Re: Minimum Range

jjm@zycor.lgc.com writes:

@:) I guess I just don't understand the idea of a minimum range when
@:) the distances measured are in the 100s or 1000s of kilometers to
@:) the inch.

  The idea is not the most plausible ever, I agree, but it's designed
only to promote the use of the smaller weapons.  My idea was taken,
rather loosely, from problems that real wet-navy battleships had
firing on targets that were quite close to the ship.  I don't actually
know what the minimum range is of, say, a 16-inch gun on a WWII US
battleship.  I can't imagine it's much more than 1000 yards and since
these things apparently have ranges in excess of 20,000 yards (sorry,
my reading of Sea Power has only progressed to Malta so the Americans
aren't involved in the war yet), that would indicate something like
1/20th the maximum range as the minimum range.	For an A battery, this
would work out to just under two inches.  So I guess you could set the
minimum range of an A battery to two inches, but I'm guessing that
won't make much of a difference in play because it's almost impossible
to manouver one ship to within two inches of another.  So six inches
(or twelve, in our case) is just simpler.

@:) >>	  I would say yes to the torps but make it pretty short, 6"
maximum.
@:) >>	You're probably right about the rail guns.
@:) 
@:) Again, 100s or 1000s of kilometers of back-splash from the weapon? 
@:) That's the size range of a small solar flare!

  You _could_ just put a minimum range on the torpedoes.  This would
again fit the wet-navy picture, except that as I understand it the
minimum arming range on torpedoes is there to prevent them from
blowing up near the firing ship and damaging it.  As you say the
ranges in FT make this less plausible.	Still, it would probably make
for interesting tactics.

-joachim

PS anybody out there care to give us some real min/max range numbers
for fighting ships?