Re: B5 Ship Combat

Oerjan Ohlson wrote:>	       At least some Drazi ships do similar
manoeuvres, and EarthForce
>heavies  seem to do so as well from time to time - though at a much
slower
>rate,	making it harder to see.

To which Jared replied:
> This is blatantly not true.	       In the 1st season episode "A
Voice
>in the Wilderness, Part 2", the heavy cruiser Hyperion does not rotate
to
>bring her main (fixed forward) armament to bear, rather she fires all
of
>her turreted secondary weapons in a port broadside.
[ munch more examples ]

Jared is right about the Earthforce ships. There is only one
case I can think of where an EA ship does any kind of tactical
manouvering, the Hyperion in "A Voice in the Wilderness" does
make an offscreen "come about" and seems to approach the enemy
ship head on.

In defence of EA, J Michael Straczynski has said online that
he envisioned the battles taking place at long ranges, but for
dramatic purposes only the battle between the Narns and Shadows
in "The Long, Twilight Struggle" really shows the distances.

Plus the EA ships are described in the B5 Wars book as having
all the agility of cast-iron bathtubs, and compared to White
Stars, Minbari, or Shadows, they are. So they probably *are*
turning in the B5 scenes, it just isn't detectable by human
eyes in the limited time available :-)

(I've tried designing some Earthforce ships for FT. The Nova
got Thrust-2 only because they do seem able to do a 180
without first coming to a stop, and the Omega Thrust-3 as
supposedly being faster.)

	Hugh