Re: Jovian Chronicles GZG Adaptation

On Wed, 12 Nov 1997, Stuart Murray wrote:

> if you attack a military ship.  Civilian ships are not worth wargaming
as
> they don't offer enough resistance to be fun.  

I don't agree. Just downgrade the attackers to sketchily-armed pirates
with an interest to keep the ship and loot intact. That should downscale

the action nicely.

> Combat in vacuum depends again on your tech level, if you routinely
use
> lasers and caseless/recoiless amunition then you should have no
problems
> with recoil and or backwards movement on firing, however if you don't
then
> you need to use jet packs to satbilise the firer.  

Caseless ammo has nothing to do with the action type being recoilless.
Firearms do have major problems in space (mostly with lubrication of
moving parts), but those could be engineered around in a futuristic
setting. 

In any case, I find zip-n-zoom jetpacks highly questionable. Anyone with

their feet on a solid support (i.e. the ship hull) has the advantage in 
rapid direction changes.

> Combat in vacuum is
> deadly, there is no such thing as wounded, explosive decompression
will
> quicly sort that out for you, even a slight nick in the suit would
remove
> the trooper as they will be more concerned about survival than
fighting.

IMO, a wounded trooper is pretty much always more concerned about 
survival than fighting. But "explosive decompression" is a myth.
You can survive even hard vacuum for some time (it's not nice and may 
result in permanent damage, but it's survivable) -- patching a suit 
should a be routine operation for trained troops. You don't have to take

my word for it, ask NASA -- they've tried it (with monkeys I hope).

Ofcourse, if you *want* to simulate bad SF with little connection to 
reality, that's another matter.

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