More Thoughts on Real Thrust

I'm glad to see GZG's rules do allow side-slip and braking maneuvers and
are
very reasonable without slowing the game down.
As to Daryl Poe's comments on fighters, I did some number crunching:
  Given from FTII that for a fighter squadron in a ship costing 20 FTP
and 6
Mass.  I assume that 6 FTP are expended for the hangar bay itself,
leaving
14 FTP for 6 fighters.	Assume that 1 point is devoted to engines, 1
point
devoted to the basic weapon system and 2/3 points for hull, systems etc.
I'm also assuming that a fighter has a mass of .5
  In the currently published rules a ship with mass 18 costs 1 * Mass
per 4
thrust.  This would mean that fighters would have a thrust rating of 8.
With the momentum rules and free turning ability, this is not bad. 
However,
the endurance rules would still make it difficult to operate fighters.
  With the current discussion regarding a new Thrust Efficiency rating
based
on Mass, I might be pursuaded that a fighter of Mass .5 would be on the
table at 1 * Mass per 8 thrust leaving a fighter squadron with a thrust
rating of 16.  Now fighters make a lot more sense...
   But if we operate fighters with momentum rules, it had better apply
to
mines, missiles etc.  We would also have to start looking in old source
books for other items that become effective with momentum such as sand
casters from traveller (David Brin's water ballon) and varients of these
such as sidearms (dumb rockets with a fixed thrust rating that have sand
as
a warhead).
   This also means that it may have to be a phased system of movement...
Therefore all movement is plotted and all objects move at the same time.
This works for my B5 Game but is mostly for fighter to fighter combat...
Again this all requires some realism vs. playability playtesting.
Phil P.