Re: B5 Ship Combat was Re: Cinematic vs. Vector movement

On Sat, 30 Aug 2003, Jared Hilal wrote:
[...]
> >> Natch, I never saw a ship larger than fighter, save for White
Stars, do
> >> this even once, but I'm willing to allow that my memory is pretty
> >> scratchy.
> >
> >
> > At least some Drazi ships do similar manoeuvres, and EarthForce
> > heavies seem to do so as well from time to time - though at a much
> > slower rate, making it harder to see.
> >
> This is blatantly not true.
>
> In the 1st season episode "A Voice in the Wilderness, Part 2", the
heavy
> cruiser Hyperion does not rotate to bring her main (fixed forward)
> armament to bear, rather she fires all of her turreted secondary
weapons
> in a port broadside.
>
> In the 3rd season episode (I forget the name) where the Whitestar goes

"Messages From Earth"

> to Ganymede to destroy the Shadow vessel and the Agamemnon has the
> Whitestar trapped in Jupiter's atmosphere, she does not rotate in
orbit
> to bring her main (forward) guns to bear, but rather fires her
turreted
> secondary batteries.
>
> In the 3rd season episode "Point of No Return", when General Hague's
> squadron is trying to get away, they engage other ships in a broadside
> duel reminiscent of broadside gun lines from sailing ships, WW1 and
WW2.
>  The Schwartzkoff  is shown to be firing broadside before she is hit
and
> disabled.  (BTW this Schwartzkoff is an Omega Class, not the Nova
class
> Schwartzkoff from the 2nd season episode "Gropos")
>
> In the next episode "Severed Dreams", none of the EA ships
> rotate...ever, except for the Nimrod and Olympic (and an
unidentifiable
> CH) that turn 180 to "RUN AWAAAY!!!" after the three Minbari war
> cruisers show up.  This is even though they start facing each other
and
> the Churchill manages to ram the Agrippa in a T-bone and the Roanoake
> receives fire from B5 broadside, rather than against it's front (I
won't
> mention the disappearing heavy cruisers or the
> now-you-see-them-now-you-don't turrets on the Alexander, Churchill,
> Roanoake and Agrippa . . . oh, wait, I just did :) ).

I forgot about those. I'll have to look for those when I watch
this ep tomorrow. :-)

> In 4th season episodes too numerous to list, the EA fleet destroyers
and
> heavy cruisers are almost never shown to rotate.  Whitestar class
> escorts often zip past on firing runs, and the EA ships respond with
> fire from their turreted secondary batteries, but they do not rotate
the
> ship.  Even in the large on-screen battle between the 6 Omega class
> ships and a task group of Whitestars, the EA ships don't rotate,
> although at several points they should, if using the FB2 rules :)

Which makes you (well, me ;-) ponder the time scale of combat in
B5 vs FT. In B5 a battle may last, oh, some minutes (granted, this
is minutes screen time, and the battle probably lasted a bit longer
than that, but I'd think not much), where it's been accepted that
in FT a single turn is on the order of 15 minutes. I think FT cannot
fully address the situations and movement/time frames in B5 as it
stands, but perhaps EFSB (EarthForce Source Book) method of cascading
damage helps reduce ships to scrap in the "required" time period?

Also this examination makes me think that the Earth Force ships in B5
are built using NSL-style engines (thrust 4, thrust 2, maybe less? ;-)

This is probably drifting away from the main thrust/counter-thrust
of the arguement, so please feel free to ignore my ramblings. :-)

Mk