[Spaceships] I'm closing on nothing, and 4 other confusions.

[mlangsdorf]

I'm not saying that the Spaceship rules are particularly clearly written here. There's space for more clarity, and some of the uses of the term acceleration and acceleration bonus could be better handled.

Originally Posted by weevis

Still, when I read through these rules the first time I recall thinking about a scenario where ships with big missiles (32cm+) want to stand off at range L vs. beam ships with beams that can't reach that far.

In the paragraph above I called that "stand off" because it feels more comprehensible to me to say that, rather than to "be evasive" at range L. I understand that a ship is harder to hit if it is accelerating. I understand I could just stop my engines or slow them down (hold course). But I'd probably want to keep those engines on and preserve every single point of acceleration bonus I'm entitled to every turn in case the enemy tries to close. "Evasive action" isn't what came to mind for that. So there seemed to be too few options.

So this is Newtonian physics in a vacuum: you're going to maintain your speed and heading unless you accelerate. You don't have to have your engines on all the time just to keep up your speed in the face of air resistance.

So this hypothetical missile ship that wants to keep the enemy distant: either the enemy's last Closing maneuver succeeded and he's on attack vector or at better range, or it didn't and he's Neutral to you. If he's on an attack vector, you're going to want to evade to escape his superior position. If he's at closer range, you're going to want to evade to escape out to your preferred range. So in those circumstances, I think it's pretty clear that evasive action is a reasonable name for the maneuver.

But if the enemy failed, but you want to maximize your engines so as to make sure he can't close with you on his next attempt? I'm guessing you're going to change your velocity so you're moving away from him, because that will obviously make it harder for him to close. But you also don't want to move too far away and outrange your own weapons - so you're going to change your acceleration when it looks like you're moving too far away. That sounds like evasive movement to me.

Maybe there should be another name for the maneuver when you just want to stand off at a distance, but it's going to have mechanical the same effect of you stay at a distance and get a lot of bonuses to contest people trying to close with you. Rather than having two maneuvers with different names but the same effects, the book conserves space by using the same name for both.

Originally Posted by weevis

I feel like your words "are evasive" would be replaced by "make you harder to hit" if we were just shooting the breeze about about imaginary space battles. You used "evasive" because that's the name of the maneuver in the rules. The first definition of "Evasive" is "to escape." I just looked it up to see if my interpretation was wacky or off-base. "to escape" doesn't fit that well in your sentence with "in a loop." That's probably why it wasn't intuitive to me.

Back to my two hypothetical jet fighters: if one of them of was doing loops during a combat situation, you'd probably say it was making an evasive maneuver. You wouldn't have an issue with the idea that flying at a high speed while doing loops made it harder for other people to successfully attack the plane. What's the difference in deep space?

A ship that's just using a lot of acceleration to increase its velocity vector away from the main engagement is starting to escape, so again, an evasive maneuver (and one that sets up the Retreat maneuver). If you just want to keep the range open when no one is closing on you, you perform a Controlled Drift or Hold Course maneuver. If someone is closing on you by performing a successful Closing maneuver and you would prefer to fight at a longer range, then you'll need to escape by performing an Evasive maneuver.

Originally Posted by weevis

With cover I think the presence of the concept in the rules at all suggested to me that you'd be able to move in relation to it and do something else with it. Since you can use cover while closing as an ambush strategy, I expected cover to come up somewhere else. That's all I'm saying.

Sure, there's room for expanding that kind of stuff.