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Post by finarvyn on Jul 28, 2010 8:06:21 GMT -5
Hey, so, I played my second game of OSFB last week. This time I was the Federation CA and my opponent was the Klingon D7. I kicked his butt! SFB had a system of rating each starship (Basic Point Value, or BPV) and your scenario might or might not have been balanced. The BPV equation has always been kept a secret. This post got me thinking ... years ago I tried to "reverse engineer" the system to figure out how to calculate BPV for ships. Somewhere I have notes on what I got done, which may not have been much at all. Anyone else try this?
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Post by Falconer on Jul 28, 2010 9:35:38 GMT -5
Hm, good question. The easiest place to start would be to compare similar ships, for example Klingon D6 vs D7, Federation CA vs CC, etc. A D7 is worth 26 and a D6 is worth 24, so there is a difference of 2. The only difference between the designs is that a D7 has two additional Phasers (180º each). No doubt the number of weapons (and perhaps arc?) is a huge factor in defining BPV.
The Fed CC is worth 5 points more than the CA, but the difference here is two phasers (360º each) plus two boxes for the Flag Bridge and two for the Reactor. If I had to guess, I would say the Flag Bridge and APR boxes count for 0.5 point each, whereas the 360º phasers count for 1.5 points each. An alternative explanation would be that the Flag Bridge and phasers are 1 point each, and the APR is 0.5 point each.
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Post by finarvyn on Jul 28, 2010 10:14:41 GMT -5
That was sort of what I did before, if memory serves me correctly. Look at similar ships and compare the differences.
I thought it sounded like fun to try again, but didn't know how many folks here had any enthusiasm for such things.
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Post by finarvyn on Jul 28, 2010 10:19:47 GMT -5
The tricky thing would be if the equation isn't a simple adding function.
For example, if converting one phaser type to another adds 10% to the cost. Or, if there is one cost for 1-2 phasers, another cost for 3-5, another for 6-10, and so on.
Either of these types of rating systems (1) is kind of stupid, and (2) makes it harder to reverse engineer.
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Post by Falconer on Jul 28, 2010 12:03:03 GMT -5
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Post by hedgehobbit on Jul 30, 2010 10:11:31 GMT -5
The BPV are heavily modified through playtesting so I don't think a formula will work so well. The older versions had ship modification rules that had a chart with BPV for every box. I'll try and dig it up.
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Post by finarvyn on Jul 30, 2010 10:44:09 GMT -5
Nice link, Falconer. Be interested in your charts, too, Hedgehobbit.
I wonder how close they might match. I'll see if I can find my own work from back then as well.
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Post by putraack on Jul 30, 2010 14:55:22 GMT -5
I tried doing this back in high school, and gave up after a short while. Once my friends started using it to design their own monster ships, the appeal faded.
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Post by finarvyn on Jul 30, 2010 17:11:55 GMT -5
Well, the thing for me is that Task Force always said that this equation was the thing that kept their stuff "official" and no one else had it. That was always the allure to me. I agree that any system could be broken, but they could design monster ships even without official BPV numbers.
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