A bit of discussion going on here on how to represent 3d. There have some
suggestions of placing ships inside plastic spheres, like those found at craft
stores. I'd just like to add that our group has done this in the past, namely
for WWI air combat. I just thought I'd share a few thoughts. While this first
seems to be an attractive solution it does present a number of problems.
- The spheres themselves are fairly large (though you can buy them in
various sizes) makes close positioning difficult.
- The need for elevation in 3d requires poles to mount the models to, we
used a ring to support the sphere on the pole, which seemed to be easily
knocked over and a bit clumsy.
- The spheres while being clear do reflect light, at times obscuring the
model, if only slightly.
- The whole pole / sphere thing looks a bit silly when you set a bunch
(six or more) of em out on the table.
It is an interesting concept, though I've never had much success trying to
model it. What I think might work, or what I'm thinking of trying next.
- Mount a small brass tube on the underside of the model, unobtrusively.
A rod
then slots to the tube and mounts on the elevation pole.
- There ought to be two fulcrum points. One left to right, handled by
the tube mount. Another up and down, provided by the rod to elevation pole.
- I imagine the elevation pole ought to be say no more than 12" to
increase stability and reduce the impact a model might take when knocked over.
Has anyone else had other successes or failures in this area?
G'day,
> It is an interesting concept, though I've never had much success trying
A rod
> then slots to the tube and mounts on the elevation pole.
I've seen something very similar done for WWI airplanes, thoug I've never
tried it myself. What we ended up doing plane wise was saying xmu (in our case
100s or 1000s of feet depending on the game and scale) represented a
height level and you moved up/down through them in the same way you move
along in horizontal mode. Then there was a set distance and number of height
levels that weapons could fire through (e.g. dropping brick on guys head, you
had to be directly above and no more than 3 height levels distant, firing a
Lewis or whatever you had to be no more than one height level and 3mu away et
etc.). Worked pretty well. Sorry if that was a repeat of what's gone before, I
haven't had a chance to keep up with the thread.
Beth
> Aron_Clark@digidesign.com wrote:
Well, there are those weird "Lunar Dragon" ships.
Telescoping rod, tipped with a short multi-jointed segment
> A bit of discussion going on here on how to represent 3d. There have
This was tried many years ago by a club over here, who actually published it
as an article in Practical Wargamer magazine; they used two plastic
hemispheres cut from the bases of large plastic Coke bottles, but this was
because they couldn't get the neat plastic globes that you can now buy in
craft shops! The game was a 3D Star Trek one, using a mix of FASA, SFB and
Zocchi ships in the spheres, and IIRC they didn't worry about moving the
models in the Z-axis - the whole point was to represent the different
ORIENTATIONS of the ships in 3D, which is what makes space combat unique, so
they mounted each sphere in a shallow "cup" so that you could rotate the ball
(and hence the ship) to any angle or orientation you liked. Each sphere had
various axes marked on it with fine lining tape. Seemed to work well, at least
according to the article.....
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:46:20 +0000 Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:
> A bit of discussion going on here on how to represent 3d. There have
> This was tried many years ago by a club over here, who actually
Yes, I've got that issue, too. The system looked okay, but there was
one big problem that the author(s?) didn't mention: they had "3-D"
_movement_ okay, but they couldn't do 3-D weapons arcs very well -- or
at all. As I remember, hit probability was rated according to which
"quadrant" the target was in -- upper or lower, front or rear -- but at
no time was it necessary to have the target located where the weapons could
bear! Both phasers and torpedoes were given full spherical coverage, and the
only difference between having a Klingon dead in front of you and tucked under
your stern (where the original Enterprise couldn't fire!) was a lower
probability of hitting!
It's possible to come up with some appropriate PSB/design
rationalisation to explain this, but it's really a fudge to allow the authors
to show off their nifty movement system. Which is why I stuck
to 2-D games; "3-D" was okay in principle, but didn't work in practice.
I haven't read the HH books, but I suspect, from reading this list,
that arcs -- either weapons or incoming fire -- are an important
consideration, in which case, this system isn't going to work.
Phil
I once thought of doing a PBeM 3d game for full thrust. I quickly decided that
my math skills were not up to the challenge.
Each ship would need to be represented as located in 3 axis: X, Y, Z
Furthermore each ship would need to have its orientation described by 3
numbers
R, S, T (climb/descent, yaw, roll)
And then, its course would need to be described by 3 numbers
M, N, O (climb/descent, yaw, velocity)
This is 9 numbers to discribe location, orientation, and course for each ship.
Now for arcs, my thought was to give each ship 3 climb/descent arcs:
Asscent /\
/ \
| |
Level | |
\ /
Decline \/
Elevation arcs would be assumed Level unless indicated otherwise. Weapons
would get ONE free elevation arc. Other elevation arcs would mass/cost
the same as a normal arc times the number of normal arcs or a minimum of 1
mass
and 3 cost. Thus a Class-3 beam that has 3 normal arcs would mass 6,
cost 18 and have the Level elevation arc. To add the Asscent elevation arc,
would add 3 mass and 9 cost. To add Asscent and Descent arcs would add 6 mass
and 18 cost.
As I stated before, plotting movement, range and firing arcs ended up being
beyond my mathmatical ability, so I gave it up.
> "Bell, Brian K" <Brian_Bell@dscc.dla.mil> wrote:
I believe that it all can be done with high school trig. and a good 3d
visualation ability. Though being able to handle transformation using matrix's
may help.
> Now for arcs, my thought was to give each ship 3 climb/descent arcs:
After looking at various polyhedron, i.e. I got a few dice :-),
I decided that the faces of a cube will be work and has the advantage of being
simple. This gives 6 firing arcs.
> Elevation arcs would be assumed Level unless indicated otherwise.
Weapons
> would get ONE free elevation arc. Other elevation arcs would mass/cost
Off the top of my head, using the cube arcs, make the cost of additional arcs
double that Brian suggests. This is to make up for each arc covering a larger
area than Brian's suggestion.
Enjoy,