<joachim writes:>
> Although one of the guys I play with is convinced that he will
Has anyone considered playing FT with imposed velocity limits on starships. I
was considering this for games played on large tables or when using cm
instead of inches. I would like to use the N-Space drive rating of a
starship to determine that ship's upper limit.
I'd like to try this and see if it makes missiles and fighters more useful on
LARGE playing areas...
Peter Caron wrote
> Has anyone considered playing FT with imposed velocity limits on
In our group we play with a velocity limit of 50 (and frequently reach it even
with capitals) and at this level you still can't hit anything with missiles
although fighters can still be deadly. This equated to the speed of light on
the scale we were playing in a campaign game. Incidently we tend to play using
centimetres on the floor and battles are lengthy
> At 01:15 PM 4/4/97 -0500, you wrote:
Instead of an N-space upper limit, maybe impose a relativistic velocity
rule. Maybe 30"? At which point ships can no longer successfully calculate
firing solutions?
> Joe A. Troche writes:
@:) Instead of an N-space upper limit, maybe impose a relativistic
@:) velocity rule. Maybe 30"? At which point ships can no longer @:)
successfully calculate firing solutions?
That sounds like a relativistic targeting rule. However, it did make me think
that perhaps a relativistic velocity rule might work (it would be complex).
The amount of speed you get from thrust could vary with your speed.
Divide your velocity by 10 (round up) and subtract 2. This is how many thrust
points it costs to increase your velocity by one inch. Values less than one
are treated as 1.
Examples:
At speed zero, one thrust point gets you one inch/turn of velocity.
At 30, same thing.
At 31, it costs two points to gain an inch/turn.
At 91, it costs eight points to gain an inch/turn.
Top speed is 101 inches/turn.
If you subtract 1 instead of two, you get a top speed of 91 (41 for thrust 2
ships).
> At 10:30 AM 4/7/97 -0400, you wrote:
Based on which accelerated frame of reference? Please, let's NOT get into
relativistic movement. We'd have to keep track of ship velocity and positions
from each individual ship's perspective, and from the perspective of a third
party observer. <<shudder>>
> Allan Goodall writes:
@:) > However, it did make me think that perhaps a relativistic @:) >velocity
rule might work (it would be complex). The amount of @:) >speed you get from
thrust could vary with your speed.
@:)
@:) Based on which accelerated frame of reference? Please, let's NOT @:) get
into relativistic movement. We'd have to keep track of ship @:) velocity and
positions from each individual ship's perspective, @:) and from the
perspective of a third party observer. <<shudder>>
Shudder indeed, although this idea has occurred to me in the past.
Especially after reading the space-traffic-control section of
Cherryh's _Pride_of_Chanur_ in which some tricks for attack a station
at relativistic velocities (ie park in orbit a quarter of a second after their
sensors tell them you've entered the system) are described. I don't know how
to make a board game to do this but a computer game might be possible. Ahh,
that's another thing I'm never gonna do.
Lucky for us the rules I described do not require Einsteinian relativity to
work. At least I hope so, although I've just had a sudden loss of confidence
in physics. I think it works out but somebody slap me if I'm being stupid. The
faster you go, the more energy you need to make you go faster.
F = ma = mv/t, so force is directly proportional to velocity. The
more force you put out the faster you go, 1:1 (give or take a constant).
But:
2
E = 1/2 * mv, so energy is proportional to the square of the
velocity. That means the faster you go the more energy you need to provide the
same force (thrust in FT terms). So that's why an engine would become less
capable at higher speeds.
I have this horrible nagging feeling that I've (a) missed something obvious
and (b) just attempted to prove both Newton and Einstein wrong in the same
sentence. Maybe it's all that SFB "warp space is
non-inertial" I've been playing recently. I need to get back to FT,
let my head clear.
> On Mon, 7 Apr 1997, Joachim Heck - SunSoft wrote:
> F = ma = mv/t, so force is directly proportional to velocity.
Acceleration, not velocity. Not quite the same thing.
> 2
Well... either an engine produces a set force just like that (a reactionless
drive, decidedly unrealistic anyway), or it chucks out something from the rear
end.
We'll assume this something masses m, which is small but non-zero.
The drive system imparts a kinetic energy of 1/2mv^2 on the chunk.
We're not interested in the exact v, but rather the force it takes, since the
opposite reaction will kick us in the direction we want to go.
The chunk has momentum mv. It used to have 0, so it just had an impulse of mv
push it. We could speculate the length of the impulse and calculate the exact
force, but that's not necessary.
The total momentum of the system must remain constant (Newton's 3rd).
Therefore, the ship's momentum increases by mv in the opposite direction,
which translates to a velocity increase of:
delta-v = mv/ship's mass
Thus, for a constant energy E, you can accelerate by a constant amount.
(Actually, a little more since you're getting lighter all the time).
Not to worry, it's a common mistake to apply conservation of energy when
one needs to use the conservation of momentum.
I won't speculate reactionless drives, since they're impossible as we
understand physics. If they are possible, they probably won't follow any
traditional laws of physics anyway.
> Joe A. Troche writes:
This depends on your idea about the game scales. I'm perfectly happy with a
game turn of about 20 minutes and a length scale of 1 mu ~ 1000 km, a
speed of 30 mu/turn is roughly 25 km/s... which isn't fast enough to
justify relativistic velocity rules.
If you choose another set of time and length scales, you can choose the limit
arbitrarily, of course.
> Shudder indeed, although this idea has occurred to me in the past.
> -joachim
Just as an aside, there WAS a C.J.Cherryh boardgame from Mayfair Games,
published back in '83 (I've got my copy in front of me...) - called The
Company War, based on the Merchanter novels (Downbelow Station etc) which are
set in the same universe as the Chanur books, though in the
human-settled bits. As a game, it sucks - I bought it (second-hand)
because I'm a fan of the novels, and wanted the background stuff in it. There
is a rudimentary set of "tactical" rules in the game that makes no attempt
whatsoever to reproduce any of the combat tactics used in the books. I find
Cherryh's vision of space combat to be very compelling reading, and probably
more like "what it might really be" than all the space combat
> Ground Zero Games writes:
@:) I find Cherryh's vision of space combat to be very compelling @:) reading,
and probably more like "what it might really be" than all @:) the space combat
games put together (yes, FT included...:));
Therefore, I propose new FTL rules:
Humans are forbidden to use FTL drives within 6" of any other ship.
Kra'Vak may use their FTL drives at any time. If they use their drives within
6" of another ship, that ship is transported with them. In order to do this,
however, they must leave something equal in value to the ship they've taken.
"Equal in value" is decided by the Kra'Vak player. This procedure is called
"trading with aliens without the benefit of the universal translator".
Gravity drives could also PULL a ship by increasing gravity between the ship
and a stellar object. (Don't ask me how you would increase gravity to
Strong Force level, but in SF _anything_ is possible.
Brian Bell pdga6560@csi.com
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pdga6560/fthome.html
Includes the Full Thrust Ship Registry Is your ship design here?