02-10-2018, 10:59 PM
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.
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.