Re: Fast speeds

> lot easier for military people already.  Radar-aimed guns would
> perhaps be the low-tech equivalent of some of the futuristic weapons
> found in FT.	They tell you how far away the target is, then they aim
> themselves, wait till the target is in optimal range, fire at the
> target, track the bullet (!), figure out whether the bullet hit the
> target or not, adjust their aim, and fire again.  All this while you
> decide whether or not to put jalepenos on your sandwich.  Sure beats
> that other war when you had to actually pull the trigger.

And whilst you're deciding the enemy fools your IFF and suddenly you
can't
shoot at him cos the guns "know" he's a friendly. Okay say you... Lets
turn the IFF off.....

Computers can lead to as many problems as they solve....  Specifically
once you get lots of data flowing in then, yes you're computer may be
able
to process a lot of it, but it can only show you a limited amount of it,
because you can only take so much input.  If you are arguing that the
computer decided when to fire, it is not so far flung to presume that it
has run a couple of projected simulations and also dedicates movement
and
target preferance - Hey who needs people....

I much prefer the "dumb computer" approach as this maintains it's human
element.  Assume that people do the stearing and the shootin' .  Now
this
makes you somewhat "unpredictable".  Now assume the game turn lasts a
resanoble length of time.  There may be some delay between firing at a
target and hitting it.	Suddenly predicting the position of a ship
becomes
a whole lot harder, and so weapons and ranges cannot be determined with
such accuracy.	The "turn based" game is open to abuse because it allows
people to look at positions at the end of each move. In reality ships
would have been firing throughout their move, not move then fire.

To reflect the added complecations of a 3D (no FT isn't 3D, but it
is still simulating this) combat with a very complecated
ship,  I do not think it unreasonable that a player should have to
estimate range....

Just my view.  If you haven't tried it yet, then do.  The fun of FT is
that it is a tactical game where your decisions make a differance.
Estimating range adds one more decision to the game, and give a futher
advantage to the superior commander, rather than relying on the luck of
the dice.  I encourage this in our group, by allowing B and C batteries
to
fire twice during the first occasion on which they fire (take care with
this.... It works for our games, because everyone knows about it).  This
leads to people holding their fire till they know they are in range,
rather than firing everything they have every turn...

-Entropy