"Hard about!" or turning mutiple hexsides at once

[kealios]

Has anyone tried a rule to fiddle with this restriction? There are times that a ship has a real need to come about hard, and currently the rules dont allow for this. Watching BSG, you can see how slow and lumbering the beasts are, but there has got to be an option.

I came up with what I think is a really simplistic option:

If a ship wants to turn more than 1 hexside at a time, it needs to spend a "hex" worth of speed and also roll a d6. If the die roll results in exceeding the size of the ship, the 2-hex rotation occurs as normal.

If the result of the roll is equal to or less than the ship's size, the ship only turns 1 hex side instead of 2, and automatically suffers some damage to its Hull. I dont know how much - I seem to remember a Star Trek computer game that such failed maneuvers resulted in 30% hull damage? Maybe also take a critical hit?

Example:

A Size 4 Battleship is moving at speed 6 with a Delta of 1. The player wants it to move forward 3 hexes, rotate left twice, and continue moving. He moves forward 3, spends a Movement Point (so, succeed or fail he will only be able to travel 2 more hexes) and rolls. He needs a 5+ to succeed. Rolling a 4, he fails. He takes TBD damage to his Hull and also rolls on the Critical chart. He only turns 1 hex and now has 2 remaining hexes to move...assuming the damage received wasnt enough to destroy the ship!

Thoughts? Should delta or ship roll affect this at all?

[toaster]

To easy for small ships which are already pretty manuverable and I would think that the delta cap on turning would still apply so useless for big delta 1 ships, the only ships that might benefit but would have to run a serious risk of damage would be size 3 and 4 RDF battlecruisers so its of limited benifit to the game. Try playing a game with preplotted movement like Full Thrust and you will realise that ships in CBF are pretty manuverable anyhow.

Robert

[TheDreadnought]

I feel that a lot of tactical decision making is driven by the things you CAN'T do, rather than by the things you can. Of course there are going to be times where you would love to be able to turn that extra hex side. Good tactics is being able to maneuver your ships in such a way that it doesn't happen very often. If your opponent is better able to do that than you, then he gets a tactical advantage over you, or vice versa.

From a game design standpoint, something like this is too risky for a big ship, and not really necessary for a small one, so it wouldn't come into play much, or if it did, it would reduce the game to a pass/fail die roll

[kealios]

I like your arguments. All of your responses are well-thought out and make sense. I appreciate that for sure!