Friday, April 22, 2011

So, since I'm embracing high guard now...

I've been knocking around ideas about incorporating static defenses in HG combat.

If a commander of a fleet wishes to employ planetary weapons in the battle, the world for all intents and purposes is one very big ship. It should have a computer and a power plant; it will need crew and so forth. Armor for these features should be equivalent to a buffered planetoid. There are essentially no tonnage limitations: budgetary and tech constraints are all. Edit re italics: although on an inhabited planet of equivalent tech, these could be scattered all over the surface or just under it, and blend into the background, and be basically unidentifiable... no? So basically, the target-able elements of planetside defenses would be the weapons themselves, except in the case for deep mesons, whose sensors would again blend into the background of an industrialized world... argh.

There should be a fairly restrictive "batteries bearing" percentage (planets being big)

Damage to planetary installations should be treated the same as with ships: most weapons systems need to be on the surface anyway.Deep mesons, while technically invulnerable to direct hits, are dependent on surface sensors and power plants which are themselves vulnerable and damage assigned to them can be ascribed to damage to ancillary systems for purposes of an individual battle. see above.

1) A fleet incorporating planetary defenses has a fleet agility of zero.
2) To bring planetary weaponry to bear, the planet must be placed in the line of battle; it cannot fire from the reserve.
3) If the planetary fleet has initiative, and changes range from long to short, the planet must be placed in the reserve.
4) If the planetary fleet has initiative, and changes range from short to long, it must be assumed to have moved far enough away from the planet to remove it and its weapons from play.

I'd discussed with someone, once, the phenomenon of a fleet with agility-0 being able to occasionally win initiative and determine range, the rationale being that the mobile fleet is attempting its best possible shot but is preempted by the immobile fleet from doing so at the best range presented to them: in the context of HG's abstract combat this works for me - and it works just as well if one of the fleets happens to be a planet on its own. Biggest difference: The planet cannot flee the battle (though the battle can be brought away from it) and it cannot pursue a mobile fleet that attempts to flee.

Anyone want to contribute ideas? Let's ignore cost and composition of planetary defenses for now, since it's a can of worms.

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