AncientSion
commented
8 years ago Im pretty sure Marcin has some good counter arguments either way, but did you just use the term "competitiveness" in context to a jammer-equipped vessel ? :) :P
My opinion: I think the white star is a badly designed vessel in genereal and should probably be a HCV with a bit less firepower (alpha strike /wo NL can do upwards of 100 damage post armour).
Unfortunally this is no option. I think before we jump to any conclusions, the ship should get a hitArray setup as close as possible to B5Wars using current technology. Then one should do some games and see how exactly the differences in determining which system is hit actually influences the WS. I havent looked into the figures, but it could be more powerful (or more weak) in the current FV iteration, similar to how EA received a huge nerf on most vessel with the influence of interceptors on hitChart.
tksolway
Zero1627
Marcin pointed out that the White Star is a unique case with hit charts. We discussed multiple ways of dealing with this, but I think we actually need to come up with a sub function that triggers off of a special hit chart entry to look in the primary for a specific system. Marcin suggested this.
We would use a placeholder (Perhaps "Place-Holder") When this is "hit" then the subfunction takes over and looks at a new variable on the ship that contains the displayName that should be in the hit chart as well as the section the "hit" should be looking for. For the display of the hit chart in game that function could reference the displayName stored in the ship's variable for display
My explanation of why we need this below:
SCS: Shields are Primary systems. They can be hit from forward or aft on normal random rolls. Called Shots are not possible. Shields are hit at a rate of 10% of all shots, and they are rakeable, having low armour of 3.
Your Suggestion: Shields become aft systems. Shields may now be targeted as a called shot, although they are only hit randomly at 10% of all shots coming into the rear arc.
The additional vulnerability you are adding is the ability for them to be targeted by a called shot. This is most likely to be exploited by fighters which are already this ships greatest vulnerability. This vulnerability is not a small one. See some odds below
6 Ship flight of Sentri firing on White Start at range zero from side/back hex entry (Best approach vector)
As SCS: %100 Hit Chance with a %47 chance of hitting the shields at least once. But assuming average damage rolls there is only a %0.01 chance of completely destroying both shields.
With a called shot: The Sentri have only a %65 chance of hitting each the shield, however again assuming average damage output, splitting the fire of the flight to each shield nets a chance of %42 to destroy each shield or %17.6 chance of destroying both with split fire. If you concentrate all Sentri’s on a single shield then there is only a %0.05 chance of not destroying that shield.
This is with a single flight, two flights each concentrating on a single shield have only a %1 chance to not destroy both shields.
The WS is a special ship, it was designed to be good against other ships, and it certainly pays for its advantages by being very expensive, remember and Omega is only %10 more points. To offset some of these advantages it is obviously vulnerable to fighters due to its lack of anti-fighter weapons and rear arcs. Making the change you propose would only exacerbate this built in weakness and seriously hurt the ship’s competitiveness.
I hope you can see from this why I think it is such a large change from the SCS. In fact our discussion has actually convinced me that we need to make a code change to the hit locations to accommodate it, as I don’t think moving the shields out of primary is tenable in any situation.