RE: Beta Fighter game report

> A very plausible PSB is that most important governmental facilities,
if not
> all military installations, are surrounded by a very dense minefield

>>Except that it's not especially plausible, a ballistic asteroid
doesn't care unless you have really, really big mines, and it's not
generic.<<

Well, it's as generic as you can get since it's an inbuilt part of
rules.
And what prevents it from being plausible? We used to stretch big huge
chains across harbor entrances to prevent ships from entering, that
doesn't
sound plausible to me - but we did it.

And my argument with ballistic asteroids would be that then you're
playing
on the wrong scale- these things should be visible from a *very* long
way
off (what the hell happened to your sensor pickets? Or scout sweeps?) -
if
you're trying to stop it on the table-top, this would indicate to me the
failure of a whole series of other measures that went into trying to
either
stop it, or divert it.

When the book talks about asteroids it's discussing chunks of rock large
enough for a Mass 300 ship to hide behind - the one number given is a
Billion tons...

In Fleet Book terms that's something like 10,000,000 Mass. Would you
mind
giving me an explanation of how in the heck you managed to get that much
Mass moving in the direction you want? And manage to accurately guide
it?

Hell, lets make it a baby at a 1/100 of the size, a 1/1000?

Where in the heck are you going to get a tug to move that?

There's also the option from Full Thrust that says that Asteroid can be
assigned a Damage Point value. I'd have to say that if the asteroid in
question is small enough that you can mount a drive on it or maneuver it
well enough to be a weapon is also small enough to be destroyed...

If it's small enough to be moved and guided, it's small enough to be
blown
apart by weapons fire.

And if it's too small for that, then we're just talking about a really
big
freaking K-gun - and there are rules for that also.

Frankly, the rules say that *ships* are destroyed when impacted by an
asteroid - last time I checked, a facility isn't a ship...

;-)

Admittedly, that's sort of rules-jurymandering, but then since we're
making
up an attack form that doesn't otherwise exist in the game...

I'd also be tempted to treat a ballistic asteroid attack as ramming
attempt
- just like in FT. So either you can look at the at need to roll a 6 on
a d6
to successfully make a ramming attempt (because there's a 'crew' on the
Asteroid) or you need to roll the 6 because of the inherent difficulties
in
setting up the course for a Ballistic Asteroid. Just because a station
is
stationary on the table doesn't mean that it's stationary in relation to
the
universe.

And if it's a 'homing' Ballistic Asteroid - then throw a Weasel or a
Bogey
out on the table. 

David