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Starfleet Design Bureau

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[X] Focus on Particle Density (75 Degrees Arc, 12->18 Damage)

Per Sayle they had a 45 degree arc in TOS proper, and with much less manouverable starships too. Between the impulse shunt and the new engine we've got the manoeuvrability, and now we need the power (especially since if we stick with wide we'll be 9 off of canon damage)!
 
Skippy said:
the preoccupation with total weapon coverage was always looking at things the wrong way.
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it always was, but at time of voting it has since been sneakily edited out of the table in the threadmark the focused phaser option for the Type 2 was horrifically overpriced, and budget limitations made them basically completely unviable in that version of the quest rules. And thus we got...not quite a blowout, but a pretty overwhelming (≈2-to-1) win for gimbals- hell, iirc I voted for them myself despite hating 'em!- which was the only halfway reasonable choice at the time but for which we're still suffering all these months and revisions later.

Had they been priced equally per unit, the tradeoff of more damage versus requiring more space and expense for more mounts to get a given amount of coverage would have been pretty compelling. When the focused mounts are also 150% the price of the turrets DISCLAIMER: TECHNICALLY HEADCANON THOUGH IT SEEMS PATENTLY OBVIOUS: despite being overwhelmingly mechanically simpler, with an order of magnitude fewer moving parts and correspondingly reduced maintenance needs, then suddenly your "150% damage vs 150% space and budget" choice is a "150% damage vs 150% space and 225% budget" choice, and midrange ships just get fucked.

Doctrinally, I agree, full coverage has alway been a red herring (except the Thunderchilds), and is even more so when we're so far ahead of the game on sublight drive tech- our actual fighting ships I don't even mean dedicated combatants, just "competently equipped for their class and era" would be tremendously more effective with proper focused phasers. But our second-line ships- which currently, while largely irrelevant versus peer opponents, are effectively immune to random pirates and other non-state actors- would instead be utterly at the mercy of any rando with a last-gen BoP(okay no that's exaggerating but) seriously vulnerable to pirates and light raiders.

Roaming_Guardian said:
Focused emitters ROYALLY fuck over secondline vessels. Not only are the handful of phasors you are allotted more expensive giving you even less of them, but the few you get are going to leave massive blind spots that anything marginally faster will exploit viciously.
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thepsyborg said:
Focused would make our small ships hellaciously dangerous, and we're already pretty well doctrinally aligned toward "fuck the expense sheet" where the flagship explorers are concerned, but for everything in between- every light cruiser and science vessel and armed cargo ship and everything- the ability to get a reasonable field of fire at a reasonable expense is just. Holy moly, Focused sucks so hard.
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[X] Focus on Particle Density (75 Degrees Arc, 12->18 Damage)

It will be a slight shame to lose the cool little retractable turrets though; they were a fun little divergence from the canon timeline. This is still way better though.
 
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Derpmind said:
Why do canon ships have the narrow firing arcs? In this quest, we've focused on maneuverability a lot - we've had two ships that hit Very High maneuverability, the maximum. And you'd think canon Starfleet, with their tankier but less maneuverable ships, would want wider firing arcs. So why?
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Nature of the various races.

In StarFleet Battles, the maneuver for starship generally was rated from A to F, with Federation ships being more ponderous, such that a Constitution was maneuver rating D, when compared to a Klingon D7 or D6 was up at a B rating, and even the most manueverable Federation classes barely doing better than a C, while a small Klingon ship was likely sitting at an A rating.

On the other side of the coin, a Federation Heavy Cruiser had a lot more 'Crunch' power in its alpha strike, such that there were specific styles associated with a particular race, so Federation ships favoured a slow charging 'Boom n Zoom' type tempo while the Klingons were characterised by the close range fast firing Disruptor 'Sabre Dance' patterns and the Romulans had their 'Plasma Ballet'.
 
[X] Focus on Particle Density (75 Degrees Arc, 12->18 Damage)

Reluctantly, I've been convinced that wider arcs just have not worked out for us, and unless we make drastic changes to how we're designing our ships, probably never will.
 
thepsyborg said:
it always was, but at time of voting it has since been sneakily edited out of the table in the threadmark the focused phaser option for the Type 2 was horrifically overpriced at the time of the vote, and budget limitations made them basically completely unviable in that version of the quest rules. And thus we got...not quite a blowout, but a pretty overwhelming (≈2-to-1) win for gimbals- hell, I voted for them myself despite hating 'em!- which was the only halfway reasonable choice at the time but for which we're still suffering all these months and revisions later.

Had they been priced equally per unit, the tradeoff of more damage versus requiring more space and expense for more mounts to get a given amount of coverage would have been pretty compelling. When the focused mounts are also 150% the price of the turrets DISCLAIMER: TECHNICALLY HEADCANON THOUGH IT SEEMS PATENTLY OBVIOUS: despite being overwhelmingly mechanically simpler, with an order of magnitude fewer moving parts and correspondingly reduced maintenance needs, then suddenly your "150% damage vs 150% space and budget" choice is a "150% damage vs 150% space and 225% budget" choice, and midrange ships just get fucked.

Doctrinally, I agree, full coverage has alway been a red herring (except the Thunderchilds), and is even more so when we're so far ahead of the game on sublight drive tech- our actual fighting ships I don't even mean dedicated combatants, just "competently equipped for their class and era" would be tremendously more effective with proper focused phasers. But our second-line ships- which currently, while largely irrelevant versus peer opponents, are effectively immune to random pirates and other non-state actors- would instead be utterly at the mercy of any rando with a last-gen BoP(okay no that's exaggerating but) seriously vulnerable to pirates and light raiders.


[X] Focus on Particle Density (75 Degrees Arc, 12->18 Damage)

It will be a slight shame to lose the cool little retractable turrets though; they were a fun little divergence from the canon timeline. This is still way better though.
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Honestly I had completely blanked on the cost thing. Clearly the repeated concussions from repeatedly getting the absolute shit kicked out of me in votes where I try and convince the Quest to put science labs on things have started to take their toll and cause a form of early onset dementia...

But as a mindset I think it also has effected some of our choices weapon placements in votes etc.. Although obviously that's less of a factor now we're into "only two phaser beams on screen at a time, we need to make the VFX budget last all season" territory, it still comes up now and again.
 
[X] Focus on Particle Density (75 Degrees Arc, 12->18 Damage)

I despise giving up increased firing arcs; being able to wreck people in any direction at an affordable cost appeals to me greatly. But that only works if the phasers have enough punch to matter.

If Starfleet Command gets uppity about the increased cost of arming new ships, I'm going to riot.
 
thepsyborg said:
it always was, but at time of voting it has since been sneakily edited out of the table in the threadmark the focused phaser option for the Type 2 was horrifically overpriced, and budget limitations made them basically completely unviable in that version of the quest rules. And thus we got...not quite a blowout, but a pretty overwhelming (≈2-to-1) win for gimbals- hell, I voted for them myself despite hating 'em!- which was the only halfway reasonable choice at the time but for which we're still suffering all these months and revisions later.

Had they been priced equally per unit, the tradeoff of more damage versus requiring more space and expense for more mounts to get a given amount of coverage would have been pretty compelling. When the focused mounts are also 150% the price of the turrets DISCLAIMER: TECHNICALLY HEADCANON THOUGH IT SEEMS PATENTLY OBVIOUS: despite being overwhelmingly mechanically simpler, with an order of magnitude fewer moving parts and correspondingly reduced maintenance needs, then suddenly your "150% damage vs 150% space and budget" choice is a "150% damage vs 150% space and 225% budget" choice, and midrange ships just get fucked.

Doctrinally, I agree, full coverage has alway been a red herring (except the Thunderchilds), and is even more so when we're so far ahead of the game on sublight drive tech- our actual fighting ships I don't even mean dedicated combatants, just "competently equipped for their class and era" would be tremendously more effective with proper focused phasers. But our second-line ships- which currently, while largely irrelevant versus peer opponents, are effectively immune to random pirates and other non-state actors- would instead be utterly at the mercy of any rando with a last-gen BoP(okay no that's exaggerating but) seriously vulnerable to pirates and light raiders.


[X] Focus on Particle Density (75 Degrees Arc, 12->18 Damage)

It will be a slight shame to lose the cool little retractable turrets though; they were a fun little divergence from the canon timeline. This is still way better though.
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Click to shrink...
Whilst nothing you've said is wrong, I'll note that this is not only just one of those slightly awkward things that happen when mechanics change, but that the QM is letting us walk it back now that the new mechanics are making old decisions non-viable. All things considered, this is being handled about as gracefully as it can be without completely retconning things.
 
Karugus said:
Again, canon shows that a comparatively sluggish Constitution can readily bring it's phasers to bear against a Klingon Bird of Prey.
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LOL! literally when has the NCC-1701 No-bloody-A-B-C-or-D used a phaser on a Klingon Bird of Prey onscreen? Maybe I missed it while watching hundreds of times as a child...

[X] Focus on Particle Density (75 Degrees Arc, 12->18 Damage)
 
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