***
Ah, an abstraction...How big was the map?
I don't think I have ever heard of DS....Is it a new game, or an old out of
print one?
***
I'm assuming it's the long OOP Dark Stars by Simulations Canada. I've a copy
at home, though I didn't recall the display. Yet another box to dig out of the
basement. *shudder*
For completeness, I'll mention Battletech's Aerospace hex map with lil arrows
pointing out the grav well, though it wasn't the 'area' system we've been
discussing, and SPI's BattleFleet Mars, though my recollection is the
planetary orbits only went to Jupiter. We've already discussed Starfire's
system.
Good systems, but more complicated than I was going for, and I was the fellow
that wanted slightly less grainy dirt combat.
I wish I were up to posting to the rec. hierarchy again. There's a discussion
of
3-D
representation, and BFM had that 'interesting' system, with 5 counters per
ship/missle.
The_Beast
> devans@uneb.edu wrote:
> ***
A sudden thought... Take a large piece of paper, and put the star in the
middle, and then draw rings
around it. One ring for each planetary orbit, out to say 10-15. Make
the rings
about 3/4 inch apart. Then place planet counters on the orbit rings.
The whole map would be about 23 inches across.
This is highly abstracted, but would be a workable one map solution...
Donald Hosford sed:
***
A sudden thought... Take a large piece of paper, and put the star in the
middle, and then draw rings
around it. One ring for each planetary orbit, out to say 10-15. Make
the rings
about 3/4 inch apart. Then place planet counters on the orbit rings.
The whole map would be about 23 inches across.
This is highly abstracted, but would be a workable one map solution...
***
With little tic marks around each circle indicating orbit distance traveled
in, say, a month, lots of tics on the outer rings, fewer and fewer as you move
inward indicating the faster moving inner orbits...
You've seen BattleFleet Mars, then? ;->= However, they used a measure
stick for actual movement, and given the already mentioned vastly different
distances between inner, iron planets and outer, gas ones, not terribly
realistic.
The_Beast
<You've seen BattleFleet Mars, then? ;->= However, they used a measure
stick for actual movement, and given the already mentioned vastly different
distances between inner, iron planets and outer, gas ones, not terribly
realistic.>
I think it was surprisingly realistic.
Battle Fleet Mars by SPI - a great game in a lot of ways - in fact TWO
great games! The strategic game had the orbits of the solar system out to
Saturn (Ibelieve) the justification for using big circles was that at that
scale you would need a microscope to detect the ddifference between the circle
and the parabola. Each turn the planets moved one notch along the orbital
track and each orbital track had different size increments so planetary
postions remained pretty accurate.
The really nifty neato map though was the tactical ship to ship maneuer map
which was a cartesian coordinate system where each ship and missile had TWO
markers one on the X, Y map and the other on the X, Z map allowing you to
expend thrust points in a true three dimensional manner. A table gave you the
tru 3D range between any two targets on the board. I have always been
surprised that no one has offered gamers that movement system again. It would
require double miniatures; but it would have some advantages: 1) It would get
us away from having space battles look just like WW II naval miniatures.
2)
It would get our tactical thinking out of the WW II naval miniatures rut.
Thanks for bringing up that great old game, I'll try using the system for some
SFB games and see how it might work.
> devans@uneb.edu wrote:
> With little tic marks around each circle indicating orbit distance
The outermost rings, the tics would probably be in years... :-)
> You've seen BattleFleet Mars, then? ;->= However, they used a measure
No, but I have heard of it...and drooled at the adverts in my old Analog
Sci-Fi
magazines...The map would be in the ad, but I could never make out any
details...
Was it a good game in spite of the movement problems?
First, let me apologize for answering this, as it running rampantly OT.
Second, let me apologize if it appears that I had anything but the highest
respect for the game. I recall just sitting, moving the planets in the
spheres, 'listening to the music', when I first picked up a copy.
The use of a movement 'stick' (in this case a marked strip of paper) ignores
that the ship is in the same orbital mechanics as are the planets. And, I find
orbital movement
VERY counter-intuitive. As my Astronomy 103 prof pointed out,
if you are in orbit, have a ship 'in front of you', how do you get in front of
it in the same orbit? Fire retros, drop to a lower, faster orbit, then burn to
get back in orbit AHEAD of the other ship. Or, I suppose, you could burn a lot
of fuel pointing your ship slightly oblique to the center of the gravity well,
but then only a VERY small part of your thrust would be moving 'forward' in
the orbit. And, these were only.1G ships.
Natch, the massive use of quotes is cuz directional notation is very confusing
in space.
Using the BFM map the way we've been discussing the BR one would require
mechanisms for moving between orbits, or ignoring the larger paragraph
previous.
Using the BR map as we've been discussing incredibly over simplifies, but
that's hard NOT to do.
The complaints for the ship/missle battle movement was that
it was TOO realistic. Two grids, imagined perpendicular, with one chit per map
representing any battle unit, meant two chits plus 3 vector chits (x,y,z), in
turn, meant the map space could get real busy.
I've tried dowels with markings, 3-d grids made from closet
hanging shelves, stuff I don't want to mention, etc. I don't
think there's a good way to do 3-d, but I do salute noble
folk that have tried.
BFM still impresses me.
The_Beast
> devans@uneb.edu wrote:
I too have tried many things for 3-D, and none
of them work very well.
> On Sat, 3 Apr 1999, Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
> devans@uneb.edu wrote:
now THAT is what i call impressive!
> No, it didn't work very well.
who cares? it's really cool! hmm. perhaps holograms might do it? each counter
would come in several "heights", with the hologram taken with different
offsets, so when viewed, they look like the same ship floating at different
altitudes. then you'd just swap the counters in and out. this isn't any more
convenient than counters with height markings, but it's probably easier to
visualise.
of course, you'd need the ability to make holograms, which is easier said than
done. in principle, all you need is a laser (one of those laser pointers would
do), some photographic film (the ordinary sort is fine, except that the
resolution is about 30 times too poor), a few lenses and a
beam-splitter. or another, identical laser. but now i'm blathering.
Tom
> At 12:53 PM -0800 4/2/99, ScottSaylo@aol.com wrote:
Forgive my saying so, but that's a little nuts. but let me offer a suggestion,
try it with destroyer or war destroyer squadrons, I always found that to be a
very manageable game and you want to keep it simple
if you're trying 3D-SFB.
And I've scored a copy of Battlefleet Mars through eBay.
> My weirdest 3-D system used red-blue anaglyph
Or print 6 different sizes of a ship image and put them on a cube. (Or, for
the fanatical, twenty different images and an icosahedron).