No.MutantDwarf wrote:You might also be able to dynamically calculate them when you run the game - if you know damage per shot, can calculate the amount of damage that's done, and can see how much energy is left in the ship's energy bank, you could bash together a way to test this by spawning a ship in some far away corner of the player's current sector and have it fire at some other stationary large ship from, say, five meters away, then check how much damage is done and how much energy is consumed after one second.
Been there, tried that, got the T-shirt.
Not gonna work.
Yes, it does. =PMutantDwarf wrote:Actually, it doesn't. It only needs to be done once per target per laser type. You multiply the number of lasers that fire by that laser's RoF. It really shouldn't be any more costly to calculate than the current implementation. You don't even need to have it be done per turret grouping, though that's how I'd prefer it for player-involved battles.
Treating every ship and laser (type) individually is too far on the micromanaging side.
I suggested the 3 laser classes because there are 3 basic object classes for ships and lasers can be assigned to "belong to" one of these classes pretty well.
But yes, target speed could be factored into the THAC0 with minimal effort. =)
Also, a ship's "medium laser battery" could have a THAC0 based on the average of their bullet speeds, still allowing room for experimentation.
All of that would have to be precomputed in a setup phase, that only runs once.
Afterwards combat would (in spirit =) play out D&D style.
Without the cardboard dungeon master's screen.