> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
> Doug wrote:
<snip>
> This is exactly the same behavior you get in FT's Vector movement:
> much, or at all, between your main drive burn and firing your (F)-arc
> want to get any closer, or when you're flying past your enemy, that
This is blatantly not true.
In the 1st season episode "A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 2", the heavy
cruiser Hyperion does not rotate to bring her main (fixed forward) armament to
bear, rather she fires all of her turreted secondary weapons
in a port broadside.
In the 3rd season episode (I forget the name) where the Whitestar goes to
Ganymede to destroy the Shadow vessel and the Agamemnon has the Whitestar
trapped in Jupiter's atmosphere, she does not rotate in orbit to bring her
main (forward) guns to bear, but rather fires her turreted secondary
batteries.
In the 3rd season episode "Point of No Return", when General Hague's squadron
is trying to get away, they engage other ships in a broadside duel reminiscent
of broadside gun lines from sailing ships, WW1 and WW2.
The Schwartzkoff is shown to be firing broadside before she is hit and
disabled. (BTW this Schwartzkoff is an Omega Class, not the Nova class
Schwartzkoff from the 2nd season episode "Gropos")
In the next episode "Severed Dreams", none of the EA ships rotate...ever,
except for the Nimrod and Olympic (and an unidentifiable CH) that turn 180 to
"RUN AWAAAY!!!" after the three Minbari war cruisers show up. This is even
though they start facing each other and
the Churchill manages to ram the Agrippa in a T-bone and the Roanoake
receives fire from B5 broadside, rather than against it's front (I won't
mention the disappearing heavy cruisers or the
now-you-see-them-now-you-don't turrets on the Alexander, Churchill,
Roanoake and Agrippa... oh, wait, I just did:)).
In 4th season episodes too numerous to list, the EA fleet destroyers and
heavy cruisers are almost never shown to rotate. Whitestar class escorts often
zip past on firing runs, and the EA ships respond with fire from their
turreted secondary batteries, but they do not rotate the
ship. Even in the large on-screen battle between the 6 Omega class
ships and a task group of Whitestars, the EA ships don't rotate, although at
several points they should, if using the FB2 rules:)
J
> On Sat, 30 Aug 2003, Jared Hilal wrote:
[...]
> >> Natch, I never saw a ship larger than fighter, save for White
"Messages From Earth"
> to Ganymede to destroy the Shadow vessel and the Agamemnon has the
I forgot about those. I'll have to look for those when I watch
this ep tomorrow. :-)
> In 4th season episodes too numerous to list, the EA fleet destroyers
Which makes you (well, me ;-) ponder the time scale of combat in
B5 vs FT. In B5 a battle may last, oh, some minutes (granted, this is minutes
screen time, and the battle probably lasted a bit longer than that, but I'd
think not much), where it's been accepted that in FT a single turn is on the
order of 15 minutes. I think FT cannot
fully address the situations and movement/time frames in B5 as it
stands, but perhaps EFSB (EarthForce Source Book) method of cascading damage
helps reduce ships to scrap in the "required" time period?
Also this examination makes me think that the Earth Force ships in B5
are built using NSL-style engines (thrust 4, thrust 2, maybe less? ;-)
This is probably drifting away from the main thrust/counter-thrust
of the arguement, so please feel free to ignore my ramblings. :-)
Mk
> Which makes you (well, me ;-) ponder the time scale of combat in
Or 7.5 minutes. And I think Derek suggested 100 seconds or something similar,
which worked well.
> On Sat, Aug 30, 2003 at 11:29:54PM -0400, Laserlight wrote:
> Or 7.5 minutes. And I think Derek suggested 100 seconds or something
OK. Here's my standard explanation, which I don't think I've posted here
before:
FT acceleration (in cinematic or in vector) is not realistic. When you
apply 1 thrust point, you get a speed of 1 MU/turn, which is fine - but
during the turn you apply it, you move 1 MU, which isn't. That would only make
sense if you applied all the thrust instantaneously at the start of the turn,
whereas what we generally assume is that the thrust
is applied over the entire course of the turn - what that should mean is
that you move 1/2 MU per thrust point on the turn you accelerate, and 1
MU per thrust point on each subsequence turn.
This problem is common to all space combat games I've played. Some of us have
been playing with rules to make this work in a realistic manner. It's
possible, but needs a lot more bookkeeping, especially in vector.
Anyway, that's a side issue, but explains why I'm using the working I am here.
Some variables:
g = the acceleration equivalent to "thrust 1" (in m/s/s)
T = the length of a turn in seconds M = the length of an MU in metres
V = the speed of 1 MU per turn (in m/s)
OK. So, the speed you get by accelerating by thrust 1 for 1 turn is V:
g x T = V
but that's also a speed of "1 MU per turn":
M / T = V
so M / T = g x T
(I.e. "the speed you end up going at is equal to the acceleration multiplied
by the time for which the acceleration is applied".)
rearranging, M / g = T^2.
I'm going to assume hereafter that g is one terran gravity (9.81 m/s/s),
since that makes sense from the point of view of acceleration compensators.
This gives a family of scales:
M T
1,000km 319.3s 2,000km 451.5s 4,000km 638.6s
or if you want to nail the T values:
M T
882.9km 300s 3,531.6km 600s 7,946.1km 900s
or if you don't care about the precise value of acceleration but want
round numbers, set g = 11.11 m/s/s:
M T
1,000km 300s 4,000km 600s 9,000km 900s
Any of these scales will work. The only thing they'll affect is the size of
planets placed on the table (Earth has a 6,300km radius) and the placement and
speed of orbits (a geosynchronous orbit is about 42,000km
from the centre of Earth and involves movement at about 3,065 m/s).
Hope this helps...