Rob Dean:
>No, you mistake my intent slightly, Scott. I merely said that if we
>were going to go for "realism" we should do both.
I agree. GO for it, or stop complaining about lack of realism.
>Marc Miller (RIP) stated in a seminar at Origins last year that the
>tech levels were never especially intended to be "equally spaced" in
>any way. So, don't worry about it.
SO far I never have.
<about fusion rockets>
What he said!
>Actually Scott, I suspect that Steve is familiar with that. What he
>has just posted is a question as to whether or not _any_ agility
>should be figured "realistically". Having once done some
>calculations on how many maneuver Gs would be required to alter the
>projected position of a ship by more than one ship length, I tend to
>agree with him in principle. Since ship combat is in sad shape
>anyway, this is the sort of area in which I am a little more
>comfortable considering changes.
I also agree with this. We (C and I) have occasionally played around
with the idea of integrating ship combat with the rest of the combat
system, but have come to no real conclusions yet.
>Just as an arguing position, I would suggest that agility be reduced
>to a small factor at long range only, and that _more_ emphasis should
>be placed on computers, sensors, jammers, countermeasures and perhaps
>relative velocity in working out combat. In addition, we really need
>to start a thread concerning missiles in combat, especially with
>respect to how they home and what effects if any the firing computer
>should have on their peformance.
A small agility effect at long range I can live with. How about
this: If your acceleration (in meters per second squared) is over
your ship's radius (compute as if the ship WERE a sphere, even if not:
a table could be generated in about 5 minutes), then you get an
agility of "1" (used exactly as it is now, but only at one light
second or greater range). If greater than two times, you get a "2",
and so forth. That way nothing gets an agility except for small
stuff: your Tigris is SOL.
As to the velocity effect, remember that at 100,000Km, a velocity of
3000Km/s translates to a crossing speed of 1.7 degrees per second. A
Phalanx or Goalkeeper can traverse at better than 90 degrees per second
now. They can also track something crossing faster than that. So
velocity is not likely to be a proble unless v:w3it is REALLY high, or the
target is REALLY close by.
As to the missile discussion, I'm all for it! It's about time we got
a good thread going again, and missile have needed beating on for a
long time now.
Later...
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I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
--W. von Braun