Re: New helm being Submitted to Compendium

> Yes it is a serious question. I never liked the 100 ton rule and I
> know that
> others on this list have had ships in there campaigns that are above
> 100
> tons.

And that's supposed to mean what to me?  The helm was posted as an idea
for Compendium, which anyone who's read the guidelines thereon knows is
supposed to fit with the SJ rules as they are.  This does not in any
way shape or form.  Period.

 I don't see 500 tons as being a "impossibly crazy amount" and
> with
> ship critical hits it is possable to cripple a large ship like this.

Ahh.  So if you fire 20 shots and this behemoth has an AC more than -50
(that's less than 60 to you 3e players) you might get one critical hit
that would do about 5% of the ship's hull points in damage.  Wooo.  I'm
impressed.

> You
> just have to keep in mind that the bigger the ship the more
> expensive.

Not necessarily.  That's what slave labor and conquesting empires are
all about.  You now have a cheap, ultra armed and armored dreadnought
roaming space that's immune to everything but the Spelljammer itself or
a ramming attack from another ship of the same size.  And since a
normal helm costs 100,000 to 250,000 gp and you only spent 50,000 gp on
this helm even someone that pays for their ships will be able to build
a big ship and put lots of nice stuff on it for the 200,000 gp savings
due to the SJ economics that make ships so much cheaper than helms.

 So
> the nation building these ships may not have the funds to make a
> fleet of
> 500 ton ships.

They don't need a fleet.  But see above for why you've assumed wrongly
anyway.

 Hell they may not have the funds for many 100 ton
> ships.

Because 100 ton ships (used to) use 250,000 gp helms.

 Also
> because they are not very manuverable (and large) they are suseptable
> to
> smaller (faster) ship attacks.

I won't get into the fighter versus capital ship debate here.  See
above for the ludicrousness of this argument with 500 ton capital
ships.  At least with 100 ton ships uber-rare and only 100 tons a large
swarm of fighters used to have a chance against them.

 They would make a great target for
> fighter
> attacks escpecially if the fighters had some fire based attacks.

Oh, yeah.  Fire is sooo helpful against metal and stone.  As long as
we're discussing non-standard SJ rules (see your first statement) I've
always felt the idea of greek fire doing damage to all ships, while a
rules balance (presumably) was not thought out.  Quite simply, hosing
down the underside of a dwarven citadel (ie, solid rock) should net the
attacker nothing (well, maybe a reduced air supply for the victim).

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