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Post by tosfan1956 on Jul 15, 2019 12:41:43 GMT -7
We’ve seen in TOS and TMP ships engaging warp drive from orbit and close proximity to large structures like starbases, but how close can you get before you MUST drop out of warp? Does a gravity well affect the warp field? Does the accuracy of star charts play a role? Certainly you cannot drop out of warp too close, any ship able to land could drop out at ground level, expel troops and tanks while using ship weapons for cover fire then warp out again! The whole subject of how close and why is one that is open to a lot of interpretation. Several episodes and a few films have even contradicted themselves over time. It appears that it is or is not dangerous depending on what the story calls for. There is a good piece about it here www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/treknology-power.htmAbout halfway down the page. On an aside but kind of linked to this, is there mention of how large a hex is across faces in the FASA game? I have always assumed that one hex is 10000 km as the earth like planets provided are 3 hexes across which is roughly the same size as earth. However on this scale the distance between Earth and the Moon would be around 39 hexes? Jim That was a good read and lead me down many rabbit holes! Also, I’ve always used the 10,000 km hex. Perhaps it’s in the original rules. I remember explaining to new players that “warp 1” was 30 hexes per turn and warp 2 was off the map before you could do anything about it!
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Post by tosfan1956 on Jul 15, 2019 12:47:56 GMT -7
Tinker, I agree! But the question was how close can you get to a planet or other gravity well before dropping out of warp. As I said, I’ve never seen or heard of any “official” rules. It was just one random question that escaped the event horizon of the black hole I call a brain! Lol Evidence would suggest that this depends on the time period: In the original Motion Picture, the Enterprise had to completely leave the Solar System before going to warp. By the Next Generation, this restriction seems to have been overcome. I would think that the time period in between would show a gradual improvement over time. My best guess. The original movie was testing new engines and a redesigned ship for the first time. In case the worst happened, you want all that antimatter as far from home as possible! And that asteroid getting sucked into the warp bubble just emphasized the point. Kinda like blowing up the gas station because you couldn’t put your cigarette out long enough to pump the gas, and the last thing you see is the “NO SMOKING” sign
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Post by bazbaziah on Jul 16, 2019 3:57:51 GMT -7
The whole subject of how close and why is one that is open to a lot of interpretation. Several episodes and a few films have even contradicted themselves over time. It appears that it is or is not dangerous depending on what the story calls for. There is a good piece about it here www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/treknology-power.htmAbout halfway down the page. On an aside but kind of linked to this, is there mention of how large a hex is across faces in the FASA game? I have always assumed that one hex is 10000 km as the earth like planets provided are 3 hexes across which is roughly the same size as earth. However on this scale the distance between Earth and the Moon would be around 39 hexes? Jim That was a good read and lead me down many rabbit holes! Also, I’ve always used the 10,000 km hex. Perhaps it’s in the original rules. I remember explaining to new players that “warp 1” was 30 hexes per turn and warp 2 was off the map before you could do anything about it! 30 hexes per turn would be the speed of light with this scale as light travels at just below 300000 km per second which at 10000 km per hex works out at 29.something or 30 hexes. This also tells us that the movement phase of a turn is actually 1 second of "real" time? Jim
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Post by tosfan1956 on Jul 17, 2019 4:55:26 GMT -7
Exactly! Which causes me to think there is only one “fire” order per turn and the computer would take over and fire all designated weapons at all designated targets and continue to fire as that same target came around into the firing arc of other weapons. I mean, how many times can you say “fire phasers” or “fire torpedoes” in one second? Of course, nothing says you couldn’t change the size of your hexes in house rules. I’ve done that. Hexes were 1000 km. All ranges and speeds remained the same except going to warp took you off the map immediately at a speed of 300 hexes.
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Post by bazbaziah on Jul 17, 2019 10:50:45 GMT -7
When we played all those years ago we retained the three fire phases but limited fire to only one of the three. In addition once you placwd your fire marker you also had to roll for a lock on before you fired torpedoes but not beam weapons. We had some lock on modifiers also but they must have remained in someone else's game box as I can't find them or recall them now.
Jim
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Post by tosfan1956 on Jul 18, 2019 8:22:13 GMT -7
We rolled for lock before movement. If the lock was broken during the turn (cloak, terrain, etc) you had to re-roll. I think we had something like a -5 to hit for beam wpns and torpedoes were “fire or no fire.” And I vaguely remember any wpn could only fire once per turn. I also remember powering ALL shields at the normal shield ratio then adding additional power as needed during battle. Don’t remember the exact wording. Something I will have to work on in my spare time when I have enough spare time :-)
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Post by tinker on Jul 19, 2019 4:56:58 GMT -7
Isn't each phase supposed to be 10 seconds - so each turn is 30 seconds?
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Post by tosfan1956 on Jul 19, 2019 20:07:28 GMT -7
If each hex is 10,000 km and light travels 30 hexes per turn then each turn is 1 second. Atleast that’s how we always played it. So, unless you drastically change the size of the hexes...
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Post by bazbaziah on Jul 20, 2019 4:31:27 GMT -7
I've been checking through my books and have found one place where maximum impulse speed is noted in an official book. In the Voyager tech manual it states that maximum IMPULSE speed is .75 that of light. So the fastest a ship can move subwarp is 74700 km/s (round to 75000). To retain the movement chart as is in the game with a maximum movement of 30 hexes per 3 phases or a TURN would equate to a hex size of 75000/30 or 2500km across faces.
This rescale fits with the maximum speed for impulse engines, which is defined, and with the 3 phase per turn rule of the game.
Again this is per second so that still leaves the problems of:
how to do 3 fire/no fire opportunities in such a small time frame?
how do you handle games at warp speeds where the distances travelled are many multiples the speed of light?
Jim
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Post by tinker on Jul 20, 2019 5:52:06 GMT -7
If each hex is 10,000 km and light travels 30 hexes per turn then each turn is 1 second. I do not recall this at all - I'll have to look it up in my rule book. If so, then repairs are being made in an astonishing three seconds! Edit: OK - a very quick look and I didn't find anything about how long a turn is (I think I remember now that Battletech turns are 10 seconds each - doh!) or that 30 hexes equals the speed of light. Sometimes a turn is just a turn.
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Post by tosfan1956 on Jul 20, 2019 7:51:40 GMT -7
I've been checking through my books and have found one place where maximum impulse speed is noted in an official book. In the Voyager tech manual it states that maximum IMPULSE speed is .75 that of light. So the fastest a ship can move subwarp is 74700 km/s (round to 75000). To retain the movement chart as is in the game with a maximum movement of 30 hexes per 3 phases or a TURN would equate to a hex size of 75000/30 or 2500km across faces. This rescale fits with the maximum speed for impulse engines, which is defined, and with the 3 phase per turn rule of the game. Again this is per second so that still leaves the problems of: how to do 3 fire/no fire opportunities in such a small time frame? how do you handle games at warp speeds where the distances travelled are many multiples the speed of light? Jim One way to deal with this is to require each ship to designate ALL targets before movement/firing begins. You may have opportunity to fire on more targets as the turn progresses but may only fire on those pre-designated targets. As always, rules are more guidelines than anything else and you have to choose what works best for your game. As for the hex being 2500 km across, that would make Earth just over 5 hexes across. If you have the original rule book, check there. It’s got to be somewhere. We didn’t just make it up. Or is this a group delusion?
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Post by bazbaziah on Jul 20, 2019 9:39:27 GMT -7
Page 26 of the construction manual talks about the FL1 and FL2 AND how the FL2 increased the range of the FL1 by 20000km. Looking at the weapons table we can see that the FL2 has an increase of 2 hexes on the range of the FL1. PAGE 28 mentions the FP1 having a range of 120000km again the weapon table says 12 hexes.
So that I guess nails down the hex size at 10000km at least.
Jim
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Post by tosfan1956 on Jul 20, 2019 15:11:41 GMT -7
I knew there would be something somewhere! Thank you
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Post by tinker on Jul 22, 2019 4:50:08 GMT -7
Yes, each hex is 10,000 km across. Based on what we see in more recent programming, I think that seems a bit excessive. Most battles occur at much, much shorter distances.
The only time we have ever seen combat at those ranges was in TOS - only so the enemy ship would not have to be represented as anything more than a blip on the viewscreen.
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Post by krebizfan on Jul 22, 2019 11:45:24 GMT -7
I thought even in the later series, the distance count offs were done in 10,000 km chunks in the main. The appearance of ships close together is more a scale thing sort of the way a radar blip would look like it was 5 miles across. For ST, instead of seeing a couple of tiny dots, the ships are presented as large enough to recognize.
10,000 km is a good high speed universe distance. A planet is noticeable but not a dominant element of the map.
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Post by tosfan1956 on Jul 22, 2019 15:01:06 GMT -7
Have to keep in mind, on screen the visual has to be more dramatic. Watch any sub warfare movie and watch the torpedo leave the sub and strike the target from a stand off view. Also, if you go by “movie time” the torpedo only takes seconds to hit where in real life it could take minutes to run it’s course. And, according to the rules, you can’t recreate the ramming scene in Nemisis because you can’t collide with another ship. So, you take what you need or want and leave the rest
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Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2019 8:46:14 GMT -7
I just don't see how backwards-compatible down-scaling to NX-01 would be possible without additional math or different dice.
NX-01 vs NCC-1701 is no contest. NCC-1701 vs NCC-1701D is no contest. NCC-1701 vs a runabout is actually pretty close (should be closer than it is).
That means you need adjustments for eras. Fighting within an era (Enterprise vs Yorktown) is a pretty fair fight. Go outside the era, and run into problems.
There are a couple of ways to control damage. One is the number of hits (different dice or the same dice with era-vs-era modifiers). So a TOS ship would roll on d10, ENT ships on d8, and TNG ships on d12.
Another is era-vs-era damage multipliers. So 1 pt of damage from NCC-1701, may be 10 dmg vs. NX-01, and 0.5 dmg vs NCC-1701D. These numbers are just for reference. They would likely be very different.
If the desired outcome is a fun game that allows a simulated battle between two different Enterprises, then simply building ships using the standard rules then applying a die-roll or damage multiplier to account for era-to-era differences may be best.
If the desired outcome is an exercise in the math needed to build ships with different factors for hulls, computers, warp drives, weapons, shields, etc, you'll need to re-engineer the game itself.
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