Re: Marking extrapolated ship locations

At 01:07 PM 8/14/98 -0900, you wrote:
>_Almost_
>
>Be aware however that it is both legal and reasonable to do a full burn
of
>the main drive, as well as full burn of the thrusters - of course,
these
>pushes would be perpendicular to the facing - any pilot who burns the
main
>drive on full and the retro thrusters on full over the course of the
entire
>turn should be shot.  But in any case, you end up with a move of 8.94
(call
>it 9) which is offset from the main course a bit.  But this is a far
cry
>from the silly idea of 11.

Hmm.

Sounds like we're visualizing two different systems here.  What you are
describing is two different independently-powered ship's systems; a main
drive and a set of maneuvering thrusters.  What I thought we were
discussing was a single drive system which could channel its thrust
through
either the main drive or the thrusters, but not both.  Guess my idea is
a
holdover from FT2 and the EFSB.

If it is as you describe, why not install thrusters independent of the
main
drive; why limit yourself to the 1:2 ratio that exists now?  Why can't I
buy extra maneuvering thrusters?  In fact, what if I don't want a main
drive at all; just 360-degree maneuvering thrusters?  Do we make
separate
threshold checks for the thrusters independent of the main drive?  Or
for
each individual thruster?  What if your port side thrusters are knocked
out, but the starboard ones still work?

I'm not flaming you, just brainstorming.  This might be perfectly valid
for
lower-tech near future backgrounds, it's just not quite what I was
visualizing.

Jeff