Hiho all ...
Following on with the ideas inherent in flickering black globes ...
(I'm taking most of this info from Interceptor/Centurion/Leviathan
board games and Legionnaire RPG, from FASA)
They developed a gravitational field effect that generated (I think)
several thousand Gs on it's surface - the first time it was tried
the thing imploded and took out most of the lab as it drained it's
power source (don't we just love inventions that blow up!?)
So the guy came up with the idea of flickering it on and off - this
avoided the exponential curve of the power drain, and still provided
the practical effect.
When the system became portable, they started using it for fighters,
as a marvellous way of stopping laser and mass weapons (yes, photons
at speed have mass ... it's just when they're at rest that they don't)
but found that the constraints of the power supply meant that the flicker
rate couldn't really be varied much.
The methods of firing at a flickering ship were either to keep the weapon
trained continuiously (in the case of laser and particle weapons), or to
try to synchronise the attack with the flicker. Synchronisation proved
to be the best in terms of power expenditure, and so lasers attacked at
the flicker-rate-range for that model of target.
On the ground, the grav-tanks could carry much more equipment, and so
were able to have more control over their shields. However, as the distances
on the ground were much less than those in combat in space, ground bases
units were able to employ painting lasers, whose sole job was to contact the
shield and by varying it's frequency was able to figure out the flicker
rate of the target. This information was then broadcast to every unit,
and the shield was effectively negated.
The grav-shields take a finite amount of time to generate and dissapate,
although short, and this time delay is the basis of the painting laser -
once it has analyzed the flicker rate, it has <x>ms to transmit the
information to other units, before the rate changes.
Simple game mechanics - Legionnaire is a d10 based game, and so it
uses a single d10 roll to see if a shield has been penetrated - the
shields have flicker values of 1 to 9 (quoted as 10 to 90, just to
sound good - note that a rate of 100 doesn't flicker, and destroys
the user as in the initila experiment).
The relative cost of the differing rates, and the improvement in protection
can be sensibly modelled using the distribution of 2D6, as in ...
| | _/-------
| | _/
| __ | /
| / \ | /
| _/ \_ | /
| / \ | /
| / \ | _/
|/ \ |_/
+---------------- +------------------
Bell curve distribution Cumulative distribution.
(apologies to any real statistitions out there ... I think it's clear :-)
Basically, the cumulative curve can be used for both cost and effectiveness,
as the lower rates are cheap but useless, the mid-range ones climb steeply
in both categories, and there isn't much difference between 80 and 90 ...
Note that this is slightly different from FASAs approach, but I think it
makes a bit more sense ...
Perhaps a proper rule master could tidy this idea up a bit ...
And hey! What about the TDR then ? I'm not submitting this as it's not
completely worked out ... anybody willing to help out? (like, do it all!)
A la prochaine ...
_____ ____ _ _ _
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(____) (_)(_)()(_) (____)(_)_)(__=)(__=) (_)_(_)_)(___)_(_)()(_)
Jim Cheetham, [email removed], BRA01 0344 424842 x3121 (ITD 763 3121)
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use [email removed] due to corporate restructuring.
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