Re: Cinematic vs. Vector movement

Brian B wrote:

>
>company's uber-anal security policy won't
>allow me to view the archives.  But my original
>impression of the issue was that someone thought that
>the rules for movement resulted in a choice of weapons
>tactics they found objectionable because they didn't
>resemble what that person thought combat should look
>like.	If I misunderstood, again, I'm sorry for the
>error, and I'd be happy to rethink my position if
>someone can present me with evidence to the contrary.
>
>
>The question is, do the rules represent vector
>movement accurately?  If not, i agree with you.  If
>they DO, and the only problem is with how they affect
>fire resolution, then I return to my stand thast
>that;'s probably more an aesthetis issue and not a
>realism issue.
>
>
As the original poster, perhaps I can clear this up.

1) My group plays cinematic (I have played vector exactly four times, 3 
w/ EFSB & 1 w/ FB1), so I have no personal gripe about vector, except 
that it makes the Liberal Arts types in our group twitch uncontrollably
:)

2) While Lurking here, I have seen several posts from people who do play

vector complaining about perceived problems, and I thought that I would 
try and help.

3) The problems that I was trying to solve were these (as identified by 
others):
A) In FB2 vector, multi-arc weapons are not as useful as they are in 
cinematic.  This is because each ship always ends its orders with a 
Rotate Ship order to bring the (much more predictable) expected loci of 
the intended target ship into the maneuvering ship's primary (front) 
firing arc.  Therefore the general FB1 & FB2 ships (with numerous 
multi-arc weapons) are at a disadvantage against home designed ships 
"optimized" for vector rules with all weapons having minimum arcs to the

front, and thus more weapons for the same points and mass.
B) The FB2 Advanced Grav Drive vector ability to direct MD thrust in any

direction is significantly less useful than the AGD cinematic ability to

use any amount of thrust for turning. This is because it is easy either 
to rotate the ship to burn the drives and then return to point at the 
enemy (because of unlimited Rotate Ship orders) or, for ships with 
Thrust 4 or less, it can be more efficient to use maneuvering thrusters 
to accelerate sideways rather than spending 2 points to Rotate the ship 
and then Rotate back after accelerating/decelerating.  Therefore AGD are

overpriced in vector compared to normal (human/phalon) drives.

After re-reading the rules, I noticed that in the FB2 vector rules 
update, ships were allowed any number of Rotate Ship maneuvers as a 
change from FB1.  This seemed to indicate a source of the problem.

In three of the four vector games that I played, all with very different

starting situations in terms of initial position and initial direction 
of travel, after the first pass or general melee, the ships ended up 
traveling roughly parallel courses (slowly converging or diverging) and 
exchanging fire.  Since this happened several times, I figure that this 
is not an uncommon result.  Further contemplation brought me to conclude

that on a larger (star system) scale, most engagements in a vector type 
setting would result in situations like this.  This is based on the 
Newtonian physics of an approach in-system after emergence from FTL and 
that a task group or squadron already in-system which desires to engage 
the enemy (rather than a single high speed pass or simply "RUN AWAAAY") 
would usually end up on a converging parallel course, and then the two 
groups would jockey to keep the range at their own optimum while denying

the same to their opponent, if possible.

I then thought about how the new rules (as presented by the complaints 
posted to this group) would affect the situation.  I figured that 
point-to-shoot ships would look funny as they rotate 90 degrees to their

course, burn the drive briefly to accelerate or decelerate, then  rotate

90 degrees back to fire at an opponent off their port/starboard beam, 
then repeating this sequence each turn.  I also thought that it would be

illogical for a ship (e.g. with T:4) to be able to fire the maneuvering 
thrusters (2 points max) and be able to get the same accel/decel as 
rotating the ship (1 point), burning the drive (2 points), and rotating 
back (1 point).  The same for a ship trying to hold open the range by 
remaining pointed at the enemy and burning retro-thrusters (forward) to 
move the ship away from the enemy at the same rate as rotate - MD burn -

rotate.  However, I can see how the AGD vector abilities should be very 
useful in this situation, especially with the KraVak point-to-shoot ship

design philosophy.  They could effectively accelerate or decelerate 
sideways while keeping all of their single arc weapons bearing on their 
intended target.

This is why I suggested limiting Rotate Ship maneuvers to 1 Rotate per 
game turn (but at any point in the ship's order sequence) and reducing 
the thrust potential of the maneuvering thruster to 1/2 or 1/4 MU per 
point of thrust (but with no limit on the number of different thruster 
burns).  I feel that these two changes taken in concert would alleviate 
the problems of the limited utility of multi-arc weapon mountings and 
the limited advantage of the AGD compared to its point cost.

J