Re: Vector Rules

Status: RO

>Does the Space Shuttle use its main engines to rotate???
>
>No!  It uses lots of small little manuevering thrusters to do so. 
There
>is no reason why a billion ton supper-battleship couldn't rotate, stop
>rotating, and then fire its main engines in one turn.	Remember
>micro-gravity.  It doesn't take that much thrust to rotate and stop
>rotating a billion to supper-battleship.  

There is a big, big, big, BIG difference between the shuttle and the
ships used in FT. That difference is primarily Mass. The more massive
something is, the more energy and effort it is going to take to move
it *any*where - even just to rotate it. You gotta get that bulk moving
somehow, and a dinky thruster that would rotate a 10 ton thing ain't
gonna do squat to a 10,000 ton thing. Micro-gravity only reduces your
weight; it does nothing to your mass.

That or you need a hell of a lot of dinky thrusters! More than what are
feasible to imagine. Much less mount on a ship.

There are Laws which govern this.

And once you got something going, it's going to take a heck of a lot of
energy to stop it again! Inertia. In both cases. You need to overcome
it.

>Rotating should cost ZERO thrust.  

Why? You need to spend energy from somewhere to rotate something;
why should it cost '0'? 

I think the rules, as written, and the vector rules, do a reasonable
job of simulating the thrusters and account for rotations well enough
to work. That you are using Thrust to rotate your ship does *not* mean
you are using your main engines. Simply the power output is redirected
to side thrusters.

Mk
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
During the run-and-fight-and-run-again battle through this forest of
horror,
she is finally cornered. Her weapons have been left deep in the bodies
of the
slain or broken against the granite-hard scales of these snakes that are
not
snakes. Her stand to the death must be fought here. Though her only
weapons
are her hands and her deep and wide knowledge of the slayers, she does
not
fear them. They will die. Of this she is sure.