Actually, there are some other SFB rules that would require thought. The first and ugliest example is web.

Weapons arcs would require a LOT of thinking. Sure, it's simple to say that you just extend the arc completely up and down. Except... what about such nifty weapons as 360 phasers - are they on top of or bottom of the ship? Or some of the FX/RX weapons - again the question arises regarding how they get this extended arc and whether it allows an 'umbrella' above and below the ship.

BUT - as to actual 3D play, my daughter can play AV (Ken's game) at a reasonable clip. She doesn't like it (SFB either) finding it boring, but she can play it. At an average rate of ten minutes per turn including damage allocation (for a 8 impulse turn). Applying it to SFB... Frankly, it'd not move a whole lot slower than it does now.

By Andy Vancil (Andy) on Thursday, October 31, 2002 - 01:37 pm: Edit

MJC-
Dodecahedrons, yes. To fill 2D space with regular polygons, you would need to use triangles, squares, or hexagons. To fill 3D space with regular polyhedra, you must use either cubes or dodecahedrons.

If you stack a bunch of billiard balls in the tightest possible arrangement, each one will be touching 12 others.

By Jay Paulson (Etjake) on Thursday, October 31, 2002 - 01:43 pm: Edit

You can use four sided pyramids as well. And if cubes fit, then octahedrons must as well.

By Jay Paulson (Etjake) on Thursday, October 31, 2002 - 01:55 pm: Edit

It should be notes that the dodecahedrons won't be regular polyhedrons either.

By Dave Morse (Dcm) on Thursday, October 31, 2002 - 02:02 pm: Edit

This thread is getting mighty silly...

Andy Vancil writes:
To fill 2D space with regular polygons, you would need to use triangles, squares, or hexagons. To fill 3D space with regular polyhedra, you must use either cubes or dodecahedrons.


Why limit ourselves to regular polys? Why not play SFB on a MC Escher grid of interlocking lizard silouettes? That's how they play at the Gorn naval academy.

By Jay Paulson (Etjake) on Thursday, October 31, 2002 - 02:50 pm: Edit

I beleive the Gorn Naval academy is the sponsor of this topic. And I was in error when I said four side regular polyhedra would fill 3D space. The will not, of course 4, 5, and 7 sided irregulat pyramids will.

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Thursday, October 31, 2002 - 05:19 pm: Edit

Actually, you're better off using hexagonal columns. Hex grid + up and down. Vastly simpler for everyone to visualize.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Thursday, October 31, 2002 - 11:59 pm: Edit

CUBES CUBES CUBES.


You can't go past CUBES.

People understand them...Oh sure, you need to make some kind of rule about moving diagonally, but you can geyt around that.

( 1.414 becomes 1.5 quite easily for the purposses of a game and 1.732 nicely becomes 2 and then all your diagonal problems are solved ).

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Saturday, November 02, 2002 - 02:11 am: Edit

The easist way to deal with the issue is to use, as Ken suggests, hexagonal columns.

If you want to deal with the pythagorean theorem, you do a 30x30 chart that displays the values pre-figured. Outside range-30 nobody's going to care about exact range anyway.

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Saturday, November 02, 2002 - 02:46 pm: Edit

There's a better way to do the pythagorean theorem.

Print two rulers at 90 degree angles from each other. Put a tick mark every 8th of an inch or so, for 40 tick marks (5 inches for each ruler)

Provide a third ruler, and let them measure the hypotenuse directly. You need to know net altitude difference and hexes away on the map.

For ranges under about 24 in either axis, you can get away with simply halving the smaller of the two distances and adding it to the larger. It will overstate the range a tiny bit, but the cumulative error is less than the error in counting out hexes on the hex map rather than using a measuring tape.

By Jay Paulson (Etjake) on Saturday, November 02, 2002 - 04:00 pm: Edit

I don't know why you would add that amount of complexity and still keep hexes though. Better to use free movement and make some turning wheels.

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Saturday, November 02, 2002 - 04:53 pm: Edit

Jay: In a vector movement game, turning wheels aren't gonna work, since facing is mostly independant from direction of travel. (It only effects the direction of thrust)

For 3-D SFB, we want the hexes because otherwise it's too different from "flat" SFB. Plus, using a turning wheel to show a ship's movement through a 60 degree facing change (turn mode gauge) where the ship is rolled 30 degrees to port and nose is angled down by 30 degrees, is more effort than it's worth.

You'd define turn modes by "Number of hexes traveled between orientation marker shifts on the AVID" in 3-D using my engine. Your direction of travel would always be in the direction your nose indicator is pointing. Pretty straight forward, in fact.

Hexes are convenient for a lot of other things top, like regulating movement and orientation changes in 3-D play.

Making SFB 3-D is a feasable project. I don't know if it's something that the market would ever agree to, simply because the first reaction to hearing

"Hey, wanna play SFB in 3-D?"

is to go "3-D SFB? Are you MAD?!? Or did you just want to write the world's only 300 page optional rule?"

Usually while trying to surreptitiously wave to the guy in the white coat with the big honking hypodermic needle.

However, it is doable and eminently playable, aside from seekers. And even seekers could be doable with reduced numbers of them.

By Jay Paulson (Etjake) on Saturday, November 02, 2002 - 05:11 pm: Edit

My point is the restrictions of facing and movement to only 6 directions is rather silly if you're trying to do a "realistic" movement system.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Saturday, November 02, 2002 - 08:55 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

Jay: In a vector movement game, turning wheels aren't gonna work, since facing is mostly independant from direction of travel. (It only effects the direction of thrust)

---

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Saturday, November 02, 2002 - 10:51 pm: Edit

Jay, in AV, we limit it to 50 facings. 12 in the planet of the map (hex edge and hex corner, basically, like most air combat games), 2 rings of 12 facings 30 degrees above and below the plane of the map, 2 rings of 6 facings 60 degrees above and below the plane of the map, and 2 facings for directly up and down.

(This makes it sound much more complex than it is -- the graphical play aids make it childlike simple to use.)

Needless to say, AV is built around realistic physics. SFB isn't.

However, what I learned by making AV playable in 3-D would port fairly easy to SFB, but would require massive changes in things in SFB to make it work right. There is no way to make the 3-D engine fit SFB; there are plenty of ways to make SFB fit the 3-D engine and still have it recognizably BE SFB.

Michael:

In a vector movement game, if I've got a vector of 7 hexes per turn in A, the face that my ship is facing in E has absolutely no relationhip with the direction I'm travelling, as opposed to Star Trek "warp field dynamics", where in order for me to change my facing by 180 degrees, I either have to HET, TAC, or turn in a circle on the scale of the map.

SFB has no vector movement, and no easy way to add it in.

3-D SFB would translate the turn modes defined by the game into something roughly comparable using the 50 point facing system needed for 3-D play.

I know how to do 3-D SFB. I'm even convinced I could make it a playable game; I'm not convinced that it would be met with wild cheers of approbium from the SFB fanbase.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, November 03, 2002 - 01:54 am: Edit

Ken:

---

Quote:

In a vector movement game, if I've got a vector of 7 hexes per turn in A, the face that my ship is facing in E has absolutely no relationhip with the direction I'm travelling,

---

By Jay Paulson (Etjake) on Sunday, November 03, 2002 - 02:44 am: Edit

Turning wheels would be recognizably SFB. The system is built on ships moving like naval ships. (Other than their rather impressive reverse speeds.) Presumbly ships cannot roll at any speed past impulse since they never do in the old series or films.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Sunday, November 03, 2002 - 02:12 pm: Edit

I've even seen them. There have been miniatures modifications for SFB, complete with turn mode guages.

Ken's right though. SFB just doesn't lend itself to true 3-D.

Now, some people have been putting out ideas that would lend themselves to a sort of "2 1/2-D" or "movie 3-D" SFB. The following would represent an attempt to describe a system that integrates with SFB with minimal rules additions.

* Ships do not rotate on any axis at any time, save through the Y-axis according to the existing 2-D turn rules
* Ships are always level with respect to the playing field.
* Ships change altitude as a slidelip or turn function.
* Shields are assumed to be "orange slices", negating the need for new "top" and "bottom" shields and allowing the use of SFB's normal 2-D shield facing rules regardless of altitude.
* Weapons gain an "up" or "down" property (occasionally both). Unless we can easily describe a 60-degree downward/upward slope, all up/down arcs are 90 degree arcs, utilizing SFB's 2-D firing arcs and shield facings to determine whether a weapon can fire.

It's very simplistic, I agree. But it wouldn't be a game-altering 300-page optional rule, either.

The big problem with any kind of 3-D SFB, including my proposal, is that SFB ships are not balanced or built for 3-D combat. Without looking at SSD's, it seems likley that ships could have embarassing and exploitable "dead zones" where few or no weapons bear. Suppose a Fed BB's G-racks and P-Gs are on the belly (i think they are). Launch those drones from above it and suddenly the Feds lose all of their defensive weaponry.

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Sunday, November 03, 2002 - 05:16 pm: Edit

Even legendary Captains rarely notice that space is 3-D in Star Trek, it is an amazing breakthrough when this finally dawns on Kirk in one of the movies after all. His super inteligent opponent misses it entirely. (And even Kirk is not daring enough to actually try to turn the ship to face up or down, or move forward at the same time he is gowing up or down, you stop, and then rise or fall like an elevator.)

And Star Trek ships CANNOT roll on their axis, after all one of the easiest ways to tell a ship has been killed in the shows and movies is that it starts to list, God knows what happens if one capsizes!

By John Kasper (Jvontr) on Sunday, November 03, 2002 - 06:37 pm: Edit

The NG episode w/ the 3-engined Enterprise is the only one I can think of, in any of the TV shows or movies where combat took place w/ the two ships using different local verticals. Horizontal, from the Enterprise point of view was vertical from the Klingon one.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Sunday, November 03, 2002 - 09:15 pm: Edit

DS9 had some swooping down and strafing attacks but generally it just adds to the S.E.cost to change the ship elevation and attitude.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Sunday, November 03, 2002 - 09:45 pm: Edit

D.E.L.:


Check out still pictures form STII-tWoK.

After Khan takes over, the reliant's upsidedown...and Kirk doesn't find this at all odd.

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Sunday, November 03, 2002 - 11:34 pm: Edit

Actually, porting SFB to AV's 3-D would be about the same number of pages it is in AV -- about 10 pages, all told, including firing arcs. Maybe fewer. AV is in larger text that's eaiser to read, getting about 80% of the text per page that SFB uses.

The problem is that while I could make it, I couldn't get permission to make it -- and it'd be fitting SFB to 3-D, not 3-D to SFB.

The orange slice shields issue runs into some problems. What shield do I hit if I'm directly over the top of someone's ship?

Weapon arc blind spots are another...SFB's weapon arcs (other than the Klingon extended firing arcs) really have no thought put into 3-D for them.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, November 04, 2002 - 12:10 am: Edit

"The orange slice shields issue runs into some problems. What shield do I hit if I'm directly over the top of someone's ship?"

Resolve it the same as Range zero is resolved now. Or the was split shields are resolved. Move one ship in the direction it is traveling to determine which shield.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Monday, November 04, 2002 - 02:18 am: Edit

Loren Knight,

Exactly.


Ken Burnside,

The one problem importing SFB into AV, is that it's no longer SFB.