Re: Weapons for Newtonian based FTIII

Phillip E. Pournelle wrote:
>	  This also means that all weapons such as missiles, fighters,
ships
> etc. must all pre-plot their movement and execute them using the Real
Thrust
> rules.

Not necessarily -- if one group writes down their orders, another
group moves, then the first group executes the orders, you've 
eliminated the interactions.  The More Full Thrust fighter rules
work this way.	 Now, you may still have to worry about
Player A's fighters moving before Player B's...

>  However, after objects have moved, check their movement lines and
> see if they crossed during the movement phase, this can have certain
effects...

I've been thinking about a "fight in the asteroid field" scenario
that has similar challenges with determining intersections.  For
stationary asteriods, I was thinking of saying that "if the new
vector (old speed + new thrust) passes within N inches of the 
asteroid, you've hit it".  Strictly speaking, the path the ship
travels isn't a straight line but rather a parabola or something,
but it's close enough for my tastes and fast to figure out.

For two moving objects, it's trickier, and IMHO you want to avoid
pro-rating movement to figure intersections.  Your suggestion that
if the movement lines intersect might lead to some "wierdness" though,
for instance, if a ship is 6" in front of a sand cloud, and both
are moving at a speed of 7" in the same direction, the movement
lines will intersect while the objects never came any closer than
6" from each other.

I like all the weapon ideas, though.  I wonder if there's a place
where we can store all these great ideas (perhaps the unoffical
FT page?) -- say a directory with weapons ideas, one file per weapon?

Daryl Poe