Few questions

The quote's getting unwieldy, so:

To be honest, I'm not convinced that specifically wingman tactics are important. Of course, it's important to keep an eye on your formation and not move each ship purely for individual advantage... but there's nothing magic about two. There is IRL because a pilot cannot reasonably be expected to keep track of an arbitary number of allies (or even of their wingman should they become separated), but when we play Silent Death we have a god's-eye view of the battle. There's no reason why a third pilot will be isolated from a three-ship formation in Silent Death.

Also, moving for individual advantage works better than it would in a more simulationist game like Over The Reich because of the initiative-and-move system. A turn is a long time compared to the lethality of the weapons, and hence it is more viable to be in a bad position next turn in return for one turn's fire from a very good position. Furthermore, when you move an individual fighter you are in the odd position of knowing exactly where some of the enemy will be but relatively little about where the rest of them will be; early in the turn fighters end up being moved with more of a view to your overall formation but late in the turn when you know where almost all the enemy will be there's an incentive to make moves which disrupt your formation for immediate advantage.

I think of the formation as far more like one of battleships than fighters - it's feasible for them to keep track of all their allies and maneuver with that in mind, with no need to especially single out one of them as a wingman.

The FTM is hence in a slightly awkward space; there's some solid material in there about Silent Death, but one does have to read it with an awareness that there is no guarantee that RL tactics will work in Silent Death. (Take the Lufbery Circle, for example - it might make some sense in an impulse-movement game like Star Fleet Battles where the other two ships in the circle will get a firing opportunity on someone attacking the first as the turn goes by, but in SD it just invites an opponent of similar force to exchange fire at a 3:1 advantage with one of the ships.)

MTV strikes me as being in an even more awkward space; there's material in there that wanted to be in the FTM (sure, page count) and then a weird mix of rules and non-rules. Skills have definite rules, but then some Quirks are quite incomprehensible.

I also feel a lot of the MTV Skills and Quirks are colossally expensive - take Natural Pilot, for example - you can get most of the benefit (improved gunnery and tight turns) by bumping a pilot's Piloting and Gunnery a few levels, and have 80-odd points left over. The example is particularly egregious - drop 259 BPV on a pilot for a 39 BPV ship [1]?

(Plus, "sleak" on the front cover always bugged me...)

[1] Admittedly, a really good 39 BPV ship - one of the oddities of TNM's design system is that it undervalues the superb Ion Ram. It's cheaper and smaller than the Plazgun, which is worse in every respect except the target speed restriction (and with relaxed restrictions, the Ion Ram's 2d8 gives it a better chance to hit against Drive 16, equal against Drive 17). The one original ship with the Ion Ram, the Death Wind, is nicely balanced with an early crit and W hit. The Ion Ram's even cheaper than twin Blatguns; I cannot imagine any circumstances where I'd want twin Blatguns over an Ion Ram.

The second time I ran an SD campaign, which was otherwise really successful, ship modifications rapidly got out of hand, and the main reason was that valuation of the Ion Ram - the Teal Hawk Valiant with a 180 degree Ion Ram (fearsome combined with its huge Drive since range-10 ships basically can't touch it) and the Betafort Oni (both Plazguns replaced) were both holy terrors.

The point of this rambling anecdote is that I'm reasonably skeptical about ships designed with the TNM ship design system which use the Ion Ram - they get a disproportionate amount of bang for their buck. Not as much as ships with Damage Reduction 0, which as I recall culminated in an abomination that was basically 3 Night Hawks bolted to each other.

[quote pid='552' dateline='1518303593']
To address your main points:


"...early in the turn fighters end up being moved with more of a view to your overall formation but late in the turn when you know where almost all the enemy will be there's an incentive to make moves which disrupt your formation for immediate advantage."


And this right here is why restricting the ability of a player to break up their formation has it's value; you are correct, that we players have a godlike view of the battlefield. The pilots would not, and further, training would IMHO be such that breaking away from one's wingmate would be frowned upon. Further, breaking up one's formation may provide an immediate advantage, but depending upon how successful that action proves to be in terms of hurting your opponent's ship(s) the breakup of the formation may prove less than beneficial in the next turn. A further factor would be how well one's opponent is able to maintain group coherence and weapon firing arcs permitting, provide mutually supporting fire.



"I think of the formation as far more like one of battleships than fighters - it's feasible for them to keep track of all their allies and maneuver with that in mind, with no need to especially single out one of them as a wingman."


Somewhat. 



"The FTM is hence in a slightly awkward space; there's some solid material in there about Silent Death, but one does have to read it with an awareness that there is no guarantee that RL tactics will work in Silent Death. (Take the Lufbery Circle, for example - it might make some sense in an impulse-movement game like Star Fleet Battles where the other two ships in the circle will get a firing opportunity on someone attacking the first as the turn goes by, but in SD it just invites an opponent of similar force to exchange fire at a 3:1 advantage with one of the ships.)"


The Lufberry Circle is not a cure all, nor is it a sure fire way to exchange fire at 3:1 in favor of the attacker, as the nature of the attacker and the defender's actual fighters involved will influence that outcome (ie., a LC made up of Sentries or Gunboats will be much harder to overcome if you're flying lighter ship types such as Spirit Riders or Hellbenders). 


"MTV strikes me as being in an even more awkward space; there's material in there that wanted to be in the FTM (sure, page count) and then a weird mix of rules and non-rules. Skills have definite rules, but then some Quirks are quite incomprehensible."


MTV served a specific purpose, to try and provide an extra layer of flavor ala an RPG. MTV is like one of those gift assortment spice racks: not everyone's palette is the same, and some of those bottles might never be opened, while others might be refilled again and again and again.


"I also feel a lot of the MTV Skills and Quirks are colossally expensive - take Natural Pilot, for example - you can get most of the benefit (improved gunnery and tight turns) by bumping a pilot's Piloting and Gunnery a few levels, and have 80-odd points left over. The example is particularly egregious - drop 259 BPV on a pilot for a 39 BPV ship [1]?"

An experienced (veteran) pilot versus a protege (again, we hit that RPG-ish flavor goal/issue). 


"(Plus, "sleak" on the front cover always bugged me...)"


As it irked me along with more than a few other points of contention I had with the series editor at the time, actually, including the use of the wrong draft for the "historical lecture" intro, but that's another mostly "classified" story...



"...one of the oddities of TNM's design system is that it undervalues the superb Ion Ram. It's cheaper and smaller than the Plazgun, which is worse in every respect except the target speed restriction (and with relaxed restrictions, the Ion Ram's 2d8 gives it a better chance to hit against Drive 16, equal against Drive 17). The one original ship with the Ion Ram, the Death Wind, is nicely balanced with an early crit and W hit. The Ion Ram's even cheaper than twin Blatguns; I cannot imagine any circumstances where I'd want twin Blatguns over an Ion Ram."


When I first broached these very points along with a few others with the former series editor back in 1998, the response I got was that this was supposed to reflect differences in tech levels between different Houses. Of course, this variance in available technology from one House to another was never actually set down in writing and explained beyond a terse, "Well, that's why we're giving each House it's own unique weapons in their House books!" 

For my part, I came to view the weapons of Silent Death as being analogous to the machine guns and automatic cannons deployed by WW2 combat aircraft. Thus, the Pulse Laser was essentially a .30 calibre-ish light machine gun, the Splattergun a .50 cal./12.7mm weapon, and the Ion Ram essentially a Rheinmetall-Borsig MK 108 3 cm automatic cannon, the Plazgun in effect a pair or quartet of 20mm Oerlikon weapons in terms of its potential effect and bulk. 

Yes, a crude as all Hell analogy, but it works still as far as it goes to provide a rough rule of thumb for interpreting weapon effects. That being said, I have always found the low TSR of the Autocannon especially at short range to be too low, and the lack of six gun packages for the Minigun and eight gun packages for the Pulse Laser and Splattergun when employed in a fixed, forward firing mount to be no less odd. With the publication of Warhounds, I found the inability to mount a Repeating Blaster on a gunboat if only in a fixed forward firing mount while you could still fit a Heavy Plazgun to be no less absurd, as a single Repeating Blaster along with space for the two crew required to operate it take up less space than the Heavy Plazgun (you'd save five slots!). 

These were as the past series editor admitted to me, acts of attempted playbalance, along with the fact that the twelve Core Ships specifically do not in any way sync with the published Design System. All of which led to some pretty epic arguments between that same editor (who uncritically defended those actions) and I and Dr. Greaves (who argued at times quite passionately for reforms including a full alignment of all published ships with a revised Design System for the sake of 100% consistency). Obviously, who prevailed until very recently is self evident... 



"The second time I ran an SD campaign, which was otherwise really successful, ship modifications rapidly got out of hand, and the main reason was that valuation of the Ion Ram - the Teal Hawk Valiant with a 180 degree Ion Ram (fearsome combined with its huge Drive since range-10 ships basically can't touch it) and the Betafort Oni (both Plazguns replaced) were both holy terrors."


See above. Under the current Design System template most every Core Ship simply shouldn't exist to begin with, as their internal systems and stats exceed the slot count limits of their design templates in several cases by a pretty embarrassing margin.


"The point of this rambling anecdote is that I'm reasonably skeptical about ships designed with the TNM ship design system which use the Ion Ram - they get a disproportionate amount of bang for their buck. Not as much as ships with Damage Reduction 0, which as I recall culminated in an abomination that was basically 3 Night Hawks bolted to each other."


That abomination - the Predator class strike gunboat used by House Colos - is a direct analogue to a number of WW2 medium bombers deliberately refitted with multiple automatic cannons for anti-shipping missions. The Predator IIRC states that anti-shipping strikes are it's number one mission profile. Seriously, if the Predator scares you, then wait 'til we publish it's heavier, nastier cousin, the Guillotine (which sports five Ion Rams, the better to gut your bulk freighter with, my dears)...

So you have in fact hit upon some key points of our effort to update and improve matters vice SD:TNM with our 3rd edition. A central feature of that effort is the revision of the Ship Design Rules and redesigning the Core Ships to both conform with their respective design templates, *and* keep as much of their quirky original flavor as possible. The lynchpin of this specific reform is the slot cost for Damage Reduction, as the Core Ships overwhelmingly carry levels of Damage Reduction well beyond what their actual slot costs would be if one attempted to design them as they currently exist using the current Design System ship templates. 

Slot costs for Damage Reduction will be modified accordingly to make the use of armor more cost effective, while restrictions on the size of turret mounted weapon systems and which templates can have 360-degree turret mounts and in what size will also be imposed. This would put an end to such as your Teal Hawk with a 360-degree Ion Ram, as it will force a significant overhaul of a number of other later designs such as the Black Widow and the Mujhadeen. A further twist is that we may introduce a restricted FF only firing arc for all cannons mounted on a SPAC as well, which will affect game play as SPACs will be forced to maneuver to place their intended victims directly ahead in order to get their shots in. I expect you appreciate how that would affect game play and tactical considerations accordingly...
[/quote]