Re: [GZG] FT Vector: Alternative Fire Resolution Distance

John,

I was initially looking at this simply to suit the flavour I'm looking
for (fire throughout the round) and reasoning backward to resolution.
Your point about it being a bit more complicated (if you mark the
halfway point when you move the ship, its pretty easy... usually in
vector we have at least 3 counters per ship going.... last position,
end of drift, and current position.... having another really isn't a
lot of extra pain to me) is fair and in one sense it might not seem to
make much difference.

The reason I keep it particular to vector is that *if you assume
vector movements are applied across the turn*, then your position at
the midpoint will be half your drift + half your aggregate thrust
(which is half way along your eventual vector, oddly enough). It might
or might not make sense in cinematic...

Turn length is certainly variable - I've heard people suggest periods
from 2 min to 20 min for an FT turn, thrusts from fractions of a G up
to quite a few Gs, and MUs from 100 kms to 10000 kms. Depends what
feel you are shooting for. As you say, doesn't change much with my
argument.

In refining thinking about this, I might end up trying something like:

'There are three interesting points along a ship's path during a turn.
The start point, the end point and the mid-point. These collectively
encapsulate the ship's movement. If you can bear on your target when
both of you are at the same point (tgt at start and firer at start,
tgt at mid and firer at mid, etc) for all three of these points, then
fire is resolved as normal with the range being measured from the two
respective midpoints. If you can see at only two of these points,
count range as 25% more. If you can see at only one of these points,
count range as 50% more. This range-extension represents the fact that
weapons have a reduced envelope of engagement and are these less
effective.'

I guess what I'm looking at is a way not to have all fire seem to
occur from a range at the end of turn that seems to reflect the final
position of ships as if nothing else during the turn happened and you
only shot at the end of movement. Maybe I should be averaging the
ranges of the three points. Or something. The way FT is written, the
fire feels like it all happens at the endpoint of movement. If so, why
not along the path? Why can you get vector or cinematic jousts where
you can't engage because ships fly past one another when the computers
would have fired along the way? I'm looking for a way to make this
make more sense and do so in a way that sort of addresses the reduced
effectiveness of a limited window of engagement.

If you picture each beam shot or pulse torpedo die roll as a single
shot, it has a different feel and implications than if you treat it as
the fire from an entire turn and more than one shot. The latter seems
more likely to me to be closer to what could happen.

Tom
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