No longer Re: GenCon Review with a GZG Emphasis (part 3 of 4)

> Mikko wrote:

> > Yes, but they'd involve taking advantage of rules. In RL (or what
things.

> Let me offer an analogy.

I take it that you consider me "sane", then :-)

Although I *have* played most of the battles in ISW-4 (..."In Death
Ground" and its sequel for you non-Starfire players) in full scale -
several hundred capital ships per side, plus endless numbers of escorts
and fighters - I do think that size has some importance for playability
<g>

However, there are some things you can do when faced by (the threat of)
high-speed strikes:

1. For defence of fixed positions (ie, planets) assume that the planet
has longer-ranged sensors than any ship, or that there is a net of
sensor platforms. Use these to guide your own fleet onto an intercepting
vector
- but time lag etc can cause interesting problems. If you use the vector
movement, do a galilean transform of the velocities (ie, deduct the largest
possible common vector from the velocities of both fleets and consider the
relative velocities of the ships only). Preferrably, this interception should
be assumed to have been carried out prior to the actual game <g>

2. For defence of a moving fleet, require that the enemy explain how they
managed to pin-point the target. If they are the system defenders thoy
can, but if they are invaders - no chance.

The above solutions are what the SF authors I've read have come up with. So
far, they've worked for me on the table as well.

3. For the "formations passing each other at high speeds", well... it depends
on how fast the ships move. I consider the FT combat outcomes as the result of
fire over the entire turn, or at least a large part of it
-
which is, of course, an idealisation leading to a host of other
contradictions :-). If the ships move past one another too fast they
won't have a full turn of time, or whatever, in which to fire before they
have passed each other by. For the low-speed equivalent this solution
breaks down, of course (eg, two ships with forward-arc Class-2
batteries,
starting at range 25 facing each other, and both with speed 13 - they
end up 1 mu from each other but are unable to fire any weapon, in spite of the
fact that they have been both within range and arc for most of the
turn!). However, the only real solution to this problem - fire during
movement - causes IMO a (much) bigger reduction in playability than the
problem it was supposed to solve. Try fighting a large battle in SFB, for
example (although SFB have a lot of other features that slow the game down as
well, of course).

Later,