How about giving missiles a duration of 6 turns, represent a "spread" of
missiles, and attack by rolling 3d6 per Spread as per "beam" weapons. (like an
"A" battery) max normal screens are grade 2. If you "roll ship" you get an
extra shield grade, but the enemy counts as having an extra shield grade as
well due to the increased difficulty of getting a firing solution through the
impellor "stress band" Make each spread take 1 space and a ship may fire only
as many spreads as it has firecons. Just a thought....
Regardless of what the warships look like....
The underlying implication is that only about
5-10% of mass can be placed in the bow or the
stern of the gravity impeller driven ship. Remaining weapons bearing will be
broadside weapons.
Fore and aft arcs will be unshielded to weapons
fire, either energy weapons or the X-ray warheads.
Port and starboard arcs will be shielded with the gravity sidewalls and "top"
and "bottom" will be covered by the impeller wedges, providing that the nodes
are active.
Alpha and beta nodes will have to be represented by internal systems, subject
to threshold checks. Sidewalls, if I recall, were independent on the port and
starboard.
Fusion cells are also a critical item and the number onboard will be a
function of the ship's mass. A fusion loss can result in catastrophic failure.
500G is approximately 5km/s2 = 5" of vector thrust
Time (seconds) Distance 1" Energy (in.) Missile (in.)
1 1 km 100,000 1,000,000
10 10 km 10,000 100,000 100 100 km 1,000 10,000 1000 1000 km 100 1,000
Another alternative would be to define 10" as energy range and 100" as missile
range. You'd still need a large table to play a game of HH Full Thrust.
In a message dated 97-07-15 22:49:53 EDT, you write:
<< Another alternative would be to define 10" as energy range and 100" as
missile range. You'd still need a large table to play a game of HH Full
Thrust. >>
why not break this up into a long range missle combat setup, 50" range,
representing 1,000,000 km, or 20,000 km/inch) for beginning missile
salvos and 30 sec. per turn (would allow 1 salvo per turn), and then when
ships are close enough, 20" or so, change the scale to represent 400,000 km by
moving
the ships out to 40", 10,000 km/inch, range and 5 seconds per turn to
allow energy weapons to fire once per turn and missile once per 6 turns.
> << Another alternative would be to define 10" as energy range
Interesting idea but wouldn't there be a problem if the opposing fleets don't
stay together ie half the fleet at missile range and the other half at energy
range.
> Rutherford, Michael wrote:
range,
> >representing 1,000,000 km, or 20,000 km/inch) for beginning missile
You can't adjust the distance scale and make sense of the table. Harpoon
adjusts the time scale when the missiles are flying, but changing the distance
scale would mean adjustments for some ships and not others for
HH-FT.
After giving more thought, the missile range is not strictly 1,000,000 km, but
rather the missile's effectiveness is based on the impeller "burn" time for
the missiles. Since the HH game would have Newtonian movement mechanics, the
initial velocity of a missile would match that of the ship plus the ejection
acceleration. Missiles can continue ballistic after the "burn", but are easy
to pick off by countermeasures. (PDAF bonuses...)
If the HH rules concentrated only on the mechanics of the missile combat and
simplified the energy weapons to an opposed die roll (i.e. high roll wins,
loser dies) the 20,000 km per 1" and 30 sec. turns would be a good scale to
investigate further.
> Rutherford, Michael wrote:
range,
> >representing 1,000,000 km, or 20,000 km/inch) for beginning missile
try it using to maps, a missle range map, and a energy weapon range map, after
a ship moves into such an area on the map, replace it on a counter and move it
on to the energy weapons map, misle range ships can still fire at the counter,
which dosen't move on the missle map, and the energy map ships can still fire
on missle map ships from the counter on the missle map
maybe
Well, I just read "On Basilisk Station" and I'm hooked (put in an order to
Amazon for the other 5 today). I recall there being a lot of talk about FT
rules for the HH universe a while back. Has anybody come up with anything
concrete?
Tom
> Tom Pope wrote:
Myself and another person came up with rules. Both are linked through the
UFTWWWP; you can also find mine at:
> Well, I just read "On Basilisk Station" and I'm hooked (put in an
> talk about FT rules for the HH universe a while back. Has anybody
Nevermind, I just foudn them. Maybe I should have looked BEFORE I went
asking...
Tom (who wonders where he put his brain this time)
> Well, I just read "On Basilisk Station" and I'm hooked (put in an order
Well, the Salvo Missile rules that will be out in the FT Fleet Book in the
very near future (hopefully a week or so for the UK, and when the boat arrives
for the US and Oz!) will be useful for the HH missile combat (may
still need some genre-specific tweaking, but any background does).
I've never read any of these books, but have seen them mentioned on this list.
I did a double-take this morning, though, seeing a car with a bumper
sticker that said something like, "My child is a Harrington Honor Student." I
suppose Harrington is a school around here.
I can't remember who on this list suggested the Honor Harrington books but at
lunch today I went to Harvard Square (containing Harvard University no
less) and popped into Pandemonium - the best Sci-Fi and Fantasy
bookstore in Massachusetts. I asked Tyler (it's 2nd most famous desk clerk) if
he knew about the books and who wrote them. "Webber of course, we should have
every single on in stock and if not someone will die." I took this to be a
rather ringing endorsement. Sure enough there the books were (and a messy
execution avoided). I read the prolog of the first one on the train ride back
and I am hooked!
Thanks to who ever suggested it.
--Pete
P.S. unfortunately they were completely out of the Earthforce source book.
Tyler was complaining that the actual roleplaying game hasn't sold dick and he
is mystified why EFSB has been selling so well...
> Peter Mancini wrote:
Another good SF series with applications to starship wargames is Bill
Baldwin's THE HELMSMAN series. If you read them *real* carefully, you can see
that
Another good choice for getting a feel for Nelson's style of Navy in the far
future is a series by David Fientuch or Feintuch (can't
remember exact spelling) - They are about a young man who works his
way through the ranks as an officer cadet up through being a captain. It is
reminiscent of the books on Nelson. It gives a good flavour for Navy life and
the powers of a Captain a sea (in space?).
Challenger's Hope I think was the name of the first book in the series. The
main character was Nicholas E. Seafort.
Mind you, I didn't buy the very latest book in the series because I did kind
of get tired of it. He should have stopped after three or four. But the first
one especially is a great book, and the second one is good too.
Tom.
/************************************************
> Another good choice for getting a feel for Nelson's style of Navy in
I agree with what you say about Bill Baldwin's HELMSMAN series, right up until
the last book. In that one, for some reason I've been unable to fathom, he
changed his writing style dramatically. He went from an exciting third person
narrative to a turgid, poorly written first person narrative. I hated it, but
because I've liked the others so much, I'll
get the next one that comes out--IF it comes out. I haven't seen or
heard of the next book, and I wonder if he managed to kill off the series with
this abomination. (BTW, I can't recall the title of that one, and the books
are packed in boxes following a recent move. Sorry.)
On Thu, 16 Apr 1998 20:32:36 -0400 Nyrath the nearly wise
> <nyrath@clark.net> writes:
The first book was nice. After that, it got boring. The logic of making this
kid a captain, and keeping him there after he got back to base, was a little
weak. Plus, the kid was an *sshole. But it was certainly a good read, and a
fascinating universe.
On Fri, 17 Apr 1998 10:53:02 -0500 Thomas Barclay
> <Thomas.Barclay@sofkin.ca> writes:
I don't know if this has been posted yet as I get the digest but my friend
Andrew Nelson let me know that the next Honor Harrington book "Ashes of
Victory" will be published in March 2000. Even better news is that the Baen
books website has the first two chapters of the upcoming book posted.
Hobie
> hrupe@Notes.State.NE.US wrote:
...and if you're a real Weber-aholic like myself (and plenty of others)
you can filter through the messages on Baen's bar for a
paragraph-by-paragraph form of water torture (i.e. Chapter 3) by Jim
Baen himself. It's quite painful and he's getting WAY too much enjoyment out
of it.
URLs:
http://www.baen.com/
http://www.baen.com/chapters/Ashes/0671578___.htm
Tom