Re: Fw: Weapons for Newtonian based FTIII

On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Phillip E. Pournelle wrote:
>	  Yes.	In my own B-5 Game, I had a 24 Phase based turn that did
this.
> However, for FT you can initiate it after you see that a couple
objects came
> within a reasonable range to require an instant replay.  The
proportional
> movement shouldn't be too difficult to determine.

Famous last words...

I see a couple of problems:

First: The trig. Your examples all had neat angles. What if the 
cloud is heading in direction 12 and you're going in 11? The relative
speed is...

Sq.root((Vcloud - (Vship * sin 60))^2 + ((Vship * cos 60)^2))

A bit more math than I like to do mid-game.

Only the head-on and tail-on cases are simple.

Then, there's the addressed problem of determining whether the cloud hit

at all. With this high damage, I can foresee countless heated arguments.

Nice idea. It just needs to be more player-friendly. How about dropping 
the damage (the ships must have some kind of protection against space 
dust!) and just using the blocking effects?

Otherwise, I can see the "cast a volley of sand and run" fleets...

Also, I'd replace the per cloud penalty with per inch of cloud.

--
maxxon@swob.dna.fi (Mikko Kurki-Suonio) 	  | A pig who doesn't
fly
+358 50 5596411 GSM +358 9 80926 78/FAX 81/Voice  | is just an ordinary
pig.
Maininkitie 8A8 02320 ESPOO FINLAND | Hate me?	  |	     - Porco
Rosso
http://www.swob.dna.fi/~maxxon/     | hateme.html |