Re: [GZG] HDC madness

On 1/21/07, Roger Burton West <roger@firedrake.org> wrote:

>
> However, I see two HDC-specific problems: (1) the HDC has no exemption
> from the normal rule that a weapon must be mounted facing into a
> specific firing arc. (2) _All_ weapons that are fired from a ship
that's
> also firing an HDC have to make threshold checks. So when your
80-strong
> set of HDCs fires, each of them has to make 79 threshold checks for
all
> the other HDCs firing at the same time, and has about one chance in
1.8
> million of surviving.
>

The issue I have with problem (1) is that it violates the spirit of
the rules.  If I pay for an arc of 180 degrees, but want the weapon to
fire from 20 degrees off the starboard bow, through the starboard
beam, to twenty degrees to the port of dead astern, than that is the
arc it covers.	By the spirit of the rules, the layout of the six, 60
degree arcs is a suggestion that has the added benefit of making ships
using standard arcs easier to describe.  Odd arcs require more initial
record keeping, but they are perfectly valid-- so long as they are in
multiples of 60 degrees (as appropriate).

My issue with problem (2), is twofold.	First, the rules mention that
vessels can have more than one, and that the paragraph that mentions
that a vessel can fire any number of HDC's it mounts, if it mounts
more than one, does not imply any penalty.  Secondly, as the multiple
HDC's are not firing at each other, nor does a single HDC require a
threshold check from its own firing, it is not unreasonable to assume
that HDC's are immune to the side effects of other HDC's.

Actually, the rules do not say that other systems take a threshold
check, but that they are damaged, as if they had failed a threshold
check, so allowing multiple HDC's to be fired from the same ship, in
the same turn, would be strongly contraindicated. Yet the wording
implies that it is not disasterous, or even all that bad.

The rule is poorly written, as it does not specify whether the arc
blanked out by the HDC fire is the thirty degree arc of the weapon or
the sixty degree arc centered on the HDC's plotted line of fire.
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