Re: What System for Ship Combat do you use for 3E?

At    Mon, 1 Sep 2003 09:47:03 -0700,  Mark Doolan
<markdoolan@?????????????????.com> maliciously asked, after getting
possessed by his dark side:

>
>After I posted this thread a thought accured to me... How do gamemasters
>treated the 'ships gravity' with respect to objects in it gravity field...
>If a ship is at spelljamming speed and a crew member cast a fly spell on
>himself and lifts off deck is he left in the dust? I assume nearly all do
>not run it this way and the crew member is still 'anchored' to the ships
>gravity. The reason I ask this is cause I was ammusing my self with the
>idea
>of a smaller ship can simply be 'anchored' to another ships gravity and no
>matter what the other ship does it gets dragged along (as much a slow
>moving
>critters would).


Just to add my 0.2 electrums (the most useless coinage ever invented): I'd
say whatever inside the gravity well gets along the ship when it moves
(including flying objects or people), SAVE for objects/people that have
another spelljamming field around them.

So, if two ships' sj fields overlap but they are actually manned by somebody
and their fields are thus active, one doesn't get dragged along by the
other. Same for people inside the gravity field of each ship. If however a
big ship (say armada) hosts other spelljamming ships (say man-o-wars) which
do have a sj helm but it is unmanned, all the hosted sj ships travel along
with the big one as long as they remain inside its gravity field (they don't
even need to be anchored), AND as long as they don't exceed the helm's total
carried tonnage.

With this theory there's just one little problem: what about all those
debris existing in space? If a ship's traveling at sj speed, they are
avoided automatically, drifting alongside the gravity field as they come on
the ship's course. HOWEVER, if a ship travels at tactical speed and
encounters rocks and debris, theorically all of these debris fall onto its
deck and are kept there until somebody throws them away (here here! we found
another choir to give to our sailors!). BUT how can they be thrown them away
if the gravity well is too large (say a man-o-war or armada)? using
catapults or jettisons maybe? and if no such option is present? Any idea?

Apart from this minor thing, I'd say the theory could work. What do you
think?

Cheers!

DM

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