volley but if it is killed by those GR or beam weapon then odds are most or all of the volley will get through. This is covered in RUE page 364.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:Yes with missiles but I am not comparing it to the Hunter, I wasn't even comparing it to the Protector, although I covered how those missiles are not that much of an equalizer due to reload speed. Also according to the book most LRM are guided but CMs are always smart. This means to guarantee a kill on a CM, +5 to dodge, the LRM launchers will need to launch 4 missiles meaning each LRM launcher can counter 15 fighters or CM volleys before a 6 minute reload. With it's PD turrets getting just 1 shot for all the ones getting through they will get swamped.

Only if the Emancipation is sitting at -exactly- the right range to somehow exploit the variable reload times. Again, if we're having this battle in "best situations for my argument" land, then we can just stop having the argument, because we have nothing left to discuss. At that point, you're arguing in bad faith and moving the goalposts every time you post just to be right.

It isn't sitting anywhere, they would be moving together to have a fight. This would cover, at minimum thousands of miles and could potentially be more. I am not doing a what is best for my argument I am using what is says in the book about where battles happen. You seem to think that in a space battle to fleets of mile plus long warships would teleport next to each other. I have not moved the goal post once because you have failed at every turn to provide a goal post.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Long-range missile bombardment against most ships is non-viable.

Yeah I'm sorry but we have played this out more than a few times in my games and for big ships, like the Protector or Emancipator, it is very effective and the advantage is almost always to rate of fire.

Again, only if rate-of-fire happens to give one salvo a chance of getting through with NO counter-battery fire. This is ... lets just say itll happen maybe one out of every few hundred volleys.

Here is one thing I will give you. Put smart LRM in the Protector and that is a ship is way more deadly. Give it LR smart multi-warhead were each single missile turns into a volley of 4 medium range, that ship is armed to F- all. But, since the book says these ships are armed with standard guided, the effectiveness is limited.

Their effectiveness is in the high likleyhood that 4 or 8 missiles will destroy your 200 missile CM barrage. Your CMs cant dodge, and 70% of the time, the entire volley goes. The chances that the defending ship has to fire more than one or two volleys of 4 countermissiles is extremely low, and given that LRMs outrange CRMs, its not likely you will get missiles through.

If I, the Emancipator, Launch 1/6th of my fighters at your protector and then concentrate my CM fire on first one until it dies then switch to the next you have a choice of kill the fighters, of which 1/3 will have 2 CMs each, or shoot the CM volleys. The fighters of course can fire back with mini-missiles which again they only get one shot but if they hit the missile volley is almost certainly dead. Also with each dead Protector more fighters can move to the next. Again Rate of fire, including reload speed, means something here.

Except the Protectors will have hulled the Emancipation in about the 3rd or 4th round unless we're just assuming that we're ONLY fighting at Max range all the time, every time, always.

The way you move goalposts is rapidly approaching Olympic levels of skill.

The only person moving the goal post is you.
I compared the Emancipator to the Doombringer, you insisted on your Protector Packmaster fleet
You said that the carriers would never be in range of enemy fighters traveling at better that Mach 16 but the Emancipator must start the engagement at no more that 100 miles from the enemy fleet.

I am trying to meet the terms you set out even though it was not remotely my point and you continually change the dynamics and ignore the book when convenient.

If this fleet goes to attack the Emancipator it will be seen at tens of thousands of miles away.
Fleets page 25 has a targeting range of 10,000 miles with sensors of 250,000 miles so explain to me what situation stops the ships from opening up before 100 miles. Set a goal post.

You are also not paying attention to the barrage rule. If I launch 32 missiles as a barrage that translates into 3 to 5 separate volleys each needing to be destroyed by a separate launch of LRMs. But I don't have to do that.

Assume every ship has gunners of equal attacks, 4 which is low. Each MC launcher can fire 4 separate, distinct, each needing to be killed on its own, volleys of 8 CMs. That is 16 volley coming in at once. LRMs will do great here but again if you time this with your fighter deployment the LRM can counter them or the missiles but not both. Either way they are going to get hit with a staggering number of CMs either from fighters or the Emancipator, dealers choice.

Now each protector has the exact same number of CMs and rate of fire as the Emancipator so in your little imaginary fleet battle it would be even harder for the Emancipator to defend, it has no LRMs, than the protectors. It would have to hold back the 120 assault shuttles to use as frigates and/or the 960 Battleram bots (which is what I would do). This greatly reduces the effect of its fighters. Emancipator dies but so do several Protectors and all it needs to do is kill 3 of the ships and more people will have died on the fleet side than the Emancipator.

But, again, this fleet battle is your thing. In a battle of the Dreadnoughts the Doombringer dies in 5 minutes or less. It is outclassed in every respect.

In space these two opposing forces are going to see each other at tens of thousands of miles, unless you think someone is hiding behind a bush or something.

if the two ships are closing at max speed (you know assume the fleet is military geniuses while he CO of the Emancipator is a functioning moron), no maneuvering which serves you best, you are looking at four and half minutes of CM fire before beam weapons range. Assume the Emancipator CO has a room temp IQ and he just stops cold when they hit CM range it will be almost 8 minutes before beam range. Assume the Emancipator CO has the basic math skill and just as soon as he reaches CM range he will flip and burn away in which case he can keep the range open for 35 minutes.

Missiles in Rifts are not useless, in fact MRMs are the only thing that makes the Flying Fang even a remotely useful fighter. They can be shot down but that takes missiles and time. Does the Emancipator die in your little fleet battle, yes every time it borders on ridiculous. Will it kill a large chunk of the fleet sent for it and in the end cost more lives than it looses. Yes again every time.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

I mean if the Naruni are building ships like the Conquistador and Esperanda every other cruiser and destroyer/frigate is just junk.

The Hunter would hold its own against an Espandon fairly well, actually, particularly given that it is half the cost of an Espandon. It wouldnt necessarily win (the two ships can inflict roughly the same damage with their main guns, their smaller guns are roughly equal, and the Espandon's better Cruise Missile capacity is largely nullified by the Hunter's ability to simply counter-volley MRMs missile for missile. The Espandon probably wins in the end, but itll know its been in a fight.

I am not sure what you are looking at but here is the matchup:

Advantages for Espandon:
- MB 5,500 to 4,500
- Shields 7,200 to 6,000. This is a huge advantage when you factor in recharge

No it isnt.

- Mach 15 to Mach 9.5

Okay? It can either rush into range faster or escape. In the case of "Escape", thats a "Hunter Wins" as the Espandon has left.

Yes I am being trolled. If we can not agree that 5,500 is greater than 4,500 and that 15 is greater than 9.5 we're not having an actual conversation.

You have said over and over that I can not ignore cost, I am, you don't like it that is a simple matter of opinion. But now you are trying to argue that a single Hunter has a chance against a single Espandon. How is armor not an advantage? How is greater shield strength not an advantage? How is a 50% advantage in speed not an advantage.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote: - Main Cannon the damage for Esp is half that of the hunters 3 cannons but it has twice the rate of fire and ten times the range. Factor in the speed advantage and the Esp doesn't have to let the Hunter even get a shot at it.

Ahh, the vaunted "battlefield is always best for me" defense.

This has nothing to do with the Battlefield unless that battle field is smaller than 10 miles. Range is always an advantage, read the account of any Confederate soldier with his smoothbore musket going against a rifle for the first time and that gets real clear real quick. And since I brought that up, rate of fire. Take a look what happened to the battle field when repeating rifles first went against muzzle loaders. In case you missed it the Hunter is the muzzle loader (1 at a time) while the Espandon is the repeater.

What battlefield could two "Spaceships" have were a 10 to 1 range advantage would not be important. Explain to me how the Hunter is supposed to get within 10 miles of a ship that is 50% faster.

Again arguing that my ignoring cost is a problem, that I at least understand. It has absolutely nothing to do with power creep but I get it. But seriously these arguments. the ship with 2,200 MDC advantage in shields and armor doesn't have any advantage at all?

And no the Esp doesn't have to either drive in at full speed or run away. A 50% speed advantage would allow it to maintain a favorable range, separate the fighters from the destroyer or neutralize them as a threat. In a space battle speed or in a realistic setting acceleration, is the ability to control the battle.

If the Esp approaches the Hunter and it launches it's fighters the Esp can hold the range to the Hunter open at greater that 10 miles.
- If the fighters attack on there own it can destroy them with LRMs and defense lasers. Once they are dead I can simply saturate it with CM, LRM, and heavy laser. It can fire one CM at a time so no threat there. The MRMs can be an issue but power armors and and point defense can take most and 7,200 MDC shields can take a lot of MRMs especially with that recharge rate.
- If the fighters stay with the Hunter, they die. It takes longer but they die. Give this Hunter Katana fighters and it becomes an actual battle but Scorpions or Black Eagles, no. Most Hunters wouldn't carry a bomber version of either of these but lets pretend they do. Since bombers of both are 1/3 of total that means they would have 1 fighter with 2 CMs. And since we now know that nothing the fighters have besides CMs can damage the 5,500 MDC of the Esp well the Hunter is even more screwed.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote: - CMs the Esp has 60 to the Hunters 50 but it can fire 30 everytime the Hunter fires one.

And them promptly destroyed by the MRMs on the Hunter.

No, you have to roll for that, it is not automatic. Also if we put these 2 ships in the bathtub that you want for the battlefield it can close to 3 miles and fire 30 CMs that can not be countered by anything. This is more than enough to obliterate the Hunter while the hunter can fire 1 CM which if the Esp just decided to leave it's shields down and the CM did average damage of 1,400 would scuff the paint but the Esp is still flying and the Hunter has taken an average 42,000 MDC. To a ship with 4,500 MDC and total shields of 6,000. Come on, we can disagree about weather cost is factor in power creep but at least let us agree about math.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:If the Esp decided to charge in, nose to nose with main cannon and CM against the Hunter the Hunter dies 9.9 times out of 10 and the hunter can't escape. This gets worse as the Esp carries reloads for a total of 300 while the hunter does not.

This engagement was never going to be decided by missiles anyway.

Any other decrees you would like to make? The length of the work week, moving Halloween to the last Saturday in October? Please tell me what this battle will be settled by, set a goal post because apparently this is the first battle in history where armor, shields, weapons range, rate of fire, and speed don't count so set a goal post what does.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote: - Secondary missiles Esp with 2LRM of 80 each capable of volleys up to 20 each. Hunter 2 MRM of 160 each with volleys of just 8 each that means it is incapable of the random missile assault with the Esp would excel at it.

Its like i mentioned the LRMs of the Espandon being its major benefit. And Random Missile Assault. Seriously. I dont even...

I don't understand what this is. If there is a factual error in what I said please state it but this is dismissive and rude.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:In every respect the Esppandon is far superior to the Hunter and the Hunter would do far better than the Scorpion or Berserker.

The Scorpion is a Fighter, so i certainly hope so. The Berserker is also WAYYY cheaper than the Espandon.

You keep trying to imply that cost is never relevant, and quite honestly, thats absurd on its face. If you can have one of your Awesome Thing, but i can have 10 of my Pretty Great thing, your Awesome Thing is dead.

I meant Scimitar not Scorpion, since I was talking frigates and destroyers I thought most would catch that but I guess not.

And here you are moving the goal post again. Yes, more expensive, buy more. I agree but it is irrelevant to what I was saying. You can say it is relevant but we have differing opinions. But you have been arguing that the Espandon does not have a qualitative edge, which it does. Clearly. In almost every metric.

Now you can almost buy two Berserkers for the cost of one so I'll give you two to one. Everything I said above about the Hunter applies triple for the Berserker. In a three dimensional battle field of any real size, you know like infinite space, 2 Berserkers could never catch an Esp. Worst case scenario for the Esp it runs away after harassing the Berserkers with it's missiles. Best case scenario it kills one and maybe damages another before it leaves. With the Sublight and speed advantage there is no geometry where it can not run.

Scimitar and Hunter. Since you are so big on costs you have to start including the cost of fighters in the calculations. Hunter 350, Scorpions 30 each at that is 470, 20 million more than the Esp without PA and it has no bomber. Give the Hunter one bomber it is now 490. Space Angel, the standard PA for the Esp, is 8.7 million so for 20 I can get 2 or 40 I can get 4. Equip the Hunter with Black Eagles and I can put 12 of the best NE power armors available on the Esp and still have money left over. Katanas, we would be talking an escort for the Esp.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Given the relative age of the Hunter to the far newer Espandon, it's a pretty solid matchup. Given that you can field 2 Hunters to an Espandon, its not a bad comparison. (The market cost is 320 million on a Hunter; cost to produce for the CCW is surely lower).

You keep doing this, I am talking ship quality the price is of limited import here for power creep.

No it isnt. Price and availability is extremely important. Quantity has a Quality all its own.

But no you could not field two full Hunters.

Not if we're both non-government entities buying ships on the open market (which you cant even really buy the Hunter). But we're not. The CN doesn't pay market price for its ships.

At max cost you could field just 1.56, at average cost it is 1.4 and where do you get that the CCW would pay less per ship.

Warshield Class Cruiser, under Cost "2.4 Billion; this is the Cost to the Consortium; these ships are sold only to Consortium member planets at three times their cost" The Consortium doesn't pay market value.

I mean yes I agree it would make sense but there is nothing in the books to support it.

You were saying?

I was saying why did you add "The Consortium doesn't pay market value" when it doesn't say that anywhere. 2.4 billion is its market value, I know that because those are the words you left off your quote right before the 2.4 billion. Again you keep introducing things that are not in the book or anywhere else. You can make an argument that the CAF might charge 700 million to 1 billion for others to buy the Hunter but you can't make the magical argument that it is cheaper. Now I agree there should be stats for construction cost and market cost, but here aren't so we need to just stick with what we know.

Now if you can get Carella to post that the Hunter only costs the CCW 50 billion I would accept that but until then you are just pulling stuff out of...where the toilet paper is.

Also I have covered the cost above, if you insist on doing this then the cost of fighters has to factor in and the Hunter is on its own. 2 hunters, no fighters against an Esp. Yeah the Esp still wins for every reason above.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:The Conquistador is... interesting. Without the Espandons, its not very compelling. Even with them...

It has no force field. Zero. Zilch. Nadda. Thats a MAJOR weakness. Its main gun is finicky and not particularly overpowered when youc onsider the low rate of fire. Its secondaries (the 8 heavy plasma cannons) are more dangerous, IMO, due to the high rate of fire.

At first I did not understand this. I assumed that since you knew the Packmaster had an FTL speed of 6, which is not in the book, that you knew about all the corrections. The lack of Force Fields was just an error not a feature. The same thing is true of the Commodity from Fleets.

Here is Carl Gleba's answer to this from nine years ago. The Conquistador has the most powerful shields in its class and you can poo-poo it's weapons all you want but it can swat any ship in it's class especially because of the 24 fighter capacity. The smasher carries 50% more fighters but those fighters crap and barely faster than the Conquistador.

1, Flying Fangs, for how cheap they are, are actually pretty tough and dish out LOTS of damage.
2, we're at the "if it isn't in the book (a revised printing is fine), and/or official erratta in a Rifter or somewhere a player who doesnt obsessively search forums can read it" - its toilet tissue. It doesn't exist.

It does exist. Again you make all the decrees you want but they are there. It is hysterical to me that you add things to books like lower costs for Hunters with no reference what so ever but I send you the link to the authors and that's it. It is in the errata for PB on the forums, those are as official as anything. Also, page 162 in the description second column talks about how the Conquistador can only maintain its shields while firing the main gun if the 4 Esp are attached. It clearly has them, it says so in the book but no stat was given.

I will also note 2 things: 1) it took me 2 minutes to find this post, no digging required. 2)You're on the forums. If we were having this conversation at a convention you might have point but this is just too much.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:Nor you can you even try the "well its an obvious mistake, all other ships have shields" - no, they dont. There are several other large(r) - non fighter - Ships that dont have shields.

Which ones. Please actual provide evidence because outside of troop shuttles and the two ships that the authors said were omitted in error I can not find any. There is no destroyer class vessel or larger that doesn't have them. Gas collecting ships have them.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:The CRMs are... eh, again, depending on who you're fighting, unless you're getting up super close and launching them point blank, theyll just get counter-volleyed against a lot of the ships itd be fighting.. However, it has SIX LRM emplacements, meaning its got a serious backup punch and can put enough missiles into space that a lot of other ships WOULDNT be able to successfully countervolley EVERYTHING its throwing out.

Still, given its cost, its not too far out of whack. Its a LOT more expensive than other heavy cruisers.

No, they can not counter Everything. You have to take the full ship into account. If it launches 24 fighters against the 12 of the Warshield combined with the weapons fire it will overwhelm it and the Smasher is even more over matched.

Again, you're ignoring cost.

Great, you have a Conquistador. All THREE. POINT. FIVE. BILLION. Credits worth.

You can field a Warshield and a complete screen of Hunters for that.

Or the TGE could field a PAIR of Smashers for that. Or a Smasher and a complete screen of Berserkers.

If you try to field the entire weapon system, which is a Conquistador AND Four Espandons, (just shy of FIVE Billion Cr), you could field a task force from either navy (we wont even get into the UWW) that would obliterate them in a few minutes of action.

Cost is not irrelevant.

There are already, before this even, instances of 'X is better than Y' - but the costs tell the tale.

I know you are trying to ignore ever single stat except price but they exist and for a reason.

Now a Conquistador and 4 Espandons would cost 5.3 billion. Now it says specifically in the book - Page 162 that NE is happy to make package deals. This is in the book as opposed to the hallucination of cheaper Hunters. What is that deal? No idea but it is listed there so if anyone has cause to lower the price I do but since we don't know what it is.

With the cost of Fighters you have

Conquistador, 4 Esppandon, 12 Fireeater (with all those lovely LRMs), 12 Rapiers
and in the other corner
Warshield, 6 Hunters, 6 Katanas, 30 Scorpions. - If you bring in more Katanas, add bombers, or add Black eagles bombers or not you have to reduce numbers. If you bring in Scimitars it drops the numbers substantially.

And for every reason I listed above they die. Superior speed, superior shields, superior weapons power range and in many cases damage. Every single stat is not just superior it is massively superior. It is power creep and the costs as listed in the book not some fantasy number do not limit it.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:The Emancipation doesn't invalidate the Protector or Doombringer. No one is going to send a lone Doombringer against a lone Emancipation. Nor a Protector. Etc.

I did not bring the Protector into this you did and yes if you had bothered to read the description of the Doombringer you would know that the TGE Emperor does not trust any commander with that much power so most Doombringers are on there own while a few have escorts under a separate commander.

Colonel_Tetsuya wrote:This doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Now I know you are just messing with me
It does actually happen in a vacuum, you know space and all that.

Everything else on this post I already covered. I was wrong about this being a rule but it is game obliterating. I will point out that you Eliakon disagree on a few points but it doesn't really matter.

So with this I am done. We have a disagreement over what is in the books and how that effects the game and since we can't even agree that 15 is greater than 9.5, and since we are now wayyyyyy outside the OP I think it is best to leave it here. Best to both of you.