Re: Planet Conquest]]

>Actually it is true.  the slightest calculation at those speeds
>and distances will cause you to lose ships constantly.
>Off by .1 degrees?  Bye-bye ship.

I don't see where you are coming from.  Navigators on a weeks-long trip
don't just plot a course and hope it all works out.  It is constantly being
updated.  If they are off a little, it is corrected before they go to far.
The ship meets at waypoints at specific intervals, probably at least once
per eight hour watch due to the speeds involved, with the final one being
about 200,000 miles out from Spiral.  They are perfectly safe there.
Detecting something the size of a sailing ship at 200,000 miles (the
distance of the moon from the earth) is going to be absolutely impossible.
But once they have gathered there, it is a short distance at full
spelljamming speeds (about 3 minutes) to close with the Crown, and it is
almost impossible to get lost in the process.

Another approach is to travel in a single file line along roughly the same
course.  It doesn't really matter then if they are off by a fraction of a
degree because it won't result in the slowdown of neighboring ships (as
there aren't any neighboring ships).  As long as they all stop periodically
to let ships that have drifted recalculate, it would work just fine.  Since
they all travel the same speed at full spelljamming speed, keeping in a line
means they don't close with each other and cannot trigger a drop to tactical
speed.

Assume they are spaced out about 1 second apart, ie, the 2nd ship leaves a
second after the 1st, the 3rd leaves a second after the 2nd, etc.  That puts
them more than a thousand miles apart, far more than is needed to avoid any
interference problem.  When the first ship slows, the next in line overtakes
it in about a second and automatically slows down.  Then the third over
takes them both and also automatically slows, then fourth, etc.  In one
round, you can have 60 ships showing up.  They won't be in a great
formation, but unless their foe knows they are coming, they will have
several rounds (while the defenders get up from bed, or the mess table or
wherever they were at the time, and get to their battle stations) to take
advantage of their surprise, get some organization, and start pounding the
heck of their foe.

If you have a good plan worked out in advance, and line the ships up in
order of their tasks (so ships with the most critical features are up front,
etc) that should work by the rules of the game, and still be very effective.

>travel.  Thus there are many fewer navigators around to teach anyone.  The
>elves would be the best at this and even they are smart enough to use their
>armada-carriers.  The scro have been hiding in their sphere trying to avoid
>notice while rebuilding their fleet and numbers so they don't have
>a whole lot of skill at this.

This is just silly.  The phlogiston is an even bigger area than a sphere.
There is no reason to assume scro have no skill at navigating it.  They can
practice all they want and never run into another vessel.  They could even
practice going right up to the target sphere, since they don't have to
actually enter that sphere.  And if some poor merchantman is unlucky enough
to run into them while they are practicing fleet maneuvers, well, that is
just one more ship that never returns to port and no one knows what happens
to it.  It even helps blood the troops and give them some experience, and
would be considered a good thing by the commanders and helps keep morale up.

>"fleet".  SJ was designed to avoid fleets, pure and simple.

No, it wasn't.  I just requires different fleet tactics than you seem to be
focused on.


>On a historic/swashbuckling note (correct me if I'm wrong, Paul), fleets
>weren't common even on our own world's seas.  Those fleets that were put
>together (and you could even see the other ships in order to
>remain together!)
>tended to be coastal since a single storm or especially dark night
>could get you split up.

Actually, while I'm no expert, I've read a few books on this, and they
generally acknowledge that small fleets were common among the military
forces.  They tended to be on the small side (20 ships or less, and
typically much less, about 3-5) but that was more because of the relative
lack of ships and the need to spread them out to cover vast areas, not any
navigation or fleet-movement issues.  And several of the sailing fleets I'm
aware of did use a single-file approach to fleet navigation.  I've read
accounts of at least three real-life sea battles where a fleet was initially
travelling in a single file formation prior to encountering the enemy.

As for the swashbuckling aspect of the game, sure, large fleets are probably
not a great thing because it is hard for a party to deal with a large fleet
in combat.  But that doesn't mean that those fleets cannot exist in the
context of the rules.  If earth nations had trouble assembling large fleets
because of the extent of water they needed to cover, it will be much worse
in wildspace.  Pretty much the only time a fleet could be used, logically,
would be in cases of a sneak attack by a foe who doesn't have much in the
way of holdings they need to protect.  If they can concentrate their forces
on offense, as the scro did here, it is quite possible.  But most
space-faring nations will not be able to do that, because they need to have
ships that defend their cities and holdings, escort their merchants, perform
patrols and diplomatic missions, etc.

So the possibilities of fleet action within the rules doesn't mean it would
be common in practice for purely setting reasons (rather than rules
reasons), and that is a good thing for a game that is based around
swashbuckling.

Cheers,
Lindharin