Fast speeds

I think pre-measurement fits in with the Genre. These are not "Wooden
Ships" where you had to fly by wind and sail. Accurate measurement would be
assumed through sensors (radar, Lidar, Gravitics, blah, blah) I mean after
all, you could fly to near a star, or bounce to close to a supernova and that
would end your trip real quick,
wouldn't it.....wait, I think I've heard that somewhere before...;-)

> Mikko Kurki-Suonio writes:

@:) Do you allow pre-measurement of movement and/or weapon ranges?

Yes.

> Mikko Kurki-Suonio writes:

Our group allows this also. Given the level of technology that the game is
representing, the ship's sensors should be able to provide accurate
information for ship location, speed and range.

> On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Robin Paul wrote:

> each other with no apparent thought for tactics, and apparently flown

Or captains who are not allowed to pre-measure distances.

IMHO, this seems like a crucial point, let's take a quick poll:

Do you allow pre-measurement of movement and/or weapon ranges?

8< (snippity snip! >8
> Or captains who are not allowed to pre-measure distances.
No I don't until they are resolving movement or attacks, its more fun this way
especially with 'terrain'!

Most are issued with a standard HB pencil to write orders and these are approx
6" long. Captains may place there pencil on the table once or twice during a
turn! Its a simple way of giving partial info and saves on
tape-
measures.

Jon (top cat)

> [quoted text omitted]
SDL

> each other with no apparent thought for tactics, and apparently flown

I understand that it is supposed to be the flavor of the game to not
premeasure, but...I always had a hard time with that. I figured that
premeasuring was just reflective of the data your battle/navigation
computer(s) are calculating for you. Your sensors, computers, and subordinate
officers all give you the necessary information required for you to fight your
ship, so I took this as being encompassed in the premeasuring bit.

So, to answer, I allow it.

Mk

Movement: No Weapons: Yes

Brian Bell pdga6560@csi.com
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pdga6560/fthome.html
Includes the Full Thrust Ship Registry Is your ship design here?

> Do you allow pre-measurement of movement and/or weapon ranges?
Absolutely not. The point is you have to work out and judge where you want to
be.... plus I'm better at judging range than most of my opponents....

-Entropy

> On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:

> On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Robin Paul wrote:

Yes. "No pre-measurement" is fine for historical (ancient/napoleonic/
whatever) battles where there were no reliable way to measure distances.
For high-tech battles, however... well, if I can see you on my radar, I
know how far away you are, right? And I can keep track of the range all the
time, too. I strongly suspect the same would apply for other types of
high-tech sensors or scanners too.

Regards,

> On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:
snip
> Do you allow pre-measurement of movement and/or weapon ranges?

I _prefer_ to avoid it for reasons of game-play and flow, with the PSB
explanation of "mumble... relativistic speeds... mumble... Heisenberg...
mumble". However, I also have the advantage of a "good eye", so I wouldn't
object to an opponent pre-measuring as long as it wasn't too extreme.
I'd guess that it would be much more critical for players using cm rather than
inches.

cheers

> On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:

Nope.

> On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

Still, nothing is easy as it seems, especially in the chaos and confusion of
warfare. I find it hard to believe that computers, radar,
fire-control,
and all the futuristic high-tech sensors and scanners will make
everything easy for the crew of a starship. After all, have computers really
made your life any easier?:)

> Rick Rutherford writes:

@:) I find it hard to believe that computers, radar, fire-control, and
@:) all the futuristic high-tech sensors and scanners will make
@:) everything easy for the crew of a starship. After all, have @:) computers
really made your life any easier?:)

I can tell you for certain they've made my life a living hell, but then
computers are my job. I can't really speak for starship crews
but I can say that high-tech sensors and computers have made life a
lot easier for military people already.  Radar-aimed guns would
perhaps be the low-tech equivalent of some of the futuristic weapons
found in FT. They tell you how far away the target is, then they aim
themselves, wait till the target is in optimal range, fire at the target,
track the bullet (!), figure out whether the bullet hit the target or not,
adjust their aim, and fire again. All this while you decide whether or not to
put jalepenos on your sandwich. Sure beats that other war when you had to
actually pull the trigger.

> On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Joachim Heck - SunSoft wrote:

Hmm... call me cynical, but I still don't believe that all the
whizbang high-tech stuff envisioned in starships would make it
possible to pinpoint another ship and plot its probable course within the next
few milliseconds to the degree necessary to hit it thousands of kilometers
away, especially if they know you're there, and they're maneuvering as
erratically as possible to keep you from getting a good shot (and of course,
you're doing the same thing, too).

(Working with network technology has made me a believer: Murphy rules the
cosmos! Never forget that your equipment was made by the lowest bidder!)

Now, I'll happily admit that this is simply a way of justifying
my preference for not pre-measuring anything in miniatures games,
but I think that the argument in favor of pre-measuring is based
on a whole lot of optimism about future technology.

> Hmm... call me cynical, but I still don't believe that all the

When the members of my group run a measurement, they are getting a "ballpark"
estimate of the distance between two objects. It's more of a range band type
of number that we'll use, not a precise measurement.

It's not an abused issue for us. One or two may be all that's done.

I would imagine that a tournament rule would have to be applied if a 'serious'
game were being run at a convention. In that case, the 'no premeasurement
rule' would be useful to avoid the abuse that some players would make of it.

> At 03:10 PM 4/3/97 +0000, you wrote:

And don't forget Sulu or Data calling out the ranges as the Klingons approach.
I have no problem with premeasurement in FT.

> From: Oerjan Ohlson <f92-ooh@nada.kth.se>

> high-tech sensors or scanners too.

Of course, that's what ECM is for. If you also assume that all warships have
some form of basic ECM, you could argue that the sensor info is
compromised. Also if you are talking 1/4 light minute per inch, the time
it takes to travel to and from the ship will also necessitate some guesswork
on the navigation/targeting computer's part. Therefore, there is also a
vaild argument for NOT measuring in a high tech setting.

> Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:

Yes. It rarely comes up before movement but frequently before firing. The
weapons ranges are granular enough it becomes a game necessity.

> Rick Rutherford writes:

 @:) I find it hard to believe that computers, radar, fire-control, and
 @:) all the futuristic high-tech sensors and scanners will make
@:) everything easy for the crew of a starship. After all, have @:) computers
really made your life any easier?:)

The problem with computers is not invalid or faulty data, rather its the
volume of data. At the National Training Center in California, the forces are
almost wholly digitized now. There have been some remarkable "shutdowns" to
the battle because of the amount of data commanders and staff have to process
(including position locators for friendly and enemy vehicles down to 10 meters
blocks). Of course, they have their usual stoppages when computers go down too
:).

> <<Joachim Heck writes:

I can tell you for certain they've made my life a living hell, but then
computers are my job. I can't really speak for starship crews
 but I can say that high-tech sensors and computers have made life a
 lot easier for military people already.  Radar-aimed guns would
 perhaps be the low-tech equivalent of some of the futuristic weapons
found in FT. They tell you how far away the target is, then they aim
themselves, wait till the target is in optimal range, fire at the target,
track the bullet (!), figure out whether the bullet hit the target or not,
adjust their aim, and fire again. All this while you decide whether or not to
put jalepenos on your sandwich. Sure beats that other war when you had to
actually pull the trigger.
> [quoted text omitted]

The stabilization system on the M1 tank is similar to what you're talking
about. Unlike other stab systems that tried to keep the gun level, the M1's
tries to keep the sight on the target -- a much easier proposition.  The
gunner locates his target and presses the firing button. The next time the gun
is aligned with the sight (because of vehicle movement, or gun movement), the
gun fires automatically. Note, though, that the time delay is measured in
fractions of a second.

-- John I.

> On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Rick Rutherford wrote:

> Hmm... call me cynical, but I still don't believe that all the

You are talking about two different things. Your targeting system should be
able to tell you if a target is in range of its weapons, even if it can't
pinpoint a target to within a few cm. Weapon ranges would have a rather large
bracket, it should be farely easy to tell if a target was within a several km
range bracket. After all, if a system could not even tell you if a target was
in range of its weapons in the first place, then I would think that there is
probably no way it could possibly hit that target with those weapons. Actually
hitting a target would of course would be much harder, but then that is why
the weapons do variable damage (and often none at all).

> Rick Rutherford ----- rickr@digex.net ----- The above opinions are

On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Brian Bell wrote in reply to me:

> > For high-tech battles, however... well, if I can see you on my

It depends on your background, of course. I don't think of 1" ~ 15 light
seconds; more like the 1cm ~ 1000 km/1 turn ~ 20 minutes scale. For FT,
that is; Starfire uses 1 hex = 30 light seconds; but Starfire physics are...
very strange:).

ECM may disturb your scanners enough to prevent a good firing solution, but
would it stop you from determining the position of the target with an accuracy
of several km or so (...ie, less than 0.1 mm in the "ground" scale I'm
imagining)?

In a message dated 97-04-04 11:31:37 EST, you write:

> << On Thu, 3 Apr 1997, Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:

The subject of premeasuring movement has never come up in our group's games
but I would be against allowing it. We don't allow premeasuring of fire
assuming that the enemy ships are using some type of ECM or something to fool
the ships targeting systems. Players will usually take a "ranging" shot with a
small ship with a C bat.

> Mikko Kurki-Suonio wrote:

No. We consider this cheating. One of the fun points of playing FT was not
having to use a grid or hex-based play surface.  The unknown factor adds
to the fun of the game, placing more emphasis on good strategy and tactics.

> lot easier for military people already. Radar-aimed guns would

And whilst you're deciding the enemy fools your IFF and suddenly you can't
shoot at him cos the guns "know" he's a friendly. Okay say you... Lets turn
the IFF off.....

Computers can lead to as many problems as they solve.... Specifically once you
get lots of data flowing in then, yes you're computer may be able to process a
lot of it, but it can only show you a limited amount of it, because you can
only take so much input. If you are arguing that the computer decided when to
fire, it is not so far flung to presume that it has run a couple of projected
simulations and also dedicates movement and
target preferance - Hey who needs people....

I much prefer the "dumb computer" approach as this maintains it's human
element. Assume that people do the stearing and the shootin'. Now this makes
you somewhat "unpredictable". Now assume the game turn lasts a resanoble
length of time. There may be some delay between firing at a target and hitting
it. Suddenly predicting the position of a ship becomes a whole lot harder, and
so weapons and ranges cannot be determined with such accuracy. The "turn
based" game is open to abuse because it allows people to look at positions at
the end of each move. In reality ships would have been firing throughout their
move, not move then fire.

To reflect the added complecations of a 3D (no FT isn't 3D, but it is still
simulating this) combat with a very complecated ship, I do not think it
unreasonable that a player should have to estimate range....

Just my view. If you haven't tried it yet, then do. The fun of FT is that it
is a tactical game where your decisions make a differance. Estimating range
adds one more decision to the game, and give a futher advantage to the
superior commander, rather than relying on the luck of the dice. I encourage
this in our group, by allowing B and C batteries to fire twice during the
first occasion on which they fire (take care with this.... It works for our
games, because everyone knows about it). This leads to people holding their
fire till they know they are in range, rather than firing everything they have
every turn...

-Entropy

> M. Hodgson writes:

@:) > [ military computers do almost everything for you]
@:)
@:) And whilst you're deciding the enemy fools your IFF and suddenly @:) you
can't shoot at him cos the guns "know" he's a friendly. Okay @:) say you...
Lets turn the IFF off.....
@:)
@:) Computers can lead to as many problems as they solve....

Hm. This is true but I don't think it's true the way most people think it is.
More later.

@:) Specifically once you get lots of data flowing in then, yes you're @:)
computer may be able to process a lot of it, but it can only show @:) you a
limited amount of it, because you can only take so much
@:) input.

This is certainly true, and a problem for fighter jockeys and the like.

@:) If you are arguing that the computer decided when to fire, it is @:) not
so far flung to presume that it has run a couple of projected
@:) simulations and also dedicates movement and target preferance -
@:) Hey who needs people....

  I think it is actually fairly far-flung to make that argument.  The
automatic weapons we have today are designed to increase the probability of
killing the target. The Phalanx is a good example since there's probably no
way a human being could hit a target flying towards him at mach 2. In the
situations we're talking about, FT gunners trying to shoot at spacecraft,
similar problems might exist (note I say might because it really depends on
your FT universe). Ships are far away and moving quickly etc etc so you tell
your gun "shoot that" and it kills it. But the idea is generally that if you
don't tell your gun to shoot it, it won't.

One interesting point about all this is that I think FT, which, officially at
least, takes place several hundred years from now, probably fails to represent
the role computers will play in combat at that time. Given that the US
military is at this very moment trying to come up with ways to take pilots out
of aircraft and given the current state of the art of cruise missiles and
unmanned reconnaissance vehicles it seems likely that computers will in fact
replace humans in vehicular combat in the near future. If the vehicles are
still driven by humans, they will probably be teleoperated from a remote site.
That seems to be the goal anyway.

There are lots of obvious problems with this, especially when you're talking
about vehicles that are used to repairing themselves like ships or perhaps
tanks. And of course there's the point you mentioned that these systems will
inherently be more vulnerable to electronic attack than current systems. But
on the other hand it keeps people alive and I think that's where the trend is
going.

So given hundreds of years of progress, given space travel and fantastic
weapons and defensive systems, it seems to me almost foolish to imagine that
people would be operating these ships. But that's exactly what I do anyway.
Ogre showed us that combat could be just as fun without the people but I think
most wargamers still imagine that human beings are involved somewhere, however
unlikely that conjecture might be. It makes the game easier to understand and
easier to relate to real world situations.

But it'll never happen.

Anyway I think that at the current state of the art in computer science, your
best bet is not to make machines that do things by themselves, but to make
machines that make you do whatever it is you do better. Calculators make us
add big numbers faster. ABS makes us stop with more control. These systems
solve more problems then they introduce but on the other hand they're using
old technology. It's when you get to the really new stuff that you start
running into trouble. How do you distribute a complex calculation over 64,000
processors or over millions of computers on the internet? No one knows. How do
you simultaneously inform a pilot of his speed, direction, altitude, nearby
friends, nearby enemies, fuel level, targeting parameters for five different
weapons, vehicle damage, orders from base and who knows what all else? Dunno.
When you try to deal with these kinds of problems you run into trouble. But
the fact is that the pilot never knew all this stuff before anyway so if he
turns the system off he doesn't lose anything. Eventually they'll figure out a
way to make this stuff make sense but by then it'll be old hat and everyone
will have it in their cars and no one will realize it's Wundertech.