 August 14, 2007 - 12:27am | We should study how the various classifications of seafaring vessels are determined in today's world in order to be able to properly classify spacefaring vessels the same way. You can't classify a cruiser and a frigate in two different size categories, as they are essentially the same size, but simply serve two different purposes. Both are warships, but a frigate was used more for defense of larger warships and of merchant ships, while a cruiser was primarily used for offense and reconnaissance. Later, cruisers were used more for air defense than its traditional roles. Both frigates and cruisers are meant to be fast and light, though burdened for heavy combat. In WWII, frigates were used against submarines. So in a space campaign, the two would be pretty much interchangeable. One covered the sea, the other covered the air. If there's a difference, it would be weaponry. The frigate would be equipped for close-range combat, while the cruiser would be equipped for long-range combat, lone missions and perhaps orbital bombardment. So we should be exceptionally discrimenating when determing the size ranges and purposes of particular classifications of ships, making sure to spell these things out to the reader. |
 August 14, 2007 - 9:57am | I think we should take a similar approach to spaceships as they took to vehicles in the original game, which few people complained about: Have a "Basic" section at the front of the book with ten different ships (that's all the vehicles they had: ground cycle/car/transport, hover cycle/car/tranport, explorer, glijet, jetcopter, aircar) fully defined and ready for purchase, along with new rules on how to use 'em to get around and enjoy space. Then we can get creative and deviate from the core rules slightly: make an "Advanced" section with TONS of options for personalizing and tweaking the classic ship designs, adding armor and weapons, sacrificing cargo space or luxury features, etc. Once this is mastered, attention could even be placed on the classic ten planet-side vehicles to provide personalization options, though this might be better as a separate book. For example: A WarTech Mark IV Assault Ship might be a space vehicle of type "shuttle" with modifications for enhanced maneuverability and durability, weapons, etc... but all that military stuff might take the crew capacity from 6 to 1 and remove artificial gravity and life support, requiring the pilot to bring along breathing equipment and not travel far from its docks. Because it's of type "shuttle" it will already have several things defined about it (like a "ground car" already has wheels and an electric engine and operates off a type 2 parabattery with a crew capacity of 4ish). If we do it in this way, people can simply buy a "shuttle" or a "light transport" or a "starliner" and be done with it (like buying a hover car) or can get creative with upgrades/modifications. That's my take on it: keep things similar to how Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn is set up with vehicles, then add options as an envelope around it. I'm curious what the project manager thinks about all this.... 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
August 14, 2007 - 12:18pm | I like that idea. I hated how they give you a bunch of military stats in the Tactical book and then only give you instructions for constructing civilian ships in the Campaign book. Start with the civilian ships and give options for turning them into military craft. Though larger military starfighters and bombers and the largest military spaceships will have to be specialized for warfare from the beginning. Could you images a civilian aircraft carrier, or a civilian version of the stealth bomber? That's why I classified the differences in personal and light miliatary and larger fighters. EDIT: Added from "Start with..." |
August 14, 2007 - 5:52pm | Understood. If the manager decides to craft ten or so ships, I can't imagine many civilian uses of some of the largest ones other than colony ships (Battlestar Galactica) and such. But a lot of options can be made to take these basic frameworks and turn them into viable interesting ships of any nature. On the smaller scale, Tanks could arguably be heavily adapted from the Ground Transport design... I guess... even though they're fundamentally very different. Take a Ground Transport, subtract this to gain more that, put a little bit of this here, a little bit of that there, sacrifice some comforts, add a big gun, etc. Even though that's not the way they're designed it's statistically how they can be built. Do ya see what I mean? 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
 August 15, 2007 - 1:54pm | All of the original craft will come, in their original format. Most of my rule changes, are mostly fluff and such. It's just I always hated playing tabletop with 5 frigates *EXACTLY* the same and limited rules on how to modify them, to make something different. My idea was simply to make it easy to "import", if you will, ships from other genres and run with it. All shipes are defined to a predeterimed SCALE, but each ship is in a CLASS. For example, If you wanted a Nebulon B Frigate, it's scale is Frigate sized, but it's CLASS is a Frigate. If you wanted a YT-1300 Transport, it's Scale is STARFIGHTER (Size 2 Hull Size), but its CLASS is a Freighter. Scale determines the damage done by weapons (Larger ships have more firepower and do more damage, but smaller ships are harder to hit). I don't want generic cruisers, destroyers or fighters. It was good in 1982, but in 2007 it's not so interesting. The rules for tabletop are almost completely unchanged. It's the rules for characters that will be modified. (Sorry, but playing a game with 5 people and having to break out the map to do combat between two ships was silly and pointless. Tabletop should be used exclusively for large scale battles and not between a pirate ship running from system fighters.) Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation. |
August 15, 2007 - 2:22pm | Hmm. I always thought of the YT-1300 as a small KH size 3. But I see where you're coming from. |
August 15, 2007 - 3:00pm | You're thinking in terms of KH rules on jump drives. Things are *VASTLY* different now. ;P FTL drives aren't what they used to be. =D Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation. |
 November 3, 2007 - 6:57pm | Personaly I've altered the weapon and shield fit as well. Proton and Electron beam batteries and the disruptor cannon are very questionable science. I replaced them with a plasma batteries and PA cannon (particle accelerator) and got rid of the equivalent screens altogether. I also altered Rocket batteries to use less batteries, but gave each a number of salvos, so you could have 2 batteries each with 3 salvos, rather than 3 batteries. Makes them longer lasting but more vulnerable - lose a battery, lose all it's salvos. The FTL drives are very wonky - especially the accelerate up to 1% of c. I actually quite liked the idea the fighters used Assault rockets exclusivly, gave a sort of pacific WW2 feeling to the naval battles. G. |
November 3, 2007 - 7:07pm | Personaly I've altered the weapon and shield fit as well. Proton and Electron beam batteries and the disruptor cannon are very questionable science. I replaced them with a plasma batteries and PA cannon (particle accelerator) and got rid of the equivalent screens altogether. I also altered Rocket batteries to use less batteries, but gave each a number of salvos, so you could have 2 batteries each with 3 salvos, rather than 3 batteries. Makes them longer lasting but more vulnerable - lose a battery, lose all it's salvos. Why do you say they're "questionable science"?The FTL drives are very wonky - especially the accelerate up to 1% of c. I actually quite liked the idea the fighters used Assault rockets exclusivly, gave a sort of pacific WW2 feeling to the naval battles. G. |
November 4, 2007 - 5:28am | Why do you say they're "questionable science"? Well, firstly we need to bear in mind that SF is firmly a space opera, so questionable science isn't as much of a sin as it would be in a hard sci-fi game. However, I say questionable because the electron and proton beam batteries as presented do not fit with the actual effects of a proton or electron beam. The disruptor cannon is a nice fit for a large particle accelerator, but the description of the effects are wrong. Electron and proton beams are just flavors of particle accelerators, like neutron, poistron, A-hydrogen and a bunch of others. They work by accelerating sub-atomic particles to relativistic speeds, and smashing them into a target, disrupting it's sub atomic matrix and causing massive explosive damage through the conversion of the huge ammounts of kinetic energy at the sub-atomic level. A common description is like smashing a pool ball into the pack. As soon as it hits, the pack shatters. That shattering is an explosion. They are also hugely power hungry, the return on them, even with superconducting materials, is likely to be far below the level where a decent HE or X-ray laser would be able to deliver far more energy on target. Also, A strong magnetic field easily diverts most particle beams, indeed magnetic fields are used to aim them, so the idea of a tunable field which would attract or repel a type of beam is somewhat odd. If your ship already has some form of magnetic radiation shielding set up, you could use that to deflect the particle beam. G. |
 November 4, 2007 - 6:43am | I like how in the basic rulebook has the stats to all the cool WWII styled warships, but the big KH book has little or no useful information making your own custom (or any standard) warship. The ship building rules are vary worthless. You have to account for things that are a given or just fluff (portholes & intercoms). I once found add-on rules for making military ship that was vary helpful, but it would be nice to have a system that is more consistent with options to do things that are not standard (like trans-atmospheric flight). I also hate photon/electron shields & cannons. At the time, it might have sound like a good system for strategy, but now its just seems odd (and not to mention having to flip "+/- Energy Shield" counters around). An important rule to have is that space should be partitioned off for built-in systems like engines, life-support, computers, work-stations (bridge & engineering), and superficial equipment (portholes & intercoms), much the same way vehicles from Battletech have a percentage of weight given to the frame, control systems and locomotion. Computer programs and work-stations should be standard with weapons, defenses, and other systems. I would also like to see the ships a little bigger so that they can hold shuttle/fighter bays (so that a Cruiser can carry a fighter squad and a Battleship can... well you know... be more like Battlestar Galactica). Having shuttle bays available to ships would add to their versatility. |
 March 21, 2008 - 4:34pm | Modern terms are poor, due to congressional BS... You may want, instead, to use the WWI designations Patrol Boat or Torpedo Boat Cutter (torpedo boat) Destroyer Frigate Light Cruiser Heavy Cruiser Battle Cruiser Battleship by WWII destroyers were the same size as frigates, and overlapped highly. Many Sci-Fi games and settings use Patrol or Scout Corvette or Cutter Frigate Destroyer Light Cruiser Heavy Cruiser Battlecruiser Battleship note that modern US class designations have less to do with size and more to do with funding. It is easier to get funding for 20 destroyers than for 20 cruisers, even tho' the ships in question will be the exact same design... |
 March 22, 2008 - 10:33am | Not really Arramis, an Arleigh Burke is way different in design philosophy(and firepower) from a Ticonderoga-class cruiser(rushed into production after the BBC showed footage of just what an Exocet can do to a modern warship)or even the Virginia, California and Belknap-class CGs.\ As for class designations, the terms cruiser, destroyer, et al, are relatively modern terms, only in naval nomenclature for a little over a hundred years, with even ironclad warships being designated with names from the Age of Sail up to the late ninenteenth and early 20th centuries(quite a few cruiser-sized US ships from that period were simply labelled composite gunboats, for example). As naval(and aerospace)technology evolves and the purposes of warships change, we will come up with other names to call them. As for SF, B5's Earthforce had three main types of warships: Corvettes War cruisers Destroyers with the latter being their largest(and after 2260, their main)type of combat starship. In the end, it's all a matter of taste. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
