Re: Ship tape names Was: New Conversion of Babylon 5

On Wed, 20 December 2000, KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de wrote:

> Naming of ship classes is a quirky matter. "Monitor" and "Dreadnought"
 
> were named after the first ship of that class. "Ships of the Line"
were 
> those able to play a role in that formation. "Destroyers" were 
> originally "Torpedo boat destroyers" designed to destroy torpedo
boats.

Very true. Torpedo Boat Destroyers (TBDs) were pretty small, too. Tiny
things, 
about the same size or a little bigger than a torpedo boat (which,
itself, actu
ally shrunk in size if you compare things like WWII Motor Torpedo Boats
and Ger
man e-boats to pre-WWI TBDs). 

 In WWII, 
> what the Brits called "Fighters" were "Pursuit planes" to the 
> Americans, "Jaeger/Hunter" to the Germans. And, BTW,
"Kampfflugzeug"/"Fightin
g 
> plane" was a bomber, not a fighter, etc...

And in WWI, what would later be called "fighters" were called "scouts"
by the B
ritish (at least). 

Dreadnoughts we think of as huge vessels, and they were the largest
battleships
 of the period. But the later WWII battleships dwarfed the WWI
dreadnoughts. Ev
en pocket battleships (battleships built, I think, on battlecruiser
hulls by th
e Germans to get around either the Treaty of Verseilles or the
Washington Naval
 Treaty, not sure which) were bigger than dreadnoughts.

> It helps acceptance if bears some resemblance to present usage, 
> though.

Definitely. The assumption since the beginning of space opera has been
that spa
ce militaries would follow a naval scheme. I suspect, though, that they
will fo
llow some sort of air force scheme. Space is what's "up" and it would be
hard f
or a nascent space force to follow a naval model. Space falls under the
control
 right now of the air force, adn I don't see them giving that up. I
suspect tha
t nomenclature, ranks, and traditions will actually come from an air
force back
ground, not navy. 

Navy makes sense for fiction, as it's the closest analogue we have. But
if I we
re to bet money, I'd bet it evolves from the air force. Instead of
references t
o boats and ships, it will be... something else.

I suspect we'd see a whole bunch of weird ship type names, probably in
some for
m of acronym. I see the whole series of naming conventions following not
a nava
l evolution but some other sort. An example of what could happen is the
way tha
t tanks got their names and designations. The name "tank" came from the
code wo
rd for the British motorized artillery platform of WWI. Eventually tanks
fell i
nto various types of tanks: light tanks, cruiser tanks, medium tanks,
heavy tan
ks. Later these even changed, to light tanks, main battle tanks,
armoured fight
ing vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, etc.

You won't see cruisers, destroyers, battleships, etc. It would be
something els
e. What? I haven't a clue. But it will be something far different, I
suspect.

But for a game, or for fiction, using naval terms has the immediate
advantage o
f acting as a metaphor. Since it's unlikely that in "reality" we'll use
naval p
arlance, we might as well stick to naval parlance as a metaphor to be
consisten
t.

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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On Wed, 20 December 2000, Jeremey Claridge wrote:

> Yes in practice very few players simply switch off and sit there while
repair
ing.
> I should add a rule where it cannot be done if in direct line of sight
of the
 enemy.
> But then if your mobility is shot you may not have the choice.

I suggest a Reaction Test to conduct repairs in the open. If failed,
they have 
to head for cover to do the repairs.

I would also suggest that if they are forced to repair in the open and
they can
 NOT move, that this would require a Confidence Test. And, possibly (not
having
 read your rules) requiring them to repair their mobility problems first
before
 anything else.

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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On Wed, 20 December 2000, "Bell, Brian K (Contractor)" wrote:

> I have looked and not found a suitable response.
> 
> If I decide to take the plunge and purchase some SG figures (enough
> for 2 sides), what combination of figures should I start with?

Most of the games I run at conventions I try to keep to about a platoon
per sid
e. I set up the games so that each player has a squad and a vehicle to
go with 
the squad. I usually have one command squad attached with their own
vehicle, or
 a command squad with a support squad of some sort.

This gives a force sufficient for a 3 to 4 hour game.

To begin play, I suggest as a minimum of three squads of, say, 8
figures. There
 should be a squad leader, a support weapon (missile launcher, plasma
gun, etc.
), a squad automatic weapon per squad, and 5 riflepersons. You can
replace eith
er the SAW or the support weapon with a rifleperson.

The command squad you can keep to about 4 figures, consisting of a
commander, a
n NCO and two rilfepersons.

That gives you 28 figures and a reasonable choice for games. You may
want to ma
ke it 6 riflepersons per squad so that you can choose to have 1 SAW and
1 suppo
rt weapon per squad, or just one SAW, or just one support weapon. That
comes ou
t to 31 figures.

I would ignore PA for now. PA you can pick up later. I would also ignore
forwar
d observers, snipers, etc. for now. You can add them once you've got a
couple o
f games under your belt, and you can always just assign a couple of
rifle figur
es for those purposes for now.

When you get rolling, you'll want more figures of course. With this as a
basis,
 you can easily add to the forces.

Oh, and before you buy more figures you may want your squads to have
some APCs.
 I'd buy APCs before I bought PA.

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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Subject: RE: Starfire, was Re: More weapon concept questions
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On Wed, 20 December 2000, "Dean Gundberg" wrote:

> If the list feels this type of info would be appropriate, I can do a
weekly
> post of the latest news but it would be mainly non-GZG products and it
may
> be a bit too far OT.

Well. This list is for GZG. We do talk about related game systems, but
it's mos
tly for GZG. On the other hand, I'd have no problem with a "latest in
the indus
try" post from you from time to time. As long as it didn't develop into
a raft 
of OT posts, keeping us all interested wouldn't be a bad idea. I mean,
we've ha
d all sorts of OT posts of the "Hey, thought you guys would find this
interesti
ng" variety.

I suggest giving it a try and if it degenerates into a whole lot of OT
posts ev
ery time you do it, you can always stop.

Allan Goodall - agoodall@canada.com
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Subject: Re: Weapons Concept Question
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> > In FT the missiles can all be launched from the ship itself in a
single
> > salvo - simply use SMRs and/or MTMs instead of SML/magazine
> > combinations.

Stilt said:
> Yeah, this is about the closest thing that FT offers to HH "missile
pods";
> you can increase your total "throw weight" (to use the HH term) for
the first
> salvo tremendously at the compromise of long-term ammunition by
substituting
> racks for launchers.	If you were to, for instance, throw half of
your missiles
> as racks instead of launchers your first missile barrage would be
about half
> again as large.

Make that "five times as large".  Unless you're worried about all your
salvos landing on an escort, there's no point in dribbling missiles at
your opponent when you can do an alpha-strike, and that's what SMR are
for.