Re: Re: Cinematic vs. Vector movement

Oerjan Ohlson wrote:

> Jared Hilal wrote:
>
> >So the actions of a ship over several turns look like this:
> >
> >Rotate ship, MD burn, Rotate ship, Fire Weapons
> >Rotate, Burn, Rotate, Fire
> >Rotate, Burn, Rotate, Fire
> >Rotate, Burn, Rotate, Fire
> >rinse and repeat...
> >
>
> Unless of course you have seen Babylon 5, where the EarthForce
Starfuries
> behave *exactly* like this...
>
Actually no, they don't.  If you watch closely, they burn towards the 
target, fire straight ahead, stop accelerating, rotate to keep the 
target in the engagement basket as they pass (al the while firing), then

when past the target do one of three things:
A) Return to original heading and accelerate away
B) remain flying "backwards" and use main drives to decelerate
C) turn to a facing almost perpendicular to their original course and 
accelerate away on a new vector

Thus, they are not doing a Rotate, Burn, Rotate, Fire sequence, where 
they repeatedly turn away from the target to burn the main drive for a 
short burst, then rotate back to the same target.

If you watch the large ship battles (excluding the Whitestars), then the

sequence of  long continuous burns of the main drive to accelerate, 
while firing with turreted weapons or fixed mount aft weapons at targets

outside the front arc becomes apparent.

I only made the suggestion because several posts had complained that in 
the vector system multi-arc weapons are useless, and that Advanced Grav 
drives are overpriced.	To my visualization of the action, this should 
not be, so I thought I would reason out the cause and a solution.  My 
description of the Rotate-Burn-Rotate-Fire sequence went undisputed, so 
I will assume that I was right.

If you stop and follow the development of the vector movement rules 
(EFSB=beta test, FB1 = 1.0, FB2 = 1.1) I noticed that my suggestion was 
actually the original form of the rules.

In FB1, the main drive and maneuvers came from separate "pools" of 
thrust points and the ship was allowed only one each of Rotate and Push 
per turn, but some unscrupulous players took advantage of this and would

burn the main drive, the rotate 90 degrees and thruster push in order to

get more acceleration.

The patch to this was to combine Main Drive and Maneuvering into a 
single pool of thrust points, but lift the restrictions on Rotations and

Pushes.  Now, many players, not just the loophole-hunters, maneuver as 
R-B-R-F, which causes the problems with turreted weapons and AGD.  Now 
that I think about it, I am sure that there are also those who let the 
ship move "sideways" and use thruster pushes as half speed acceleration 
without turning the ship, further reducing the benefit of AGD.

I would add to my 1 rotation limit that thruster pushes (port, 
starboard, and retros) be at a rate of 1 thrust point = 1/2" or 1/4" to 
reduce the "sideways acceleration instead of main drive use" syndrome.

Matthew L. Seidl wrote:

>
>I think some of it comes down to your PSB.
>
I agree, however...

>
>If you think of firing as only 1 or 2 shots, with larger recharge
>times between them, it makes perfect sense to thrust in one direction,
>spin, shoot, spin back, and keep thrusting.
>
>If firing takes the whole turn (lots of shots), but you have high
>reaction drives that let you get a massive thrust for a short time
>(with recharge between thrusts), then again you spin only as needed.
>
>If both things take the whole turn though, then the spin shoot spin
>cycle seems a bit strange.
>
...what this comes down to is how long a turn represents.  In several 
places I have seen this as high as 10 or 20 minutes.  This may seem 
reasonable, given the vast distances and the motion involved, but there 
is more to be considered than just that.

Some of the systems in FT have recharge times of one or more turns.  
While some systems in popular sci-fi have recharge times that affect the

way the story unfolds, they are in terms of minutes, and the still 
affect the way that the ship is handled and fought.  For example, 
staying with the B5 line, if you get to the "Excalibur" and the 
"Victory" in the tele-film "A Call to Arms" and the series "Crusade", 
the main gun recharge time is 1 minute.  If you have long turns in order

to justify a R-B-R-F sequence, then the special feature recharge time is

lost as between 5% and 10% of the whole turn, where you cannot justify 
limiting the firing of the weapon every turn or having a special 
vulnerability of the ship when firing.	The same can be said for the 
Wave Motion Gun (takes several turns to recharge).

Also, for SMLs, with a long turn, they should be able to shoot their 
magazines dry in a single game turn.  This is mentioned in David Weber's

Honor Harrington series, and in real life, the original Ticonderoga 
class CGs (with turreted launch rails, not vertical launch tubes) could 
shoot 80+ missiles off of 4 launch rails (2x twin launchers) in less 
than 10 minutes.

Additionally, battles in film, TV and novels, including single ship 
duels, often last mere minutes with a fatal conclusion for (at least) 
one combatant.	A 10-20 minute game turn means that a ship was reduced 
from undamaged to expanding cloud of debris in a single game turn.  I 
have never seen that happen with any FT capital ships that were not 
home-designed.

In the end, the Rotate-Burn-Rotate-Fire sequence can only be justified 
with a long game turn, which then causes many other PSB problems 
throughout the rest of the rules.

J