Archive through November 23, 2002
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
New Rules:
3-D SFB Proposals:
Archive through November 23, 2002
This is a conversation thread that grew out of the "Impulse chart Optional Rule" topic when it split off into various forms of 3-D adaptations of SFB.
I posted the following On Nov 3, reposted as a convo re-starter.
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.
Kirk Spencer posted this in the optional rule thread.
<I>John Trauger - the one problem with making SFB 3D in any flavor is that it's no longer SFB. (sigh).
Regarding the orange slice shields, you haven't thought it out. Stationay target - a base, maybe. I maneuver to the Z axis of the ship and begin my run. What shield do I hit? "next" move does me no good at all. Ah, I know - it becomes the defender's choice.
Orange slice weapons is even worse as it makes absolutely no sense for some weapons - the worst being the 360's. As you noted, is it a semisphere above or below the ship? or worse for visualizing, a sphere minus some sort of 'divot'?</I>
Wrong image. Loren Knight answered the weapons question (I believe the idea I'm using was originally his), but I'll expand on it just to be sure its clear. Weapons have an "up or down" property in addition to their normal firing arcs. A top mounted weapon uses its normal SFB firing arc except it extends infinitly high. above the ship. Some thing for a bottom-mounted weapon. LS and RS weapons can have both top and bottom, describing a hemisphere on its side. This only breaks down with limited-arc weapons like photons, which shouldn't have a 180-degree arc of fire up-down any more than they should have one right-left. If we can easily decrible a 120-degree cone, that problem is solved. I don't expect an easy solution.
We're talking standard SFB arcs extended up and/or down as is appropriate. We don't want to start working with 3D geometry. That gets incredibly messy.
Now we'll address shields.
The general rule for shield facing would be "reduce to 2-D. What's the shield facing?" That's why the shields would be orange-slices.
If you are making a Z-axis run at a base, your position relative to the base (and therefore which of the base's sheilds you will hit) has not changed since you entered it's hex-column. For shield facing purposes, it would be the equivalent of spending an extended time in the base's hex or something similar to assaulting a temporaly-elevated Andro base. I cannot conceive of ever having an ambiguous shield facing when dealing with a base, let alone a "defender's choice" result occurring.
By that same token, the base would NOT have all of its weapons available to fire at that ship, just those that were in arc according to the ship's 2-D facing relative to the base
John said
Quote:It's very simplistic, I agree. But it wouldn't be a game-altering 300-page optional rule, either.
300 pages? Bah - no way. Whether you use Ken's AV as a base, or your 3d Chessboard, or even the convaluted 3D mechanism of "shooting stars", the worst you'll see is 30. Well, maybe not. I can already think of a couple of rules modifications which are going to be painful to deal with: Webs in all cases, and vertical movement in your system. (First is the fact that I'm going 45 degrees up/down, second is the mental realization that even if I "turn" down, I still stay parallel to the mapboard.)
FWIW, if I can't take advantage of 3D - rolling and pitching as well as yawing - then I have no reason to play 3D. It becomes as useful as - oh, let's say as useful as having my nose direction fixed regardless of my heading on a 2D game.
You have to have a legendary captain in order to "take advantage of 3d".
I was considering allowing altitude gain/loss as a sideslip function, just to save on credibility strain.
And, as I said on the other thread, this was written to be minimally invasive to SFB, not make the most sense.
Really you need to redesign ships, some terrain, and movement to do a "good" 3-D SDB and at the end you get a SFB-ish system, at best. At that point, it would be much easier to just adapt SFB to something like Ken's AV. In fact, AV would be my first choice I belive Ken has done some work along those lines already.
Quote:I just thought of something for shields. What about having a 7th and 8th shield (top and bottom). You don't add the shields but rather take 1/6th of the shields from all the others.
Or you could increase the number of sheild boxes of the #3 and #5 sheilds to be equal to the #2 and #6 ( if they aren't already ) and then take roof and floor hits on the sheild #3 and #5.
Or, you just do as I proposed -- #3 becomes the top shield (covering 1/6 the surface of a sphere) and #5 the bottom, with the equatorial shields being 1, 2, 6 and 4.
It actually does the least change to the game engine; the fact that you no longer have a "rear flank" equatorial shield becomes much less of a change than the fact that you can angle up or angle down.
There is a "right" way to do 3-D space combat in general. Anything that deviates from this in the name of "simplicity" usually runs into massive second and third order problems.
As to the web issue...you define a web with altitude as well as length.
A lot of the canonical SFB interps of web (buzz saw in particular) goes away. But a globular web is truly that -- a globe of web.
Web would need a serious rewrite to extend to 3D. Obviously, a web would need to be at least 10,00km in height but the rules governing the ability to place web next to web would need a rewrite. By the current rules, you cannot build a true sphere of web. It would be too porus. The best you could do would be a series of rings or a single strand wrapped around the base like a ball of string. But there would be scads of 10000km gaps through which defenders would stream. Without a rewrite, web probably could not serve its defensive function and Web-casters would have to fist to be useful. It might work to allow web to be anchored at 4 points instead of two.
ESGs would become both more powerful and more difficult to properly employ, assuming they became spheres, as would be reasonable.
I disagree with going to 4 shields. More damage tends to fall on less shield area. But then if you're departing from SFB to a true 3D system that includes pitch and yaw and all the rest, it doesn't mattter. You could use any shield system you cared to because a proper conversion requires that you'd be redisigning the ships anyway.
A little of topic thought:
Star Fleet Acadamy was full 3D. I wonder how SFC would work out?
3D SFB should NOT be an attempt to realistically simulate 3D space combat. Rather an attmept to simulate the third dimension as seen in the various films.
I developed a 3D version of SFB for a homebrew RPG I am writting.
It's funny how I can put most of the SFB rules and the 3D stuff into about 48 pages of rules.
1) Balanced BPV...it's an RPG so the players don't need a balanced BPV, they just need to get the right number of XP to the suit the result of the battle.
2) Top and bottom sheild...#3 & #5 became Top and Bottom respectively....you'll understand below.
3) Type of teselation...cubes.
4) Side-slips...It's an RPG so gaining little one change of range adjustments through side-slips becomes less important...though I could alter my turning by degrees rules to generate both a heading and an inclination and then apply FORCED SIDE-SLIPS inorder to pass through all the cubes that a real ship could possibly move through.
It's also a full turn or ten segment game (Referee's choice ) so if you want to pass through some specific point, you just turn and counter turn a few cubes early.
5) Firing Arcs...I broke the Firing Arcs into several different firing Arcs, based on what I felt was most reasonable, throughing the BPV out in the process to a small extent.
The new Firing arc were many and varried but some applied directly to SFB Firing Arcs.
All Arcs are decribed by travelling clockwise from the first to the second point and cover all angles inclusively.
01 Arc. This is from a bearing of 0 to 45° and through an azimuth of 0 to 45°, it corrisponds to the LF firing Arc of SFB.
02 Arc. This is From a bearing of 45 to 90° an through an Azimuth of 0 to 45°.
04 Arc. This is from 90 to 135° and through an azimuth of 0 to 45°.
05 Arc. This is from 135 to 180° and through an Azimuth of 0 to 45°. Itis the LR arc of SFB.
07 Arc. This is from 180 to 225° and through an Azimuth of 0 to 45°. It corrisponds to the RR arc of SFB.
08 Arc. This is from 225 to 270° and through an azimuth of 0 to 45°.
10 Arc. This is from a heading of 270 to 315° and azimuth of 0 to 45°.
11 Arc. This is from a heading of 315 to 360° and through 0 to 45° azimuth. If corrisponds to the RF arc of SFB.
F Arc. From 315 to 45° through azimuth of -45 to +45°. It corrisponds to the FA arc of SFB.
P Arc. From 225 to 315° through an Azimuth of -45 to +45°. It corrisponds to the L arc of SFB.
A Arc. From 135 to 225 degrees of bearing througfh an azimuth of -45 to +45°. It corrisponds to the RA arc of SFB.
S Arc. From 45 to 135° bearing through an azimuth of -45 to +45°. It corrisponds to the R arc of SFB.
PB Arc ( Port Bow ). From 270 to 360° through an azimuth of 0 to +90°.
SB Arc ( Starboard Bow ). From 0 to 90° through an Asimuth of 0 to +90°.
SQ Arc ( Starboard Quater ). From 90 to 180° through azimuth of 0 to +90 degrees.
PQ Arc ( Port Quarter ). From 180 to 270° through azimuth of 0 to +90°.
FH Arc. From a bearing of 270 to 90° through an azimuth of -90 to +90°. This equates to the Forward Hemisphere arc of SFB.
PH Arc. From a Bearing of 0 to 180 degree through an Azimuth of -90 to +90°. This equates to the LH Arc of SFB.
AH Arc. From a bearing of 90 to 270° through an azimuth of -90 to +90°. This relates to the RH Arc of SFB.
SH Arc. From 180 to 360° through an azimuth of -90 to +90°. This equates to the SFB arc of RS.
FX Arc. From 225 to 135° through an Asimuth of -90 to +90°. This Equates to the FX arc of SFB.
SX Arc. From 315 to 225° through an Asimuth of -90 to +90°.
AX Arc. From 45 to 225° through an Asimuth of -90 to +90°. This relates to the RX arc of SFB.
PX Arc. From 135 to 45° through an Azimuth of -90 to +90 degrees.
CA ( Circle Above ). 360° of bearing through an Azimuth of 0 to +90 degrees.
CO ( Circle Over ). 360° of bearing through an azimuth of -45 to +90°.
CB ( Circle Below ). 360° of bearing through an Azimuth of -90 to 0°.
CU ( Circle Under ) 360° of bearing through an azimuth of -90 to +45°.
Klingon Special Phaser Arcs were thrown out as being to limited...only Klingons get to use them anyway. It's not like those weapons don't alread have fantastic arcs.
6) Range. Range is easy to calculte. All diagonals cost 1.5 except the diagons that are are also onm diagonals whioch cost 2 ( round up ).
People who want to be really accurate can use.
( (X1 - X2)2 + (Y1 - Y2)2 + (Z1 - Z2)2 )1/2 ( rounded up )
7) Movement. Movement is also 2 for the odd diagonals and 1 fior the evens, and Diagonals that are on diagonals cost 2 every time ones moves into a new Cube.
Lateral and Vertical Turning are independant.
HETS and TACS don't change.
.
.
.
All in all, once you choose to through out the idea that two ships of Equal BPV are still going to be of equal BPV, you can build a TRUE 3D game with very few extra rules.
MJC,
You have the "simple" math there to do the range, but it took me YEARS, literally, to solve these problems:
My ship starts on a heading of 0 degrees azimuth (on the 360 degree horizantal plane), 0 degrees attitude (+90 to -90 degree nose up/down), and 0 degrees orientation (wings-level on +180 (roll-right) to -180 (roll-left) scale). First, I pitch the nose up by 45 degrees, then I yaw to the right 60 degrees ... how much do I have to roll to bring the wings back to level???
Before I started that maneuver, your ship was at 335 by +15 degrees, "northwest" and slightly "higher," from mine. After I made the first two moves, up 45 / right 60, what is the realitive direction to your ship, i.e., which of my weapons are in firing arc?? (Or should that be a firing cone??)
Granted, you can approximate these questions with miniatures mounted on 3D stands ... but at one point in time, I was looking at writing code to for a copmputer program. I did figure out a series of eight trig-function calculations to answer those types of problems. Someone told me that I should try matrix-multiplication ... which (1) I haven't done since high school algrebra-2 some 25 years ago, (2) I didn't understand back then, and (3) even if I did know how to use them, they appear to be far too complex for ME to write code for.
Garth L. Getgen
Garth,
Using the AVID from Ken's game and some approximations (all the intervals are 30 degree segments, making that 45 a pain)...
In the first case, you need to roll about -30 to be 'wings level'.
In the second case, anything that's got an aim of left low - generally just below and slightly forward of your port wing.
Total time to figure - five minutes. (Again, the hard part was that 15 degree interval and the resulting swags.)
I really am becoming convinced that Tony Valle has successfully invented the wheel for 3D, and anyone not using his PHAD system is "doing it the hard way." oh - that's right, I mean Ken's adaptation of Tony's PHAD. Calculating position - both specific and relative, is QUICK.
8) The Web Problem. ( I knew I forgotten to post something. ) What you do is circle around abond connect the web.
Then you energise that web in a special way, by making the web circle into t tube. Every point of power increases the height per cube that you flew through, by one level.
Once you've got it to the height ( and depth ) to what you want, you can just energise the web to cover over the ends, creating a giant octagonal prism.
Then after you've filled the surface cubes with an unenergised web all around, you can just begin solidifying that web by energising it.
Sure, it's not rearly as realistick as flying around through every "brick of the wall", but it's still a playabvle solution.
Garth, if flying with the AVID/PHAD (The AVID sacrifices some accuracy for ease of training), finding out if a weapon is in arc in 3-D is simple.
Question 1: Do I see him through a hex edge or hex corner?
Question 2: Which of the following conditions is true?
A) Is his horizontal distance 4x his vertical distance?
B) Is his horizontal distance equal to or greater than his vertical distance?
C) Is his horizontal distance less than his vertical distance?
D) Is his horizontal distance less than one quarter of his vertical distance?
The answers to those two questions tell me which of 50 windows of the sphere I see him through. Count windows over to where my nose or port or starboard indicator is pointing (think aircraft lights on an airplane), and look for the corresponding spot on the firing arc display.
I can map every SFB firing arc to AVID displays fairly easily.
Calculating the range is easy: I have two rulers printed on a play aid at right angles (like below)
|
|
|
+-------
I simply take a third ruler, line one end up on the altitude hash mark and measure the damned hypotenuse. No math needed. Any fractional distance rounds in favor of the attacker.
John: Trust me on this -- the difference in the shield coverage is ignorable. It's hard to explain without a lot of graphics and actually playing it...but it is a trivial difference.
MJC: Your way isn't simple, or playable. 
K.B.:
But at least I DID IT MY WAY.
Good title for a song.
J.T.:
Yup...that was my thinking.
I'll vouch for Ken, his AVID system is both simple and very playable. I see few reasons why SFB 3D would have problems with his engine (unless of course he want to play Titan and the Unicorn)
having also played around with the AVID, it is very nice and nifty (one of those - gee, I wish I had thought of this ideas).
Movement in SFB could fairly easily be adopted to some other systems (like the AVID from Attack Vector). Combat would open alot of worm holes. Weapons arcs would totally have to be rethought - from the ship minis as a guide just look at how many phasers are on the top of the ship with no way of firing down - you would probably need to alter every single SSD - yuck. and just how big are the plasma LP/RP arcs in the +/-Z?
For my money, I'll stick with other games that were designed with 3D in mind for 3D excitement.
but dont let me deter anyone from going down this particular path to madness - everyone needs at least one..
Simplified 3D:
(CX.0) TACTICAL ROTATION (Optional)
(CX.1) Just as ships in space can move forward or backward without penalty so to can they fly upside down or right side up. All ships are assumed to begin scenarios upside right but ships may rotate on their axis similar to performing a tactical maneuver.
(CX.X1) Ships gain the ability to rotate at the same rate and cost as if they were performing a tactical maneuver.
(CX.X2) Once rotated the ship has the mirror firing arcs. An FA weapon would not be affected but a LS weapon would now become RS. LFL would become RFR.
(CX.X3) In a similar way a rotated ship would mirror shield facings. Shield 1 and 4 would not be affected. All damage that would have been resolved as hitting Shield 2 would instead hit shield 6 on a rotated ship. Shield 3 damage would be resolved on shield 5. The reverse of these examples is also true.
The rule (CX.X1) is too powerful. Lets require a four impulse delay to change your orientation and once begun you can't reverse the process until the process is complete. With this delay I'd eliminate the cost and simply allow any ship to perform this maneuver for free as often as it likes (within the limits of the non-reversible delay).
I'm pretty sure this is on the auto-reject list.
Yep This is definetly on the auto reject list
Like this topic is in danger of being immediately promoted to the New Product Development list.
But I take your point. Let there be a 4-impulse delay plus the cost of a TAC. Like EM this maneuver could use as much impulse power as you like (1 impulse per rotation), even if impulse has already been used for movement. Of course warp could be used but not AWR or APR. Also a ship eligable for a zero energy turn would also be eligable to execute a zero energy tactical rotation if announced on impulse 28.
Still, if you think about it, it’s simple to implement and has mind-boggling tactical implications. I think it would be a wild optional rule. Now when was SSJ2 being published again?
True.
This maneuver has its own topic already. "New Maneuver: Axial Roll" about halfway back up the page.