Re: move and fire problem

John K. Lerchey wrote:

>Pardon my French, but that's a really lame assed excuse for not 
>being able to bring the weapons to bear.

No offence taken.

>Ok, the game basically ignores the Z axis. But how likely is it that
>the captains of the attacking ships, whos helmsmen are bearing in on
>the targets just somehow forgot about the Z axis.

I did not say the game ignores the Z axis. I assume there is
movement in the 3rd dimension going on, which can be used to
explain strange occurrences in the simplified 2D tabletop
representation.

The helms of the attacking ships haven't forgotten about the
Z axis, but it imposes an additional constraint that we can't
see in 2D.

In the original example, there's a squadron of fast flying
ships approaching an SDN. The ships start at 50MU and overshoot,
so let's say the initial distance is 25 MU. The SDN is either
moving very slowly or not at all. On the table it starts like:

>   >
   >  > 		  SDN
>   >

and ends with
				      >  >
			  SDN		>  >
				      >  >

If the attacking ships have an upward vector component as well,
"gaining altitude" if they were aircraft, and the SDN has a
downward component, then moving in a straight line will take
them further away from the SDN, not closer, and also move the
SDN more into their rear firing arc. So they are turning as
well, in the vertical plane, to bring weapons to bear. In this
case though they're moving too fast and can't turn tightly
enough, so overshoot.

If the action is rotated through 90 degrees around the axis
running from left to right, it would start like this

  /  /
   /  / 		  SDN
/  /

be like this at the midpoint of movement

			 >   >
			   >   >
			 >   >

		     SDN

and finish up as
		   SDN

				    \  \
				      \  \
				     \	\

They never get the close range frontal shot.

>If the game is representing only two dimensions, then it does so for
>ALL ships.  You don't get to say, "Oh gee, well, you couldn't fire
>at me because my ships must have been on a different Z level."

<Shrug> It may be a lame assed excuse. I still like it better
than "your crew collectively lost their minds for a few minutes"
or "there's a fault in the game."

Zillions of dollars are spent on training fighter pilots and R&D
for air to air missiles because it's really hard to zip about at
high speed in 3D and shoot things. If the game rules create
situations where ships sometimes overshoot and miss sitting duck
targets, then I regard that as being more realistic, not less.

	cheers,
	Hugh