From: Noah Doyle <nvdoyle@m...>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 21:43:46 -0500
Subject: RE: Strategic Movement
I see your point about EOS definitions - I was thinking about 40-50 AU - I'll try to fudge something about the gravitational effect of the star to get that result for a Sol-type star. Correction for stellar motion is done during the jump - it is calculated to compensate for that (I don't want to deal with relative stellar motion - headache!). As far as our short little lives and empires are concerned, stellar drift is minimal (unless want it to be a plot device...'Hey, where'd THEY come from?!?!'). Most EOS jump areas will be inside the Oort-type clouds pretty well. Sol's Oort Cloud is presumed to be from about 50,000 AU to 150,000 AU in radius - pretty far out there. It's only 300,000 AU to Alpha Centauri. It would be the deep-space jumps you'd have to worry about getting scragged by an iceball. The outer system of any particular star is so vast anyway, there'd be lots of places for pirates and other nasties to hide. As for a 2-D system map, yeah, I'm _definately_ going to stick with that. If I wanted to go full-3D, It wouldn't be in a minis game. Anyway, there is so much stuff in the plane of the ecliptic, and so little outside of it (relatively), that there is little reason to go there. You can hide, live, work, whatever, to your heart's content in the ecliptic.