Re: [FT]Variable Fire Arcs...

Aaron Teske wrote:

> Or, take... um... I think it was the ships in Piers Anthony's Space
Tyrant
> series, that were spheres with rotating belts?  Something like that,
anyway.
>

I wonder how much extra mass the rotating belt would require?  And how
much mass
of weapons you could mount in one?

>
> Or try this reasoning for allowing many 360 degree weapons: they're
not all
> the same gun.  Personally, I'll abstract a fair number of weapons out,
> especially if I'm trying to make a design based on a miniature.  As
in,
> "these two weapons on opposite sides of the bridge structure I'll
count as
> one 360 degree weapon."  Sure, you lose a bit of flexability, but so
what?
> If you want to, you can... that's the wonder of the system.
>

In one of the early (taskforce) nexus magazines, they had a starfire
story.	It
was about the Khanate encountering a new race.	The new race's ships had
little
ports all over....for their laser beams.  They had one or two centrally
mounted
laser generators, and all of these conduits to channel the beams to the
ports.
The gunners would then select the nearest port, and "wobble" the ship a
tiny bit
to bring it to bear.

They could only fire one shot per turn like normal.  Also in Starfire
there are
no adjustable/buyable firearcs.  All weapons (even guided missles) have
a
standard arc:  F, FP,FS,AP,AS (FT equivalent)  (After a while, all of
the
starfire ships started to look the same to me...I still like the game,
many
happy memories...)

>
> Besides, I can't get the image of a Gunstar-like ship where each
gunner has
> a set of weapons available, and just spin 'round and 'roudn and 'round
> shooting at whatever's in their field of view at the time. ^_^  I
guess
> that's not loads of 6-arc weapons, but close enough....  (Now who
> knows/remembers what a Gunstar is? ^_^; )
>
> Later,
>
>					  Aaron Teske
>					  ateske@HICom.net
> LAUNCH DAY!
> A totally unprovoked attack on peaceful neighbors. Must be the race
> file. Does strange things.
>		  --Rick Kucejko, on the War Monger PRT in Stars!

The Last Starfighter  -- I think it is a very good movie.

They must recruit their pilots from amusement parks...	:)

Donald Hosford