Steve Higginbotham once told me that with the introduction of
spinal mounts two ships of 30.000 T and up becomes better than
one ship of twice the size. This is too bad if you want your
big interstellar powers to build fewer and bigger ships to
reduce the number of ships that the Navy can spare for piracy
suppression and annoying PCs.
I've therefor come up with a variant rule for starship combat
that I'd like your opinion on:
Larger spinal mounts have a longer range than smaller.
Thus ships equipped with larger SMs gets one or more
free shots at opponents with smaller SMs before these
can get within range.
The number of free shots a ship gets is equal to
(difference in SM rating divided by the maneuver
rating of the ship with the lesser SM). The figure
is rounded up. Thus a ship with a SM rating of L (20)
against a ship with a SM rating of G (16) and maneuver
drive 3 will ((20-16)/3) = 1 1/3 = 2 free shots before
the opponent can start shooting.
I know that this is a simplification of the factors involved.
For a tactical game one ought to take into account the reduced
chance of hitting at long range, and that it shouldn't be
accelleration but speed that decided how long a ship would be
unable to fire back, etc.. But how does it sound as a TCS rule?
Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
[email removed]
- ------------
"A subsector official pompously states that the
subsector armed forces have four Kinunir class
ships in service, each with enough troop strength
to put down any military operations that threathen
the peace of the Imperium."
---Adventure 1, The Kinunir