Ship to Ship Combat and FTL

I actually like the "fast out, slow in" idea.

Yeah, but that means that it's easy for anyone to flee now.

Which, I'd add, was the primary point of the no-FTL Hill Sphere. When you enter in it, you commit.

Basically, while Aendri's idea has nice facets to it, I'm against it. It'd be a step back.

I thought the primary objection was fast in, not fast out.

Well if you want the "fast out, slow in" then perhaps we say CDD can be used to exit a hills sphere. But Fold can't, and neither of them can enter the hills sphere.

It solves one problem, but has the unpleasant downside of creating another. If first responders arrive in-system, hostile forces can just pick up and leave. What a single plotship can do, a fleet can do as well. I'm also iffy about the idea with CDD - not everyone has or wants to use it either.

EDIT: Thinking of this from an OOC perspective, before taking into consideration any physics and such, what if we basically had a 'scout rule' where individual ships below a certain class/size could leave quickly, but larger ships and fleets could not and were more committed?

Aendri said:

I thought the primary objection was fast in, not fast out.

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I've never been worried about planet busters, mainly because I consider that only a few ships are actually narratively capable of doing that. When I think of ship railguns and torpedoes, I see them packing power on a scale capable of devastating cities and not cracking planets open.

Even with the Battle of Yamatai, there were plenty of ships capable of leveling their anti-ship weapons at the planet itself to lay waste to it. And yet, ultimately, what was more hazardous were ship crashes on the planet (with the Miharu crew ultimatingly failing in stopping the Mishhu flagship to make a suicide run at the planet and crash in a fashion that caused a lot of surface damage on the planet).

And, honestly, that seems to be consistent narratively. SARP's history is one of specs having big numbers and the application actually being much weaker. If a ship can survive an attack, there's no reason whythat same attack should be expected to crack a planet open.

And, besides... historically, "sun busters" have been far more of a danger anyways. And they typically manage that through plot-sciency-weaponry.

CadetNewb said:

EDIT: Thinking of this from an OOC perspective, before taking into consideration any physics and such, what if we basically had a 'scout rule' where individual ships below a certain class/size could leave quickly, but larger ships and fleets could not and were more committed?

Click to expand...

Well, we're kind of all across the board on that.

-For example, the genesis of the Plumeria's design - the Sakura-class - was to be an interceptor. Intercept enemy forces before they get from point A to B.
-Then there's the unwritten rule that Wes' ship design is the fastest in the universe, regardless of rhyme or reason.
-And then there's a statement - I think Uso made it - that bigger ships are actually supposed to end up being faster than small ships, and therefore it was not actually possible for fighters and scout ships to actually range out and outrun other slower vessels. SARP's notion that every ship must be as fast as possible anyways kind of threw a shoe into that. Then there's the speed scale that came later which standardized that (save exceptions, see above) but also made variations undesirable.

In warfare, it'd totally make sense to me to have lighter ship pickets made to intercept scouts, with scouts coming in, taking a look at the disposition of the ships and then sending word back so that when the bigger ships would FTL in, they'd be in the best possible posture (and thus not that badly positioned if they did commit).

But, then again, KFY sensors are so ludicrously powerful that scouting is actually of limited worth. Again, that's a vestige from the Ayenee period where higher numbers were better, regardless of what they actually entailed.

Some, if not most of the weapons on SARP...don't do the math. DocTomoe even got pissed at me for actually doing the math at one point. It's horrific what the weapons can do, once you do the math and realize just how absurdly powerful they are. So just don't do the math. Doc later said to me something to the effect of, "Our weapons are absurd, but they're at least consistently absurd."

In regards to bigger ships being faster, that's only if we're going by "Hard Sci-Fi Rules", as in reality, what really determines a ship's speed would be its thrust-to-mass ratio. With water craft, smaller vessels are faster simply because their propulsion is very powerful for their mass, giving them a good ratio in comparison to, say, a nuclear powered carrier. Even though its engines put out more thrust than the smaller craft's, it's ratio with its own mass isn't as good. It's all about the ratio. Here on settings like SARP however, it's best to assume there's something going on with intertia-mass-graviton-spacemagick drives/systems, which allows us to keep certain gameplay conventions.

With sensors, I actually kinda freaked out when Nashoba asked me to put ranges on a sensor suite I was working on for a ship. You're right in that it's absolutely absurd. I feel that it's to the point that if GMs and so forth actually did adhere to it, roleplay would be horrible. Fortunately, Fian calmed me down by saying that sensor reading quality was absolute shit at such ranges. For the sake of RP and gameplay, it's best to assume sensors are only worth jack in-system, or more specifically, within the distance that a typical system is wide. Beyond that, and they start getting 'faeries' on the sensor screen. This would mean that scouting is still important.

Which brings us back to the FTL issue.

"Slow in, Fast out," isn't so bad until we take into consideration how it would impact first responders and interceptor craft like the Plumeria that are all about hitting those scouts or raiders. Right now, I'm of the opinion we should figure out a good game/RP mechanic and worry about physics second, as it would impact how GMs and Players would experience things.

We should create obstacles outside of systems too. Encounter events that turn certain areas of space into terrain that is better to go around than through. Rough seas, maybe.