Hi All,
I need opinions on damage from asteroid collisions. My idea:
A ship colliding with an asteroid takes a number of dice damage equal
to 10-<Main Drive rating>. Thus a ship with a Main Drive rating of 4
would take 6 dice of damage.
This would give more maneuverable ships the advantage, as they might be able
to change direction enough for a glancing blow.
Comments? Alternate ideas?
--- Sean Bayan Schoonmaker <s_schoon@pacbell.net>
wrote:
> Hi All,
...
> Comments? Alternate ideas?
I would suggest going for an 'avoidance' roll.
If movement suggests a 'dramatic event' has occured, roll to avoid impact. The
highter thrust ship has a better chance to survive.
bye for now,
> I would suggest going for an 'avoidance' roll.
I was going to avoid that whole can of worms and just say that the collision
had already occurred. I'm just looking at damage.
> Schoon wrote:
> I would suggest going for an 'avoidance' roll.
If the asteroid is big enough that you use the FT2 method to determine if
there's a risk for collisions (ie., if the ship's path crosses the asteroid's
base you risk crashing) and the ships really move at the
velocities most FT time/distance scales suggest, a ship which fails its
avoidance roll takes about ten times its current number of hull boxes in
damage. The chance to get a "scrape" rather than a clean miss or an
utterly fatal crash is virtually non-existant..
Regards,
--- Sean Bayan Schoonmaker <s_schoon@pacbell.net>
wrote:
> >I would suggest going for an 'avoidance' roll.
If a contact occured, the ship is destroyed. Reason 1: G forces will overcome
any strucional strength the ship may have. Reason 2: If enough of the ship
exists after contact, the crew is a paste on a wall due to the high G spin
imparted at contact.
Any sort of 'contact' will produce forces in excess of 50 to 200 Gs.
Bye for now,
> Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote:
> >I would suggest going for an 'avoidance' roll.
The collision damage depends on three things: 1) How massive is the ship,
ships with more mass take more damage (although they usually have more damage
points). The damage is caused by the change in momentum, and larger ships have
more momentum.
2) How fast the ship is going. The faster ship has more momentum than a slower
ship. The higher speeds also increase the energy of the collision.
3) Finally, the ability of the ship to evade the damage.
> Or you could take the simple route and say "Splat!"
It's looking like this is the "preferred" method ;-) from the replies
I've seen thus far.
Thanx everyone!
On Sun, 14 Jan 2001 19:08:32 -0800, Sean Bayan Schoonmaker
> <s_schoon@pacbell.net> wrote:
> It's looking like this is the "preferred" method ;-) from the replies
I'll put in my two cents worth and agree.
In the pre-dreadnought rules I'm (still) working on, I have more complex
running aground and collision rules. But this is with vessels that have a much
lower speed limit. Also, the maximum speed of the ship is dependent on the
number of hull rows left, so I was able to come up with an easy mechanism to
work out collision damage. The upshot is that if the ship is going close to
full speed, it will be crippled or sunk outright.
This seemed reasonable for ships in the pre-dreadnought era moving at 18
knots. If you use the semi-official FT game scale, you'll have
horrendous speeds even for a relatively slow moving ship. I can't see a ship
surviving even a relatively low speed collision. The comments made about the g
force on even a partial hit were bang on.
Keep it simple. Hit an asteroid, go boom.
> At 10:43 PM 1/14/01 -0500, you wrote:
What I think that I'm gonna do is use my foam asteroids, call them asteroids,
but treat them like the debris fields from More Thrust...as someone suggested
to me a few weeks back. I'm just going to assume that each asteroid represents
a reasonably dense cloud of rocks; they'll still block LoS, but they won't be
instantly lethal if you go through them.
They will almost certainly become big solid blocks once people get used to
playing FT again, though....
> Sean Bayan Schoonmaker wrote:
I suppose if you could make a boarding attack--ie matched the rock's
direction & speed within those constraints--it's possible you might
survive. Roll basic 2d6 + 1d6 for each mu speed difference + 2d6 for
each point of heading difference and apply that many PTorp attacks. Example:
for a rock heading 12 speed 5 and a ship heading 1 speed 6, roll 5d6. The
result is 14, so the ship suffers the same damage as if hit by 14 PTorps.
Or you could take the simple route and say "Splat!"