Tom wrote
> Of course, the biggest thing in any Full Thrust game is your ships'
velocity relative to fighters and missiles. If >your capital ships can safely
go faster than the fighters and missiles, and you use the optional rule where
fighters >move after orders and before ships move, then a
one-point turn can fool the fighters and make them nearly useless.
> I'd say that this is one of the things distinguishing many 'standard'
FT games. If your velocities are all under 15, >fighters will do impressive
amounts of damage. If your velocities are over 15, fighters often won't be in
range.
> I don't see a way to codify that points-wise, however.
I regularly fly my entire fleet at 20+ (inches on on an 8x4 foot table.
This means that you can easily outpace even fast fighters, also you can judge
a jump over missiles. With most of the fleet being small enough to have thrust
8 without huge cost this gives great maneuvorability.
Recently I ran a fleet in at max of 15 speed and suffered my worst defeat ever
by miles! (My rolls were all ones and twos as well though) I could not move
out of the way quick enough.
Fighters are very ineffectual vs this sort of speed and you don't suffer a
turn penalty for your speed!
Just my thoughts,
> Tom wrote:
> >I'd say that this is one of the things distinguishing many 'standard'
FT
> games. If your velocities are all under 15, >fighters will do
> Alan wrote:
I am beginning to think that the fighter and missiles rules are based on some
play test assumptions regarding the velocities of ships.
Mike,
> Jon Davis wrote:
> Mike,
Well, please remember that the original FT ("FT1", the little yellow book) was
first published several years ago. It was in fact the collected spaceship
rules that Jon had actually been playing for several years before that (I
think Jon says that he first started trying to play spaceships games back in
the early 70s). Consequently, "FT1" was designed "on the fly" what worked as a
game and was fun stayed, what didn't work was thrown out. The result a great
little game. Then came FT (the glossy one). Unlike DSII and SGII which were
complete rewrites of the previous editions, FT in a
glossy cover was just that - the only real change was the restriction on
firing into the rear arc (in "Ft1" you _could_ fire into the rear arc!).
So what you have in the current version if FT is pretty much the original game
with a few bells and whistles (and pretty graphics and photos). MT added
several more bells and whistles.
Sorry, rambled a bit. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that here in the UK,
the _average_ size table is 6ft * 4ft. Houses over here are smaller than
most in the US, so there's not room for a bigger table usually. Therefore
FT _was designed for play on a 6*4_. On a table this size ships tend not
to move that fast and so there was no problem with fighters being limited to a
speed of 12". It worked and it was fun.
As you chaps have played the game on bigger tables you have (rightly)
discovered that if you have the room, your big ships can outrun fighters.
Fine, either explain it away with some appropriate PSB or invent your own
modified fighter rules....
Regards,
> Mike wrote:
> Sorry, rambled a bit. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that here in the
Therefore
> FT _was designed for play on a 6*4_. On a table this size ships tend
All our wargaming efforts have been played on the floor. Small tables are
suddenly no longer a problem...
> On 25 Sep 1996 M.J.Elliott@uk22p.bull.co.uk wrote:
> >Mike,
[snip]
> Sorry, rambled a bit. Anyway, what I'm getting at is that here in the
Therefore
> FT _was designed for play on a 6*4_. On a table this size ships tend
Well - another thing to remember is that you British tend to measure
distances in inches. A 6ft*4ft table is HUGE if you measure in cm instead!
I play on a 120cm*80cm table, and have no real problems with speeds of
20+ for my capitals - 15 cm is slow.
However, using true vector movement rules for both ships and fighters, and
giving the fighters 12 points of thrust, remedies that...
Later,
In message
<Pine.SUN.3.91N2x.960926120313.11698G-100000@byse.nada.kth.se> you
wrote:
> Well - another thing to remember is that you British tend to measure
We do? I use metric all the time in real life. I do prefer
inches in wargaming though - it's less fiddly than cm, as
long as people don't try to convert the inches into feet, which just confuses
me.
But I'm getting better at measuring things in steps of 12"...