>> Subject: STAR CRUISER
>>
>> I agree that Star Cruiser is one of the most confusing game put out
>> by GDW. I assume that the firing arcs are for ships in adjacent hexes, but
>> that's not the only problem. I think the biggest problem is that beam
>> weapons have such a short range. Considering that most military ships can
>> move 7 hexes in a turn this turns space combat into a "knife fight." It also
>> means that you can detect a hostile ship long before you can fire on it.
In message number 5952 Timothy Little [email removed]
said:
>"Short range" is a relative term. With each hex representing 600 Mm, it
>means that the accuracy of each weapon is very good indeed. The Star Wars
>system is considered completely unworkable, and it only needed to deal with
>targets at about 1/1000th the range, and 10000 times slower.
I don't dispute the difficulty of trying to hit something with a laser in
space, but the current system requires so much suspension of disbelief as
it is that I don't have a problem with adding a little more to make the
game more playable.
>> The idea I think is that missles are supposed to be the main form
>> of combat, but when you're fighting a Delta Class Kafer battleship the thing
>> is going to close with you eventually. In my experience, all movement stops
>> at this point and the two players sit in the same hex, blasting away at each
>> other with their lasers.
>In my experience, either the human ship runs out of missiles and dies, or
>the Kafer dies.
Very true.
>In custom-designed games, the tactic of choice (after missiles, of course)
>is to have rear-mount weapons and a fast drive. Oh yeah, and lots of remote
>armed drones. (In fact, the remote drone situation got so bad that we had
>to limit numbers to keep the game playable)
If you're willing to assign arbitrary limits to the numbers of missiles why
not arbitrarily extend the range of lasers?
>> What I have done in my games is to make long range for beam weapons
>> 3 hexes and short range one he This helps keep ships from parking in
>> the same hex and plugging away at each other.
>I think the main cause of 'plugging away' is not the weapon ranges, but
>the lack of maneuverability of 2300AD ships.
My concern was mostly with small craft that only carry a few missiles and
usually finish the fight with an exchange of laser fire. What I find
happens is that the two close to the same hex and then take turns rolling
for position and exchaning broadsides. The problem is that the scale of
the game is so large and the range of lasers so short that when it comes to
the tactical maneuvering of exchaning laser fire the game resorts to
rolling dice for orientation. Also, by limiting turn radiuss and
acceleration and deceleration it makes it more difficult for two ships, or
more often, two fighters to sit on top of each other.
>> I have also experimented with limiting a ships acceleration and
>> deceleration by saying that they from a dead stop they can only move half
>> speed the next turn. Likewise they can only decelerate to half speed their
>> first turn and must wait until the following turn to come to a complete
>> stop. Along with this, ships may only change facing by one hex side per
>> hex of forward movement. This prevents ships from spinning in place and
>> doing 180's in space.
>What's wrong with that? Do you have a problem with rotation? I have
>exactly the opposite view - they make rotation too difficult. They only
>justify it with some washy statement that the drives cause 'inertia'.
Actually I like the idea of "pseudo-inertia" and have chosen to place
greater emphasis on it, for the above reasons. I, frankly, don't find it
any more absurd than the prospect of a stutterwarp drive itself.
>> The net effect is to make combat more swooping and graceful. The
>> extended range of beam weapons and the limits on turning radius also make
>> the firing arcs that began this discussion all the more important. :)
>If you want swooping and 'graceful' combat, play a flight sim. I don't
>see any reason why space combat should share this property, and I dislike
>games that artificially try to introduce it.
This was probably the wrong way to say what I was trying to express. My
feeling is that it is more interesting when the ships are actually maneuver-
ing to get a shot on each other than merely sitting one counter on top of
the other rolling for position and firing. Wouldn't you rather see the
jockeying for position that roll represents? I would.
>Other points:
>Why do they include a 'star' counter and say that ships can move within one
>hex of it? They explicitly state that stutterwarps fail against a 'few
>tenths of a G'. By my calculations, the closest a stutterwarp-driven ship
>can approach a star like our Sun is about 10 hexes. If it gets any closer,
>it can't get out (and will fall into the star in about 18 hours.
>Why do 2300AD power plants supply such *abyssmal* power/weight ratios?
>A current internal combustion engine can supply 1 kW/kg, yet the most
>advanced 2300AD military MHD turbine supplies 10 times less. Considering
>that power/mass is a major design factor, why not use petrol engines?
>Especially since the cost is about the same. Worse than that, however, is
>the fuel cell technology - it is exceeded by a factor of 3 in power/mass,
>is more expensive, and consumes more fuel than current technology.
>They ought to run the things on the same LMS batteries that power the laser
>guns. A 10 MW MHD costs at least 0.7 MLv and masses at least 100 tons.
>10 MW of LMS batteries costs 1700 Lv (0.0017 MLv) and masses 330 kg (which
>is 0.33 tons). For the same price (0.7 MLv) you get 4200 MW of peak power
>massing 140 tons. Energy capacity is also good - 7 MJ/kg, halfway between
>MHD and Fuel Cells. So, *why not*?
>- --
>Tim Little
Maybe MHD turbines are inefficient because they are trying to reduce their
signature? I don't know, all your points are quite good. I believe some
- -one made a similar point about Traveller. He found that it was more
cost and space efficient to use the batteries used with black globes than
to use a power plant. Go figure. As much as we try to make out games
_science_ fiction they still require an enormous suspension of disbelief.-
>In message 5946, Muir Macpherson [email removed] writes:
>> I think the biggest problem is that beam
>> weapons have such a short range. Considering that most military ships can
>> move 7 hexes in a turn this turns space combat into a "knife fight." It also
>> means that you can detect a hostile ship long before you can fire on it.
In message 5957, C. Harald Koch [email removed] writes:
>This may make for a strange game, but at least it's logically consistent
>with StutterWarp physics.
>Imagine tryig to hit a target from more than one Hex away, when that target
>is travelling FTL using stutterwarp. *long* before the light from your laser
>arrives in the same general vicinity, he'll have moved to a different
>location.
<stuff about missles deleted>
First of all, stutterwarp combat takes place inside starsystems where
the stutterwarp drive is limited to less than "FTL." Secondly, your point
about light lag is true of *any* space combat system, not just Star Cruiser.
The common justification is that it is possible to compute the limited number
of possible locations for the ship because of the limits of the ships drive
and the constraints of inertia.
>Making beam weapons have 3 hex range may make the game more playable to you,
>but it's no longer realistic (according to the 2300AD universe).
I do think that my changes make the game more playable, but I disagree about
the lack of realism.
>> I have also experimented with limiting a ships acceleration and
>> deceleration by saying that they from a dead stop they can only move half
>> speed the next turn. Likewise they can only decelerate to half speed their
>> first turn and must wait until the following turn to come to a complete
>> stop. Along with this, ships may only change facing by one hex side per
>> hex of forward movement. This prevents ships from spinning in place and
>> doing 180's in space.
>You really don't understand StutterWarp physics, do you? :-)
>StutterWarping ships don't change their real-space vector in any way; they
>simply "teleport" a short distance away, at a rapid cycle rate, giving
>effective FTL travel. StutterWarp ships don't "accelerate" or "decellerate";
>they simply start and stop moving. StutterWarp movement doesn't have
>momentum or inertia; StutterWarp ships can move instantly and stop on a dime.
Actually, I think I do understand StutterWarp physics :-) According to
_The Science of Star Cruiser_ section Star Cruiser: "The activity of the drive
itself at high cyclic rates produces a gyroscopic effect that is referred to
as pseudo-momentum. It is not true momentum in the Newtonian sense, but
limits the magnitude of immediate changes in direction and velocity." This
is why stutterwarp ships cannont make infinite changes of facing during
a combat turn. I have chosen to make this effect more pronounced because
I think it keeps combat more mobile
As to the realism of extending the range, I think by limiting stutterwarp
mobility, and and therefore the possible locations of an enemy ship we can
justify extending the range of lasers. While we're discussing the limits of
lasers, however, I have to point out that missles are under some pretty
serious restrictions of the same kind. A missle has to detect a ship, send
this data to the mother ship, wait for the remote pilot to respond, wait
for the message to make it back to the missle, and _then_ fire! By whick
time the enemy ship is nowhere near where it was when the missile first
detected it. I suppose we could justify this because missiles "spray space
with lasers" as Harald put it, but I think we have to recognize that
space combat games, or at least Star Cruiser, are only "realistic" as long
as we are willing to suspend disbelief on a number of points. Since this
is what rpg's are ultimately about, this shouldn't be a problem :-).
Muir Macpherson [email removed]