In the year 2246, a small group of Earth Alliance ships are trying to escape the clutches of the Minbari. We had a game of Babylon 5 Wars, a particularly crunchy set of space combat wargame rules.
IMHO any wargamer who grew up with Triplanetary and/or GDW's Mayday will find Full Thrust's vector movement to be easy and intuitive. Babylon 5 War's "vector" movement is a clunky mess.
@nyrath I played the EASB one. It used the cinematic movement for Minbari and other ships that had 'gravitic' drives, and vector for lower tech ships.
I've taught the FT vectored movement to a number of gamers who have never used anything like it before, and it was a lot easier than teaching the B5 Wars movement system.
For those in our studio audience: Jon Tuffley wrote Full Thrust. He was later contracted to design the starship combat system for Chameleon Eclectic Entertainment's TTRPG "The Earthforce Sourcebook. Tuffley just slightly modified Full Thrust to adapt it to the Babylon 5 universe and called it a day.
@nyrath I use counters, which show where the ship will be when it moves (assuming no acceleration). This makes it easy to see where each ship will be, but has the downside you need to keep the counters on the table as well as the ships.
Even with unique counters for each ship, it can sometimes also get messy for big battles.
@notasnark@nyrath The alternative I've seen, which is less clear but easier to manage in large battles, is a direction + speed record for each object - e.g. a clockface mini stand + pointer + die for speed.
@notasnark@nyrath Of course both FT and Triplanetary make the understandable error of v = v + a, xy = xy + v - implying the acceleration all happens instantly at the start of the turn. What it really should be is xy = xy + v + a/2, v = v + a, representing thrust being applied throughout the turn. I have played a modified FT with this approach and it's hard work, but it is doable, at least for relatively small battles.
@RogerBW@nyrath I actually used the correct equation in my first attempt at doing vectored movement for Full Thrust (before there was an official one). I decided the extra effort didn't add anything to the game so dropped it.
Ken Burnside was annoyed by that error, and managed to incorporate the fix into his Attack Vector: Tactical and Squadron Strike games. Called it "displacement".
So did Charles Oines in his Voidstriker (because he and Ken are friends).
AFAIK no other published table top spaceship miniatures rules do.
Could the hard work of your system be reduced with a nomogram or something?
@nyrath@notasnark Well, I did draw one for the thrust calculations in Leaving Earth, but I don't think it helps here. Basically use the FT multiple marker system, but instead of (move velocity marker by accelaration) (move ship to velocity marker) it's (put new marker at velocity + acceleration) (measure next-turn drift velocity) (move ship to half-way between markers).
@nyrath@RogerBW The other complication introducing the full equation to Full Thrust is that it affects balance.
If a ship only moves half its thrust in the first turn, that makes its position much easier to predict. You'd have to change the range for things like salvo missiles and maybe even fighters.
@notasnark@nyrath Yup, I noted this in the blog post. I think to a first approximation you need to halve the radius of area weapons again, just as you do (in FT) going from cinematic movement to standard vector.
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