Re: [GZG] FT: Modern Naval

> Once again I send out my yearly (or so) post asking if anyone has
worked on a
> FT conversion to play modern (from the 70s onward) naval battles.

I¹ve considered it.  Does that count?	:-)

There are a few problems that stopped me before I got very far:

1) Movement vs. weapon range.  Missile ranges can be anywhere from
10-300
miles depending on launch platform, OTH detection and missile.	You
could
model all ships with a ³thrust² value of 1, give missiles 36² range
on the
low end and still not get very close.

2) The pulse combat model.  FT models WWI dreadnought battles decently
well.
It models WWII battles with carriers and screens quite well for a space
game.  In both of those models the combat model is similar.  Ships can
take
a number of hits from almost any weapon and keep fighting.  In contrast,
a
modern warship can maybe take two missile hits before it is a mission
kill,
but I wouldn¹t count on it.

3) Take those two together and you get the fundamental precept of modern
naval warfare.	If you spot the other guy first, odds are you just won,
and
this applies to a very wide range of force balances.

#1 is probably something you could engineer away without losing too
much,
but it will be an issue.  Especially once you add airplanes into the
mix.

#2 I think is either going to have to be engineered out of FT, in which
case
it won¹t feel much like FT anymore, or it has to be abstracted out of
the
game, in which case it won¹t feel like modern naval combat anymore.

#3, and any kind of detection game without a referee is terribly hard to
pull off of course, and critical for modern naval warfare at almost any
scale.

What I¹d suggest is to look at Shipwreck.  It¹s not FT by any stretch
of the
imagination, but it is a lot faster and more playable than Harpoon.
Personally I want a game somewhere between the two, but I don¹t think
I¹m
going to find that unless I write it myself.

All of which is probably straying a bit off-topic for the list, sorry.

Tom

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