Re: Vector Movement

Jared Hilal wrote.

1) At the risk of picking nits; the problem is not rotate-burn-fire, but

rather rotate-burn-ROTATE-fire.

This is the *esthetic* problem Jared has with the current Vector rules. 
Unfortunately neither it isn't the *game balance* problem he intended
his 
proposal to solve

Actually, this is the root cause of the problems (symptoms) that I am 
trying to solve,

No, it isn't - at least not if the problems you're trying to solve are
the 
game balance problems of Advanced drives and wide-arc weapons being
badly 
overpriced in Vector.
I already explained this in the post you replied to further down in this

post, but here it is again in a shorter form:

Manoeuvre in Full Thrust is only really important in that it allows your

ships to (or prevents them from) getting into positions where they can
fire 
their weapons at the enemy, and/or into positions where the enemy ships 
can't return fire effectively.

In Cinematic, with its quite limited abilities for ships to change
facing, 
wide-arc weapons are easier to point towards the enemy (and thus more 
valuable) since you don't need to change course as much to do so as you 
would if you used narrow-arc weapons. Similarly Advanced drives improve 
your ability to change facing, thus giving you advantages similar
(though 
not identical) to those you get from wide-arc weapons.

FB Vector allows *any* ship can rotate to bring its narrow-arc weapons
to 
bear on the enemy, due to its any-angle rotations. The *number* of 
rotations in Vector matters very little, if at all, to the relative 
worthlessness of Advanced engines and wide fire arcs in Vector; the 
important difference is that in Vector a thrust-2 ship can turn 180
degrees 
in a single turn while in Cinematic that same ship could only turn 30 
degrees per turn.

It is the *angle* a ship can rotate which is by far the most important 
factor, since that is what determines whether or not you can bring your 
weapons to bear against the enemy, not the *number* of rotations it can 
make. As long as you allow any ship is able to rotate the full 180
degrees 
in a single turn no matter what its thrust rating is you'll have these
game 
balance problems with wide-arc weapons and Advanced drives being
overpriced.

Anyways, for ships with low thrust (which happen to be the larger
ships), 
this means that the single-side thrusters are often close to half as 
powerful as the main drive.  Huh?

All of the single-side thrusters taken together are close to half as 
powerful as the main drive on its own, yes. Is there a problem? (BTW, 
towards the end of this post you're actually - though accidentally - 
arguing that the FB1 background blurb describes precisely this kind of 
powerful single-side thrusters :-/ )

Unfortunately for your suggestion, you haven't correctly identified the 
problem. (Unfortunately for GZG, neither did we playtesters during the
FB1 
and FB2 development :-/ )
Then what is the root cause of the problem?

I explained this in detail in the post you're replying to. Your question

here suggests that you didn't actually read what you replied to - is
that 
correct?

What your suggestion does is to prevent the narrow-arc ships from
keeping 
the enemy under continuous fire (ie. shooting at him every turn) *while 
accelerating away from him*. Trouble is, this is merely a special case
of 
the real problem - and removing this special case while leaving the real

problem unsolved won't make wide-arc weapons any more useful.

The real problem is that the narrow-arc ships can keep the enemy under 
continuous fire *at all*, as opposed to Cinematic where narrow-arc ships

tend to make an attack run and then spend several turns during which
they 
can't fire on lining up for their next attack run (or else come to a
full 
stop, in which case they can rotate freely but make themselves very easy

missile targets and also allow the enemy to control the range).

But in vector, narrow arc standard drive ships should be able to keep
the 
enemy under continuous fire if they forego accelerating in any direction

except towards the enemy.

 From an *aesthetics* point of view I don't disagree with your "should".
I 
thought so too both five and three years ago; that's why I pushed so
hard - 
and, unfortunately, successfully - for allowing ships to rotate through
any 
angle for a single thrust point in the FB1 and FB2 movement systems.
(Funny 
though; you're the very one who listed a number of examples where 
vector-moving ships in a certain TV show did *not* rotate to keep their 
narrow-arc weapons trained on the target continuously in spite of not 
attempting to get anywhere in particular ;-) )

It's just that these any-angle rotations are precisely the root cause to

the *game balance* problem: they are the very reason why wide-angle
weapons 
and Advanced engines are badly overpriced by the FB ship design system
if 
you play Vector.

If you want to solve these two game balance problems you only have two 
options: either devise a completely different set of ship design rules
for 
Vector movement (ie. lower the price of wide-arc weapons and Advanced 
drives to match their value in Vector), or restrict the angle a ship can

rotate in a single turn (ie. increase the value of  wide-arc weapons and

Advanced drives to match their price).

(Of course there's a third option, namely to ignore the game balance and

the ship design rules entirely, but since that doesn't actually *solve*
the 
problems and it wasn't what you said that your proposal was intended to
do 
I'm leaving that option out for now.)

This, combined with your "while accelerating away from him" results in
the 
majority of cases, rather than the "special case", as you said.

 From an aesthetics point of view, sure. But according to your previous 
post your proposal was intended to solve the *game balance* problem
(namely 
that wide-arc weapons and Advanced drives being overpriced in Vector),
and 
from the game balance point of view you're completely wrong.

Accelerating toward the enemy and then rotating (once) to keep him under

fire is reasonable to me.

Reasonable or not, it won't help making those wide-arc weapons and
Advanced 
drives worth their cost in Vector. You're confusing aesthetics with game

balance.

The reason why wide-arc weapons cost more than narrow-arc weapons is
that 
the wide-arc weapons *in Cinematic* have a much better chance of having
a 
target in arc and thus on average get to fire more shots each over the 
course of a (Cinematic) battle than narrow-arc weapons do. Fewer weapons

firing more shots each per battle give about the same damage-dealing 
capability as more numerous weapons firing fewer shots each, so for a
given 
amount of points you get fewer wide-arc weapons than you could've gotten

narrow-arc weapons of the same type and class

And the same should be true for vector,

It *should* be true for vector, yes. On that we both agree. So why do
you 
propose something which doesn't allow it to *be* true in Vector?

(Kra'Vak pay the extra points for better engines instead of for extra
fire 
arcs, but the end result is the same: they get fewer guns which get to
fire 
more shots each than the same points value of single-arc human weapons
on 
human-engined ships.)

However, if 1 thrust point in Vector is sufficient to rotate the ship to

any facing it likes - and in the FB Vector rules it is - then you can 
almost always rotate the ship to point your single-arc guns at where the

target will be after movement.

However, on the turn after you have pointed your ship at the target, you

should have to make a choice between keeping the target in the
engagement 
basket or continuing your acceleration, rather than being able to do
both.

If you want to continue the battle, keeping the target in your
engagement 
envelope is FAR more important than continuing your accelleration.

[...]

But, if the player (ship captain) had to chose between pointing at the 
target and turning to accelerate in a direction 60 degrees or more from
the 
target, then the ability to, for example, travel course 12 with a target
at 
bearing 3, face heading 5 to both decelerate and converge on the target 
(bearing 3) and still be able to fire at that target with batteries that

bear into your port broadside is worth the additional points and mass.

This seems to be where you go wrong: you assume that being able to 
accelerate away is as important as being able to fire your weapons, but
it 
isn't. Being able to fire your weapons is far, *far* more important, so
the 
"choice" you're talking about is trivial.

If the player has to choose between pointing *two* wide-arc weapon 
batteries at the target while accelerating away, or point *three* 
single-arc weapon batteries of the same type at the target and not 
accelerating away, the three batteries almost invariably beat the two.
No 
matter which armament you choose, if you play Vector the armament it
will 
almost certainly point at the enemy throughout the battle - so the 
single-arc ship effectively has 50% more firepower than the wide-arced
one 
*throughout the battle*.

In Cinematic the choice is quite different: due to the much lower
turning 
ability ships have in Cinematic, you get the choice between on one hand 
three single-arc weapons which probably *won't* point at the enemy most
of 
the time, and on the other, and on the other two wide-arc weapons which 
will probably *will* point at the enemy most of the time. Here it isn't
a 
matter of slowing down the enemy's rate of closing; instead the question
is 
whether or not your weapons will get to fire *at all*, and the 50% extra

firepower the single-arc weapons get on the few occasions they do manage
to 
fire is just about enough to even the odds against the more numerous
shots 
the wide-arc weapons fire during the battle.

[...]

The problem is not that the single rotation can acquire the target once
, 
or even continuously,

Then could you please explain why complaints about wide-arc being 
overpriced in Vector weapons appeared about three months after *FB1* was

published, and have continued ever since? FB1 Vector only allows a
single 
rotation per turn, so according to you it should've been free of this 
particular game balance problem?

If the ship coasts while pointed at the target, then he has given up the

maneuver initiative in favor of an attempt at overwhelming (with his 
maximum firepower) the target before the target can redefine the
maneuver 
situation, while the opposite is then also true (giving up firepower in 
order to maneuver).

You forget that manoeuvres in Vector are far more limited than they are
in 
Cinematic. In Cinematic giving the manoeuvre advantage up often means
that 
you don't get to use your higher firepower to full effect; but in Vector

the target can't re-define the manoeuvre situation much anyway so giving
up 
a small advantage in manoeuvrability to gain a massive advantage in 
firepower is usually not a very hard choice to make.

Actually, I think the FB1 rules work well,

Since they have exactly the same game balance problems wrt. wide-arc 
weapons as the FB2 ones have, I don't think they work well.

<snip  catastrophic failure discussion>
(FWIW quite a few of the larger ships destroyed in B5, particularly in
the 
Narn-Centauri conflict, blow up as a result of secondary explosions
rather 
than as an immediate effect of the incoming fire. The only way this can 
happen in FT is if the Power Core fails catastrophically.)

Unless you consider rerolls to represent those secondary explosions. :)

I don't. If a ship is destroyed by re-rolls it can't fire any more 
afterwards, but at least two of those B5 ships (Centauri battlecruisers)

kept firing for a while after the enemy had stopped shooting (in one
case 
due to starting to explode itself, in the other because the Narn ship
had 
entered the jump gate).

<snip more game turn length discussion>

 >From FB1, pg. 3, right hand column, "Rotation" section, 1st para.:
"...(the only difference between rotating 30 degrees and rotating 180 
degrees is simply that, once the thrusters have started the ship
spinning, 
the ship is allowed to rotate for [a] longer [period of time] before the

thrusters burn again to cancel the spin)..."

So, IIUC, FT thrusters are probably more than 1/4 g, probably closer to
1 
g, but only on for a brief burst, then 0 g coast, then short ~ 1 g 
counter-burn.

If they're that powerful (close to 1 g), then they're also powerful
enough 
to push the ship sideways at a fairly considerable acceleration :-/
You're 
the one arguing against such powerful lateral thrusters, not me.

Further, if I understand the assumptions behind your math, you are
assuming 
MD1 ~ 1g over a full game turn, but if you rotate twice, taking 1/2 of
the 
game turn (total of 2x Rotate), then MD1 ~ 2g because the time that the 
drive is on is much less.

Not exactly. *Manoeuvre thrusters* need to be able to make ~2g burns or 
more in order to push a ship sideways or backwards during a turn in
which 
the ship rotates once or twice (which means that the ship is able to
rotate 
even faster - isn't that nice? <G>). *MD1* (Main Drive 1) doesn't
however, 
since a ship capable of both rotating twice and making an MD burn in a 
single turn must have at least MD3 (each rotation uses up 1 thrust
point) 
so you can safely assume that its "MD1" burn represents a shorter burn
at a 
higher thrust level.

(This is why FB2 Vector rotations use up thrust points from the MD pool,

BTW. Of course this assumption screws up the nice "true Newtonian Vector

Movement" concepts you and others have discussed recently, but that's 
another discussion :-/)

When even huge ships like an Omega or a Shiva could potentially rotate
this 
fast, even the fastest "GZGverse scale" with its 100-second game turns 
clearly allows a ship to make two 180-degree facing changes in a single 
turn and still leave time for a main drive burn and/or firing weapons
:-7

But I would not want to be in a DCP, or a SBA, or etc. (and therefor not

strapped into a shock couch) when the ship makes a 1g rotate burn, 0g 
coast, 1g counter-burn, (total 30 sec) 2-4 g MD burn (40 sec) (could be
as 
high as 8-12g on a destroyer or corvette), 1g rotate burn, 0g coast, and
1g 
counter-burn (another 30 sec), all in a 100s game turn.

Sure. This is exactly why the GZGverse canon claims that gravitic 
compensators provide such a powerful combat advantage... and why most
other 
SF backgrounds featuring space combat have similar devices too :-/

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry