B5 and Sir Isaac - Reply

The "baffled" David Brewer, he say:

>Have I missed something? I like B5, indeed a few weeks ago I
>sat down and watched years 2 and 3. It never occurred to me
>that I found appeal in its display of Newton's Laws. Am I weird?

Are you weird? No (not because of this, anyway. What you do in your own
time
is your business. B-) ) Have you missed something? Perhaps.

>Indeed I'm hard pressed to recall any particular examples of
>its display. I recall StarFuries (and perhaps the White Star)
>rotating 180 degrees to brake or return fire... and that's it.
>I don't recall any starships powersliding sideways or the like.

There are quite a few examples of Newtonian/3-D movement, mostly
involving
fighters, especially StarFuries. Cases in point (from memory):
-- "Midnight on the Firing Line": Sinclair rotates 180 degrees to zap a
pursuing
Raider
-- "Soul Hunter": Lots of tight, close-in manoeuvring using all the
StarFury's
thrusters as Sinclair tries to grapple the tumbling Soul Hunter ship
-- "Signs and Portents": Garibaldi vectors up and out of the line of
fire of a
Raider, then rotates nose-down to zap him as he overshoots
-- "Revelations": G'Kar's fighter escort 180's to stop pursuing Shadows
-- "The Fall of Night": The female Zeta Squadron pilot who dodges
Keffer's
attack, then zaps him a la Garibaldi in S&P. Later, 'Furies strafe the
Centauri
BC, rotating nose-down to fire as they fly by
-- "Severed Dreams": The EarthForce reinforcements (including 2 Omegas)
rotate about their yaw axes to head for the jumpgate before the incoming
Minbari decide to attack

There are lots of other, smaller examples of ships and fighters
uncoupling their
heading from their facing -- a StarFury speciality.

>Ships, IIRC, move like... ships. Slowly and in the direction they
>face. Fighters zip around them like aeroplanes. Shadow ships
>seem to stop dead when attacked by telepaths, in flat 
>contravention of Newton's laws. Am I mistaken?

Oh, B5 isn't perfect -- look at Centauri and Raider fighters -- although
a lot of the
seeming inaccuracies can be explained away as the product of POV
movement,
field drives, etc. -- if you really _want_ to explain it away. In
"reality", the FX
people aren't clued up on what true Newtonian movement in space looks
like.

And, I have to admit, I can't even begin to justify the Shadows' habit
of
"stopping" when a telepath jams them or they get hit by, say, a White
Star's
BYEW...

>I don't even recall anything resembling a tactical manoeuvre,
> just material, heroism and the occasional new weapon.

Take a look at the episodes listed above, and you'll see some. The point
is that
B5 has made more of an effort to do it right than any other series. Star
Trek is
quite entitled to do what it likes regarding FTL movement, because
no-one
knows how (or _if_) that works, but they always mess up sub-light
flight, most
especially by equating thrust/power with _speed_ rather than
acceleration (so
FT has one up on them, anyway). Other series/films are either
deliberately or
through ignorance based on aircraft/ship movement. Only B5 has even
tried to
get it right; they don't always succeed but, all in all, JMS and co. do
a much
better job than any other show I know of.

That being the case, there is, I believe, a strong feeling among the
members of
this list that a B5 game should do what the series itself hasn't been
able to
achieve completely -- namely, use a proper, correct-as-we-can-make-it,
playable
Newtonian movement system that doesn't require a computer or a
qualification
in navigation to use. Not an easy task, but worth the effort if we can
get it right
or help someone else do it.

As far as the appeal of B5 and Sir Ike's laws go, I think it boils down
to what
makes a good SF TV show (or book, story or film, for that matter).
You've got to
have a good plot and good characters, and SFX are a big help (although
look at
Dr Who, B7, early ST, etc.), but, to make it really work, it has to be
_believable_. Oh, sure, you can postulate FTL travel, transporters,
psionics and
the like, but once you've done that, you have to work out how they work
and
stick to the rules. To quote Larry Niven, internal consistency is all.
B5 has done
this and, most of the time, they make the effort to play out their
conflicts within
these boundaries -- one of which is Newtonian physics. There are some
classic
errors in B5, but they have at least tried.

So, yes, one of the attractions of B5 for me is that they base their
visuals on
real physics (it also leads to some lovely scenes, like the StarFuries
strafing the
BC, that you just don't get in other shows). And because of that, I want
B5
games to reflect those principles. And I think we can do it.

Phil
-------------------------------------------------------------
 Gravity is a Downer... So let's go flying!
   -- so sayeth Phil Atcliffe (p-atclif@uwe.ac.uk)