Re: [FT]Near Future Equipment

On Thu, 15 Apr 1999, Donald Hosford wrote:

> Jerry Han wrote:
> >
> > Have you looked at Keith Watt's Solar Thrust rules?  It's not based
on
> > the GZG timeline, but it's a good universe, and the rules are
perfect
> > for those reality monkeys out there.  (8-)
> >
> 
> No weapons except the ones in the books.

My original purpose for Solar Thrust was to provide a hard-science
setting
for Full Thrust, hence I just specified which weapons were unphysical
rather than create new ones.  But in truth, FT the weaponry isn't bad.
With 1 MU = 80 km, you can use lasers as energy weapons and of course
missiles will always be important weapon systems.  I have roughed out,
but
not written, an article on near-future weaponry and will put it up
eventually, but other than particle accelerators, mass drivers, lasers
(of
various wavelengths), and missiles, these's not much more I see in my
crystal ball by 2063.  I plan to do some energy delivered/damage
calculations, but really the FT rules are fine - there's not much need
for
new rules that not everyone will agree on.

That said, Solar Thrust is fast being expanded into a full independent
strategic, tactical, and roleplaying (!) game, and so I will probably
write some rules based on the calculations hinted at above.  

The URL for the site is:

http://www.erols.com/kwatt/SolarThrust

TTYL..
Keith

kwatt@astro.umd.edu
Univ. of Maryland Astronomy