As has been discussed before, there is a little silliness in the vector
movement rules.
Once can use the Main Drive (MD) to thrust one's full thrust amount, change
your facing directly away from your heading, and use "push" thrusters to add
1/2 your MD rating. This effectively give a ship 1.5 the thrust rating
of the ship.
Current rules do not allow a "push" forward. So if a ship spend the entire
turn using the main drive, it is only.75 times as effective as if it takes the
time to turn and use the less powerful "push" thrusters. This is utter
silliness.
I see three ways to change this:
1) Allow a ship that does not turn to have an extended movement (1.5 or 2 x MD
rating). Rationalization: The ship is burning the main drive longer and thus
creating a greater change in velocity.
2) Allow a ship to "push" forward. This would allow the current effect of 1.5
movement without the silliness of doing an about face to accomplish it.
Rationalization: If thrusters could be mounted to other sides of the ship, why
not the aft.
3) Limit "push" movement to 1 and allow a ship to "push" forward. This brings
"push" movement back to what it should be. Minimal, adjustments for docking.
Rationalization: Maneuvering thrusters are MUCH less powerful than the main
drive.
IMHO, solutions 1 and 3 are better. Both of them return some advantage to high
thrust ships.
Feedback welcome.
> On 11-Aug-99 at 09:25, Bell, Brian K (Brian_Bell@dscc.dla.mil) wrote:
You forgot
4. Do not allow a push and a thrust to be separated by a rotate.
I like this solution as it gets back to the original intention and it works
well.
> As has been discussed before, there is a little silliness in the
<SNIP>
I'd add a couple other ways. Remove the separate pools of thrust for main
drive and manuvering and have all of the thrust come from the same pool, but
allow only half to be used for pushes or to rotate. If a ship rotates during a
turn, it should take some time for the rotation to actually happen so when a
main drive burn would occur at the new facing, the full Main Drive amount
would not be available.
Or another option that would keep separate pools of thrust as they are now.
Allow a ship to rotate to any facing for only 1 point of thrust, but then for
each facing change from rotation, the amount of Main Drive available that turn
is reduced by 1. The MD reduction is not due to any increase in power needed
to rotate further, but instead happens because less time available in the turn
for the MD to actually burn and move the ship because during part of the turn
the ship is rotating and amy MD thrust during the rotation would not have the
desired effect. Pushes would also be reduced by rotation in the same way. A
order of full MD burn and a full push port would still be allowed since facing
did not change so both burns would be able to last the whole turn.
This last option seems pretting interesting, but there is probably some
drawback that I am not thinking of.
> Roger Books wrote:
> > 3) Limit "push" movement to 1 and allow a ship to "push" forward.
This
> > brings "push" movement back to what it should be. Minimal,
Or even simpler and more realistic, don't allow pushes at all. A thruster
push, I feel sure, was inspired by the idea of "docking
thrusters" for finely-controlled movements, but in order to use those
thrusters to get the kind of results you see from pushes in the rules, you've
got to have a main drive mounted on all four sides of the ship. Aside from the
fact that this would look silly (note none of the minis do this!), it's really
totally unnecessary. Just allow any number or combination of rotates and main
drives and all the problems are solved.
Just my 2 cents worth..
> On 11-Aug-99 at 10:27, Keith Watt (kwatt@ExodusProject.com) wrote:
This
> > > brings "push" movement back to what it should be. Minimal,
> Aside from the fact that this would look silly (note none of the minis
So if you have X thrust you may rotate (any amount, costing one) and
then thrust X-1? Sounds good to me.
Hmmm, Kr'vak (sp?) still get pushes?
> 4. Do not allow a push and a thrust to be separated by a rotate.
I see this as the simplest solution to the "problem."
G'day guys,
OK you knew thsi was coming, but I'm going to say it anyway....
Option 57 < or whatever you're up to now;) > leave it alone!!!!! I've
never felt it was really broken in the first place - to use an old
argument, who's going to go back and tell all the Fokker pilots they can't do
tight right turns, becuase that particular engine quirk wasn't written
in the tech manual? I think the same's true for the push-turn thing.
Now I have my cathartic raging at windmills out of the way... I do realise I'm
pursuing a hopeless cause here so if I were to opt for any change to the
system I'd say make rotations cost one thrust point per facing.
By the way, am I interpreting this wrong, but isn't "If you have X thrust
you may rotate (any amount, costing one) and then thrust X-1" going to
allow the exact same thing you don't like now (or worse)? Or is it that
because you've changed the justifications its OK? And I'm not trying to be a
sarcastic b*tch here, I am honestly confused.
Cheers
Beth
This is the version that I use for VM. All maneuvers come out of the Thrust
Points.
> Dean Gundberg wrote:
> I'd add a couple other ways. Remove the separate pools of thrust for
In order to restore the KV manueverability in vectored movement, allow them to
use double the normal amount of manuever thrust. (ie a thrust 6
KV ship has 6 manuever points - if I'm reading the normal rules
properly)
In order to make the high thrust ships more manueverable (in respect to
facing) over the lower thrust ones in vectored movement. (the two options
increase in sluggishness as we go on)
1, allow only 30 degrees/60 degrees of rotation per manuever point
used to rotate 2, a more complex system involving recording rotational
velocity...
A ship expending 1 point of manuever thrust can increase or decrease its
rotational velocity by 1 point.. in order to turn around completely in one
turn 3 points would need to be expended. In order to retain that facing next
turn, a further 3 points would need to be expended to halt the rotation. (I
know that this is more than any normal ship can manage) The record of
rotational velocity can be stored by the vector using a single
die recording clockwise rotation. (A rotation of 1 anti-clockwise is
effectively a clockwise rotation of 5) This method of recording could lead to
a ship perpetually spinnning 360 degrees as it cruises along, but anyone using
this method is cautioned to be sensible.
Quoting Bell, Brian K (Wed, Aug 11, 1999 at 09:05:40AM -0400)
> As has been discussed before, there is a little silliness in the
> On 11-Aug-99 at 19:44, Beth Fulton (beth.fulton@marine.csiro.au) wrote:
The problem, thrust right now is 1-1/2 times what you pay for, really
leveraging faster ships.
Scenario:
I'm, for whatever reason, doing max accel. I thrust my 6, rotate 180 degrees,
and push for 2, thus giving me an acceleration of 8. Clearly NOT (correct me
if I'm wrong) what the designer intended.
It needs to be fixed in FT3. Two solutions proposed:
1. A push and thrust may not be separated by a rotate.
I would consider this a "band-aid".
2. Do away with pushes as uneccessary, and have rotates come out of thrust
(After all, they do take time, and if it takes 90 seconds to rotate to have
used 10% of your thrust time rotating.)
Don't worry about 1/2 of your thrust for turning, if you want
to sit and spin that's fine with me. 1 thrust for any rotate would be fine.
You can rotate as many times as you want would be fine also.
I like this one, it is simpler than the current system, and more realistic.
Docking thrusters wouldn't be much more than
1 meter/sec accel, miniscule in game terms.
On 12-Aug-99 at 11:11, colin.plummer@theplanet.net
(colin.plummer@theplanet.net) wrote: > In order to restore the KV
manueverability in vectored movement, allow
> them to use double the normal amount of manuever thrust. (ie a thrust
How about this:
Ships do not have seperate thrust/manuever points. Rotating costs
a maneuver point. No pushes.
KV may thrust any direction without rotating.
> On Wed, 11 Aug 1999, Roger Books wrote:
> On 11-Aug-99 at 10:27, Keith Watt (kwatt@ExodusProject.com) wrote:
forward. This
> > > > brings "push" movement back to what it should be. Minimal,
i'd agree - thrusters arren't powerful enough to give sideways motion of
the same order of magnitude as the main drive (if they were, turning would be
free). the only amendment we need to make is to take out pushes. good for
realism and consistency, possibly bad for playability. personally, i'd do it,
but i imagine many people wouldn't.
> So if you have X thrust you may rotate (any amount, costing one) and
i don't think this is what Keith was suggesting.
> Hmmm, Kr'vak (sp?) still get pushes?
how to deal with the KV under vector is a big problem - now that
everyone can spin like sufis, the KV need a new edge. perhaps they get an
extra turn or something?
tom