Re: No longer ...

Thomas Barclay wrote:

> Oerjan spake thusly upon matters weighty: 
>  Try fighting a large battle in SFB, for example
> > (although SFB have a lot of other features that slow the game down
> > as well, of course).
> 
> Having fought at least 1 18,000 BPV battle in SFB (hoo boy what a 
> battle), 

Similar in scope to the ISW-4 battles, I suspect <shudder>

> I think the other rules got in the way as you say. But I'm 
> not sure that fire during movement is a bad idea. 

In SFB, no. In Full Thrust, yes - because of the simultaneous movement
and lack of hexes. There is no obvious place in which to interrupt the
FT
movement in order to execute the under-way fire. Sure, you could move
all
ships half-way, then fire some of them, then move them the rest, but it
would only push the problem away a bit, to those ships travelling at
double speeds... and you get two movement phases, both of which take as
long time to execute as the single one we had before. Hex-based movement
is a *lot* faster to execute than measured movement in my experience -
it
is the measuring which takes time.

> Frankly, having an 
> inability to do this is a rather annoying limitation. It would slow 
> the game somewhat, but it does elimintate some rather glaringly 
> unlikely maneovres. 

Not unless you can fire at any point during the movement, and that slows
down the game to a crawl. The best we could come up with was to start
each movement phase with declaring/indicating how each squadron (or
individual ship) would move, then determine how big a fraction of the
move should be carried out before someone wanted to fire, move all ships
that far, fire, determine the next fraction before the next fire
exchange, etc.

> Just how long do we think it takes modern weapons  to inflict damage? 

Just how long (ie, how many shots) do you think it takes to achieve even
one single *hit* at a range of 20,000 km at ships moving at high speeds?

> Don't get me wrong, I'm not suffering munchkinism. But I find the 
> move-fire system simpler, but NOT more elegant because of the 
> tactical constraints it forces upon you.

Simpler, yes. More elegant, yes - because the alternatives I've seen
becomes horrendously clumsy, and horrendously clumsy is by definition
*not* elegant by any means :-(

Later,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@nacka.mail.telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry