RE: Gravity, Tech & others (was Re: Orbits, etc)

[snip]

> This is about .025 light seconds per MU (1/40th of a light second).
> I prefer to use larger units (75,000km or about 1/4 light second).
> To my mind this gives a greater "cosmic" feel to the combat and
> allows ships to reach a viable jump point (~2au in my game) quicker.
> However, planets represent not only the planet but its gravity well
> also. It also accounts for the large percentage to miss a ship in
> FT. If you have to fire several light seconds away (even with
> speed-of-light weapons), it will take some time to reach the target
> (target is 24" away: send an active targeting pulse [6 seconds
> there, 6 seconds back], fire [6 seconds there], gives 18 seconds
> from when you first gave the order to fire [12 seconds from when it
> was locked by active sensors or 1 second per 2"].).
> Brian Bell
> brian.bell@axom.com

Some figures to give a sense of this... even though the target may
have moved for 12 seconds since sensor return to the beam hitting
it, it doesn't mean the amount you could miss by is the amount that
it moved in those 12 seconds. You can lead the target. The trouble
is the amount the target could deviate it's course in those 12
seconds. Assuming a randomly dodging target, a 1G manuever ship can
manage (at maximum) a whopping 706 meters, which begs the question, 
how did you manage to hit it at all, unless the ship is 
superdreadnought sized. 6G would be over four kilometers.

Using 75,000km per MU gives about 10G per thrust point for a 15 min 
turn. This means /really/ big areas of uncertainty in target 
position, up to 7km per thrust point. So your beam weapons either 
throw out a hell of a lot shots, hoping to catch the target in the 
spray, or have to be FTL.

Also, with a 75,000km scale, who cares about gravity wells around
planets? why represent them, (other than for jump limits) your ships 
have 10-80G drives, so unless you want to approach a really high 
gravity body, it's not really important.

7,500km per MU is sounding better all the time ;)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
I've noticed that one thing about parents is that no matter what stage
your child is in, the parents who have older children
always tell you the next stage is worse. 
     Dave Barry
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