Re: Space tactics

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, John Atkinson wrote:

> House Rule Jump Points:  
> Jump engines do not work within the gravity well of a star, defining 
> gravity well steep enoug to interfere (for simplicity's sake) as the 
> outer orbit slot, whether it's occupied by a planet or not.  This is 
> necessary for any sort of sensible universe, otherwise you can FTL 
> right into planetary orbit.  

That, unfortunately, doesn't help any. There are infinite points "far
enough away", and one of the problems was that of predicting the attack
vector.
 
> House rule for collisions:
> (velocity of both objects added) squared, times (mass of both objects 
> added). Under this, a ball bearing can destroy a super-dreadnought 
> moving at 200.  Shields have no effect.

It doesn't rhyme with the printed ramming rules, but I'll assume you'd
change those too (and be prepared to deal with ramships). 

It also either
 a) requires trigonometry to calculate
or
 b) blatantly ignores the concept of RELATIVE velocity

> House Rule sensor nets:
> Most well defended planets will have a ring of sensor nets sufficient 
> to pick up the signature of an operating jump engine.

Doesn't help any. I assumed the defenders automatically knew the jump-in
point as soon as the jump is actually made. If your sensors are good
enough to know X turns in advance, now that's another story...
 
> New System:
> Ball bearing launcher:  Simillar to scatter pack, usually fitted to 
> sattelites.  Mass 1.	Fires ball bearings in a 1" diameter pattern 
> which moves at a speed of 24.  May be ignored as micrometeors by any 
> ship moving less than 50" per turn.  Any ship is used to being hit by 
> micrometeors.  The catch is eventually you start going way too fast
and 
> the kinetic energy involved gets too difficult to deal with.	When a 
> ship moving 50" or more hits 'em, is impacted by 2d10 ball bearings, 
> each doing damage as per collision above.

a) It is not logical (why are ball bearings limited to speed 24"?
why is it only the ship's velocity that matters?)
b) Flattening 3d space to 2d works as long as you don't have any
area effect weapons -- and even in 2d the amount of ball bearings
required puts a serious dent in my "suspension of disbelief"
c) Covering base a), you *really* don't want to see me take this to its 
logical conclusion and use it as an offensive weapon... 

P.S. Yes, I do think Nova cannons are silly.

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