RE: [FT] Vector Silliness

> As has been discussed before, there is a little silliness in the
vector
> movement rules.
>
> Once can use the Main Drive (MD) to thrust one's full thrust
> amount, change
> your facing directly away from your heading, and use "push"
> thrusters to add
> 1/2 your MD rating. This effectively give a ship 1.5 the thrust rating
of
> the ship.
>
> Current rules do not allow a "push" forward. So if a ship spend the
entire
> turn using the main drive, it is only .75 times as effective as
> if it takes
> the time to turn and use the less powerful "push" thrusters. This is
utter
> silliness.
>
> I see three ways to change this:
>
<SNIP>

I'd add a couple other ways.  Remove the separate pools of thrust for
main
drive and manuvering and have all of the thrust come from the same pool,
but
allow only half to be used for pushes or to rotate.  If a ship rotates
during a turn, it should take some time for the rotation to actually
happen
so when a main drive burn would occur at the new facing, the full Main
Drive
amount would not be available.

Or another option that would keep separate pools of thrust as they are
now.
Allow a ship to rotate to any facing for only 1 point of thrust, but
then
for each facing change from rotation, the amount of Main Drive available
that turn is reduced by 1.  The MD reduction is not due to any increase
in
power needed to rotate further, but instead happens because less time
available in the turn for the MD to actually burn and move the ship
because
during part of the turn the ship is rotating and amy MD thrust during
the
rotation would not have the desired effect.  Pushes would also be
reduced by
rotation in the same way.  A order of full MD burn and a full push port
would still be allowed since facing did not change so both burns would
be
able to last the whole turn.

This last option seems pretting interesting, but there is probably some
drawback that I am not thinking of.

Dean
(Who will at least get a start on his GenCon review sometime later
today)