RE: Fiddling with units

The bit about Harpoon is true, but it misses a few things.  First, naval

combat consists of 3 VERY different travel media: Air, Surface and 
Subsurface.  The difference in speeds and movement styles is radical
(AIR: 
500 knts+, sharp turns; Surface:30 knts, medium turns; Sub: 10 knts,
slow 
turns).  The speed of missiles in respect to target is also phenomenal 
(1000+ knts v. 30 knts).  Space units all work by the same principles,
and 
tend to have similar movement styles.  Space combat in FT probably
consists 
of a lot of firing through a 15 min turn, to acheive just a few hits - 
ships are small & manuverable, space is big and empty.	Fighters
probably 
launch from the carrier form up, and then receive orders from flight 
control.  I can see getting a few groups out and ready to go taking a 
while.

Noah

-----Original Message-----
From:	tom.anderson@altavista.net [SMTP:tom.anderson@altavista.net]
Sent:	Friday, July 17, 1998 02:00 PM
To:	FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
Subject:	Re: Fiddling with units

 ---- Noam wrote:
> a turn was, say _five_
> minutes.

the renowned but highly tricky naval combat 'simulation' (it's only a
game 
if it's fun :-) Harpoon uses turns which are (if i remember right) about
30 
*seconds* long; it has a 15-minute turn for when the ships are out of 
engagement range, but when the sho
oting starts it goes to a really short scale since this is the timescale

for modern naval combat - you might only have a couple of minutes to 
detect, lock on to and engage (with three layers of weapons) an incoming

missile; i always assumed that space com
bat would be even quicker.

for instance: my thrust 4 battleship, turning with thrust 2, takes 3
turns 
to turn 180 degrees (vanilla movement - FT 2nd edn, cinematic, no
frills). 
on a 15-minute scale, this is 45 minutes! i know supertankers take three

miles to stop etc, but this is r
idiculous!

ok, so maybe a game based on a 15-minute turn would work (we don't need 
Harpoon's pathological obsession with detail, although we still do have 
missiles meandering about for multiple turns), but it would have totally

different maneuver rules ("ok, turn 7
- my superdreadnought turns 120 degrees to port ...").

however: fighters. with a 30-second turn, we are talking about a carrier

launching 2 groups = 12 spacecraft in 30 seconds, which is 2.5 seconds
per 
launch; whilst realists amongst us may balk at this, just think B5, 
battlestar galactica, etc - they get th
eir fighters out in no time.

hope this isn't too wrong,
Tom

#include <stddisclaimer.h> etc