RE: [OT] Ships & Spheres...or 3D representation

"Bell, Brian K" <Brian_Bell@dscc.dla.mil> wrote:
>
> I once thought of doing a PBeM 3d game for full thrust.
> I quickly decided that my math skills were not up to the challenge.
> 
> Each ship would need to be represented as located in 3 axis:
> X, Y, Z
> Furthermore each ship would need to have its orientation described by
3
> numbers
> R, S, T (climb/descent, yaw, roll)
> And then, its course would need to be described by 3 numbers
> M, N, O (climb/descent, yaw, velocity)
> 
> This is 9 numbers to discribe location, orientation, and course for
each
> ship.

   I believe that it all can be done with high school trig. and
a good 3d visualation ability.	Though being able to handle
transformation using matrix's may help.

> Now for arcs, my thought was to give each ship 3 climb/descent arcs:
> 
>   Asscent	  /\
>		 /  \
>		|    |
>   Level	|    |	
>		 \  /
>   Decline	  \/

   After looking at various polyhedron, i.e. I got a few dice :-),
I decided that the faces of a cube will be work and has the advantage
of being simple.  This gives 6 firing arcs.

> Elevation arcs would be assumed Level unless indicated otherwise.
Weapons
> would get ONE free elevation arc. Other elevation arcs would mass/cost
the
> same as a normal arc times the number of normal arcs or a minimum of 1
mass
> and 3 cost. Thus a Class-3 beam that has 3 normal arcs would mass 6,
cost 18
> and have the Level elevation arc. To add the Asscent elevation arc,
would
> add 3 mass and 9 cost. To add Asscent and Descent arcs would add 6
mass and
> 18 cost.

   Off the top of my head, using the cube arcs, make the cost of
additional arcs double that Brian suggests.  This is to make up
for each arc covering a larger area than Brian's suggestion.

Enjoy,
Tom Granvold				<thomas.granvold@eng.sun.com>