The Future for SE IV? Does it have one?

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by dumbluck:
One small thing: Make sure it's "fire, then move" instead of "move, then fire". Otherwise, static defences, especially at Warppoints, would be at a serious disadvantage...

I'm not sure I see the disadvantage of static defenders in "move, then fire", given that the attackers, IF they happened to have the fastest speed in the game, would at most be able to move 1 hex/square before the fire phase of that impulse. I'm not talking about going through all the movement impulses of a turn before anybody fires, but rather each impulse having separate move & fire phases. Not being able to move in an impulse would not preclude firing. Only not having your weapons charged would do that, which on the first impulse of the first turn of the batle would not be a problem (unless some sort of surprise rule were added - a separate topic).

Originally posted by dumbluck:
Also, couldn't this be (kinda) modded in? Change the # of combat turns to, say, 300, and multiply the reload rates by 10. But not the movement; you'd probably want to DECREASE the combat movement generated by normal engines. Of coarse, this would need a lot of balancing, but it's kinda what you want. Sorta. Maybe?

Interesting idea, but I don't think it would work. The impulse concept requires that some impulses a ship can't move and others it can (but only 1 hex/square). To take a simplified example, let's say our max game speed is 6, so we have 6 impulses. We have four ships: #1 moves at speed 6, #2 moves at speed 3, #3 moves at speed 2, #4 moves at speed 1:

Impluse#1: Ship #1 moves
Impulse#2: Ships #1 & #2 move
Impulse#3: Ships #1 & #3 move
Impulse#4: Ships #1 and #2 move
Impulse#5: Ship #1 moves
Impulse#6: Ships #1, #2, #3 & #4 move

Any of them could fire on any impulse, whether or not it can move, if it has a charged weapon. A weapon that fires every turn would take 5 impulses to charge - if you fire it on impulse #3, it could not fire again until impulse #3 of the next turn.