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Re: Sensor Range Question [Evasion]

From: Michael Llaneza <maserati@f...>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 21:07:01 -0700
Subject: Re: Sensor Range Question [Evasion]

At 2:55 PM -0700 4/28/99, Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:

>	There are actually some other FTL drives that have been
>	postulated in SF.  You can find the canonical list at
>
>http://www.clark.net/pub/nyrath/stardrv.txt
>
>
>	The reason most jump drives in SF use fixed jump points
>	is the reason given in Pournelle's "The making of the
>	Mote in God's Eye".  Without the choke points mandated by
>	fixed jump points there would be few, if any, space battles.
>	Space is so freaking huge that battles can only happen
>	by mutual consent, lacking such choke points.

This gets carried to a ridiculous extreme in Starfire. Warfare becomes
a matter of warppoint assaults. Its The Great War in space. And you
thought trench warfare was bad. I don't mind losing a chunk of my Wall
in open combat, but knowing I'm going to lose most of the first wave is
somehow repugnant. I've been pondering the concept of making Starfire
warp points delievr ships over a larger area, which will make warp
point assaults less like charging entrenched machine guns on foot. Has
anyone else tried something like this ?

In the Honor Harrington books Weber gets around the 'combat only at
fixed points' issue (not necessarily a problem) by postulating that
ship's drives can be seen a looong way off, plus 500g gives lots of
delta V for generating intercepts. Of course, most of his intercepts
happen a long way from planets, but the base course for the attacker
usually terminates at a fixed point.

Michael Carter Llaneza
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1991-1950
Devolution is very real to me.
http://216.101.185.88
Whenever I hear the "Odd Couple" theme, I get this image of Dennis
Rodman borrowing Marge Schott's toothbrush.

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