Re: ship combat

[email removed] writes:
>
> If u are going to put in black globes into the picture then the whole
> situation changes a bit. Your target vessels also get protected against
> the factor T by the black globe.

Am I the only one who felt that this is silly?  Black globes can "flicker",
i.e. switch on and off in order to let weapons and drives work.  Why not
synchronise the weapons (or at least, the spinal mount) with the globe -
for a while, the globe switches off, and the weapon fires unimpeded.  Of
course, if an enemy weapon hits at the same time, it is also unaffected.
But for an enemy ship to arrange for his fire to arrive at my ship at the
exact time that the black globe switches off while I fire is a pretty neat
trick.

Also, how come missiles treat black globes as armour?  I'd think that either
the missile gets through, and does its full damage, or it doesn't get through,
and does nothing except give the black globe some energy.  There's also the
matter of what happens to solid matter in general when it hits a black globe.

Anyway, when I used black globes in High Guard, I disregarded the bit about
a black globe protecting both the user and the enemy; and when missiles hit,
I rolled a D10 to see if they got through.  (If 1D10 was greater than the
ship's USP black globe code, the missile got through, and was unaffected by
the black globe, otherwise the missile hit the globe.)

One article later, [email removed] also writes:
>
> Planetary Bombardment:
>
> Scott kellogg and Rob Dean pursued the rocks as bombs theory to
> great lengths whereas it was proven that a small lead bullett could
> be used to "crack" an entire world ( given enough initial velocity).
> It is virtually indetectible and a Type S could do it.

Here we go again.  Summary of arguments about this idea:
..Anyone caught doing it would be lynched by everyone.  The Imperial and
Zhodani navies would probably co-operate for the first time in their lives
to catch the culprit.

..The type S would have to accelerate to a tremendous velocity to do this.
Physics experts here doubted that the ship could get enough kinetic energy
from the ship's drives.

..The ship which tried this would itself be vapourised by the first dust
particle it hit.  The only pilot you would get for such a mission would
be a mad Vargr intent on getting the title "fastest sentient being alive",
shortly before he got the title "fastest cloud of gas", and with a big
question being raised about the inclusion of the word "sentient" in the
former title.


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

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