Re: Pre-measuring things

The way I tend to do it is pretty loose.  We allow brief measurements as
we're
thinking things over, but we generally expect the game to progress
quickly
regardless of whether you're measuring or not, so we just don't have the
problem of pre-measuring stalling up the game.	We're good at eyeballing
and
generally only tend to measure if we've got a borderline situation or to
get
an initial measurement for purposes of gauging how far we want to go in
some
direction when we cloak.

I guess I _do_ fall along the "pre-measurement" side of things more than
I'd
thought, but I only do so because the people I play with aren't going to
get
into abusive delays of the game by measuring.  On the other hand, when I
go
to conventions and run into folks that have to measure _everything_ I've
been
known to crack off the occasional remark to the effect of, "Oh, come on,
you
actually need to _measure_ that?!" when they're getting out the ruler to
see
if something's in weapons range when it OBVIOUSLY isn't.

I guess my take is, just keep the game moving.	If you're spending
fourty
minutes a turn because you have to measure something, I'm probably going
to
ask you get on with it, because I'm not liable to take more than thirty
seconds to decide where I'm going each turn and what I want to shoot at
if
it's within reach.  If you're that big a perfectionist that you just
_have_
to get into the perfect position when it's based on guesswork anyhow,
I'd
probably bug you about it (although I'd do it good-naturedly).	We don't
even
write move orders for ships unless it becomes pretty critical (firing
salvoes
at ships moving at high speeds, for instance).
-- 
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