combat spoilers for "Movements of Fire and Shadow" (was: EFSB: new info from recent eps)

first, some spoiler space in case you really don't want to know about
some
of the combat scenes ahead of time:

		GGG	 OOO	  OOO	 DDDDD
	       G   G	O   O	 O   O	 D    D
	      G     G  O     O	O     O  D     D
	      G        O     O	O     O  D     D
	      G  GGGG  O     O	O     O  D     D
	       G   G	O   O	 O   O	 D    D
		GGG	 OOO	  OOO	 DDDDD

  M	  M    OOO    RRRR     N     N	IIIIII	N     N    GGG	  !!  !!
  MM	 MM   O   O   R   R    NN    N	  II	NN    N   G   G   !!  !!
  M M	M M  O	   O  R   R    N N   N	  II	N N   N  G     G  !!  !!
  M  M M  M  O	   O  RRRR     N  N  N	  II	N  N  N  G	  !!  !!
  M   M   M  O	   O  R   R    N   N N	  II	N   N N  G  GGGG  !!  !!
  M	  M   O   O   R    R   N    NN	  II	N    NN   G   G
  M	  M    OOO    R    R   N     N	IIIIII	N     N    GGG	  **  **

And if you kept reading but are tired, THAT ought to have woken you
some!

Rob Pruden <rpruden@theriver.com> pens:
>
>I just watched this week's B5 ("Movements of Fire and Shadow") and
whoa,
>what an episode!  Lots of space battles for us to simulate with EFSB/FT
>2.5.  We see some new systems in use by some of the combatants that
haven't
>been previously shown in the game as is.  Any ideas on how to depict
them
>in the game?  Replies should probably come with spoiler warnings just
in
>case.

Well, here's my take on it. For starters I've always thought the Vorchan
cruiser as being seriously undergunned in the game. At least I would
like
to boost it's main battery to be a Class-3 batt.

The missiles used by both the Centauri and Drazi in the opening scenes
I interpret to be variants on the same theme: salvo-missiles! The Drazi
appear to fire these guys from their wings, so I would be inclined to
call
them external racked SMs. The Centauri, on the other hand, fire 'em from
inside their ship, and these appear to be almost omni-directional (yuk;
I *hate* that! ;) and I would classify them as being Salvo Missiles,
also,
just a different breed (and multiple arcs of fire). With some small
amount
of on-board guidance, perhaps?? They seemed to possess some limited
intel
by the way they tracked in on the Drazi ships (I don't think more than
any
two Centauri SMs hit any given Drazi cruiser).

I don't believe there is any way we can depict things *exactly* using
the
FT/FT2.5 (or even FT3 when it's ready and out) systems, so I'm thinking
that
just putting a single salvo-missile launcher with a small magazine on
the
Vorchans (with the option of being able to also mount Ortillery and/or a
few MT
missiles), and putting 1 or 2 SMRs on the Drazi Sunhawks (I am presuming
those
were the vaunted Sunhawks) would be representative.

As for the final scenes, well, the Narns havent' changed: they still
have their
HBWs mounted on their massive cruisers (which look like they way
out-mass the
Drazi ships! call 'em dreadnoughts? superdreads?). The Drazi appear to
have
a version of the HBW as well as pulse batteries mixed on their ships
(kinda
like the WhiteStars, which, btw, appear to be able to smoke Vorchans
with a
single shot - so why did Delenn's ship not take a few out to reduce the
amount of firepower heading her way? *shrug* not my universe...)

I can only imagine the hoopala that's going on now on the Babylon5 Wars
list.
;-)

Mk
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