...do not go well together. I'm working through the cadet game of SFB that comes with SFC, and a huge key to the board game is that turns happen instananeously at 60 degree intervals, and due to the flight path restrictions of a hex map, flying 60 degrees off of a parallel course to your enemy keeps the range open just as well as the parallel one (e.g. with an FX firing arc, you would never get chased down during a saber dance, because every hex you go sideways at the sixty degree angle is another hex counted as range that your enemy has to eventually cover himself). This also means as a fed you could dip into range 8 on an oblique and shoot overloads at a plasma ship and then run away the NEXT IMPULSE at speed 31...as if you were flying directly away from it because of the angle thing...essentially an infinitely fast course reversal...you can fly TOWARDS it at top speed into range 8, then never get closer than range 8 from then on! Ridiculous!!
In SFC, this doesn't work because normal geometery is in effect. Turn one degree away from your run-away-course and your enemy catches up. With a typical Fed turn mode, you cannot hope to fire torpedoes without an HET at high speeds unless at extremely far ranges because your enemy will pretty much have overrun you by the time you start to turn towards him...
Of course, you can simply decelerate, and that's great when facing missile and plasma ships *cough*. Even then it just takes too long to turn, that something like range 20 may not be enough.
I think SFC is a great game, and should by all means not be an exact replica of the pencil and paper version. But it wouldn't hurt to boost the turn rates of all ships with an extra boost to the slower ones. Disruptor ships should still turn faster, but it should be possible to fire overloaded photons at max range without overrunning the target one second later, or what is the point of having different ranges in the first place..
So many times in this game I plan on taking a specific range volley with certain weapons, only to have it degrade into a point blank alpha. Much of the precision is lost because of the smooth, slow turns.
Along a similar vein but not as necessary it would be cool if the weapons charged as in SFB (instananeously). One point for a phaser allows it to fire immediately, then it has to cool down for one turn (the rest of the current turn in SFB). Or for photons...in SFB they essentially charge in one turn since you can fire them on the 33rd impulse...the photons should charge in one turn but then cool down for a turn...exactly as fusions work in SFC EDIT: not exactly, since you still have to pay energy each turn, the point is that you only have to wait one turn's worth of time before they are ready to fire from the time you started charging them. This also allows for battery boosting of heavy weapons. If you are closing and suddenly want an overload, you just click overload and bam it's ready...like using batteries in SFB.
Then I want every thing else in SFB added in, plus 10x more, plus one.
But at least boost turn rates.
Topic: Real time SFC and Fed turn mode (Read 2116 times)