(no subject)

From: Adrian Hurt [email removed]
[] 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.)

This is what I feel too.  Having two large ships of the line circling in the
same hex should be asking for a hull-scraping.

[]> >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?

Well, turrets are armored, but probably not as much as the main hull.
Perhaps a surface hit welds the turret in one place, or (as I stated for lasers)
blows away the reflective surface of a vane.

[]> >			     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?

If firing arcs are to be used, I presume some means of abstracting it can be done,
as you mentioned above.

- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I want to make a retraction.  In my last message I mentioned how a ship could have
more than 1 hardpoint per 100t?  Well, thinking it over and chewing around some
numbers, the number of hardpoints should be based on surface area instead.
Base SA equals (displacement/100)^0.666666 times some constant.  Open frame ships
have DOUBLE the figured number, irregular ones have 50% more.

How many hardpoints should a 100t ship get?  Maybe not 40 like I mentioned before,
but certainly more than 1.  Perhaps they can get 4, with each movable hardpoint
requiring DOUBLE the space (thus, on a 100t ship you could have one turret and
2 fixed missile harpoints, or go for the gusto with 4 missile hardpoints).

This will SIGNIFICANTLY alter the armaments of large ships (since 2x size is
not equal to 2x weapons).  Spinal mounts have their hardpoint limits checked, but
only use 1 hardpoint (firing port).

(btw, is there any reason WHY only one spinal mount is allowed?  If the ship is
large enough, could it not have 2 parrallel, or 3 triaxial mounts?
Perhaps with the limitation that they all be of the same type and size.)

===============================================================================
Burton Choinski                                       Phoenix Technologies, LTD
"All opinions are mine, not Phoenix's"                            Cambridge, MA
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