[GZG] Dancing the Pre-Measure Monkey

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Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lWell, it's been
less than 24 hours, and it's been an interesting thread to
read. :-D  Stirred up a few hornets, but nothing terribly painful. That
reflects something about the readership of this list. :-)

I did note two, well three, trends in what people were referring to for
pre-measuring:

1) movement 2) firing

(and since this whole thing was kinda aimed at the FT side of the house,
number 3 would be the references to StarGrunt, FMA, etc - but
surprisingly, no one piped in for Dirtside!)

WRT movement and FT, since movement is supposed to be all simultaneous,
pre-measuring to make sure you are "just in" or "just out" of an arc or
range band is a little over the top, imo, as you don't know where the opponent
is going to end up.

WRT firing and FT, I think pre-measuring should be acceptable (and what
I was meaning in the original post, though I didn't specify:)). Some have
mentioned setting up rangeband sticks or "waving the tape measure around" set
at a certain distance. For the granularity of FT, that seems perfectly
reasonable. Measuring from and to each and every ship on the board is a little
over the top imo.

So, while I am pro pre-measuring (at least wrt FT and firing), I think
for the most part there still are boundaries that need to be addressed for
game play. I suppose each group needs to address this on their own terms (no
pre-measure, pre-measure optiosn by # of firecons, general tape waving,
yardstick rangeband markers, measure each and every possible point and
permutation from/to each and every ship/fighter/planet/meteoroid on the
board, etc).

Anyway, more to read!

Mk

> WRT movement and FT, since movement is supposed to be all

I'm in favour of pre-measuring for FT. Space ships will have
the technology - heck, warships had rangefinders a hundred
years ago. It won't always work perfectly - that's why we
roll dice to hit.

One exception: like most people I can get irritated with people who measure
everything in sight and suffer from paralysis by analysis. But measuring isn't
the only thing that can slow the game down: other people spend ages on
deciding how to distribute fire. And it could equally go the other way: if I'm
being forced to guess by eye, I'm going to spend longer doing so than if I
could whip out a tape measure.

More important to me is that I regard FT as a game about being a starship
commander, or squadron commander. As such, measuring distances simply isn't
part of the role. Captain Kirk orders Sulu to open fire at 5,000 km range. He
doesn't push Sulu out of his seat and take over the firing controls himself.
If I want to play a game about estimating table top distances and angles by
eye, snooker or billiards will do just fine.

cheers,