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giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by cowboy31 on Apr 11th, 2005, 1:24pm
I have been giiving this some thought, and a few friends and i are going to try this out
some weekend.
Regarding making STSTCS into a 3d game. I don't think it can be done with out convoluting
the game with alot more rules, but you can give it the illusion of 3d. my friends and i
have constructed a "sand table" in my neighbors storage building. We took the
hex map and pasted it to plywood and then we stackek four levels of clear plastic with the
hex map drawn on them. that gives us five levels of play. We kept all the rules that have
been published and so on but we did add a modifiier to range.
here is our formula for range
no of hex's away + level away * .50
ie: a ship on the second level is firing at a ship on the 5th level and the range is 14
hexes on the hex map.
you would take the 14 and add 3 * .50 which would be 1.5 so you would round that up to two
and that would make the range and damage equivalent to 16 hexes. In our simple rules ships
that ocupy the same hex stack on the levels can not fire on each other. We are in the
process of figuring that one out right now.
all the sensor, cloaks, and other rules apply.
tell me what you think, but please remember this is a protytipe that is being developed as
we go.
thanks
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by cowboy31 on Apr 11th, 2005, 1:28pm
oh for movement into the next level and so it cost a movement point on that level of power
alowcation.
ie. you have 3 movement points. and you want to move up or down a level it will leave you
with two movement points
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by atkindave on Apr 11th,
2005, 4:39pm
OK, actually the right triangle rule works perfectly, instead. Mentally draw a right angle
straight down to the level the opposition ship is on, and push it out to the ship there.
The range is the hypotenuse.
In this case, if a firing ship is two planes up (equal to 4 hexes range?), and the
recieving ship is 14 hexes away from it horizontally, then the range should be the square
root of each number squared. 4*4 = 16, 14*14= 196, total 212, rooted to 14.560. (You could
make the rule always to round up).
You could also use a standard board, and small chips (like those found in Axis and
Allies) to represent range, use two colors to represent whether it is above or below
the plane.
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by CaptainPierce on Apr 11th, 2005, 6:22pm
A friend and I thought about this 15 years ago, but never quite got around to doing it...
The "right triangle" rule sounds like a good way to handle range.
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by christopher on Apr 12th, 2005, 02:26am
Right triangle right on...I used that to devise a minimum range chart for angle of attack
in a WW 1 air combat game I made in jr high. As for keeping track of 'altitude'
difference...hmmm, just use one of the hex rows on the side of the map to represent a
'vertical' plane. Each ship has an 'altitude' chit that represents what vertical level the
ship is on, the rest of the hex field keeps track of position in the normal way. When it's
time to fire, input the horzontal range and vertical range into the right triangle formula
and 'boom'. It isn't as neat looking as this transparent hex level thing but it gives you
as many vertical levels to play in as the longest hex row you decide to use. I have always
thought ships should be able to fight in the same hex...has there ever been a maximum
range phaser shot in any Trek film/episode? Probably, but most of what we see seems to be
happening pretty close quarters.
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by cowboy31 on Apr 13th, 2005, 5:03pm
Ok we talked about the right triangle rule and we all agree to it. and we have come up
with and idea for ships in the same hex stack. We are going to allow them to fire on each
other. but seeing how the game is origenally set up for 2d play we decided to through a D6
to decide what shield area an effective hit would be on. This way it gives us combat in
all hexes including if the ships are on the same exact hex. It kind a forces you away from
trying to use an enamy ship to cover your own....
the range on a hex stack is to be calculated just like a regular hex line on the starmap
ie. an Enterprise class cruiser is on the lowest level and a Klingon BoP ocupies the the
hex that is two levels above it the range would be 6 hexes (we measured the hight between
levles and they average out to 3 hexes between each) We decided if the ships ocupy the
same hex stack that the forward weapons would be used in an attack on that situation.
Tell me what you think of these rules please
....smiles......my friend Tim says this is starting to get complected but he is having fun
testplaying this stuff..
LOL
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by christopher on Apr 15th, 2005, 7:03pm
Hmm, for same hex combat I use an abstract system that is a common feature of many other
role playing oriented games. Energy is allocated as normal, but for combat resolution and
movement things change. First the ships are assumed to be manuevering towards the targets
tail as most ships have less firepower aft. The speed of the ship, the skill of the
helmsman and a die roll are totalled (I have considered adding a modifier based on the MPR
or some possible 'quickdraw' features of certain weapons, but it's simpler this way) the
ship with the highest total is in the other ships aft arc and the other ship is obviously
in the high rollers forward arc. fire is then resolved normally with an assumed range of
'one'. Two is subtracted from the hit probability for both ships to account for the
relatively violent manuevering. Obviously only the aft weapons of the 'manuever phase'
loser may be fired at the winner, and only the winners forward firing weapons may be fired
at the loser. This system can be used for dogfights involveing more than two ships but an
additional modifier should be added per ship on each side in excess of one. So that if a
three ship group (of Klingons usually) is attacking a single ship in the same hex the
three ship group would have a +2 added on three seperate rolls to out manuever the lone
ship who would have no modifer (this represents the added difficulty of trying to out
maneuver multiple ships that are cooperating). If each level in the 3D game is equal to
10000km ships not on the same level should be considered not in the same hex (dogfights
are only allowed when within 10000km of the target).
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by atkindave on Apr 16th,
2005, 4:48pm
That's probably more complicated than it has to be. Besides, the ST combat from TOS and
movies 1-6 (that this game is trying to recreate) does not have any
"dogfighting" per se. Besides, it wouldn't look that way in real space
combat either. Just have auto hits (or base 10 modified for casualties etc.) and maximum
bonuses for weapons. As far as shield hit, well, look at the ship's lie. The ship with
initiative gets to decide if the opposition ship is in front or behind it at the time of
fire, then just by looking you can see which shields are hit from any resulting fire.
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by christopher on Apr 16th, 2005, 7:12pm
Sounds good to me...except the automatic hits thing, in all of the films we see at least
some of these very close range shots miss. We also see the ships perform evasive
manuevers, we even hear the captains bark the word 'evasive' in whatever langauage they
speak. So, the hit probability for range one should be used, with a -2 applied as usual
for ships that are evading. I might even go so far as to assume all ships in the same hex
situation to be evading as matter of course, but this is not entirely accurate as some
commanders will prefer to not evade to preserve increased hit probability and risk the
enemy not missing them. The dogfight thing is just so easy to depict in this way...I must
agree that it is probably not applicable in this situation (space combat). Unless of
course it's Star Wars...but then why couldn't the TIE fighter pilot just cut his engines
and roll his fighter backwards and fire at Luke that way? His momentum will continue on
it's original vector while he's blasting away, and he could then select any new vector he
wished after Luke is evaporated for evasive. Hmm, space combat could be very interesting
in the Real Deal...
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by atkindave on Apr 17th, 2005, 8:13pm
Well, I meant that most weapons have a 10 at range 1 anyway, and for those that don't,
this is even closer than 1. 1 say 10 for all weapons modified by the standard
stuff.
Evading beam weapons ought to be impossible at this range (<10000 km) even if
you have rules for evading at longer range and MW should be difficult to evade at any
range. OTOH, you may want to have a "no fire MW" rule at this range: the
explosion could be dangerous for the attacker as well.
Re: giving the elusion of 3-D
Post by christopher on Apr 17th, 2005, 10:22pm
OK. The Rules do not allow for evasion of beam weapon fire. Evasion of missile weapon fire
at less than 10000km is not really that different than evading at any other range as the
most effective way to do this would be to allow the missile to get pretty close then vere
off, hopefully outside of the torpedoes manuever envelope. As for the possibility of feed
back or splash back damage from torpedo fire in the same hex...I have no idea. What would
the blast radius be for an A/M warhead of a given yield? 10000km is still a pretty big
place, the ships could still be thousands of km apart. I suppose a random way could be
used to deduce the actual subhex range, but I think it doesn't really matter. Photorps are
very destructive but I doubt they have blast radii measured in thousands of km...So, the
ship with initiative (highest speed...right?) decides what firing arc to use and the 'shy'
ship should be forced to use the reciprical firing arc (starboard quarter is reciprical
for port bow...does that make sense?) with hits assumed to be automatic barring evasion of
missile weapons and cloak effects. There is no danger of feed back/collateral damage from
'friendly' missile fire. Sounds good so far...
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