Re: The Vector Dilemma

Jeff spake thusly upon matters weighty: 

> My biggest problem with it is that it doesn't really represent the
> acceleration over time question into account; if you do a full burn
from
> your main drive, that should be it for the turn, you wouldn't have
time to
> do anything else.  Conversely, if you perform all these maneuvers you
> should not still be able to get in your full main drive burn.

Or not. Let's assume my ship is a km long with thrusters to match. I 
should be able to spin 360 degrees in (assuming about a tenth of a 
gee rotational accel and a 180 accel, 180 decel burn to bring us to 
rest)  80 seconds... which is a real small smidgeon of 20 minutes.... 
and 0.1 g is a pretty lax acceleration. I'd expect more like 0.5 g in 
rotational acceleration (or more!) thus giving us 36 seconds to spin 
the ship (now my math is probably gimped here... in fact, I'm quite 
sure it is, but not by orders of magnitude). And if an 
un-grav-compensated fighter can pull 9Gs in a turn, I'm sure smaller 
frigates and such could pull 5 Gs under grav compensation. Even if we 
only got the 0.1G sleepy acceleration of the ponderous merchant tug, 
it still only accounts for 1/20th of our turn. Not worth addressing 
on that scale of granularity! Now, if you rotate off line of 
movement, thrust for a goodly chunk, then rotate back, there is an 
argument that your guns have been offline, but given the fact that 
you can't do a roll in FT to bring your farside guns to bear 
(although someone had some neat ideas a while back on this front), 
and my previously mentioned comment about coming into range but not 
being penalized for that, it seems penalizing you or restricting you 
is not very fair. 

But, YMMV, and if it makes the game play the way YOU want it to play, 
go right ahead. 

/************************************************
Thomas Barclay		     
Voice: (613) 831-2018 x 4009
Fax: (613) 831-8255

 "C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot.  C++ makes
 it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
 -Bjarne Stroustrup
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