Space Tactics

A few thoughts:

As a ship captain, I would have one serious worry about a
high-speed pass
attack - collision.  At those kind of velocities, you'd be a nice
glowing ball of plasma if you hit anything substantial. Granted, the chances
are low, but still there. On the political side, If one of my ships going
Really Fast has a manuvering problem, and smacks into the planet, somebody is
going to be very upset.

As far as midturn fire goes, I don't see a solution that doesn't

compromise playability. I would be comfortable with a fudge: at high
(relative) speeds, your ability to attack effectively is limited. This assumes
that each fire attempt (excluding missiles) is actually several fires over the
turn period. As relative velocity increases, these fires

become less and less effective, until they are nearly ineffective. This

doesn't work that well against non-manuvering targets, so a special rule

*may* need to be implemented here. As for manuvering targets, if you get a
good close approach shot - i.e., you calc'd it right and at speed 200
you are right on top of him during the fire phase, you did it right.got lucky.
 Any other result - longer ranges up to out of range - your fire
effectiveness was decreased by about that amount. It's kind of a kludge, but
it seems to work. It also requires that damage in FT NEVER be
directional - I like that, personally.  Bad memories of Star Fleet
Lawyers.

Has anybody else tried experimenting with really big beam
batteries/railguns?  I use them to represent Traveller/Leviathan style
spinal mounts. One arc only, usually fore or aft. They seem to be pretty
effective.  Long-range harassment with the beam, and massive damage from

the railgun. They also get expensive real fast.

> Has anybody else tried experimenting with really big beam

Well, that's an interesting way of looking at it - Spinal Beam weapon is
a
'long-range harassment'....I guess it doesn't quite capture the
traveller
feel- at least not classic traveller, where the spinal mount was the
primary and most effective weapon. But then again, with high guard's abstract
combat system, you basically had only 4 ranges. Battle
line-Battle
line/Reserve-Battle line/Battle-line-Reserve/ and Reserve-Reserve.

Sorry - I should have stated that Spinal Beam fire was Long Range
Harassment AND Short Range Kick-Your-Teeth-Out-Your-A** :).
I was deep into thought at that point, and was mentally comparing performance
of a spinal railgun (very nasty at close, but limited to 30MU or so) to spinal
beam (still nasty at close, but better at longer ranges
-
REALLY long ranges). I also remember playing Battle Rider, with escorts
&
cruisers subliming (turning directly from solid into gas) under capital ship
spinal meson fire.

Noah

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