Friday, October 16, 2009

Maneuver Room

Here's a few maneuvers from In Harm's Way: StarCluster. None of these can be done by airplanes.

A Horizontal Fly By is used while passing a target going in the opposite direction or moving markedly slower to one side. The craft’s thrust is cut, and attitude jets are used to slew the craft sideways to continuously point the craft at the target while maintaining relative speed. Doubles the Quality of any hit. At end, craft is reversed, but coasting backward. Failure results in Large Penalty to Gunnery Skill Check. A Vertical Fly By is as a Horizontal Fly-by, but attitude change is vertical to hit target passing above or below

In a Grapple Slingshot, the craft grapples another ship or craft and uses it to change direction, passing the momentum to the other ship

In a Gravity Slingshot, the craft uses a gravity well to change direction. The deeper the dive, the higher the speed and the arder the turn:

  • High Gravity Slingshot - Skimming through a gravity well, using the gravity to change direction. Failure results in a Medium Gravity Slingshot
  • Medium Gravity Slingshot - Diving into a gravity well, using the gravity to change direction and add speed. Failure results in a Deep Gravity Slingshot
  • Deep Gravity Slingshot - Diving deeply into a gravity well, using the gravity to change direction and add speed. Failure results in breakup of the craft on the surface or atmosphere
Of course, the bigger the ship, the higher the penalty, and the smaller the craft, the bigger the bonus to do these maneuvers.

Sometimes you have to throw away the old methods, because they just don't work in a new situaton.

-clash

2 comments:

  1. *Blink, blink*

    That's... Really groovy.

    I now have a mental image of a pilot screaming "Let's swing, baby!", and whipping in an arc around a target while firing, tractor beams humming away.

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  2. Exactly, Levi! I had to rid myself of the air-toair combat paradigm before I could see the cool stuff this was offering me. :D

    -clash

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