Re: [FT] Evasion

My thoughts on Evasion and Evasive Maneuvers are thus:

I take it as a given (read: without need for rules representation) that
all
ships are doing their utmost to evade as soon as they have an enemy on
sensors. For one ship's evasion routine, the other ship has a prediction
routine... ad nauseum

My next point varies slightly depending on what you think the FT scale
is,
but given that beam weapons travel at - or near - the speed of light,
the
odds of moving a large vessel enough to make a difference are not good.

Even "small" FT ships mass many tonnes, and even given the larger
accellerations and compensators, they don't really jink well. Current
day
destroyers "evade" in a sense, but a turn left or right doesn't even
phase
a cruise missile. Too much bulk and inertia.

A smaller ship's greatest strength is its ability to change velocity and
direction to keep it out of the arcs of the big guns. Once those
behemoths
get the bearing - lights out. Because they have a greater capacity for
delta-v, they can also go faster without worrying about overflying an
engagement - which limits their exposure to the pounding of the big boys
until they get within a range where they can return the favor.

Likewise, no small ship operates alone. Others who are more able to take
damage can distract fires while the small ships get in close. Is the
enemy
going to be looking for this? You bet. The key is to make a bigger
current
threat out of something else until your "little threat" grows into its
boots.

Schoon