Re: play style and leaving board question / was Re: Classed Weapons

Jared Hilal wrote:

 >>Finally your description of the "parallell" courses scenario,
combined
 >>with the statement that ships which move so far off the table that it
 >>can't be scrolled without at least some ships leaving it means that
the
 >>ones that leave have "disengaged", also implies that the forces move
on
 >>converging courses rather than "parallell" ones.
 >
 >In my original statement, (not the one snipped above) I had said +/-
30
 >degrees between fleet courses.

You did, yes. However, if you start within 6 mu of the long table edges 
(which you'd pretty much have to do in order to set up outside the
enemy's 
B3 range) and there's a 30-degree divergence between the fleet's
courses, 
then at least one of the fleets will have to make an immediate turn
towards 
the other or else you'll be unable to scroll the table to contain both
fleets after the first turn - which, according to your other statements,

you take as meaning "disengaging from the battle". (With the 10-30
mu/turn 
or higher starting speeds you described along with the set-ups, that 
immediate initial turn towards the enemy would usually have to be a 2-pt

turn or sharper.) It isn't much of a battle if one side disengages (with
no 
chance for either side to re-engage) before a single shot has been
fired.

(Now, judging from this latest post you'd allow ships which would be
able 
to return to the battle on the next turn to do so, so this "immediate 
leaving the table" at a shallow angle *doesn't* actually have to mean 
automatically disengaging from the battle. Even so, if the two forces
start 
by the long table edges on diverging courses and neither of them quickly

turns to make the courses *con*verging instead you won't have any
battle.)

 >>(Note that "facing more or less towards one another" does not mean
"on
 >>directly opposing courses". It only means "on converging courses", as
 >>opposed to a classic pursuit situation where both forces move at
roughly
 >>the same course one in front of the other.)
 >
 >To me, "facing more or less towards one another" means that the
courses
 >are within 60 degrees of parallel and also in opposite directions.

Incomplete definition, since it allows quite a few common situations
(eg. 
if two fleets are within 60 degrees of parallell and in opposite
directions 
but *behind* one another) which meets your definition but where the at 
least one of the forces has the other force in its own rear 180-degree
arc 
(and thus clearly faces *away* from the enemy). (BTW, Noam - was this
the 
type of situations you meant by "120 degrees divergent"?)

Of course my own "converging courses" isn't a completely accurate 
definition either since you can have converging courses in a pure
pursuit 
situation as well; I guess the best definition of what I mean by "more
or 
less facing" is "most of the ships in each force have the majority of
the 
enemy ships in its forward 180 arc" (ie. the FP/F/FS arcs, to use the
FB1 
arc  definitions). OK, this definition also includes forces flying 
parallell to one another if most of the ships are exactly lined up side
by 
side, but I hope you get what I mean anyway :-/

 >>Yes, assumptions. At least I assumed that you had more FT experience
 >>than you now appear to have,
 >
 >Depends on your definitions.	I was introduced to FT in the mid-1990s,
 >after MT but before FB1.  However, [...] (we) are
 >on the friendly-sporting side in manner of play. [...]
 >
 >It sounds like this manner of easy-going and friendly play makes me
 >unaware of the full range of both tactics and exploitation of the
rules.

Quite likely, yes. With "experience" I meant the range of different 
situations (both tactics and designs) encountered as well as the total
time 
spent on playing; and if your group hasn't experimented much with
"oddball" 
designs or tactics then the range of situations you've encountered is 
probably fairly narrow even though you've racked up many gaming hours.

 >(BTW tactics are good, exploitation: bad)

Agreed! But - and here I go off on a tangent again - where exactly do
you 
draw the line between "tactics" and "exploitation"?

Eg., your group's use of TMF 400+ SDNs isn't exactly "tactics", and
whether 
or not you were aware of it it certainly does take advantage of one of
the 
main flaws in the FB1 ship design rules (ie. its consistent underpricing
of 
large ships relative to smaller ones). I know other gaming groups where 
such huge ships would definitely be considered "exploitation" (or to use

more common terms in gaming groups, "power-gaming" and "cheese" :-/ )
but 
who happily used the "MD burn, rotate, then use side thrusters to 
accelerate further" bug/feature of the FB1 Vector rules in their
on-table 
tactics. And so on.

 >>[On the raider-vs-T8B5 scenario]
 >>
 >>>>  IOW, if you want a realistic assessment of what the T8B5 can do
 >>>> you
 >>>> probably need to reconsider the "if a ship leaves the table it
 >>>> disengages" rule :-/
 >>>
 >>>Do you have any suggestions on how to determine when, where and how
 >>>the ship re-enters the play area?
 >>
 >>Simply repeat the set-up process. On a large enough table it will
 >>usually not take more than 2-3 turns before the T8B5 is back in
position
[...]
 >
 >What I was looking for is a general guideline that can be used in our
 >games, rather than just single ship duels.

General guidelines are good as long as you're aware when they are no
longer 
appropriate :-/ In this case, guidelines for single-ship duels aren't 
necessarily appropriate for medium-sized or larger battles.

Very generally speaking there are two different categories of situations

where ships leave the table:

1) A ship accidentally leaves the table but wants to re-join the battle

2) A ship intentionally leaves the table (or it leaves accidentally but 
doesn't want to re-join the battle anyway, eg. due to combat damage) but

the *enemy* wants to continue the fight and therefore start pursuing it.

In the first category, a ship which left the table under Cinematic
movement 
can return in a minimum of 2*(angle between last course and the table
edge, 
measured in facings)/(max turn rate) game turns. (Ie., if the ship
leaves 
perpendicularly to the table edge the angle is 90 degrees = 3 facings,
so 
if it can make 2-pt turns it needs at least 2*3/2 = 3 turns to return to

the battle). It'll then return further down the same table edge it left
on 
a "mirror course" to the one it left on (so if it left at a 30-degree
angle 
to the table, it'll return at a 30-degree angle as well one or two turns

later).

If the ship wants to enter on another course and/or over a table edge 
adjacent to the one it left, it'll take longer to return since it isn't 
taking the shortest path back to the table; similarly if the table
scrolls 
further away from the off-table ship it'll also take longer before it
can 
re-join the battle. Of course, if the table starts scrolling *towards*
the 
off-table ship, or if it manages to repair engine damage while
off-table, 
it'll return to the table sooner. Either way the ship which left returns
to 
the same ongoing battle, so there's usually no need to set a completely
new 
battle between the surviving forces.

('Course, if the force that left the table and wants to return was 
substantial - eg. a largely undamaged division of capital ships along
with 
their close escorts - and the enemy has completely destroyed the
remaining 
opposition but has itself taken severe damage before the off-table ships

can return, then I might set the game up anew anyway to reflect the
"on-table"
force turning away temporarily to reform their formation etc. before the

returning "off-table" force can catch up with them.)

In the second category OTOH, the main question is who is fastest - the
ship 
that left the table and wants to disengage, or the pursuing enemy? If
the 
ship that left has the higher thrust rating (or withdraws into
hyperspace), 
then the enemy almost certainly won't catch it (unless they start with a

HUGE speed advantage, and even then it is rare). If instead the two
sides
have the same thrust rating but the pursuers start out with a higher 
velocity (including any acceleration the disengaging ship can make
before 
the pursuit starts), or if the pursuers have a higher thrust rating,
then 
the pursuers will catch up eventually unless the disengaging ship
arrives 
at its destination and/or withdraws into hyperspace before they can do
so. 
In this case it is almost always easier to set the game up anew instead
of 
playing out each turn of pursuit and try to calculate where and when the

disengaging ship will re-appear on the table.

In my experience the first category of situations is the most common in 
medium-sized battles like the ones you describe (10-20 ships per side)
or 
larger fights. (If the ships leaving the battle are too badly crippled
to 
want to return to the battle - thus putting them into the second
situation 
above - there usually isn't much point in playing out the "battles" that

occur when the victorious enemy hunts them down. Of course there are 
exceptions to this as well!)

The T8B5 vs Kra'Vak duel we've been discussing, OTOH, fall squarely into

the second category - and it is the slower side (the Kra'Vak) which
wants 
to disengage, yet it cannot withdraw into hyperspace since that'd
prevent 
it from reaching and attacking the star system's infrastructure (which
was 
the basic assumption behind the scenario). Because of this it is easier
to 
re-set the game each time either ship leaves the table.

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry