 September 5, 2009 - 5:59am | Seriously is there really any point to disallowing the recharge of 20 SEU clips? In the day and age we live in it really is starting to seem silly. Frankly I can't see any Frontier military wanting to spend money on them, "Look, soldier, you're gonna carry that power back pack any your gonna like it!" just equipping all their security/ troops with belt and backpacks is likely to save tons of money over time. I'm leaning toward plugging them in at the local recharge station and roll %dice a result of 5% or less and the energy cell has lost integrity and the recharge station wont recharge it-go buy another. could even have clips from some place with poor quality control causing a 10% or 15% of cell corruption hey there 10% off the standard price. (or maybe a military contractor slipped in some shoddy material to maximize proffit). players could even pay double the cost for an SEU clip with a 3% chance. just my random thoughts on the subject. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 November 30, 2010 - 3:34pm | This is actually rather unrelated but I found this to be the most relevant forum and didn't think it deserved its own forum. In opportunity shots, do the shots come out of the shots the character will be firing during its turn? I think so but want some input. |
 November 30, 2010 - 4:46pm | This is actually rather unrelated but I found this to be the most relevant forum and didn't think it deserved its own forum. In opportunity shots, do the shots come out of the shots the character will be firing during its turn? I think so but want some input. Absolutely. The guns are only capable of firing so many shots a round. If you take them as opportunity shots, you can't use them later. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
November 30, 2010 - 5:20pm | So... if you used the rate-of-fire of the weapon on your turn, you can not take an opportunity shot during someone else's turn. |
 May 27, 2011 - 4:29am | 15% loss of SEU in a transfer (50% for field rigged transfer/without a proper transfer-coupler; counts as a recharge) round down. A clip with 1 SEU will bleed with no transfer, 2SEU will bleed with 1SEU transferred, 20SEU clip would bleed with a 17SEU transfer (to a 60SEU air-bike battery?). Transfer counts as a Recharge to the receiving battery. Recharge at a proper station, is at a rate of 1SEU/hr or more, in the field it is drastically quick but exceptionally risky. Roll each time for a reduction of the current battery's capacity. 1 Fully Recharged/Current Integrity Maintained 2 10% Current Integrity Lost 3 30% Current Integrity Lost 4 50% Current Integrity Lost 5 60% Current Integrity Lost 6 Fully Depleted/All Integrity Lost -3 to the roll if done by a proper technician in a properly stocked lab/shop. -2 if technician is successful at a skill check, or all the equipment is easy to find in the lab/shop. -1 if an untrained attempt is made in a well stocked shop, or a trained technician is present with proper tools. +1 under field conditions by a successful technician. +2 under field conditions by a failed roll from a trained technician. +3 if there is no trained technician present in a field environment, or an attempt is made under duress or combat conditions. advantages to this system: Simplified book-keeping; Only need to adjust the max-capacity of the Battery rather than keep track of number of recharges. The likelihood of drastically low life expectancies for batteries at stable locations; corporate laboratories, military bases, space stations, and ships, is very low. Likelihood of drastically long life-spans of batteries that see a lot of field use, is extremely low. Logistics assessment result; Replace all your clips completely at every available opportunity, just to be sure. This isn't Star Wars, but... Cracken's Field Guide gave explosive damage if Energy E-Clips were stored improperly in close proximity, in amounts of four or more... I don't see this as necessary for SF, however, there is that precedent for the mentioned Frag-Grenade result, if it is desired. Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 June 6, 2011 - 6:28pm | I never allowed recharging anything that had SEU. I always saw energy stored in SEU form to be stored in some kind of new electrical component similar to a capacitance/inductance loop, and released only by destroying that component. Small price to pay for energy with a permanent shelf life. Additionally, I see it as a form of game scaling. Early in their adventuring careers, a player character can't afford an extra SEU powerclip. They're lucky to have the one that comes in their sonic knife. But energy weapons are a bit more effective, since they not only cause large damage but also their cost prohibits the common purchase of SEU-powered defenses by mooks. However, once a character is experienced and wealthy enough to have a few spare SEU powerclips, perhaps a power backpack, and is toting around an albedo screen and inertia screen (of course only one activated at a time) in addition to his skeinsuit... he's a force to be reckoned with. Other forms of storage (namely, parabatteries and the assumed microbatteries that run small things like chronocoms etc.) release their energy more gradually based on resistivity of their load and I see them as more advanced forms of our current chem-cell batteries of today. These I allow recharged. Everyone games a little differently :-) 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. |
June 7, 2011 - 4:27pm | I agree with the game-scaling rational, which is why I put heavy penalties into recharging in the proposed system. Having play-tested that system myself, I feel that the net result of such a difficult recharge causes the same effect, however, only play-testing feed-back from other groups will show if the difficulty is severe enough to keep that aspect of cost and portability equalized. I do understand how some GMs might want an option to allow recharges mid-adventure, without placing an armory in an unnecessary location. For me, this has been a logistics problem with prolonged planetary explorations, and the primary reason for developing such field recharge rules, and introducing some over-sized para-battery recharger gizmos, aimed at reducing such logistics for extended missions. Parabatteries also use SEU, while robots, vehicles, and ships (in some variations of the rules) have been given SEU output and usage numbers as well, albeit in the Mega-unit to Tera-unit ranges in the larger cases. An alternative might be to allow a set of higher priced (up to 150% to 300%), reduced capacity (as low as 90% to 66%), rechargeable batteries for SEU storage, built for more logistics-friendly use, and then use the previous recharge suggestions for those R/RU-SEU(Rechargeable/Reusable-Standard Energy Unit) Batteries. As I mentioned, it only really seems to be a large problem to me, where extended missions subsisting on independent logistics becomes a requirement, such as setting up a permanent remote outpost, or making a complete survey of a previously unexplored planet. In a frontier game that sticks closer to civilized ports, the basic 'buy-it/discard-it' batteries are not likely to be any less cost effective than spending a day cycling recharges through a jury-rigged contraption, while the current opponents make a quick trip to the quickie-store for a new handful of batteries, and are up to causing havoc again in an hour. As far as it is worth a mention, I always assumed the Standard Energy Unit to be just the standard measurement, like a 'one-kilowatt year' usage measurement, made ambiguous for the game, and I mark the usage of smaller increments in up to three decimal places, or use Micro-Energy Units (one thousandths of an S.E.U.) and Mega-Energy Units (one thousands of an S.E.U.) where appropriate. Thus while keeping everything scalable, perhaps I have been a little hard on my players (and myself, as I mark S.E.U. usage for my own characters also, with or without a GM requiring it) by assuming battery usage even for the smaller items, as it can be important if your G-Sat Chrono-Mapper isn't recharged after four months wandering on an alien planet with no quickie-mart to buy new batteries from. As far as keeping the recharge away from E-clips and Defensive screens only, it still seems to me that a rechargeable variant would be made available, and if there is any method by which a deep recon scout on a Sathar infested world with no contact to HQ can find to recharge a 20S.E.U. clip and keep his water-purifier going another 20hrs, he will do everything possible to make it happen... next year it will be in a field tech-manual... three years later every punk in Port Loren knows someone who can do it. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
June 7, 2011 - 12:53pm | I never allowed recharging anything that had SEU. Accept for your Photo-Voltaic Paint from Issue 8.  Anyone use this in their games? I haven't had a chance but plan on allowing the PC's to find some during a crash-on-volturnus like adventure I'll be running at Origins. |
June 10, 2011 - 9:45am | Solar Paint on Steel Could Generate Renewable Energy Soon ... Yes, but not to as much effect as the Photo and Thermal -Reactive Paints... they seem to be more popular. Color-Shifting Paint on '05 Saleen Mustang 3000GT Showcar.... Color changing! Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
