Last Rites for COACC

> From: George William Herbert [email removed]
> Subject: (2247) Last Rites for COACC
>
> 	I've been part of the TDR vehicles group, and a rules rewriter for my
> own good for a lot longer.  I've recently come to the conclusion that COACC
> is _bad_ and should be ignored in entirety.  (well, not recently, but my
> attempts to fix it in a reasonable manner are failing miserably).
>
> 	Is there anyone out there who thinks that there is anything salvagable
> from COACC?  If so, what and why?

There is probably very little that is salvagable from COACC...bombs, rockets,
and external ordnance racks being about the extent of it.  As far as I can
tell, too many inconsistencies exist between COACC and the Referee's Manual
design system to allow craft from one to compete on an equal footing with
craft from the other.  Scott Kellogg's _Indianapolis_ series space fighters,
with their single computers, lack of armor, and batteries worth of externally
slung missiles provide an excellent example of this problem.  (Not to mention
the fusion rockets that Dow Rieder assures us have a greater than light speed
exhaust. I should also mention that the external missiles portion of Scott's
designs is reasonable, and I'd support its incoporporation into TDR Air.)

Aircraft damage capacity is hugely inflated, and controls are not consistent
with the ref's manual.  I feel strongly that any rewrite should specifically
take into account dogfights between grav vehicles and aircraft, because there
is no real way to determine the "equivalent agility" of grav vehicles as things
stand now.

I did like some of the general ideas introduced in COACC--like helicopter and
airship design, but I can't say that they are well implemented.

Rob Dean