I disagree. I think the whittling takes longer than in SFB and in general Hellbores are weaker.mjwest wrote: As I mentioned in both threads (this one and the old one), hellbores has a very distinct advantage over what they get in SFB. There is no real need to make them even more powerful than they already are. Hellbores are supposed to be a "whittling" weapon, and not be a "big punch" weapon. And when half the damage is always going to hit a single shield, the "whittling" doesn't take as long in FC as it would in SFB.
1) In SFB phasers were able to be resolved before hellbores and therefore influenced the calculation of the weakest shield.
2) In FC the ability to shift 5 boxes dramatically increases the amount of time it will take for the hellbore to start doing internals during which time they will be losing all or most of a shield every turn. Hydran ships are designed to absorb a single large volley and retain fighting capability--but with only 12 weapon boxes and few padding weapons a couple decent volleys can strip the ship of most of its firepower.
3) It is true that in SFB there was a chance the defender could use clever reinforcement to spread the damage among 3-4 shields, but this was mitigated by the ability to fire some or all hellbores during direct fire (without the implosion detonators).
4) Shields can be repaired rapidly in FC. In particular a disruptor ship can maintain decent speed and repair a lot of whittling at little risk or opportunity cost.
5) In SFB when multiple shields were down, MORE of the damage became internals. (with 2 equal shields, damage was split into 3rds with 2/3s become internals if weakest meant down or nearly down, and so on). So in later turns the hellbore always doing half to the weakest shield and spreading the rest can rob it of some more internals. A good example of this is when the target ship has a non-facing shield down and then when the hellbore ship fires at close range the phasers (in SFB) were able to take the facing shield down as well before hellbores were resolved.
I think Dan has a point--plus it just doesn't make sense that the Hydrans would forget how to fire the weapon in armed in a way that was the original design of the technology when being able to do so is clearly needed in certain conditions.
Edit: Hellbores have one notable enhancement in FC--that being the ability to overload on demand with the massive reserves of energy instead of requiring plotting in SFB. However this is true of all heavy weapons in FC and therefore is not as big of an improvement at it seems.
