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Post by finarvyn on Jan 12, 2010 18:07:52 GMT -5
If one pays attention to the canon Trek material, warp speed messes up most starship combat games.
The Starfleet Technical Manual (the first place I can recall ever seeing a "warp factor" equation) implies that WF is based on the speed of light cubed.
So WF 1 = (1*1*1)c = c (speed of light) and WF2 = (2*2*2)c = 8c and WF3 = (3*3*3)c = 27c and so on.
The problem with this is obvious. If one ship can go WF3 and another (perhaps the Romulin Bird of Prey) maxes out less than WF1, then the speedy ship could totally run circles around the slower ship. In a hex-based game, perhaps one ship moves 1 hex per turn and the other 27 hexes per turn. This totally messes up any form of game balance.
Federation Space "solved" this problem by allowing ships to move a number of hexes equal to their WF, so for that earlier example one ship moves 1 hex/turn while the other only 3 hexes/turn. Not so "Trek realistic" but a much better game balance.
Does anyone worry about this stuff, and if so what sort of solutions have you tried?
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Post by slortar on Jan 12, 2010 18:48:36 GMT -5
Well, the way I see it is that a jump in warp capability further than .5 or so really does represent a quantum leap in engine technology. If one ship can go only wf 3 and the other 6, it really should be a rather lopsided fight, at least as far as maneuvering goes. We're talking sailboats vs WWII battleships. Just my 2 cents.
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Post by Badelaire on Jan 12, 2010 20:02:52 GMT -5
Or, you can simply adjucate that combat can't take place at FTL speeds, which is the way I'd look at it. Any ships in combat need to be moving under impulse engines in order to target and fire with the precision necessary to engage another ship.
Otherwise, how do you fire photon torpedoes while moving 27 times the speed of light?
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Post by Falconer on Jan 12, 2010 23:36:55 GMT -5
Otherwise, how do you fire photon torpedoes while moving 27 times the speed of light? Especially if your target is cloaked!
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Post by Aaron on Jan 20, 2010 17:49:17 GMT -5
In one episode (Elena of Trois or something like that), the Enterprise has its warp drive disabled and is attacked by a warp capable Klingon. Pretty good feel for what it's like although they never clearly explain why the Klingon has to make attack runs at the Enterprise instead of just sitting off at range and plinking away.
The whole warp cubed * speed of light thing really only works for the Next Generation era since they really didn't care about such things in the original series with the Enterprise going to the center of the galaxy or across it in just a few hours.
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