 December 4, 2014 - 12:39pm | So.... as I'v seen TO point out... the math doesn't work. 1ADF = 1,700 g force 2ADF = 3,401 g force 3ADF = 5,102 g force 4ADF = 6,802 g force 5ADF = 8,503 g force (rounded to the nearest g) So we all handwave the reality breaking nature of movement on the hex map right? Cause even one ADF acceleration would kill anybody on the ship. Without making the jump into artifical gravity tech is there any way to justify surviving these g forces? In star trek they have "inertia dampeners" but they also have "magic" compared to the tech levels in SF. I'm wondering if the only way to not handwave this discrepency would be to make the hexes only 5.88km big instead of 10000km? That would make 1ADF = to 1g a little more closely. How game breaking would using small hexes be? I'm thinking you could leave the weapon ranges alone, and maybe even radar range as I have always thought them to be very extreem at radar having the ability to see objects at 300,000 km. Granted this is high tech (by our standards) lidar probably but modern lidar is only good for like 10 km or so. Shortening the radar range would increase the russian roulette aspect of travelling at 1% light speed however. In Trek, they use the deflector dish as a way of dealing with coliding with space debris. Could space ships be using some sort of "slow knife" inertia fields? Would something like that effect missles (or maybe they do but the damage from the missle is the boom at the end not the impact). That might be a reason why at this smaller scale you don't see projectile weapons. In the big scale (10,000 km) projectile weapons don't make sense. Really... neather do missles unless they are pulling more then like 10,000g. ----------------------------------------------- |
 December 4, 2014 - 2:35pm | If I'm already ignoring the fact that ships can turn in space without applying thrust to do it, and that space is two-dimensional, I can easily ignore the acceleration discrepency as well. In all cases the board game is just simplified for playability, and is not what "actually" happens to the characters. Assume the outcome is the same, but the physics of how it happened were different. |
 December 4, 2014 - 4:34pm | Actually, 1ADF only equals 2.8g. I think you've got an error in your math. Remember it's 10,000 km and 10 minutes. If the hexes were 3600km 1 ADF would equal 10 m/s/s which is effectively 1g. As to making small hexes, the only real break would be that planets wouldn't fit on the map and you couldn't stack an effectively infinite number of ships in a hex. Althought it still wouldn't matter all that much. Even a battle ship is only 0.6 km long and 0.1 km in diameter. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 December 5, 2014 - 10:37am | We could just assert that despite what KHs says about scale that all hexes are 3600k and go with that. Of course there is the issue of fo you leace the weapons ranges alone or change them to reflect greater distances of the 10,000/hex range? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 5, 2014 - 10:50am | So i was googling... and the earth is bigger then a hex (just barely bigger). So if your planet is a gass giant, it is already bigger than one hex. Jupiter's diameter is 139,822km So it is 14 hex wide. lol Might be an interesting thing to do something with a gas giant. How far out do you think the orbital raneg of something that big would be... like instead of just the hexes around the planet... how many hexes out would be orbiting? two... three? ----------------------------------------------- |
December 23, 2014 - 6:16am | I like the idea of using a gas giant 7-12 hexes in diameter in game play- it becomes a significant terrain piece in a game usually deviod of terrain. 1 hex planets are rediculously easy to sidestep or shoot around. Gas giant with moons and rings further complicates the situation. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 23, 2014 - 9:07am | "Step 1: All spaceships in orbit move 1 hex. And all 32 moons of the gas giant each move a number of hexes given on the following table. Have fun managing that!" |
December 23, 2014 - 9:40am | Many such moons would be little more than captured asteroids and thus easily ignored at KH scales. You simply state their presence for the purpiose of being shepherding moons that aid in maintaining a distict disc in the dust ring. I would not want to manage more than 4 moons. The planet would be stationary in the center of the map. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 December 30, 2014 - 8:15pm | I did that once. I put a plastic coffee can lid on the hex map, and told the players that it was a gas giant. They played along. I remember that they sent the captured pirates into the gas giant after the battle. Frontier Justice. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
 January 24, 2015 - 2:00pm | a 14hex wide jovian planet, with 12 moving moons, 9 shepherding debrie orbits, 6 debrie rings, 5 nebulous bands, and 4 competing corporate asteroid stations... somewhere in this are; three secret outposts, two hidden pirate bases, a cloked sathar monitor, and some unwarry player character's on a courior mission about to enter a warzone -- fly the guantlet. Epic... Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
January 24, 2015 - 2:11pm | But, I like Imperal Starfire... so none of the 'hard stuff' sugested here is tgat extreme to me. 3,600km hexes, and the typical terrestrial taking up a 3hx wide space... no problem... moving the contents of an entire star system during a multi fleet engagment against a diverse array of system defenses... got that covered too... heck, if you want to step it up and start tracking ground manuvers for planet side assults, ship bording actions, and communication times, I'm still in -- because we still are not tracking the resource, research, refits, constructions, issued administrative orders, colonizations, and diplomatic negotiations, that can change the battlefeild in real time... and tgat is still an average day for play in my experience. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
January 24, 2015 - 7:34pm | aaaahh.... yeah. I'm going to go check what 2 Hour Wargames has for a ship to ship space game. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 January 30, 2015 - 7:10am | A scarier idea would be to limit all ships ADF to that of 1 G, but then that would limit the effectivness of the smaller ships somewhat. Unless you wanted to allow them an ADF of 2 or 3 keeping it down to levels a human could endure. Smaller ships would still have the higher MR This would still give the bigger ships an advantage, but the reality in SF is there aren't that many big ships out there so it's a non-issue. So then it all comes down to how many guns you can bring into a fight. And if we treat a HS 5 ship as using it's laser cannon like a soldier would use his rifle as a primary weapon, 3 HS 5 ships will easily outgun a single HS 14 ship. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
