> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
> Jared Hilal wrote:
> with the statement that ships which move so far off the table that it
In my original statement, (not the one snipped above) I had said +/- 30
degrees between fleet courses.
> Otherwise you wouldn't have a battle, after all - unless of course one
> or both sides have weapons which can reach clean across the table, but
> that means using B4s or larger batteries and your previous posts had
> directly opposing courses". It only means "on converging courses", as
To me, "facing more or less towards one another" means that the courses are
within 60 degrees of parallel and also in opposite directions.
> Yes, assumptions. At least I assumed that you had more FT experience
Depends on your definitions. I was introduced to FT in the mid-1990s,
after MT but before FB1. However, the group that I play with has been fairly
constant in size and people over that time. Further, they (we)
are on the friendly-sporting side in manner of play. So that, for
example, the trick of FB1 vector where one burns the MD, rotates the ship 90
degrees and then burns the thrusters to get some extra acceleration would not
have come up. Just because it is technically possible because of a glitch in
the rules doesn't mean that we exploit
it. It (this example) would be considered unsportsman-like.
It sounds like this manner of easy-going and friendly play makes me
unaware of the full range of both tactics and exploitation of the rules.
(BTW tactics are good, exploitation: bad)
> and therefore would understand more of our explanations than you
< snip >
> [On the raider-vs-T8B5 scenario]
> probably need to reconsider the "if a ship leaves the table it
> fairly short distance - within a few table-lengths, give or take some
> catch up before the raider can hit its intended target.
What I was looking for is a general guideline that can be used in our games,
rather than just single ship duels.
Our normal games consist of a division or squadron of capital ships
(between 2 and 8, most often 4 or 5) and 4-12, sometimes (rarely) more,
fleet escorts (cruisers, frigates, etc.). Most capital ships are c. T4 and
escorts are c. T6, smaller up to T8. All played cinematic. The
most common situation is a damaged ship with reduced (1/2 normal) thrust
unable to turn enough to remain on the board, but with maneuvering available
to * theoretically * get back *eventually * (i.e. engines not
completely off-line). A secondary situation is a capital ship or
division (T4, = maneuvering 2) that cannot turn fast enough to stay on the
board during a general melee, rather than a pursuit, and on the following turn
would not be able to get back on the playing area because
of a combination of speed and maximum turn rate. It is these ships that
are deemed to have "disengaged". In such a situation, we are not going
to re-set the game in order to accommodate the one ship.
J
> Jared Hilal wrote:
> Finally your description of the "parallell" courses scenario,
You did, yes. However, if you start within 6 mu of the long table edges (which
you'd pretty much have to do in order to set up outside the enemy's
B3 range) and there's a 30-degree divergence between the fleet's
courses, then at least one of the fleets will have to make an immediate turn
towards the other or else you'll be unable to scroll the table to contain both
fleets after the first turn - which, according to your other statements,
you take as meaning "disengaging from the battle". (With the 10-30
mu/turn
or higher starting speeds you described along with the set-ups, that
immediate initial turn towards the enemy would usually have to be a 2-pt
turn or sharper.) It isn't much of a battle if one side disengages (with no
chance for either side to re-engage) before a single shot has been
fired.
(Now, judging from this latest post you'd allow ships which would be able to
return to the battle on the next turn to do so, so this "immediate leaving the
table" at a shallow angle *doesn't* actually have to mean automatically
disengaging from the battle. Even so, if the two forces start by the long
table edges on diverging courses and neither of them quickly
turns to make the courses *con*verging instead you won't have any battle.)
> (Note that "facing more or less towards one another" does not mean
Incomplete definition, since it allows quite a few common situations
(eg.
if two fleets are within 60 degrees of parallell and in opposite directions
but *behind* one another) which meets your definition but where the at
least one of the forces has the other force in its own rear 180-degree
arc
(and thus clearly faces *away* from the enemy). (BTW, Noam - was this
the type of situations you meant by "120 degrees divergent"?)
Of course my own "converging courses" isn't a completely accurate definition
either since you can have converging courses in a pure pursuit situation as
well; I guess the best definition of what I mean by "more or less facing" is
"most of the ships in each force have the majority of the
enemy ships in its forward 180 arc" (ie. the FP/F/FS arcs, to use the
FB1 arc definitions). OK, this definition also includes forces flying
parallell to one another if most of the ships are exactly lined up side by
side, but I hope you get what I mean anyway :-/
> Yes, assumptions. At least I assumed that you had more FT experience
Quite likely, yes. With "experience" I meant the range of different situations
(both tactics and designs) encountered as well as the total time spent on
playing; and if your group hasn't experimented much with "oddball" designs or
tactics then the range of situations you've encountered is probably fairly
narrow even though you've racked up many gaming hours.
> (BTW tactics are good, exploitation: bad)
Agreed! But - and here I go off on a tangent again - where exactly do
you draw the line between "tactics" and "exploitation"?
Eg., your group's use of TMF 400+ SDNs isn't exactly "tactics", and
whether or not you were aware of it it certainly does take advantage of one of
the main flaws in the FB1 ship design rules (ie. its consistent underpricing
of large ships relative to smaller ones). I know other gaming groups where
such huge ships would definitely be considered "exploitation" (or to use
more common terms in gaming groups, "power-gaming" and "cheese" :-/ )
but who happily used the "MD burn, rotate, then use side thrusters to
accelerate further" bug/feature of the FB1 Vector rules in their
on-table
tactics. And so on.
> [On the raider-vs-T8B5 scenario]
General guidelines are good as long as you're aware when they are no longer
appropriate :-/ In this case, guidelines for single-ship duels aren't
necessarily appropriate for medium-sized or larger battles.
Very generally speaking there are two different categories of situations
where ships leave the table:
1) A ship accidentally leaves the table but wants to re-join the battle
2) A ship intentionally leaves the table (or it leaves accidentally but
doesn't want to re-join the battle anyway, eg. due to combat damage) but
the *enemy* wants to continue the fight and therefore start pursuing it.
In the first category, a ship which left the table under Cinematic movement
can return in a minimum of 2*(angle between last course and the table edge,
measured in facings)/(max turn rate) game turns. (Ie., if the ship
leaves perpendicularly to the table edge the angle is 90 degrees = 3 facings,
so
if it can make 2-pt turns it needs at least 2*3/2 = 3 turns to return to
the battle). It'll then return further down the same table edge it left on
a "mirror course" to the one it left on (so if it left at a 30-degree
angle
to the table, it'll return at a 30-degree angle as well one or two turns
later).
If the ship wants to enter on another course and/or over a table edge
adjacent to the one it left, it'll take longer to return since it isn't taking
the shortest path back to the table; similarly if the table scrolls
further away from the off-table ship it'll also take longer before it
can
re-join the battle. Of course, if the table starts scrolling *towards*
the
off-table ship, or if it manages to repair engine damage while
off-table,
it'll return to the table sooner. Either way the ship which left returns to
the same ongoing battle, so there's usually no need to set a completely new
battle between the surviving forces.
('Course, if the force that left the table and wants to return was
substantial - eg. a largely undamaged division of capital ships along
with
their close escorts - and the enemy has completely destroyed the
remaining
opposition but has itself taken severe damage before the off-table ships
can return, then I might set the game up anew anyway to reflect the
"on-table"
force turning away temporarily to reform their formation etc. before the
returning "off-table" force can catch up with them.)
In the second category OTOH, the main question is who is fastest - the
ship that left the table and wants to disengage, or the pursuing enemy? If the
ship that left has the higher thrust rating (or withdraws into hyperspace),
then the enemy almost certainly won't catch it (unless they start with a
HUGE speed advantage, and even then it is rare). If instead the two sides have
the same thrust rating but the pursuers start out with a higher velocity
(including any acceleration the disengaging ship can make before the pursuit
starts), or if the pursuers have a higher thrust rating, then the pursuers
will catch up eventually unless the disengaging ship arrives
at its destination and/or withdraws into hyperspace before they can do
so. In this case it is almost always easier to set the game up anew instead of
playing out each turn of pursuit and try to calculate where and when the
disengaging ship will re-appear on the table.
In my experience the first category of situations is the most common in
medium-sized battles like the ones you describe (10-20 ships per side)
or larger fights. (If the ships leaving the battle are too badly crippled to
want to return to the battle - thus putting them into the second
situation
above - there usually isn't much point in playing out the "battles" that
occur when the victorious enemy hunts them down. Of course there are
exceptions to this as well!)
The T8B5 vs Kra'Vak duel we've been discussing, OTOH, fall squarely into
the second category - and it is the slower side (the Kra'Vak) which
wants to disengage, yet it cannot withdraw into hyperspace since that'd
prevent it from reaching and attacking the star system's infrastructure (which
was the basic assumption behind the scenario). Because of this it is easier to
re-set the game each time either ship leaves the table.
Regards,