Re: galaxy battles

From: Jesse.Taylor@launchpad.unc.edu (Jesse Taylor)

Date: Fri, 08 Jan 1993 17:45:17 +0000

In article <8866@orbit.cts.com> jduffin@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Joshua Duffin) writes:
>Jesse.Taylor@launchpad.unc.edu (Jesse Taylor) writes:
>>As the the arguement that galaxy turns take a year, and that ships only
>>shooting once for each attack during the battle was too slow for a year,
>>another point was made that solar systems are BIG places, and that a
>>battle would involve numerous skirmishes between the various ships, not
>>one HUGE engagement... Plus if you factor in ECM, ships might miss each
>>other in battle. Maybe each ship could fire twice in a turn for a battle?
>
>I still disagree on the idea that ships could run out of time to shoot at each
>other.  Turns *are* at least a year long, and while star systems are large,
>ships move faster than light, and even at lightspeed no planets are more than
>a few light-hours away from the local sun.  It's also evident that finding
>enemy ships shouldn't be a problem, given that all ships at any system one of
>your ships is at are detectable, and from the map you can see that even ships
>in hyperspace can be detected at least approximately in location.
	True, but now we get into the theoretical nature of the
hyperdrive. Apparently ships in hyperdrive create a wave force that allows
them to be detected, and also for their mass and speed to be known if
you're at the planet on the other end of the wave. From every science
fiction novel I've ever read, you can't go into FTL drive inside a Gravity
well (ie: star system), thus battles would take place at normal speeds
(this, I think, would be one of the reasons for the old style of
battleing, since a fleet can't just up and leave in the middle of the
fight if they're losing... ) Also, even if you could go FTL inside a star
system, would you *want* to?! I wouldn't want to be flying around at x
times the speed of light in a place wi' lots of stuff floating around!

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References

Re: galaxy battles
jduffin@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Joshua Duffin)
Tue, 05 Jan 1993 13:07:56 +0000