Re: [GZG] Space Terrain

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http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOur resident Rock
Monkey said:

"I've been poking around trying to learn more about the composition of
Saturn's rings. They are thinner than I remembered from reading years
back,
but fairly wide (excellent for 2-D stuff, not so good for 3-D). Saturn's
rings span from the inner D ring approximately 6,700 kilometers from
Saturn's cloud tops to the fringes of the E ring, 480,000 kilometers
out.
Most of the rings are only a few tens of meters(!) thick with a total
mass
equivalent to a medium sized moon. The rings themselves are made out of
particles ranging from microscopic dust to barnyard sized boulders with
the
occasional few kilometer-sized object as well. Near-infrared
observations
from Earth have shown that the rings are composed mostly of ice crystals
with some impurities (i.e., rocky/dusty stuff)."

Tomb:

So, with 1K or 10K MUs, that's most of a board. Sounds like a
representation
for them would include both a speed-related damage effect (from sailing
through the small stuff) and the occasional on board chunk big enough to
be
its own sort of obstacle - from ship damaging right up to ship
destroying
(depending on impact velocity).

One would obviously have to construe sensible limits of speed which of
course factors in assumptions about ship micrometeror shielding (which
may
or may not relate to the ship system called shields) and hull strength
as
well as composition and density of the field. A lot of that could be
handwaved away by just saying "For every full X" of speed in this
region,
take a beam dice at the end of movement" or something.

You'd want to come up with a damage model for the solid chunks too, like
"take D6 damage for every X" of speed" (or something).

Obviously you'd need to mess with numbers until they made for a fun,
playable game. Then a ring battle could be pretty cool.

Questions though:
How wide are rings (range of widths)?
How wide (range of widths) and how empty are the spaces between?

I ask because it would be neat to have 'bands' on your FT board - some
of
which are clear (where ships wanting to take less damage can go) and
some of
which are various density of rings where flying is hazardous.

Of course, in the real 3D world, your point about depth means you'd just
fly
above of below them 1000 km and be just fine - safe and sound. No one
would
ever really fight in that thin 100m or less plane of the rings - it
would
just be pointlessly masochistic.

But that's the great thing about an FT game - it has to be fun, not
scientifically accurate.

TomB