Re: Full Thrust to Star Cruiser (2300AD)?

In a message dated 6/13/99 7:03:33 AM Central Daylight Time, 
tgunner@earthlink.net writes:

<< All of this talk about RPGs got me curious, so I went to the local
book 
store
 and picked up the Star Cruiser boxed set (for $4.00) and the supplement
 "Invasion". The Star Cruiser rules are kinda hard to follow (especially
the
 missile rules), so that got me curious: anyone have some conversion
rules for
 Star Cruiser? It looks easy enough to do- only the ships in Star
Cruiser move
 in speeds that are measured in 'light seconds'! The standard
laser/energy
 weapon only has a range of 1... so it looks like most ships just toss
around
 missiles (that use Faster Than Light Drives)... how would you go about
doing
 that in Full Thrust?
 
 Thanks!
 
 Scott
  >>

Consider the STar CRuiser Missiles to be remotely piloted ships, then
the 
rules become much more reasonable. When you consider teh ranges at which

starships would engage you have to realize that light speed sensorshave 
trouble targeting when ranges get much beyond a light second. To much
lag 
between the sensor lock and the time it takes the beam to travel that
far. 
You can make that less by using your sensors to remotely pilot a missile
with 
a beam weapon mounted (or a one shot detonated laser - an atmoci bomb
that 
pumps the first few nano second of its x ray emission through a focal
array 
like a laser). You can remotely pilot the vehicle and guide its onboard 
computer system to target at ranges which are much closer for the
missile 
than they are for the ship which might be light seconds further away
from the 
target than the missile is. Focal beam x ray lasers would be better able
to 
concentrate damage to a ship than a simple nuclear detonation with no 
atmosphere to provide a shock wave in space.