Re: A (or rather two) Solution to Midturn Firing

Noam Izenberg wrote:

> Here's a potential hardware (on the gaming table) solution to the
'firing in midturn' > problem.

Interesting, but there are several major problems with it:
 
> 1) For each ship or group of identically moving ships, you'll need a
length of string > that is equal to the distance moved by your ship,
marked off in 10 (or some other 
> arbitrary number of units) segments.
> 
> 2) Place the string between the start and end movement points of each
ship. You > now have 10 equal chronological segments marking the
location
of each dhip > through the turn.

Here's a problem with this solution: My units often fly at speeds
varying
between 10 and 30+ (40+ if using cinematic movement), and generally
changes speed from one turn to another. I usually have at least ten
ships
per side, divided into four or so squadrons. That means... well, it
means
that I have to have a *lot* of strings prepared for the battle ('cuz
marking off a new string whenever I need one also slows the game down a
lot). Not one string per speed and squadron, perhaps, but not too far
from it either.

You suggested elastic strings below. Unless you have a good way of
fixing
those strings securely to the gaming table (mine is of glass, so I can't
easily do that), this sounds like a very good way of catapulting your
models into walls, other players and similar :-(

> 3) Each player marks down what segment his weapons fire and at what
target (can > have weapoons fire on different segments if he has enough
FCS's).

Another order phase? Ah well... Deciding what to shoot at tends to take
a
lot more time than deciding where to go even now, at least IME. I'd
estimate the fire order phase to take at least three times as long as
the
movement order phase :-(

> 4) Fire is revealed simultaneously and taken care of in chronological
order.
> - A ship firing on segment 3 fires from his segment 3 location at the
segment 3 
> location of his target.
> - A ship marked as firing on a later segment that has its weapon
damaged on an 
> earlier one cannot fire the damaged weapon.

Some questions:

* What happens when a ship loses its engines mid-turn?
* When you move an entire squadron, the position of each ship won't
agree
with the marks on the string (assuming one string per squadron to
simplify things). Reasonably easy to figure out where the units will be,
though.
* How do you handle fighters and missiles?

> While not inherently horrendously clumsy (IMHO) there are Limitations
for which > YMMV:

Not horrendously clumsy, at least not in theory, but... there are some
additional problems:

> - Weapons should not be allowed to fire faster than once per full
turn,
so a weapon > fired on segment 10 of one turn couldn't fire on segment 1
of the next and would > have to wait until segment 10.

Won't work very well for point defences, though. Or, rather, it will
work, but it will render them pretty much useless.

> Requires some  record keeping that could get cumbersome in large
engagements.

No. Requires quite a lot of record keeping that will get very cumbersome
in large engagements. I'm used to keeping track of shield regeneration
and primary beam fire rates in Starfire; this is a lot worse since it
includes every single weapon instead of just a few.

> - It adds _some_ extra time to the turn, but not nearly so much as the
impulse by > impulse drag of SFB, especially once some experience with
the new hardware is 
> gained.

IE, when you've learned to find the strings you're looking for...

> - It's probably cumbersome for large fleets, unless they group
movement
> - Given the wide variety of speeds, elastic string, or a set of
pre-marked templates > would be the thing to use.

See my comments above.

> Interesting benefit:
> Allows strategic option of holding fire for optimum range, and
strategic limitation for > close range movement.

Well... this is what the under-way fire is all about, so it shouldn't
come as a surprise :-/ One benefit which you didn't mention is that
Wavegun and Nova Cannon will intercept their targets during the move
rather than at the starting or end points only; similarly missiles would
get a much larger interception envelope if they're able to attack all
along their path.

Although this is an interesting proposal, I don't think it will work
very
well in practise. The problems I see with it far outweigh the advantage
it gives IMO.

Then Jared wrote:

> ** Multi-segment combat system **
> Each ship was given firing orders - Early,Spread, or Delayed fire. 
There
> were two firing segments per turn - one at the movement midpoint
(where
you
> make your second turn), the other at the end.  Your firing orders did
not
> restrict your targets, but restricted the percentage of your weapons
you
> could fire in a given segment:
> 
> Orders     1st Segment   2nd Segment
> Early      Any	   Up to 1/4
> Spread     up to 2/3	   up to 2/3
> Delayed    up to 1/4	   Any
> 
> If you plotted delayed fire, in hopes to smash you opponent at a
closer
> range, only to find he accelerated more than you anticipated and
closed
the
> range in the first movement segment, you would only be able to respond
with
> a small number of your weapons, and hope to God you live to the second
> phase to retaliate with the rest. The only 2 restrictions were that
each
> weapon could only fire once per turn, and you could not plot Early
fire
> immediately after Delayed fire.
 
This is easy to implement and doesn't add much complexity, but it
doesn't
really solve the problem - as I noted in an earlier post, it just
doubles
the speeds where the lack of under-way fire becomes a problem. For
short-range weapons (Class-1 batteries etc), the trouble speed goes up
from 13 to 25... which is still well within the speed ranges I'm used to
flying at.

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