On Thu, 11 Mar 2004 21:54:56 +0100 KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de
> (K.H.Ranitzsch) writes:
Actually I'd like to see this too.
Let's see what you can produce Jared.... a 'coordinated fleet' and the
rationale behind what you decide that reflects that 'coordinated' aspect,
please.
Change of subjects:
RANT WARNING!!
IMDNSHO, The One Thing that I find in FT (otherwise a fine and excellent
generic spaceship battle game for small to medium fleets/task forces) in
the 'fact' that it plays out as a WW1/early PTO WW2 naval game without
fighters and as a WW2/Modern naval game with fighters. Hence the
"..capital ships have a couple of fighter groups.." thing. It fits that model
well. But the model seems... 'wrong' to me.
I think all of you know that the 'space navy' aspect is one of the assumptions
I personally question as 'best' much less 'most likely' possible future but
then I was 'tainted' while in the USAF in my mid to late 20's.
The whole 'naval class names' thing really rankles each time I think about it.
YMMV, and for most of you it does. Which is fine. I just don't like it very
much. A minor quibble at best. Except to me.
Gracias,
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2004 at 05:25:47PM -0600, warbeads@juno.com wrote:
> I think all of you know that the 'space navy' aspect is one of the
I think the justification is usually "well, the Navy already has experience in
operating vehicles with large crews on extended missions away from a friendly
base". I can see the USAF gaining dominance if
space war started with suborbital fighters and short-duration missions
(which is probably more likely in the real world)... but given the multitude
of designs and roles by the time you get to something like Full Thrust, they'd
have to make up their own terms for destroyer, battleship, and so on, or
borrow the Navy ones...
R
> Glenn wrote:
> I think all of you know that the 'space navy' aspect is one of the
Geez, Glenn. Is that the best you can do for a _rant_? I mean, it was
polite and well thought out! Where's the swearing? Where's the venom?
Where's the off-the-cuff remark?
Seriously, though, I agree with you to a large degree. There isn't much
realism in the whole space navy concept. There are far more likely scenarios
for interstellar conflict than the navy metaphor.
The problem is that the "space navy" concept has been around since... well, a
long time. 1950s for certain, I'm almost certain it was in play in the 1940s,
and probably goes back further than that. It hasn't much changed, either. I
haven't read any of the Honor Harrington stuff (for the most part they came
out after my disasterous trip to World Con in
'94, which turned me off most literary sci-fi), but it was still very
much a part of the sci-fi I have read. It's a hard metaphor to break,
and it's the one most fans want to see in a spaceship game.
For what it's worth, it doesn't _really_ play out like WW1 or WW2
combat. Try adapting FT to WW1 or WW2 (I've been doing it for the
Russo-Japanese War) and you find that you have to do a lot of tinkering
to make the game system work. This is even more of the case when you use
vector movement.
FT, though, is artificial. It always astounds me when people start arguing
about ship systems based on "realism" (and I've been guilty of it myself)
considering the artificial nature of FT. It's two dimensional, not three. It
assumes certain things about
faster-than-light travel which are theoretical at best. You can't do
full vector movement with missiles and fighters because it unbalances
the game. You can't just drop hyper-fast rocks on people because that
would unbalance the game, and make it not much fun to play. I don't know how
interstellar combat would work, but it's not going to work like FT!
That having been said, it's a fun game. I personally wish you could play
larger battles with it, but I'm not sure it's practical given the size of the
ships (I'd like to see FT fleets in a scale similar to Hallmark's
1/6000 scale ships, with a game system to support it!).
> agoodall@att.net wrote:
[...]
> FT, though, is artificial. It always astounds me when people start
It's...not real?? Oh....well, hell, there goes my whole grasp on reality!
Mk
> --- agoodall@att.net wrote:
HH is best described as "Horatio Hornblower in space":)
> I personally wish you could
Since we have started playing about half of our games at 1 MU = 0.5" rather
than 1", we have switched to using AoG Fleet Action scale ships, both for B5
and the Turning Point ones for our own designs. Perhaps GZG might consider a
range of smaller "Fleet Action Scale" ships, the FT equivalent of having both
a 15mm and 25mm line for SG, especially if future FT releases are going to
trend towards the 0.5" or 1 cm scales.
J