Re: [GZG] Space Terrain

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Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lSam said:

On very dark nights, it is possible to see the Milky Way with the
naked eye, but that's not going to affect space combat.

Tomb --> Figured so.

> Black Hole: What sorts of gravitation would  you get from a black
hole?
> Could one be put on an FT map and have any part of the map be playable
by
FT fleets at 1000 km/mu or 10000 km/mu?

Of course. You could have a black hole which is playable at 1km/mu!
It would just be a very small black hole :-)

Tomb --> I was meaning your typical collapsed star black hole, rather
than
imploded planets or the like.

If the Earth was squashed into a black hole, the gravity effects
would be the same as on my chart, as long as you stayed outside
the original diameter of the planet. Since black holing the Earth
shrinks it down to only a few kilometres, you can get a lot closer
than this, so the gravity effects go up dramatically.

Tomb --> To? Example? Let's say I squish an Earth sized and massed Class
M
planet (they're everywhere, after all). What kind of effects would I get
inside the 13" spherical region that was my former planet?

You could use them to perform very sharp turns, if you survive
tidal forces.

Tomb --> There's another good question: How many gees can an FT ship
handle
and what sorts of damages should excessive gravity do (and how to
implement
it)?

Black holes may have a large amount of matter falling into them,
and a lot of nasty radiation coming out.

Tomb --> Another interesting point, how to handle the radiation effects.

Pulsar's often rotate with periods measured in seconds (or less), so
any arc they sweep out will cover the entire table many times each
turn.

Tomb --> Sure, but is it really a damaging radiation? Out how far? How
damaging? In SFB, I seem to recall fighting near one was a real ship
grinder.

> Minefield: How best to represent this in FT terms? Contact mines?
X-ray
> laser mines pumped by a bomb? Something else?

You'd want to mine near something important, though not sure how
they'd work.

Tomb --> Well, if it was a lot of small mines, you could almost mark
them as
a region of the board where traverse allowed damage dice to be thrown
against the ship. Maybe speed would influence the number. If they were
larger mines, maybe they should feature on the map (but perhaps dummy
counters/mines should be used mixed in to simulate the stealth
properties of
real mines).

If you look at my chart, at the surface of Jupiter, you're being
pulled 20" into the planet every turn. Saturn is a more sedate 9"/turn.
Either way, if you're hitting the atmosphere at orbital velocities
it's probably going to hurt.

Tomb --> But is that relevant directly? The atmosphere of a gas giant
extends quite far doesn't it? If so, doesn't that mean that a ship could
skim the atmosphere for fuel without exposing itself to the massive
gravitation? (Of good old MT established you needed thrust 4 or
something to
land on a standard gravity world, so heavy gravity would be B-A-D news.)
And
would 'hitting the atmosphere' to skim for gas (almost like entering an
orbit) be really any worse than re-entry? The space shuttle survives
that
and I assume any GZG ship that can land would need to be able to. If you
hit
the atmosphere at other speeds, notably off from the orbital speed, I
can
see bad things happening more easily.

Tomb --> Sam mentions Comets. That's another interesting one. Would you
have
a debris trail you had to fly through doing constant damage? (I'm
thinking
of the armoured shuttles in Armageddon trying to get up behind the
planet
chunk...)