Re: Tactics

Eugene Shumu1insky said:
"       Though this is true when using the official Spelljamming rules,
in reality a ship will just wait for you to come within range before
it fires.  The fast ship in the example above would be at a great advantage,
but would not come out unscathed outside of AD&D's rigid "round" rules.

-Static"

Actually, the Spelljamming rules are warped in favor of the Beholder ship
in the example I gave.  The ship with the Light Catapult needs such
a large speed advantage to be secure only because the Spelljamming
system doesn't have simultaneous movement.  In Spelljammer you can
have two ships make a ramming run on each other's rear quarter in the same
round.

Against a ship with range, speed, and maneuverability advantages there really
isn't much hope.  The problem the Beholder ship has is that they have
no artillery, while their attack is _Devastating_, its maximum range is
one Hex.

The whole point of my article was to show that if you knew you were going
to have less speed and maneuverability, you _had_ to have the edge in
artillery and range.

The rules of Spelljammer actually work _against_ the ship with superior
maneuverability. in that maneuverability should be a much greater
advantage than it is when played out with miniatures on a hex map.  Part of
it is because movement is not simultaneous, and part of it because of
the initiative system, the slower ship could get two moves in a row before
the faster ship can reestablish range.  It would be very difficult to
play the theoretical maneuverability advantage the Elves have over the
humanoids to get the same level of combat advantage described in the
various books, modules and Netbooks.

I'd prefer a segmented movement system, which would allow a ship to
follow another's maneuvers a but more closely, making more use of
initiative, pilot skill and factors like that to see if the chaser can
match the moves of the chased.

Michael Sandy