Move/Fire limitations in FT (was GenCon stuff)

Well, this is were I'll jump in I guess.  I have also played a few big
SFB
Fleet Battles (30+ ships per side, most cruiser or larger with some
escorts), and I can tell you that it was SLOW.	but there are a lot of
things that contributed to it being so slow.
1) Energy Allocation - while not the slowest part of the turn, it does
take
a chunk of time - thankfully we don't have to futz with this in FT.
2) plotting movement - OK, so we used free movement, but in initially
planning movement people we scanning the movement charts to see what
speeds
would give them the movement breaks they wanted based on their
assumptions
of the enemy's speed, all the while counting hexes so they could be
'just
so'.  Real fiddly - FT movement plotting seems more straightforward.
3) With unplotted firing, repeated stare-downs after movement waiting
for
an arbitrary time limit to expire for announcing firing, 'me-too'
firing.
2 impulses of that crap led to written firing orders , but for the
impulse
only -but then you have other problems - if I scribble just a note
saying
'no firing', opponent writes a paragraph as if detailing lots of ships
firing, when it turns out to be just bogus but he couldn't let me know
that.  Urg!

OK I'll stop with that - It's starting to give be painful flashbacks.
Anyway, largely as a result of that battle, I was trying to put together
my
own set of rules to allow fleet battles.  This was at the time I had FT,
(no MT of FB) and also a copy of Starmada 3.0.	I liked a lot of the
features.  My movement system was almost vanilla FT.  The biggest
changes I
had to the movement system were the addition of Overthrust, Overstress,
and
some special Maneuvers (like Erratic Maneuvering).  However, my combat
system was a little different and tried to address part of the
restrictions
of Move/Fire without breaking down actions as far as SFB or Car Wars.

So here's the point: what do people think of the ideas below? What are
the
biggest holes? do they make any sense?

** Multi-segment combat system **
Each ship was given firing orders - Early,Spread, or Delayed fire. 
There
were two firing segments per turn - one at the movement midpoint (where
you
make your second turn), the other at the end.  Your firing orders did
not
restrict your targets, but restricted the percentage of your weapons you
could fire in a given segment:

Orders	   1st Segment	 2nd Segment
Early	   Any		 Up to 1/4
Spread	   up to 2/3	 up to 2/3
Delayed    up to 1/4	 Any

If you plotted delayed fire, in hopes to smash you opponent at a closer
range, only to find he accelerated more than you anticipated and closed
the
range in the first movement segment, you would only be able to respond
with
a small number of your weapons, and hope to God you live to the second
phase to retaliate with the rest. The only 2 restrictions were that each
weapon could only fire once per turn, and you could not plot Early fire
immediately after Delayed fire.

** Overthrust **
Overthrusting allowed you to used more thrust than your drive was rated
at,
but with risks of damaging the drive (or blowing it up completely.) The
risk increased the more you pushed it past spec.  A thrust 8 ship could
_probably_ get away with a point or two occasionally.

** Overstress **
Overstress was based on the assumption that a ship was designed to
withstand certain stresses, but it weakens as your superstructure gets
big
holes punched through it.  Even to the point that the force of your own
drives could cause damage, even snap your ship in two (not usually...).
Anyway, as a 'translation' back to FT, for each row of damage boxes
remaining (even it if is jut 1 point) the ship can safely withstand 2
thrust.  As you start to push it past that you risk taking damage.  This
damage is applied to the hull (damage boxes) and can cause threshold
checks
as readily as any other damage.  So your thrust 6 cruiser gets pounded
and
is on it's last damage row.  Despite it's engines being undamaged, it is
limping along at just thrust 2 to prevent collapsing sections of its
weakened structure.

------------------------------------------------

Oerjan spake thusly upon matters weighty:
 Try fighting a large battle in SFB, for example
> (although SFB have a lot of other features that slow the game down
> as well, of course).

Having fought at least 1 18,000 BPV battle in SFB (hoo boy what a
battle), I think the other rules got in the way as you say. But I'm
not sure that fire during movement is a bad idea. Frankly, having an
inability to do this is a rather annoying limitation. It would slow
the game somewhat, but it does elimintate some rather glaringly
unlikely maneovres. Just how long do we think it takes modern weapons
to inflict damage? If we assume that fire represents a miniscule
portion of the time in a turn, then you don't have to be in-arc,
in-range for long to engage. But the inability to fire during
movement seems to preclude this in certain situations.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suffering munchkinism. But I find the
move-fire system simpler, but NOT more elegant because of the
tactical constraints it forces upon you.

Tom.