For your consideration/comment, as I am particularly looking for
problems it may introduce or aspects completely overlooked....
Note: Vector only.
----------
Full thrust turns can easily be imagined to be 15-20 minutes long with
distances covered in the hundreds, thousands or possibly tens of thousands of
kilometers and engagement ranges from several hundred kms out to several
hundred thousand kms. Space is big and in order to hit things, with enemies
manouvering at long distances and ships firing at 'enemy location probability
envelopes', weapons throw out a lot of
rounds/shots/pulses in one game turn. The damage accrued in the game
is the result of the sustained fire over a round rather than the instantaneous
result of a single shot at a particular point.
In order to adjudicate the result of fire, a modification to the existing
rules is applied when determining range between ships. While moving both the
firing and target vessels and establishing their new vector. establish the
midpoint of the movement by measuring back halfway along the vector between
their start and end point for the round. Fire is considered to occur at a
range that is the distance between the midpoint marker for the firing and
target vessels. Some of the fire will have occured further away than this
point, some closer, but the average will be somewhere in the middle.
This also reflects the application of thrust over the entire turn by the ship
rather than it drifting most of the turn and applying all of its thrust at the
end of the turn from the endpoint of the drift vector.
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lThere's been
discussions about how long an FT turn is.
Different people's opinions vary. Take for example the landing refuling and
rearming of a fighter squadron. IIRC in WW2 the british did this at Malta with
Spitfires in 7 minutes (maybe that was a roll of a 6) so ~10 minutes per turn
isn't unreasonable. However some people noted that F1 cars are refulled and
retyred in ~10 seconds so maybe a turn is much shorter say 1 minute.
None of this argument impacts on your suggestion.
BTW this argument is the same for both vector and cynematic. it's quite
possible for ships to fly towards each other with sufficient closing speed
that they pass through weapon ranges and end up behind each other.
If I understood your argument correctly you want to resolve the fire at the
halfway point in the move. So changing the turn sequence to be move half,
fire, move remainder, resolve ordnance attacks etc.
If you had a fleet batle involving 20 ships it would get very hard to
calculate where a ship was at it's halfway movement point by remembering where
it was. Unless you used string to mark the vector you have to remember where
each ships start point was and it's end point and then work out the mid point
and measure all ranges from there.
At the end of the day I don't see that it gives you any advantage. Fire is
resolved at some point in the move and at the end or start or mid is all the
same really.
________________________________
From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
To: gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Thu, 14 January, 2010 10:44:12 AM
Subject: [GZG] FT Vector: Alternative Fire Resolution Distance
For your consideration/comment, as I am particularly looking for
problems it may introduce or aspects completely overlooked....
Note: Vector only.
----------
Full thrust turns can easily be imagined to be 15-20 minutes long with
distances covered in the hundreds, thousands or possibly tens of thousands of
kilometers and engagement ranges from several hundred kms out to several
hundred thousand kms. Space is big and in order to hit things, with enemies
manouvering at long distances and ships firing at 'enemy location probability
envelopes', weapons throw out a lot of
rounds/shots/pulses in one game turn. The damage accrued in the game
is the result of the sustained fire over a round rather than the instantaneous
result of a single shot at a particular point.
In order to adjudicate the result of fire, a modification to the existing
rules is applied when determining range between ships. While moving both the
firing and target vessels and establishing their new vector. establish the
midpoint of the movement by measuring back halfway along the vector between
their start and end point for the round. Fire is considered to occur at a
range that is the distance between the midpoint marker for the firing and
target vessels. Some of the fire will have occured further away than this
point, some closer, but the average will be somewhere in the middle.
This also reflects the application of thrust over the entire turn by the ship
rather than it drifting most of the turn and applying all of its thrust at the
end of the turn from the endpoint of the drift vector.
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lI use 10
minutes as that works with my Traveller based view
Michael Brown mwsaber6@msn.com
From: John Tailby
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 3:18 PM
To: gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: [GZG] FT Vector: Alternative Fire Resolution Distance
There's been discussions about how long an FT turn is.
Different people's opinions vary. Take for example the landing refuling and
rearming of a fighter squadron. IIRC in WW2 the british did this at Malta with
Spitfires in 7 minutes (maybe that was a roll of a 6) so ~10 minutes per turn
isn't unreasonable. However some people noted that F1 cars are refulled and
retyred in ~10 seconds so maybe a turn is much shorter say 1 minute.
None of this argument impacts on your suggestion.
BTW this argument is the same for both vector and cynematic. it's quite
possible for ships to fly towards each other with sufficient closing speed
that they pass through weapon ranges and end up behind each other.
If I understood your argument correctly you want to resolve the fire at the
halfway point in the move. So changing the turn sequence to be move half,
fire, move remainder, resolve ordnance attacks etc...
If you had a fleet batle involving 20 ships it would get very hard to
calculate where a ship was at it's halfway movement point by remembering where
it was. Unless you used string to mark the vector you have to remember where
each ships start point was and it's end point and then work out the mid point
and measure all ranges from there.
At the end of the day I don't see that it gives you any advantage. Fire is
resolved at some point in the move and at the end or start or mid is all the
same really.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
To: gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Thu, 14 January, 2010 10:44:12 AM
Subject: [GZG] FT Vector: Alternative Fire Resolution Distance
For your consideration/comment, as I am particularly looking for
problems it may introduce or aspects completely overlooked....
Note: Vector only.
----------
Full thrust turns can easily be imagined to be 15-20 minutes long with
distances covered in the hundreds, thousands or possibly tens of thousands of
kilometers and engagement ranges from several hundred kms out to several
hundred thousand kms. Space is big and in order to hit things, with enemies
manouvering at long distances and ships firing at 'enemy location probability
envelopes', weapons throw out a lot of
rounds/shots/pulses in one game turn. The damage accrued in the game
is the result of the sustained fire over a round rather than the instantaneous
result of a single shot at a particular point.
In order to adjudicate the result of fire, a modification to the existing
rules is applied when determining range between ships. While moving both the
firing and target vessels and establishing their new vector. establish the
midpoint of the movement by measuring back halfway along the vector between
their start and end point for the round. Fire is considered to occur at a
range that is the distance between the midpoint marker for the firing and
target vessels. Some of the fire will have occured further away than this
point, some closer, but the average will be somewhere in the middle.
This also reflects the application of thrust over the entire turn by the ship
rather than it drifting most of the turn and applying all of its thrust at the
end of the turn from the endpoint of the drift vector.
This is an interesting problem.
I'm going to put my anal retentive engineer's hat on for a moment (those of
you saying I never take it off - shut it ! B-) ). You're a code ghuru so
I figure you'll be pretty comfortable with this...
Let's set up the following terms
Sn = "Start-point" location on turn n
Mn = "Mid-point" location of turn n
En = "End-point" location of turn n
And it's the nature of the game that your end point of one turn is the start
point of the next turn or
En = S(n+1)
You're suggesting as the turn is a spectrum of time the best way to model it
is the average, or Mn. This is true. Mn is a good way to model the average of
a turn. But the entire game, a series of turns, is also a spectrum of
time. Let's look at a series of turns arbitrarily labeled 1 through 5. I've
put each turn on a separate line as I think it adds clarity, YMMV. Time is
passing from left to right.
S1....M1....E1
S2....M2....E2
S3....M3....E3
S4....M4....E4
S5....M5....E5
So, while M1, M2, M3, etc are good models for the average of turns 1,2,3
etc, it can equally be claimed that E1, E2. E3, etc are also good average
modeles for the "turn time" elapsing between M1 to M2, M2 to M3, M3 to M4,
etc. So either can do a decent job of "average" representation, it's just a
matter of your frame of reference.
Combat based on the mid utrn point raises a number of issues which would
have to be resolved.
Combat onvolves facing and weapon arcs. Would you also base combat on facing
at the mid-point? Would this result in some odd commands (i.e. I will
turn 180degrees so I am pointing at the target ( at 90degrees from my current
position) at turn midpoint)? Or do you write commands for movement pre and
post midpoint?
If combat is based on the average of fire during the entire turn time period,
and weapons have defined arcs, should ships that manage to keep a target in
the same arcs from start to finish of the turn be more effective, deliver more
damage, than ships that need to turn to get a target into it's fire arcs? If
you start worrying about modeling the average in one area,
where do you stop?
I think I understand what your struggling with, which is the granularity of FT
turns and a desire for something finer, but I'm not sure this will ultimately
be a solution that satisfies you. But then maybe I've misunderstood your
itch...
Regards, Martin
[quoted original message omitted]
John,
I was initially looking at this simply to suit the flavour I'm looking for
(fire throughout the round) and reasoning backward to resolution. Your point
about it being a bit more complicated (if you mark the halfway point when you
move the ship, its pretty easy... usually in vector we have at least 3
counters per ship going.... last position, end of drift, and current
position.... having another really isn't a lot of extra pain to me) is fair
and in one sense it might not seem to make much difference.
The reason I keep it particular to vector is that *if you assume vector
movements are applied across the turn*, then your position at
the midpoint will be half your drift + half your aggregate thrust
(which is half way along your eventual vector, oddly enough). It might or
might not make sense in cinematic...
Turn length is certainly variable - I've heard people suggest periods
from 2 min to 20 min for an FT turn, thrusts from fractions of a G up to quite
a few Gs, and MUs from 100 kms to 10000 kms. Depends what feel you are
shooting for. As you say, doesn't change much with my argument.
In refining thinking about this, I might end up trying something like:
'There are three interesting points along a ship's path during a turn.
The start point, the end point and the mid-point. These collectively
encapsulate the ship's movement. If you can bear on your target when both of
you are at the same point (tgt at start and firer at start, tgt at mid and
firer at mid, etc) for all three of these points, then fire is resolved as
normal with the range being measured from the two respective midpoints. If you
can see at only two of these points, count range as 25% more. If you can see
at only one of these points,
count range as 50% more. This range-extension represents the fact that
weapons have a reduced envelope of engagement and are these less effective.'
I guess what I'm looking at is a way not to have all fire seem to occur from a
range at the end of turn that seems to reflect the final position of ships as
if nothing else during the turn happened and you only shot at the end of
movement. Maybe I should be averaging the ranges of the three points. Or
something. The way FT is written, the fire feels like it all happens at the
endpoint of movement. If so, why not along the path? Why can you get vector or
cinematic jousts where you can't engage because ships fly past one another
when the computers would have fired along the way? I'm looking for a way to
make this make more sense and do so in a way that sort of addresses the
reduced effectiveness of a limited window of engagement.
If you picture each beam shot or pulse torpedo die roll as a single shot, it
has a different feel and implications than if you treat it as the fire from an
entire turn and more than one shot. The latter seems more likely to me to be
closer to what could happen.
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lTom,
You do realize this is the first step to introducing the dreaded "impulses"
from SFB into FT. ;-)
And it's just as doable in cinematic as well as vector.
Mk
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 3:31 AM, Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com> wrote:
> John,
Tomb,
You want to get a copy of SITS from Ad Astra games. Then you can have your
turn lengths the way you want with mid points and also actual 3d vector
movement.
And do about 3 turns in a night for a force of 2 ships on 2 ships. <G>
----- Original Message ----
From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
To: gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Thu, January 14, 2010 3:31:36 AM
Subject: Re: [GZG] FT Vector: Alternative Fire Resolution Distance
John,
I was initially looking at this simply to suit the flavour I'm looking for
(fire throughout the round) and reasoning backward to resolution. Your point
about it being a bit more complicated (if you mark the halfway point when you
move the ship, its pretty easy... usually in vector we have at least 3
counters per ship going.... last position, end of drift, and current
position.... having another really isn't a lot of extra pain to me) is fair
and in one sense it might not seem to make much difference.
The reason I keep it particular to vector is that *if you assume vector
movements are applied across the turn*, then your position at
the midpoint will be half your drift + half your aggregate thrust
(which is half way along your eventual vector, oddly enough). It might or
might not make sense in cinematic...
Turn length is certainly variable - I've heard people suggest periods
from 2 min to 20 min for an FT turn, thrusts from fractions of a G up to quite
a few Gs, and MUs from 100 kms to 10000 kms. Depends what feel you are
shooting for. As you say, doesn't change much with my argument.
In refining thinking about this, I might end up trying something like:
'There are three interesting points along a ship's path during a turn.
The start point, the end point and the mid-point. These collectively
encapsulate the ship's movement. If you can bear on your target when both of
you are at the same point (tgt at start and firer at start, tgt at mid and
firer at mid, etc) for all three of these points, then fire is resolved as
normal with the range being measured from the two respective midpoints. If you
can see at only two of these points, count range as 25% more. If you can see
at only one of these points,
count range as 50% more. This range-extension represents the fact that
weapons have a reduced envelope of engagement and are these less effective.'
I guess what I'm looking at is a way not to have all fire seem to occur from a
range at the end of turn that seems to reflect the final position of ships as
if nothing else during the turn happened and you only shot at the end of
movement. Maybe I should be averaging the ranges of the three points. Or
something. The way FT is written, the fire feels like it all happens at the
endpoint of movement. If so, why not along the path? Why can you get vector or
cinematic jousts where you can't engage because ships fly past one another
when the computers would have fired along the way? I'm looking for a way to
make this make more sense and do so in a way that sort of addresses the
reduced effectiveness of a limited window of engagement.
If you picture each beam shot or pulse torpedo die roll as a single shot, it
has a different feel and implications than if you treat it as the fire from an
entire turn and more than one shot. The latter seems more likely to me to be
closer to what could happen.
Tom
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 05:16:44AM -0800, Robert Makowsky wrote:
You can do mathematically accurate vector movement in FT - I wrote up
some rules for it a while back. You need one marker per ship plus one spare
marker. Obviously it crowds the board a bit, but it's not too painful.
The short version is: "if you accelerate by X, the movement that it
gives you _this_ turn is half of X".
R
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 6:27 AM, Indy <indy.kochte@gmail.com> wrote:
As someone who likes SFB for what it is and not for what people do
with it (20+ ship fleets fighting it out over a weekend) I wouldn't
mind impulses coming to FT as long as you actually had something to do during
those impulses. Adding the chrome to fill out the impulses
would turn FT into some version of SFB-lite.
That'd bad.
But I have this nagging feeling that I'd find a turn plotting (and pulling
off) a slow rotating drift to keep the enemy in the FA quite compelling.
D.
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lTom
Thinkng about it a bit more, moving the firing resolution step to the mid
point of the turn would really change vector movment.
As I understand it mst vector movement is turn, thrust, turn to bear, fire.
By resolving the fire during the middle of the turn, you force people to be
facing their target during the mid point of their turn.
Also if I have a 12" range weapon and am in range and arc for 50% of the turn,
I should get 50% of the shots not zero because you have added 25% to the range
and now I am out of range.
I agree with the other posters, I think you will add a lot of complexity to
the game and so reduce the ability to play a game of cruiser squadrons in a
couple of hours.
Martin:
You have made a somewhat satisfactory argument about endpoint vs. midpoint
fire. It still doesn't address what seems to me requisite which is a greater
number of averaging points for fire. But in a 'discrete simulation of a
continuous process' it makes a lot of sense.
Also, an excellent explanation. That could almost live in FT designers notes.
Bob:
Don't want everything from SFB or AV. AV is interesting and fun, but a bit to
'mathy' or 'charty' for me generally. I do think SFB is an excellent cruiser
duel game or even for small engagements. Having played games where it took 4
hours to get throught 32 impulses with huge fleets, I can say I've seen the
pain, but that was stupidity in fleet sizing.
Damond:
Sort of agree. One thing I find missing is the feel of single ship combat or
even small squadron combat with a bit more detail.
Mind you, that's not what prompted it.
Big Brain:
I disagree with your wisdom at my peril, but.... I am known to be foolhardy.
My problem with 'having a lock every 15 minutes' is this: You never do.
You might have a good sensor picture every 15 minutes, but unless your ships
are slow or your weapons blanked prodigious amounts of space instantaneously,
by the time you have received the 'locational data' across the lightspeed lag
from where the enemy is, made the firing adjustments, fired and your weapons
move at lightspeed (or less) across that space, the enemy ship could perhaps
easily have moved enough to be out of the way. I did some math on this a while
back and concluded a lot depends on your assumptions about the accelerations
and ranges, but there are some reasonable assumptions (for game purposes) of
range and acceleration that allow this.
In short, with those basic assumptions on distance and acceleration, no amount
of clarity of sensors will prevent the enemy from having manouvered and being
potentially completely outside of your target area.
The only thing I see around this is the averaging affect of turn-long
fire. With turn-long fire, you accept that you have a high chance of
not even being in near miss category for a single shot or volley, but over the
whole turn, your guesses and his dodges should at some point align in your
favour, and you'll actually have an opportunity to hit and maybe penetrate.
You're using masses of fire to try to line up a statistical hit.
At least that's what seems like it should be happening to me. Which, of
course, fails to mesh well with the RAW.
John:
I see a flaw you've pointed out to me. I was thinking since vector movement is
additive, I can apply the 'change of vector' half at the midpoint. But there's
an issue with the reality of that....
The drift part is easy. Drift half before and after locating midpoint. But
that doesn't account for half of the change vector. You need to figure out
what it is. You can't apply half of its instructions.
To illustrate this, assume my drift vector is bearing 0 degrees. My movement
order is Rotate Port 3 (aka 270 degrees) Thrust 4. The net effect over the
turn is to move me 4 units @ 270 degrees the way we consider it normally,
because the RP is instantaneous BEFORE any of the Thrust 4 is applied. If we
tried to do this in halves, we'd Rotate Port 1.5 (to bearing 315 degrees),
thrust 2, then do the same at the end of movement. The net effect would not
put us at 4 units @ 270 degrees from our starting point. I'm a bit lazy to not
do the math, but it would be somewhere between 270 and 315 degrees bearing
about 2.8 units away....
Now, I guess you could take the midpoint of the drift and apply half the
turn's aggregate change. That is, knowing that your action is RP3 Thrust 4,
you would know that half of the turn's aggregate change was 2 units bearing
270. If you apply that at both mid and endpoint you'd still endup where the
conventional rules take you.
For some people, something like this would brutally slowdown the game. I'm
willing to try it because I'm used to being done writing orders before most
people start.
Tomb
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lTom
 Here's how I see the problem with your approach to vector mechanics working.
 Suppose I have a thrust 4 ship and that it is currently facing it's target.
I want to introdce some lateral movement on bearing 270 to my current heading.
 As I understand it, I write orders turn left 90, thrust 2 turn right 90%. I
then execute my move and move 2 units to the left and end up back facing my
opponent in time to fire in the fire phase. This assumes that you turn
instantly but that thrusting takes all the move duration  In your scenario I
have spent the majority of my turn facing away from my opponent so my front
arc weapons should contribute no firepower and that I need to engage with
starboard arc weapons only. Â Not sure if this is what you are describing
> Full thrust turns can easily be imagined to be 15-20 minutes long with
I rationalize the move - fire sequence in an FT turn
as representing weapons fire that starts in the middle of the turn and extends
up to the middle of the next.
| Turn | Turn | Turn |
F i r e F i r e F i r e
By making this assumption, weapons fire IS taking place at the midpoint of the
move.
cheers,
_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
http://mail.csua.berkeley.edu:8080/mailman/listinfo/gzg-l<de-lurk>
I guess this is where I should put in my two cents.
I have both AV:T and SITS, and I have actually tried using the SITS segmented
vector movement in FT.
Ken Burnside is right that the movement is much more complicated to
explain than to do. My personal opinion is that the chocolate-candy
rally race tutorial is actually more difficult than maneuvering against
another ship for shooting. <shrug>
On AV:T and SITS They use the same segmented movement, but AV:T also tracks
fuel
consumption, heat build-up, and power management. This is too fiddly
for me. C- or D+
SITS uses vector movement with eight move segments per turn. Scale is
125,000k per hex/MU (Earth-Moon distance = 3 hexes), 7.5 min per turn
(<1 minute per move segment), 1 thrust point = 119.5g (applied for a
full 8-segments = +2 velocity and 1 displacement). But you can
obviously change the scale to whatever you want if you adapt the
movement system to FT. Basically the s=a(t^2)/2+vt+s calculations are
reduced to a table that you follow telling you which segments accumulate
velocity and displacement.
The game time scale translates into energy weapons that fire every segment and
missile launchers launch up to 5 times per segment (depending on launcher
cycle time, all launches at same target), but the missiles might take up to
three segments to get to the target (including the launch segment). Energy
weapons are fired and resolved before movement, missiles launched before
movement, but impact after movement (targeted at future position marker).
Ships fall into the same classes as Full Thrust. The basic game box included
ships up to battlecruiser size, which are monsters that crush the other
smaller ships. The damage system breaks down once the scale
reached capital ships (a SDN might be 8-10 times bigger than a BC,
equivalent to a Full Thrust 2400 TMF SDN next to a 240-300 TMF BC and
the 24-30 TMF DDs from the Fleet Books) and so...
There is a new edition of SITS, "SITS 2.0" with revised (simplified) movement
and damage systems. I haven't tried it yet, but from the
promotional material the new move system is start-point, mid-point, and
end-point; so three segments.
On using SITS 2D vector movement for FT We tried this and I think it is far
superior to the FB vector system, but we did it a little differently than any
one else on the list talked about.
Take the movement system from SITS 1.0. FT thrust equals SITS thrust
(both max 8). FT maneuver thrust (1/2 MD thrust) is used for rolls and
rotations only, no pushes. Main Drive thrust follows the SITS rules and
thrust chart for acceleration, velocity, displacement, drift, and vector
consolidation. Maneuver thrust can be applied every segment. Rolls are at a
rate of 60 degrees (2 clockface points or AVID windows) per maneuver point.Â
Rotations, yaw (and pitch in 3D), are at a rate of 30 degrees (1 clockface
point or AVID window) per maneuver point. This includes starting and
stopping. Continuous rolls or rotations induce a first segment change of the
above rates, but carry over an angular velocity of twice that. E.g. spend 1
point rotating in the plane of the table equals 1 clockface facing change, but
with 2 clockface
points/segment rotational velocity carried to subsequent segments.
This method eliminates the FB vector turn-burn-turn-fire that I really
despise. It also means that point-and-shoot ships are less effective,
and brings KV advanced drives with their ability to thrust in any direction to
their proper value.
The real difference with what people on the list were talking about is that we
have a full turn of FT weapons fire every segment. <evil grin>
If you want to try this movement system in FT, I would recommend that you
limit your first games to energy batteries, pulse torpedoes, and
K-guns to keep weapons simple. I would add that weapons listed in the
Fleet Book construction system as 6-arc should be reduced to 5-arc.Â
Missiles and fighters need some fiddling to make them work (notably
fighters move as ships with Thrust 12 and unlimited rolls/rotations, no
secondary move, shoot at range 6 as per FT2/MT), and area-effect weapons
are completely out of the question because of the more limited maneuver
envelope and precise knowledge of future positions.
On 3D maneuvering The flaw in most 3D systems is that they allow really wide
firing arcs in the vertical axis. SITS (and AVT) seriously limit those arcs.Â
This makes maneuvering and (especially) orientation much more important.
J
----- Original Message ----
From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
To: gzg-l@mail.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Thu, January 14, 2010 3:31:36 AM
Subject: Re: [GZG] FT Vector: Alternative Fire Resolution Distance
John,
I was initially looking at this simply to suit the flavour I'm looking for
(fire throughout the round) and reasoning backward to resolution. Your point
about it being a bit more complicated (if you mark the halfway point when you
move the ship, its pretty easy... usually in vector we have at least 3
counters per ship going.... last position, end of drift, and current
position.... having another really isn't a lot of extra pain to me) is fair
and in one sense it might not seem to make much difference.
The reason I keep it particular to vector is that *if you assume vector
movements are applied across the turn*, then your position at
the midpoint will be half your drift + half your aggregate thrust
(which is half way along your eventual vector, oddly enough). It might or
might not make sense in cinematic...
Turn length is certainly variable - I've heard people suggest periods
from 2 min to 20 min for an FT turn, thrusts from fractions of a G up to quite
a few Gs, and MUs from 100 kms to 10000 kms. Depends what feel you are
shooting for. As you say, doesn't change much with my argument.
In refining thinking about this, I might end up trying something like:
'There are three interesting points along a ship's path during a turn.
The start point, the end point and the mid-point. These collectively
encapsulate the ship's movement. If you can bear on your target when both of
you are at the same point (tgt at start and firer at start, tgt at mid and
firer at mid, etc) for all three of these points, then fire is resolved as
normal with the range being measured from the two respective midpoints. If you
can see at only two of these points, count range as 25% more. If you can see
at only one of these points,
count range as 50% more. This range-extension represents the fact that
weapons have a reduced envelope of engagement and are these less effective.'
I guess what I'm looking at is a way not to have all fire seem to occur from a
range at the end of turn that seems to reflect the final position of ships as
if nothing else during the turn happened and you only shot at the end of
movement. Maybe I should be averaging the ranges of the three points. Or
something. The way FT is written, the fire feels like it all happens at the
endpoint of movement. If so, why not along the path? Why can you get vector or
cinematic jousts where you can't engage because ships fly past one another
when the computers would have fired along the way? I'm looking for a way to
make this make more sense and do so in a way that sort of addresses the
reduced effectiveness of a limited window of engagement.
If you picture each beam shot or pulse torpedo die roll as a single shot, it
has a different feel and implications than if you treat it as the fire from an
entire turn and more than one shot. The latter seems more likely to me to be
closer to what could happen.
Tom