 June 24, 2010 - 4:08pm | What sort of Tech or weapons/ defenses have you guys added in. I toyed with some stuff from Palladium before; Specifically Robotech. It was ok but I threw out the Reflex Cannon I thought it would be totaly unfair. While the Robotech ships had more weapons and such... they were outranged by anything in Knighthawks. Where did they come from? They misjumped in one of those ever infamous Spacefolding misadventures of thiers. They came from the Far arm of the Galaxy and and had no way to return, they were out of fuel for the spacefold drive. The Frontier characters had to teach them to Void Jump. Wich caused them no small amount of problems because thier decks were arranged along the long axis of the thier ships. They Traded the technology for the fusion reflex drive (spacefold generator) minus the fuel of course.. for a Frontier style Navagational computer they could reverse engineer and beef up with the Player Characters help. They never Told the PC's thier star system of origin, they were afraid of the longer range and more powerful frontier style beam weapons. Thier Missiles were equal yet shorter ranged. A super dimensional Fortress carried several Titan Missiles I equated with torpedoes but with half the range. Thier fighter Technology (minus assault rockets) was far superior, but the big ship technologys were not except for the spacefold ability. Never threw in anything from Star Wars or Star Trek. Thought of making up a "Turbo Laser" but never implemented it. opinions? The bombing starts in five minutes. |
 June 25, 2010 - 6:23pm | I kind of did what you did, only I just had Zentradei battlepods scaled down for human size. Wasn't planning on using the full sized mecha as most ships in SF could not carry the number of fighters a Robotech style ship could. Trust me when you read just a Zentradei destroyer carries 250 fighter pods, 1000 battlepods, 50 glaugs and 300 powered suits. SF weapons might be longer ranged and more powerful, but when you can just swarm the ships it evens the odds a bit. Now that I've seen LoGH, it has come to mind. But the weapon ranges and damage from LoGH seems to be equal or greater than SF. Problem is most weapons on LoGH ships are on the front, and the tactics in LoGH are very different from SF. But when LoGH is massing fleets of thousands of ships. On the other hand making a universe like LoGH in a SF setting is very possible. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
June 25, 2010 - 8:54pm | Yeah, I always wondered why they failed to capture the SDF1 when they had so much firepower to bring to bear. I read all the storry books and watched the cartoons and eventually played the game too. The Old cartoons not the remakes. But I skipped them out of the Robotech Timeline. I just wanted the players to know that the galaxy is/was far bigger than The Frontier. I would never have brought a single Zentradei or Robotech Master vessel or even the Invid into the game. I was trying to set a precedent that jumping into the void could be acheived by other meansthan exceleration and deceleration. Altho they did have to work together with the "Alien" Humans to fight off pirates and a Sather Patrol followed by a Sathar raid. At the same time negotiate with them for the cool jump engines. They Called it Spacefold, But the frontier people refered to it as an Instant Void Jump Generator. Something that Was only Theoretically Possable according to UPF Scientists Blah Blah etc etc. Its not Truly Instant though, For every light year travelled the Ship Loses a Day of time so to speak... still allowing for the one day for light year rule. I attribute this to some trick of relativity or something. It seems instant to the Crew because they dont spend Days on acceleration... but the Void generator warps time in some way as if they had accelerated... I cant give a good scientific reason I just wanted them to be still limited by time in transit the way conventional jumping is. Jumping 365 light Years would feel instant to the crew but for everyone else, 1 year would pass. Thats as Far as i will go, Lose a Day per light year. because anyone constanly Jumping will Outlive all of there Planet bound friends. Especially if you make a light year take a standard year to traverse. Then they will return home to find that grandchildren are comming of age. So just 1 day. Here is another theory: I am Using a Spiral Galaxy of Course. The frontier map as we see it is only a small portion of one of those Spiral Arms. There are 10s of thousands of Stars wich may or may not have Habitable Planets. Some places have Stars close together like the Frontier. Other areas have them Too Far to Jump to, by Frontier Standards. Ie more than 20 light years apart maybe as many as one-hundred. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
June 26, 2010 - 12:50pm | Then you should consider Legend of Galactic Heroes approach. The Empire is located within one of the spiral arms and the Free Planets Alliance is in another. Navigation between the spiral arms is difficult for what ever reason, maybe a lack of star clusters to help navigation. So there are only two routes between the Empire and FPA, such a trick is probably not very realistic but it would keep ships from freely jumping between two spiral arms of a galaxy. I tended to treat the spacefolding as more of a transit thing. Both in Robotech and it's original version Macross folding still took time and the crew just got a weird sensation during a fold. Now if you were to use some of the Phase drives from Palladium books Phase world ships, that is an instant trip as are Battletech's Jumpships. However most of BT time was spent transiting from the planet to the jump points over the poles of every star. Try this in SF and every system will have a defense station located overeach pole of the star for obvious reasons. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
June 27, 2010 - 4:50pm | Got this from Wikipedia. It could be made into something Ugly in Star Frontiers. Plasma-powered cannon A plasma cannon (also called an electrothermal accelerator) is an experimental projectile weapon, which accelerates a projectile by means of a plasma discharge between electrodes at the rear of the barrel, generating a rapid increase in pressure. It functions similarly to other type of firearm, except that it uses a plasma discharge instead of a chemical propellant (e.g. black powder or nitrocellulose). Design To generate the energy required to make a plasma discharge, a high current, high voltage source and a large Capacitor bank are used. Both are attached in series to the electrode system in the cannon's barrel. The capacitor is loaded with as high a voltage as possible. However, a militarily useful energy is achieved with as little as several kilojoules. The capacitor is then discharged. The gap between the electrodes ionizes, turning the non-flammable propellant medium into a superheated conductive plasma. Associated volumetric expansion propels the projectile from the barrel at high velocity. Advantages and Disadvantages The advantage of a plasma cannon is that it uses electricity as energy source. The more energy is supplied the faster the gasses expand and the faster the projectile is accelerated. This makes it possible to "dial in" any velocity desired and also allows the projectile to reach speeds at which it would "outrun" the burn rate of a conventional propellant. A clear disadvantage of the plasma cannon is its weight. Even a small plasma cannon with only the firepower of an airgun weighs about 20 kg (without current supply). A foot soldier thus could not carry a plasma cannon powerful enough to be useful. It would have to be mounted in a stationary position or on a vehicle. End of Wikipedia part. What if you mount this thing on a HS 10 or larger Vessel and the projectile was a guided Nuke like a torpedo. fireing it out of a Long gun that runs the Axis of the ship might give it enough velocity to increase range from 4 hexes to something much higher. Just a thought. Opinions? The bombing starts in five minutes. |
 June 28, 2010 - 10:31am | I read an article about Sci Fi weapons written by a scientist of some sort. (Wish I had a link sorry) The guy said that the "Blasters" in Star Wars acted pretty much like a plasma cannon, because they fired a blast of "something" that emitted visible light, the projectile had a slower than speed of light transit time, and it hit with a physical force in addition to the aparent heat effect. Just something to think about. |
June 28, 2010 - 10:38am | Also I had thought that the projectile fired by a "plasma cannon" would be a burst of heated plasma. Which is also the impression I got from the same article about Sci Fi weapons. Maybe there's more than one way to skin that cat. |
June 28, 2010 - 5:22pm | I read several Articles on Plasma weapon Technology, all of them agreed that any plasma fired loosely; that is without a containment bottle or field would begin to dissapate as soon as it leaves the barrel. It then looks like a blow torch. Plasma cutters work in this way and that is why they are considered safe, because the plasma disipates not long after leaving the barrel. So a cannon that fires pure plasma would not work. It would need to be stored in a magnetic bottle or a magnetic field as it transitions from the gun to the target. A modern HEAT munition creates a plasma jet upon impact by means of a copper inverted cone and the shaped charge behind it. It is the plasma jet that cuts through the armor of the enemy tank or through the concrete of the enemy bunker. What modern theorists are proposeing is that plasma be used as a propellant. For the above stated reasons. With current technology it would have to be rather large mounted on a tank Chassis. The supergeeks at Army research and developement were working on such a system for for future artillery... trying to get more range, plus it would be easier for the troops to do that rather than sling powder bags as the troops do now. That program was cut due to budgetary concerns. Congress can be stingy sometimes especially since they had just fielded the M109A4 Paladin with upgrades to the A5 comming soon. The point is that they consider this to be doable and it is a viable option for a GM or referee who wants to add it in SF. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
 June 29, 2010 - 9:08pm | I have a lot of other sci-fi RPGs (Battletech/Mechwarrior, Heavy Gear, Robotech, Cyperpunk 2020, Shadowrun, Gamma World/Mutant Future, and others), so I have a lot of tech to work with. With Star Frontiers, I don't like the Lasers, as the adjustable damage is a bit taxing. I just have them do a fixed level of damage, and I call them "Blasters" to keep their design ambiguous. I try to ignore the ship design rules, so I have more freedom make my own spaceship designs. All-and-all, I like to keep the exploration gear as simple and portable as possible. That is, I like body-comps, but I don't like to bean-count all the little programs. I also don't like to make elaborate price list of every conceivable article of clothing, as it would just exhaust some of the players during chargen, and they end-up making their characters nudists. The simplicity of the basic SF equipment list is nice for countering this. I find Robotech and Heavy Gear have a lot of useful items. With Robotech, these items appeal to the sci-fi style of that time. Heavy Gear has more rugged, highly utilitarian devices - the game line even has a whole book about Tarranovain technology. With Battletech, I highly recommend looking through the old 3025 Vehicle and Personal Equipment tech book for items. Cyberpunk and Shadowrun have a lot of useful cybernetics and other good items to work with (I just ignore the Humanity/Essence lose, as it a stupid rule). I find the robot rules from Gamma World compliment the SF robot rules, but for the most part, the comic book nature of the science don't mesh-up well in a hard sic-fi setting. |
June 30, 2010 - 6:36pm | I think the SF laser power settings make them work similar to a Star Trek phaser when you think about it. Only the lasers have no stun setting, which just reminded me of an online comic joke. Star Trek/ Star Wars crossover and Captian Kirk tells every one to set weapons on stun. Han Solo goes, "Whoa, this thing has a stun setting? Just think Chewie, all this time I could have been NOT killing people." Oh never mind I found it. PvP.  In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
June 30, 2010 - 8:01pm | If I were han Solo, I still would have Blasted Greedo to death just on the principal that he said he was gonna take my ship over my dead body..... Then again Forceing Greedo to Listen to "Little red Corvette" by Prince over and over again ad nauseum may have sent him running back to Jabba in Total fear of Han's Retribution. lol The bombing starts in five minutes. |
June 30, 2010 - 9:31pm | Maybe this time, Han would let Greedo hit him, before he shoots him while his blaster is set on "tickle." XP Gorge would so green-light that! I'm going to crawl back in my hole and read me some Stars' End! |
 July 3, 2010 - 5:04pm | I ran a campaign (for myself only, unfortunately) where my players found a derelict alien ship that gave them Star trek technology. They built a couple of ships (one based on the Klingon Bird of Prey and one based on the Reliant) with shields, warp drive, transporters and such. I don't remember exactly how i integrated it all, but it definitely gave them an advantage. "Rome didn't build an empire by having meetings. They did it by killing those who stood in their way." |
July 15, 2010 - 8:46pm | If the Torpedeo is indeed as stated in the KnightHawks Book: "A torpedo is a self-guided nuclear bomb that homes in on its target after it is launched. Torpedos are propelled by prolonged fission reactions which enable them to travel at tremendous speeds. A ship can carry only a limited number of torpedos, and these must be marked off the ship's record sheet as they are used." Then why has no one come up with some sort of Multiple warheads like we have in real life, in other words the MIRV. ?? The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 15, 2010 - 8:47pm | How about an Identify friend or foe system for seeker missiles for crying out lowd! The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 15, 2010 - 10:04pm | With the scale of ship-to-ship combat (10,000km per hex), and the relative low blast radius of nukes in space (about 1km), a multiple warhead system - peppering a single hex with multiple blasts - would be more logical. IFF systems tend to counter the effectiveness of stealth, but in space, that is not an issue - it truth, distinguishing signals would allow friendly ships to keep track of each other. |
 July 18, 2010 - 3:06am | I've added/adapted tech from GUPRS, Traveller, 2300 AD and Star Wars, but I tend to keep things in the lower end of high tech. I don't like to use "God Machines" of any sort; the kind that just sort of allow you to dial-a-reality. That was one of my issues with d20 Future - Tech Levels. We would be at TL 5 in the real world; SF is about TL 6 or 7, depending. TL 8 gets closer to Star Wars, but TL 9 is god-like, and there is nothing about TL 9 because you can literally do anything there. So bleh to that... Anyway, ranting aside, I've adapted a little bit of stuff, usually equipment rather than weapons. Long live the Frontier! |
July 18, 2010 - 8:17pm | I think the seeker missle ought to target the nearest nonfriendly ship instead of simply the nearest ship. It could look at radar cross sections, energy emissions from friendly reactors, visual profile of the ships, or any and all of the above. Hell for that matter I think when you send the signal to activate a seeker you should be able to send targetting instructions also....like "target any non-friendly assault carrier" or perhaps "target the Heavy Crusier which is currently located at coordinates x,y,z". We don't need to take that from any other sci fi setting....we can take it from the here and now. About the MIRV warhead: what would it do in game terms? Hit more than one ship? Hit multiple times? Be more resistant to ICM's? All of the above? Honestly I'm not sure what tech I would take from other sources. |
July 19, 2010 - 7:16pm | The biggest reason to develop MIRV tech is to secure against countermeasures, not to bombard with multiple warheads. It was done to ensure at least one strike. In SFKH, a MIRV warhead should do the same; work against various conutermeasures. Long live the Frontier! |
July 20, 2010 - 11:04pm | You could blast one ship with multiple warheads in an overkill fashion, separate the warheads to target different ships (in both cases, the target ships could make defensive fire to knock them out), or pepper a single hex so any ship in or moving through it would at least got hit once (nuking an asteroid field could do a little more damage with the additional mass in the area). Allowing for ships to use their missile and gun batteries to make free attacks against incoming nukes could off-set the multi-warhead system (with each missile having 5-8 Hull Points - like a Fighter). By the way, I had an idea about ship guns. Small Batteries are typically clustered across warships, and are used against small craft (fighters & bombers) or incoming warheads (missiles and torpedoes). Small Cannons are fixed to the nose and wings of fighter craft.Both do 1d10 of HP damage. Medium Batteries are the usual mounted on full-sized ships as their primary arsenal. Medium Cannons are usually fixed to the bow of small warships, like Corvettes. Both do 2d10 damage. Large Cannons are usually found on the bow of full-sized ships, while Large Batteries make up the huge guns of Capital Ships (Light Cruiser or larger)! They do 3d10 damage. The Mega Cannon is the fixed gun of Capital Ships (their is not a ship big enough to mount a battery version of this weapon effectively). This dose 4d10 damage. Fixed weapons (cannons) takes-up less space then battery weapons, and you can choose between a basic energy (laser or whatever) or ballistic (rail/guass gun) system, or the more advanced Electron/Photon (E/P Battery or Cannon) system. E/P guns can switch modes when shooting, while ships with E/P Screens can try to switch modes in the last minute to defect the proper attack, but a special roll must be made to do this. That is, if a ship with Photon Screens up, then it gets attacked with an electron-discharge, the crew makes some sort of special roll to switch to an electron Screen. I have yet to figure a proper roll for this. Oh, I also never liked Reflective Hulls - it feels too much like the wall-mirror shields used in the classic V show. I just use the term Ablative Hull or something. |
July 21, 2010 - 8:55am | I like the small/medium/large weapons idea. We were talking about something along those lines after our last knighthawks game. We were also speculating about the "electron" batteries. What the heck would be accomplished by firing electrons at something? They don't have enough mass to inflict a physical impact do they? Aren't they so small that they could pass right through the target? |
July 21, 2010 - 10:24am | We were also speculating about the "electron" batteries. What the heck would be accomplished by firing electrons at something? They don't have enough mass to inflict a physical impact do they? Aren't they so small that they could pass right through the target? I have no idea? To me it seems like something that is more harmful to electronics then anything else. But then again, this is a game where folks suit-up and suck-out all the air for combat, and yet they suffer from dangerous electric fires. I usually ignore the E/P weapons and screens as it adds a needless layer to the rules. When it comes to the guns, I just say: "As advanced as the ships are, their main guns fire metal shells that are propelled by electric coils." I try to keep things simple. |
July 21, 2010 - 11:01am | I just remembered something! I was reading the Serenity (Firefly) RPG rulebook, and it has a neat article about artificial-gravity. Unlike most sci-fi, AG technology is not limited to making gravity move a certain way on a ship or make cars and robots hover in the air. AG tech seems to be the foundation of what makes everything possible on Firefly. They reduce inertia to allow ships to go faster, longer, and more safely. They amplify the mass of an atomic reactor, so they can maintain reaction much like our Sun holds a reaction under its own gravity. It makes that flying brick - the Serenity - a lot more aerodynamic! A ship can attract or repel itself off a planet's gravitational field. And small moons and planets can have their low gravity boosted, so they could hold an atmosphere, and thus the conditions needed for at least a low-tech colony (otherwise, most worlds would be bound by a "Hydraulic Civilization", that would allow the Alliance to have a tighter grip on all the colony worlds). Allowing this type of science in Star Frontiers would make a lot of sense, and opens a lot of possibilities! |
July 21, 2010 - 2:34pm | @ adamm: Don't forget that a lightning bolt and the electric current in your home are both made of electrons, nothing more, and both can easily kill a person. While realistically, a bolt of electricity would have little effect on a starship, nor should it have much range beyond a few dozen feet, but this is a game we're talking about. @ Malcadon: thanks for the info; I'd had no idea Firefly had such an integrated tech. I was recently reading an article about a new theory that states gravity isn't "real", that it is merely a "byproduct" of thermodynamics. If so, by applying the correct thermodynamic principles, one could theoretically alter gravity in any way. Long live the Frontier! |
July 21, 2010 - 7:41pm | Rather than call them electron or proton batteries why not just call them by the term particle beam weapons, because that is what they really are. But then there wouldn't be much use for both an electron and proton screen then I guess. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
July 22, 2010 - 3:15am | I really like what Serenity has to say about Gravity Control, and how it effects the technology (from pages 97-99):
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July 22, 2010 - 3:47pm | One of my favorite things from another game is the biotech gear from Traveller 2300 AD. The pentapod race grew all of their tech, from survival gear to packing crates. I think I'm going to work up an article for SFM using some of these items, or items inspired by them. If you haven't seen it before, and can find a copy of 2300, check it out. Long live the Frontier! |
July 22, 2010 - 8:59pm | One of my favorite things from another game is the biotech gear from Traveller 2300 AD. The pentapod race grew all of their tech, from survival gear to packing crates. I think I'm going to work up an article for SFM using some of these items, or items inspired by them. If you haven't seen it before, and can find a copy of 2300, check it out. Awesome! I wonder if your ideas could be integrated into the cyberbions article? Hrm... (just thinking out loud) If the gear is bio-based in its final stage after growth, carrying the gear to another environment (planet, moon, continent) could negatively effect the gear, correct? What if the gear reacted to dralasite physiology? What if this is dralasite knowledge that was lost? |
July 22, 2010 - 10:22pm | Cyberions? I don't know what that is. I've worked up the preliminary article already, adapting the basic items from the 2300 AD game (there were only 4 or 5). I already took into account some of the thoughts above (some of the gear doesn't work for drals or vrusk), and am thinking about new items along the same lines. I'll have something to submit in a week or two. :) Long live the Frontier! |
July 23, 2010 - 6:41am | Cyberbionic appeard in Issue 14 of the Star Frontiersman, page 9. Sorry for the confusion. |
August 23, 2010 - 12:56am | After reading about gravity field control in the Serenity RPG (as noted above), it seems like something useful for SF, more so with the way ships more in Knight Hawks. That is, as the ship moves forward vary fast, the gravity field on the ship lowers the inertia to normal levels (around 1g). Because the gravity field runs along the ships axis, the ship can't make sharp turns without straining the hull as the field adjusts to a new axis. That is, the ships can move really fast while maintaining normal Earth gravity on the inside, but large ships must make sight turns, or risk braking apart (or injuring crew). This also makes things a lot easier for the Damage Control Teams. As noted, gravity control allows ships to movie in and out of the atmo, to provide normal gravity and atmosphere on low-grav worlds, to allow sustain fusion in powerplants like how high-gravity maintains fusion on a star, and so on. So what do you all think? |
