Re: Inches versus CM (was Re: Vector Movement)

On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Tom McCarthy wrote:

> I've played in both inches and centimetres and prefer to play in
inches.

whereas i've played both and prefer cm!

> It's only a preference and others will prefer centimetres, but I find
that
> small scale gives high speeds which leads to brief battle passes and
short
> exchanges of fire.

in favour of metric, i'd say that it gives a bigger table, which gives
more room for maneuver: it's actually possible to be well out of range
of
a 3-battery on a norma table, which changes things quite a lot.

people do tend to go faster, and so combat can tend to consist of many
short engagements rather than one long one, but it depends strongly on
the
players. i find that my ships travel at speends of about 2 to 3 times
their thrust regardless of scale (this is largely deliberate).

> Also, the miniatures can get awfully close together in inches or
> centimetres.	In centimetres, moving two ships so they'll physically
fit can
> make a big difference to the game (say 4 or 5 cms; a lot against salvo
> missiles or pulse torpedoes, potentially significant against beams). 
In
> particular, GW and AOG miniatures are almost too big for inches scale,
as
> are the very largest and broadest GZG miniatures (FSE fleet carrier,
NAC
> superdreadnought, etc.).

i admit that i do have fairly small minis - my largest ship is a NAC BC,
which is perfectly alright in metric.

tom