quote:
Originally posted by dmm:
Maybe there should be a chance of the QR overloading during a retreat. That sort of thing happens a lot in StarTrek, FWIW. "She was na designed to go at warp nine for this long, Captain!" "I don't care Scotty. Just keep her together."
Not that I am advocating it (since I disagreed with it) but the more recent editions of Starfire introduced a distiction between "military engines" and "commercial engines". The max speed of a given hull is lower with commercial engines, but they are more reliable. The max speed is higher with military engines, but they are subject to "breakdown" if you exceed 1/2 speed in strategic movement (there is no breakdown in tactical movement). The effect there was to create a design trade-off between strategic speed and tactical speed. I didn't like it because it failed my "real life" test. Commercial systems don't have more capability than military ones (except maybe high tech electronics, because the military development system is slower than commercial right now). Commercial systems are optimized for low cost operation and low maintenance. Military systems are optimized for performance, and typically eat more fuel & need more warm bodies tending them. So, in SE4 terms you would get a higher max speed with military systems but have increased fuel usage & crew requirements vs the same ship with commercial engines. That doesn't have the effect you are talking about here.
Rather, you would be talking about a possibility of breakdown in tactical combat if a certain percentage of max speed was exceeded.
Frankly, I don't have this big problem with faster ships being able to avoid combat. In real life, that is how it works. Faster speed plus longer ranged weapons in real life also means "the fast guy with long arms wins". Ask just about anybody who ever fought the Mongols about that!
If you want seekers and direct fire weapons to be balanced so that both are equally viable, look at Star Fleet Battles. They seem to have managed it. I think the general method is that neither has a real range advantage. Seekers are easier to intercept & have a longer reload time, but pack a bigger punch to that it all works out about even.
If you want to eliminate the overwhelming advantage of higher speed, in a context in which you have also eliminated the seeker range advantage, adopt an opportunity fire system like the Steel Panthers games. Any weapon you don't manually fire during your turn is eligible for opportunity fire during the other side's turn. Each unit can be given an individual range at which it will opportunity fire. That lets you "hold your fire until you see the whites of their eyes" instead of poping off beyond EFFECTIVE range, but also make sure you are not setting yourself up for the other guy to stay just beyond your opportunity fire range and pummel you. Net result is that there is no more running in, firing and running back out of range to avoid enemy return fire.
So, my vote would to do all of the below:
1) Eliminate the tactical map borders (or make the map so big you can't reach them at a speed of 20 in 30 turns).
2) If you are the same speed or faster than the fastest ship on the other side and currently out of weapons range, you can declare that you are withdrawing and that ends combat. You then must exit to the sector on the strategic map corresponding to where you were on the tactical map when you declared withdrawal. This expends one movement point from next turn, if the battle was initiated by the other side moving into the sector during his move. If you have no strategic movement points left, you can't withdraw and have to play out the 30 tactical turns.
3) Balance direct fire weapons & seekers to eliminate the seeker range advantage.
4) Introduce a Steel Panthers-style opportunity fire system.
5) Introduce maximum speed variations all up and down the hull size range, make ship-to-ship weapons ineffective against population (you might get a few as collateral damage when shooting the WP's, but if the planet was over half full and had a full load of WP's you should not be able to eliminate the colony population with ship-to-ship weapons), and make anti-population weapons too big to put in the smaller hull sizes (nothing less than a cruiser). The intent here is to make sure that even a Propulsion Experts race can't make a colony-killing raider force that can outrun your smaller warships. This creates a late-game role for those smaller ships - defending against things that can outrun your battle force strategically, and preventing the enemy's escape from your battle line tactically.