Re: Realistic movement thoughts

In message
<Pine.SUN.3.91N2x.970117144808.17678C-100000@byse.nada.kth.se> you
wrote:

> 
> I saw somewhere that Jon plans to incorporate the 'Realistic movement 
> rules' in the new FT edition. Good!
> 
> Some thoughts:
> 
> First, on course changes. Inspired by Adam D., I allow ships to use
their 
> manouvering thrust to change facing - I've played with 2 clock facings

> change per manouvering thrust points, where escorts have a manouvering

> thrust rating of 3, cruisers 2 and capitals (usually) 1. This makes
the 
> smaller ships nimbler than big ones - and I think they need it.

I had a few realistic movement games over Xmas, and the rule we
used was that a ship can accelerate in any direction (backwards,
sideways, whatever), regardless of facing. At the end of its
movement, it can turn to face any direction it wants.

(the basic idea behind this, is that since drives are reactionless,
there's no reason why they _have_ to be pointing in the direction
they're thrusting. It also simplifies things greatly - and you still
have an exposed rear arc). 

Your other ideas on fighters, missiles & nova cannons sound good.

> Finally... Mike, you said something about Jon wanting to go to a
purely 
> mass-based design system. Any ideas of how to represent engines in
such a 
> system (without _really_ screwing battlecruisers or light cruisers)? 
> (...I don't know if it's very realistic, but I like the idea of 
> high-thrust escorts and slow capitals...)

I would assume each point of mass gives X thrust. Once the ship
has been designed, divide the total thrust by the mass of the
ship to get its acceleration. Would make for much more interesting
ship design (do you sacrifice performance to squeeze in one more
pulse torpedo?).

Kra'vak should possibly get a higher amount of thrust per mass
of drives. Even better would be to bring in tech levels for each
of the various technologies (but I can already hear cries of
"simplicity!" from some of you lot :) ).

-- 
Be seeing you,					     ARM not Intel.
Sam.					       Acorn not Microsoft.