B5\FT\Shadows\Telepaths

Mike Wikan writes:
@:) After FINALLY seeing Walkabout, Here are my first pass telepath v. 
@:)
@:) [...]
@:)

  This email may contain minor spoilers for those who have not seen
Walkabout.

  So after FINALLY seeing it myself, I noticed a minor(?) discrepancy
between the B5 universe and our own Mark Kochte's B5 rules regarding
Heavy Beam Weapons.  Someone else had some rules to do with BREWs and
their ilk but I forget who it was so I didn't look those rules up.

  In Walkabout we found out a pretty thing about HBWs.	Because of the
enormous amount of freely-flowing energy travelling through one of
these beams, physics, causality and common sense are all locally
suspended, resulting in the SMPD (or stop-motion plot device) effect.
This effect cause ships hit by these large energy weapons to stop dead
in their tracks for reasons which Dr. Newton would probably have had a
hard time explaining.  Nevertheless, it happened.  Thus this brief
document.  Veni, Vidi, I wrote a rule, as they say.

  SMPD effect of HBW:
  Each point of damage caused by an HBW also reduces the velocity of
  the ship hit by the beam by one unit (inch, generally) per turn.
  The reduction in velocity goes into effect during the next turn and
  should be entered into the movement plot as a -N, where N is equal
  to the total damage done by HBWs fired by ships in the target ship's
  front arc in the previous turn.

  To keep this simple, the SMPD effect can be assumed only to occur
when the firing vessel is in the front arc of the vessel hit by the
beam.

  That's it, but I think it could make a big difference in the way
battles, and fleet actions in particular, are fought.  Ships have the
capability to stop other ships dead in their tracks just by shooting
at them.

-joachim