> Subject: STAR CRUISER
>
> I agree that Star Cruiser is one of the most confusing game put out
> by GDW. I assume that the firing arcs are for ships in adjacent hexes, but
> that's not the only problem. I think the biggest problem is that beam
> weapons have such a short range. Considering that most military ships can
> move 7 hexes in a turn this turns space combat into a "knife fight." It also
> means that you can detect a hostile ship long before you can fire on it.
"Short range" is a relative term. With each hex representing 600 Mm, it
means that the accuracy of each weapon is very good indeed. The Star Wars
system is considered completely unworkable, and it only needed to deal with
targets at about 1/1000th the range, and 10000 times slower.
> The idea I think is that missles are supposed to be the main form
> of combat, but when you're fighting a Delta Class Kafer battleship the thing
> is going to close with you eventually. In my experience, all movement stops
> at this point and the two players sit in the same hex, blasting away at each
> other with their lasers.
In my experience, either the human ship runs out of missiles and dies, or
the Kafer dies.
In custom-designed games, the tactic of choice (after missiles, of course)
is to have rear-mount weapons and a fast drive. Oh yeah, and lots of remote
armed drones. (In fact, the remote drone situation got so bad that we had
to limit numbers to keep the game playable)
> What I have done in my games is to make long range for beam weapons
> 3 hexes and short range one he This helps keep ships from parking in
> the same hex and plugging away at each other.
I think the main cause of 'plugging away' is not the weapon ranges, but
the lack of maneuverability of 2300AD ships.
> I have also experimented with limiting a ships acceleration and
> deceleration by saying that they from a dead stop they can only move half
> speed the next turn. Likewise they can only decelerate to half speed their
> first turn and must wait until the following turn to come to a complete
> stop. Along with this, ships may only change facing by one hex side per
> hex of forward movement. This prevents ships from spinning in place and
> doing 180's in space.
What's wrong with that? Do you have a problem with rotation? I have
exactly the opposite view - they make rotation too difficult. They only
justify it with some washy statement that the drives cause 'inertia'.
> The net effect is to make combat more swooping and graceful. The
> extended range of beam weapons and the limits on turning radius also make
> the firing arcs that began this discussion all the more important. :)
If you want swooping and 'graceful' combat, play a flight sim. I don't
see any reason why space combat should share this property, and I dislike
games that artificially try to introduce it.
Other points:
Why do they include a 'star' counter and say that ships can move within one
hex of it? They explicitly state that stutterwarps fail against a 'few
tenths of a G'. By my calculations, the closest a stutterwarp-driven ship
can approach a star like our Sun is about 10 hexes. If it gets any closer,
it can't get out (and will fall into the star in about 18 hours.
Why do 2300AD power plants supply such *abyssmal* power/weight ratios?
A current internal combustion engine can supply 1 kW/kg, yet the most
advanced 2300AD military MHD turbine supplies 10 times less. Considering
that power/mass is a major design factor, why not use petrol engines?
Especially since the cost is about the same. Worse than that, however, is
the fuel cell technology - it is exceeded by a factor of 3 in power/mass,
is more expensive, and consumes more fuel than current technology.
They ought to run the things on the same LMS batteries that power the laser
guns. A 10 MW MHD costs at least 0.7 MLv and masses at least 100 tons.
10 MW of LMS batteries costs 1700 Lv (0.0017 MLv) and masses 330 kg (which
is 0.33 tons). For the same price (0.7 MLv) you get 4200 MW of peak power
massing 140 tons. Energy capacity is also good - 7 MJ/kg, halfway between
MHD and Fuel Cells. So, *why not*?
- --
Tim Little