11-20-2019, 11:15 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Cheltenham, PA
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
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The one thing I've considered is the use of mirror drones to redirect the laser around obstacles, but that would probably only explain how it fires out of a non-clear hex as I don't expect there to be optical mirrors floating all over the battlefield. Definitely a case where Bellisario's Maxim applies...
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Joshua Megerman, SJGames MIB #5273 - Ogre AI Testing Division |
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11-20-2019, 06:02 PM | #12 | |
Ogre Line Editor
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Plainfield, IL
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
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They are a game mechanic; it's not a direct real-world model.
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GranitePenguin Ogre Line Editor |
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11-21-2019, 12:55 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Cheltenham, PA
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
Totally. I suppose that the real solution would have been to eliminate the ability for lasers to fire at anything other than to intercept missiles, but I'm sure that would have led to gamers asking why can't they fire their big, expensive laser at anything else, etc., etc., etc. </Yul Brynner>
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Joshua Megerman, SJGames MIB #5273 - Ogre AI Testing Division |
11-22-2019, 12:57 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Aug 2015
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
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A laser TURRET placed in a town hex makes no logical sense anyway. By definition they are relatively low to the ground and its general purpose, to shoot down flying things, would be negated by proximity to buildings, trees, etc. Like putting an AA gun in the center of a town. It's limited to attacking things that fly directly overhead. Why would you limit yourself? I'd say a laser turret placed in any obstructed view terrain (town, forest, swamp) cannot fire outside of that hex, except at a cruise/Ogre missile that travels directly over that hex. Essentially, it would only be useful in an Overrun. To say that it can fire out of that hex into any unobstructed hex implies that it's installed on the outside edge of the obstructing terrain, in the clear, and loses any defensive bonus... yeah.. starting to get complicated and making assumptions. Now we could over complicate things and say that any laser Turret placed in a town hex is assumed to be installed in a tall building and therefore is treated as a laser Tower for targeting purposes but with reduced structure points. For example, SP10 but for the same acquisition cost as a SP20 turret to reflect that it's installed on top of a relatively fragile building. But that might be just a "home rule". |
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11-22-2019, 03:55 PM | #15 |
Join Date: May 2012
Location: Asgard
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
The quick rule of thumb for the distance to the horizon is the square root of the eye level multiplied by 1.22 - this gives the distance in miles (approximately).
At 6 foot the horizon is 3 miles. At 60 foot, 6.5 miles. Generally speaking, you're not shooting at the horizon but at at something man (or machine) made. Perform the same calculation for the target's height and add the two distances together. A marine shooting at another marine has LOS at 6 miles. Assuming they're both standing. If it's a 60 foot laser tower shooting at a marine it's 9.5 miles. (This assumes that they're both at the same level. If one is on top of a hill, or a building or a crate or something, you need to add that to their height.) When it comes to lasers, adding in atmospheric refraction, now that's where it gets complicated... I think the Ogre rule is quite accurate really. Last edited by lokke; 11-22-2019 at 04:16 PM. |
11-23-2019, 06:27 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Aug 2015
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
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11-26-2019, 01:24 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Cheltenham, PA
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
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Towers, OTOH, are tall - VERY tall, as in a few hundred feet tall. Perhaps not as tall as the Space Needle or the Eiffel Tower, but certainly as tall as, e.g., high-tension powerline poles. That gives them their ability to fire over things that would block a laser turret. However, the more I think about it, and especially with some quick & dirty curvature calculations (60 hexes @ 1.5mi/hex (minimum) =) 75 miles of max range for a laser tower would require a height of approximately 1400 feet, give or take, and that's just ridiculous. This leads me to consider the throwaway comment I made earlier about using mirror drones for targeting around/over obstacles. And maybe that's exactly what they do - have a single (or maybe a couple) high-precision mirror drones the allow the laser to fire more or less "up" out of the ground cover and angle the beam out over the nearby terrain so that it can be more useful than it logically should be. And the reason for being blocked by terrain further down is that a) the drone has to stay close by to permit any sort of precision in the aiming and b) "soft" obstacles like trees and vegetation, as well as many buildings, don't provide the same kind of sensor returns that hard military targets do, and so they're much harder to avoid with the level of precision needed for a laser beam (as opposed to a tacnuke). Laser towers have better sight lines to begin with, allowing for more precision targeting even when drones are needed to ensure unobstructed LLOS. But all of that is still irrelevant when it comes to the actual game mechanics, whose sole purposes is to make Lasers workable and relevant when they're used (since the alternative is to junk them altogether). :P
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Joshua Megerman, SJGames MIB #5273 - Ogre AI Testing Division |
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11-26-2019, 01:52 PM | #18 |
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
According to an artwork in Ogre Miniatures 2nd Edition, a Laser Tower is 70 feet tall. Range is 60 hexes, which is 90 kilometers.
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11-26-2019, 10:55 PM | #19 |
Join Date: May 2012
Location: Asgard
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
Ah. H=(D/1.22)^2. Um.
Well, if it's firing at the horizon, it'll need to be a bit taller than that. 2,031 feet more. Obviously, they stick them on top of hills. Really tall hills. Either that or they got the height of the tower wrong. There may be an errata soon. Either that, or they'll tell us to stop mucking about... On the other hand, it is possible to cause laser beams to bend, so maybe the height is correct: https://physicsworld.com/a/light-ben...round-corners/ Last edited by lokke; 11-26-2019 at 11:24 PM. |
11-27-2019, 05:48 AM | #20 |
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
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Re: Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits
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battlesuits, combat engineers, laser turrets |
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