RE: [OT] Ships & Spheres...or 3D representation

I once thought of doing a PBeM 3d game for full thrust.
I quickly decided that my math skills were not up to the challenge.

Each ship would need to be represented as located in 3 axis:
X, Y, Z
Furthermore each ship would need to have its orientation described by 3
numbers
R, S, T (climb/descent, yaw, roll)
And then, its course would need to be described by 3 numbers
M, N, O (climb/descent, yaw, velocity)

This is 9 numbers to discribe location, orientation, and course for each
ship.

Now for arcs, my thought was to give each ship 3 climb/descent arcs:

  Asscent	/\
	       /  \
	      |    |
  Level       |    |  
	       \  /
  Decline	\/

Elevation arcs would be assumed Level unless indicated otherwise.
Weapons
would get ONE free elevation arc. Other elevation arcs would mass/cost
the
same as a normal arc times the number of normal arcs or a minimum of 1
mass
and 3 cost. Thus a Class-3 beam that has 3 normal arcs would mass 6,
cost 18
and have the Level elevation arc. To add the Asscent elevation arc,
would
add 3 mass and 9 cost. To add Asscent and Descent arcs would add 6 mass
and
18 cost.

As I stated before, plotting movement, range and firing arcs ended up
being
beyond my mathmatical ability, so I gave it up. 

-----
Brian Bell
bkb@beol.net
http://members.xoom.com/rlyehable/ft/	 
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