quote:
Originally posted by apache:
Just want to mention some things.
1) There is no such thing as ballistics in space (vacuum, no gravity effects). All standard weapons will travel straight until they hit something else. I believe the range of weapons in the game is taken to be a range at which most ships cannot easily dodge them, rather than the point at which the beam dissipates or the particle has gone astray, since the beam will never dissipate, nor will the particle go astray.
almost. there are balistics as far as internal ballistics and terminal ballistics are concerned, and they are darned near the same as those in atmosphere. as far as external ballistics go, space is mostly a vaccum, but there is a heck of alot of stuff floating arround in it. another thread discusses how many millions of TONs of particulate matter the earth runs into from space on a daily basis, and there certainly is some gravitational effect too. not enough to make a big change really, but the RANGES man. a range 4 weapon has a greater range than the diamater of a huge planet, which should be a couple hundred times the diamater of the earth, significantly far to be influenced by gravity. presumeably though, any super-technology targeting control could plot a fireing solution to account for any native gravity. and as for partical dissipation, not only does it depend on the microscopic stuff it runs into over a few million miles, but it would depend even heaver on the beam attenuation. the death ray will lose focus after a while.
quote:
Originally posted by apache:
2) The comparisons with naval units are not totally valid, but they do have merit. The idea here is that the smaller ships can get to areas that make the bigger mounted weapons much less likely to hit them.
The field of fire of any weapon is always limited by ship design. The naval comparison notes that a PT boat can get under the field of fire of a BB's guns. In the same vein, it can get behind the ship, putting it beyond the reach of the forward guns.
So make a few assumptions that the larger mounts have areas where they cannot fire because A) the target is too close, or B) there is a field of fire area which a small ship can 'hide' in and not worry about the big guns being able to rotate/elevate to fire at them.
Perhaps more advanced design which would allow you to place guns with fields of fire would solve this problem. This way you could decide how many guns face forward and how many face rearward. If you happen to be running from your opponent, you would not be able to shoot your forward weapons.
I like this. but even tactical combat is not like a true space sim where velocities are significant, so facings would be a bit hard to modle without having velocity. maybe SE5 will have a feature for weapon mounts having a + or - to hit ships of a certain size (or of a certain defensive bonus)
[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 31 January 2001).]