<David Brewer wrote:>
> FTL, on the other hand, should cost nothing because, tactically, it
Our gaming group uses this slight modification to the disengangement rules:
A starship cannot disengage with NS movement alone. Only FTL disengagement is
allowed. It takes time to plot a course and also warm up the 'ol engines for
jump into hyperspace. Warships cannot disengage until turn 5 of the tactical
game. Merchant ships cannot disengage until turn 10.
We're using these rules in our FT campaign to make pirating convey's a
possibilty. Yeah, the warships could leave early but the poor cargo vessels
would likely be boarded. Cargo ships are very valuable in our campaign games.
Destroying them hurts the enemy but capturing them is a far better deal if you
can do it. The FTL rule is one we use to make the cargo ships big FAT targets.
So the FTL drive in our games do have tactical use, in addition to their
obvious strategic (ie. Campaign) use.
> pcaron%nhqvax.dnet@rapnet.sanders.lockheed.com writes:
@:) <David Brewer wrote:>
@:) >FTL, on the other hand, should cost nothing because, tactically, it @:)
>is worth nothing.
@:)
@:) Our gaming group uses this slight modification to the disengangement
@:) rules:
@:)
@:) It takes time to plot a course and also warm up the 'ol @:) engines for
jump into hyperspace. Warships cannot disengage @:) until turn 5 of the
tactical game. Merchant ships cannot @:) disengage until turn 10.
For one campaign we modified the FTL drives so that instead of just removing
you from the map, they provided enormous acceleration. They could only be used
above a certain speed (twice or four times your thrust, I think) but once they
kicked in, the ship would begin doubling its speed every turn. Ships
disengaged by getting so far away that the bad guys gave up (in practice we
considered this to occur whenever any ship's movement would remove it from the
room in which we were playing). We added some other restrictions, in
particular that you couldn't manouver or fire when the FTL drive was active.
This made for some interesting entry and exit activity, as ships entered the
game at speed 80, desperately trying to slow down to speed 20 so they could
take a shot at their very rapidly approaching enemies. We never had a scenario
long enough to allow multiple groups of widely separated ships interacting by
moving under FTL power, which was what I was hoping to see. I got this idea
from Star Wars
(actually the X-Wing computer game) and/or Star Trek. In each, ships
appear to (very rapidly) accelerate up to warp or hyperspace speeds instead of
just instantaneously jumping from zero to infinite speed.
> <David Brewer wrote:>
Not with my group. Got a badly wounded, useless ship? Announce you're going
into FTL, then plot a course STRAIGHT for the middle of the enemy fleet, and
pray for a misjump.