Re: hyperspace (was: cloaking device rules)

joachim wrote:
>@:) I prefer jump/displacement drives myself, based on theoretical
>@:) physics.
>  While jump drives or jump points make for great special effects,

Well I was refering to theories, not special effects.

>I've never cared much for the idea in games.  Well, actually I never
>thought about it much until I played X-Wing, in which no spacecraft is
>ever travelling extradimensionally in any important sense.  Sure, we
>can assume that Star Wars ships travel through "hyperspace" and that
>that is something different from normal space but: they get there the
>normal way, by speeding up.

When you mention "speeding up" as per SW, it seems you're referring to
the
special effect in the film.  The book describes this differently.  You
could
think of the appearance of the ship speeding up as it's shadow as it
passes
into hyperspace (time dilation effect).  In this case, you don't
actually
have a target, just a ghost.

>@:) If all that matters is going really fast by just hard acceleration
while
>@:) less than light speed, you will probably not outrun the majority of
the
>@:) weapon systems available.
>
>  Oh, I disagree!  Let's say you could accelerate yourself by, hm,
>2000 mph/s.  You've just outrun a bullet (Paul or other tank
>afficionado please correct me if I'm wrong) and the Kravak are out of
>the game.  In FT terms, if you can accelerate by 36 m.u./turn, you can
>outrun almost anything.

Speeding up fast enough in normal space to outrun directed energy
weapons is
a bit far-fetched.  If you can outrun a beam battery, bearing on your
aft at
short range, then you are probably running FTL.  Otherwise, a reality
check
might be in store for your crew.  Even a mass driver round might out
accelerate your ship before it achieves its final velocity.

>In the real world, I would think that you
>might not be able to out-accelerate a laser or other beam weapon but I
>bet you could get outside its effective range (or targeting range)
>pretty well.  Modern laser and particle weapons have pathetic ranges

This is mainly due to current targeting and focusing systems, not weapon
range.

>and even the best theoretical ones within technological reach (H-bomb
>powered X-ray lasers and so forth) dissapate extremely quickly.  So
>anyway I bet you could outrun pretty much anything, if you could just
>run fast enough, but not (yet) faster than light.

The majority of weapon systems in FT are directed energy weapons.  Now
if
you are accelerating really fast, but not FTL, you will NOT outrun the
weapon's output.  You might get lucky and pick a direction that the
enemy's
targeting system did not predict, but chances are, if technology exists
for
you to accelerate at such ludicrous speeds in normal space (and totally
oblivious to say coping with high-g accels on your crew, or getting
whacked
by a frozen oscar meyer weiner in your path of acceleration, etc.) an
offensive targeting system will be available to predict your path the
second
you light up and place a few gigawatts of destructive energy in a
merging
path with you.

Another point to make is that if your ship is accelerating to a high
speed,
even though it might be very fast, it is still accelerating.  You don't
have
the full velocity achieved until after you have actually accelerated. 
So at
the start of your move, you would only be moving at a fraction of your
total
final velocity, not the full amount!  If you are using some ridiculus
inertialess drive or something forget the above.

>  Yeah, well this is a good point but that's why ships carry so many
>people - so that when half of them get crushed there are still enough
>left to run the thing.  The cap'n has a _really_ cushy chair, of
>course.

I think you might need to use ships full of clones the way you go
through
crew members. ;)

>@:) or the possible effects of your drives output in it's
>@:) environment
>
>  What's with the people on this list?  First it's "FT is destroying
>the natural splendor of our forests" and now it's "FTL is destroying
>our space environment"!

Destroying vacuum???  Well you could take the argument of warp
technology
rippping space or something, but it was meant as a result of how easy
your
ship might be to target when you maximize your drives output.  

>This is a good point, and it might be interesting to include a
>possible failure of some kind of anti-inertial field.

Well, since you don't really do much with crews outside of damage
control
parties, this would probably be useless.  However, the effects on
equipment
might be more relevant to the game mechanics as the FTL effects imply.

>The risks for getting a heavily damaged
>ship out of formation and into FTL turned out to be so great that we
>pretty much stopped using it.	Since we hate not using all available
>rules :) we felt forced to come up with a replacement.  I would like
>to know whether anybody else finds the FTL rules a bit too destructive
>- maybe we just had a bunch of statistical flukes and gave up on it
>too soon?

I usually don't use them in demo games for just that reason, but with
more
experienced players it demands the use of better tactics.

Mike Miserendino