Re: Vector Rules

Imre A. Szabo writes:
@:) Does the Space Shuttle use its main engines to rotate???
@:) 
@:) No!  It uses lots of small little manuevering thrusters to do so.
@:) There is no reason why a billion ton supper-battleship couldn't
@:) rotate, stop rotating, and then fire its main engines in one turn.

  That's all true, provided said battleship had enough fuel to spin
Status: RO

itself up and slow itself down again.

@:) Remember micro-gravity.  It doesn't take that much thrust to
@:) rotate and stop rotating a billion to supper-battleship.

  How about "remember mass"?  Or maybe "remember Newton".  It DOES
take that much thrust to rotate and stop rotating a billion ton super
battleship.  If you aren't worried about turning around any time soon,
you can use the Space Shuttle's technique.  If you have to point at
something before it kills you, you're going to start thinking about
vectoring the thrust coming from your main engines.  That's a cheap
and easy way of rotating without attaching additional engines to your
ship.

@:) Rotating should cost ZERO thrust.  The little guys will still be
@:) able to out manuever the big guys because they have more (often
@:) much more) thrust.	For game play I would limit rotating to once
@:) per turn, either before or after main engine fire.

  Not only do I think that this idea ignores physics in a large way
(and remember physics is what the vector movement system is trying to
represent) but I think it changes the feel of the game significantly.
Suddenly everyone is always in everyone else's front arc all the
time.  Enormous super ships can coast through the middle of a battle
and flip from one direction to another to pick off targets.  I prefer
a system that more closely matches the original FT "cinematic" system,
in which large ships are slow and clumsy and small ones are
manouverable.

  However,  I do think your next idea has some merit.

@:) A more time consuming method would be that each ship has one free
@:) rotation and can purchase more rotations for one thrust each.
@:) This would allow a thrust 8 destroyer to rotate (free) thrust for
@:) 2, rotate (1), thrust for 4, and rotate (1).  The thrust cost for
@:) each extra rotations is for the main engines NOT thrusting while
@:) the ship is rotating.  In other words, this is the loss of thrust
@:) the main engines could have generated while the ship is rotating.

  I think this makes some sense but I still don't like the idea of
ships rotating freely.	I would say instead that ships have thrusters,
like those found on the Space Shuttle, and they can use them to make
one heading change per turn at no thrust cost.	So ships with thrust
two can actually turn three headings per turn, and even ships with no
engines left can very slowly reorient themselves.

-joachim