Re: ship combat stuff

[email removed] writes:
> In message (2918?) Burton says:
>
> >Another problem is missiles.  It takes a M-6 ship 1 turn to travel 6 hexes if
> >starting from a standstill.  Missiles launched said ship when many hexes away
> >hit THAT SAME TURN.  Ppbbtt!
>
> I've got the same gripe with missiles.  Mayday had an almost reasonable system
> for missiles (you had counters and they moved and could accelerate in a rather
> limited fashion).  The problems with having missiles as ships is that you can
> arrange to defend against them multiple times (by not getting hit until a
> later turn), which may seriously impair the effectiveness of missiles.

So?  All that means is that you're using your agility (and at least one weapon
system) to evade (and attempt to destroy) the missile, rather than chase (and
attempt to destroy) the enemy.  Isn't this one of the functions of missiles in
real air warfare?

> >With a 30 second turn (3 personal combat turns), the hexes are 4.5km across
> >(so we'll fudge it to 5km).
>
> 5km is getting awfully small, how many ships can you stack into a hex?
> A 1Mton battleship is a measly 150m diameter sphere

Correction: 150m radius sphere.

>						      so you could get lots
> of them in, however a cyclinder of the same volume with a base area of
> 10000m^2 (=1 hectare) is 1.35 km long ...
> If I was in one of those 'big' ships, I wouldn't desire another one inside
> the same hex as I was in.

So having two ships in the same hex may result in a collision?  Good.  If two
ships manage to get that close to one another, some roll should be made to see
if they collide, especially if one is trying to ram the other.  (E.g. if one
is a missile.)

>							Having 5km hexes is
> also going to cause some havoc with ranges....how far can you see in space?
> (a very large number of hexes).

This is the problem, of course.  Either you need _very_ small hexes, plus a
microscope to see the ship models/markers, or you only use this level of
detail at close range.

> >Armor should be used similar to the 2300ad way -- shots that do not
> >penetrate can cause surface hits.  This will most likely damage sensors,
> >exposed comminications gear,turrets,and perhaps the maneuver drive (giv it half
> >armor?).

Why aren't turrets armoured?

> >			     Actually, I'd like to use some Star Fleet Battles
> >Ideas as well.  With such a system, you actually have to plot your movement
> >so as to expose your best weapons (or to hide battle damage to the armor.
>
> Going towards SFB would make the ship design process much more interesting.
> You suddenly have to allocate positions for all of your weapons and (I
> presume) firing arcs (cones?) for them.

This isn't too bad for small ships with a few weapons, but how do you fancy
allocating the firing arcs of 20 batteries?  Or (in the case of a big
battle-wagon) 100+ batteries?  I suppose the best way would be to find how
many batteries you have of a certain weapon type, and then decide how many
you want in each of six general arcs - front, back, port, starboard, up, down.
Except that some weapons could cover more than one of these arcs; anyone want
to figure out a rule for what percentage of weapons can cover multiple arcs?
Or would we have to draw up accurate 3-D plans of every ship we design, and
then put weapons onto them and figure out where they can fire?

- --
 "Keyboard?  How quaint!" - M. Scott

 Adrian Hurt			     |	JANET:  [email removed]
 UUCP: ..!ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!adrian     |  ARPA:   [email removed]