RE: B5\FT\Shadows\Telepaths

Date sent:  11-OCT-1996 09:05:31 

>  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.

This only happens to Shadow ships, who probably recoil from the pain.
As their drives are obviously not reaction/thrust based, what happens
when one goes into convulsions of agony is anyones guess. I'd say it
would be more accurate to force bioships who suffer a set amount of
damage (say one row) would be forced to use its maximum available
thruster power to decelerate.

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