 February 5, 2011 - 3:10pm | The floor is now open for debate: but I'll start with a few ideas: 1. needs to be fun and fast play- with basic and advanced game options to control the speed of play depending on the number of ships on the table. 2. eliminate some of the wonkiness of the original (I speak specifically of the weapons and defenses but you may see other areas that qualify as a bit wonky; MHS?) 3. update the weapons some (guided missles and etc) 4. To go to a volume system or not? 5. ship construction should be easy and fun, kind of like designing a vehicle for Car Wars was- a great solo activity if there was no one available to play. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 5, 2011 - 5:04pm | I'm fighting really hard to not say that annoying phrase (the one that starts "In My..."), but I think that the Spaceship construction rules should be overhauled and should be mostly standardized. All ships (military or civilian) should be created the same way. I think that limiting the availability of some components, such as only military classed ships have access to Assault rockets should also be a strong consideration in these revisions. I also think that ADF should be used to determine not just hexes moved in a turn, but also should be spent to turn a ship one hex facing per point spent. MR then could just give a bonus of 5% per MR point to piloting maneuvers and reduce an opponent's chance to hit by -5%/MR points. Or Mr could also reduce damage from an attack by -1point/ship's MR to represent the ship taking evasive maneuvers during a round (that in itself would save many a fighter pilot whose life expectency is so low flying a ship that probably wouldn't survive one hit in combat) "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
 February 5, 2011 - 5:50pm | Here are my first thoughts (and I'm going to have a lot of them over the course of this  ). Also, I'm going to say this up front. Over the course of these discussions, I'm probably going to sound negative and argumentative, people are going to feel like I'm throwing roadblocks in the system and that I'm being unreasonable. I apologize in advance, feel free to tell me to get lost at any time. I'm a physicist and an astronomer and I work at NASA. I'm well grounded in the realities of spacefight and physics in general. I'll be the first to admit the system has issues, I love to point them out. But if we overhaul this, I'd really like to see it done as close to "right" as possible.1. It doesn't get much faster than the current boardgame rules. I really can't think of much more to trim out of the system. Any changes are going to complicate it, but personally, I would mind a little more complication. At some level, very little need be done to the boardgame rules, they work pretty well. It is easy enough to add additional weapons into the system. 2. Definitely, there is work to be done here. 3. No problems with that, as long as it is done logically 4. I'd love to see this. The ship construction should be based on mass and volume and those factors should determine the size, speed and maneuverability of the ships. 5. This is somewhat in opposition to #4. A more realistic and fixed construction system isn't going to necessarily be easy, athough I'm sure we can get it pretty close. And fun is in the eye of the beholder. I like making ships and the more detailed (and there for not "easy") the system the funner I think it is . But that's just me.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 |
February 5, 2011 - 9:26pm | Terl, I already had you pegged as the voice of reason. I aggree that the basic game is pretty simple and ultimately the big complication will be the constructions system. which is ok. You are quite right about new weapons being easily added- and any weapons we change simply use the new stats. One game change would be the damage table, if we change the equipment list significantly then that will need to be adjusted. Another thought that I had and will need terl's imput on would be a new level of gaming where the you would have a sathar incursion to a system that has the appropriate remote sensor arrays and the militia or Space Fleet player attempts to maneuver assets to intercept that incursion. Basic idea is that the militia can track and respond to the sathar but the sathar only have the range of their on board sensors and the knowledge of where they need to go. Play area is on a system wide scale, turns are on a suitable time scale for fractional AU movement, and movement is by vector and thrust. it becomes a tricky problem to arrange an intercept. Sathar are decelerating to raid the populated planet but wish to avoid contact before hitting the planet. Militia player may opt for a passing engagement where because there hoping to survive against heavier ships by passing through their missile envelope as fast as possible and they hope they can take a chunk out of them while another group of ships maneuvers on a convergent course. Once an intercept is reached the game transitions to basic or advanced game rules I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 6, 2011 - 12:21am | I'm in! And Terl if I beg for the math its only because of the engineer coming out of me. I like understand everything. I would like to see ADF based on some element of physics and not the 10k hex size. Possibly one standard gravity. I'd also like to see MR based more on the mass you are trying to pivot rather than 60 degrees. I'm all for mass/volume based ship construction. I'd like to sort the engines out into groupings based on thrust produced. This way the number of engines could be determined based on mass and the ADF would calculate out of that. -iggy |
February 6, 2011 - 6:49am | I'm in! And Terl if I beg for the math its only because of the engineer coming out of me. I like understand everything. I would like to see ADF based on some element of physics and not the 10k hex size. Possibly one standard gravity. I believe that in another thread it was stated what a hex size should be for 1 ADF to = on 1g but I'm down with that. I'd also like to see MR based more on the mass you are trying to pivot rather than 60 degrees. I'm all for mass/volume based ship construction.This sounds like a system of: you have to move X number of hexes before you can pivot 60degrees; [I played a ACW iron clad game at Historicon that took the mass of the boat into account with turning templates- with every ship on a different turning template (numbered A thru G) it encouraged you to think about manuevers.] This sort of system would probably work as 1MR means a ship can turn every hex moved and 5MR equates to 5 hexes before the big tubs thrust manages to change its direction. Higher MR is bad. I'd like to sort the engines out into groupings based on thrust produced. This way the number of engines could be determined based on mass and the ADF would calculate out of that. I agree but I dont think we should put exact numbers to it- leave it a little abstract so no one can pick apart the science/engineering latter on and distract people from having fun with a good system. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 6, 2011 - 7:12am | [Quote=Shell] shell brought these up in another thread: external mounts and cowling for streamlining and draw backs on non standard add ons [end/quote] just wanted to add that to the list: external mounts- should be extremely fragile and quick to be blasted away in combat. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 6, 2011 - 9:39am | The RPG rules should have never been built on the wargaming rules! If anything, the wargaming rules should be just a striped-down version of the RPG rules. What about adding Warp/Hyper-Drives for FTL ships, so there could be fast-moving (fusion-powered) starships and systemships. Allowing secondary engines, so a ship can take-off from a world, and move long distances by ions, or have ions thruster and a small fusion engine to power the ship's more powerful systems, or some other combination. The option of gravity generators. Meltdown/Radiation Leak for Fusion Drives, or fuel-leak for Chemical Drives, in-place of Electrical Fire. Using a robotic brain as a ship's default central possessing unit - basically, a fairly complex (4+) robot installed into the ship's Main Computer. I like Deryn Rys idea for using ADF for thrust and turning, with MR as an adjustment, but like this:
This adjustment is for stunt-flying, avoid getting shot, and using fixed weapons. Ships with good MR could zig-zag, with x2 the MR adjustment. |
February 6, 2011 - 10:20am | For anyone that hasn't read them I recommend a quick read through Art Eaton's Knight Hawk Vector rules. It might give you some ideas and see how we might do things. Some random responses to things posted: A 3600 km hex gives 1ADF = 1 g for a 10 minute turn. Ascent's Shades of Motion article in the Star Frontiersman and the revised one on the Star Frontiers Network Wiki show how to scale that (Ascent asked me to check those scalings and I haven't had a chance yet.) A very, very simple way to do a mass/volume conversion is to just assume that on average, the ship has some arbitrary density (Traveller used the density of water). The hull, equipment, etc has a higher density, but there are a lot of open spaces to average that out. Then you could do everything volume based and determine the mass just before you added the engines and computed your ship's ADF. The other way would be to assign mass and volumes for all the different equipment and keep track of it as you go along. More accurate, but more complicated as well. As to how big things are, we don't have to know exactly, we just have to be consistent. I agree with iggy on the engines. I'd say we genereate a series of engine types with thrust ratings. You add up the total thrust of your engines, divide that by the total mass of your ship and you have your ADF. Your freighter may have an ADF of 6 when unloaded but when you fill up the cargo hold, you end up with an ADF of 1 or less. There is the issue of limiting the number of engines a ship can handle but just off the top of my head you could do that based on the volume of the ship. If you have a small ship, you only have room for one or two struts to hold engines but as the ship gets bigger you can mount more. I'd have to work out the math but I think that could work. More later, I want to respond in a few other threads before church. 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 |
February 6, 2011 - 1:21pm | The issue of engine struts is easily dealt with on the Hull size chart- we can keep the canon listing or we can tweek them a little- that tweeking should not be any more than doubling IMO so Terl if you use the traveler standard of the density of water we need to track what the empty and full freighter will be. but it might be of value to establish what the mass of one "space" is so that a player may do some quick calculations because he has 20 spaces of cargo but the hold is by no means full. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 6, 2011 - 1:25pm | 1. I have no problem with adjusting the ship-construction rules, but major changes might turn me off. 2. A system-level aspect to the game would be something that I would very, very much like to see. 3. I'd also like to impose some more structure on the FTL aspect of the game. One that jumps out at me is the time requirement to plot a jump. 4. As for the tactical game itself (weapons and systems and maneuver), I would have to be convinced of the need to add much to it at all. Going to vector movement might be something I would like, but I'm not wedded to it. |
February 7, 2011 - 2:13pm | Ascent asked me a question that reminded me that I should state my assumptions in some areas. The one in particular is what constitutes 1g. On the surface of the Earth it is 9.8 m/s/s (varies between 9.78 and 9.82 depending on altitude, lattitude, etc). For SF I always just take it to be 10 m/s/s. There is no reason it has to be exactly the same and the difference is only 2%. Plus using 10 instead of 9.8 makes the math just so much easier. I can divide by 10 in my head, not so 9.8 . So anytime you seem me talking about accelerations and gee forces, I'm using 10 m/s/s as 1g.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 |
 February 7, 2011 - 2:50pm | I suggest that you call it GSG (Galactic Standard Gravity) and explain it as 1.02 times Earth gravity. Thanks for clarifying. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 March 11, 2015 - 6:26pm | Necro-threading I know but: 1ADF=1G=10m/s/s works for me, though in keeping with the rest of the "measurement" system we should probably call it a SGU= Standard Gravity Unit :) Mass/volume: As akward as the rest of the game is (all figures to four significant digits AFTER the decimal point :) ) I like the note from "Other Suns" RPG: "In general, each metric ton of the ship mass corresponds to a 'block' within the ship of dimensions 1.5m X 3m X 2m (=9 cubic meters, maybe stay with a unit of 10?). Heavy equipment such as a main weapon or shield generator is somewhat more dense at 25mt per 9 cubic meter block" which gives you a rough idea how much "space" each component would take up. Since I base my KH on Full Thrust and they use a "mass" based build system I use the above as a general rule with higher-tech, military grade equipment being more compact though less easy to maintain, (military tendency towards "modular/black-box" shotgun type maintenance) while civil equipment is more volume intensive per block of "mass" involved and it seems to work out well. I have an issue with the KH shields. "Electron/Proton" screen don't make any sense as they would require the SHIP to be charged (charged hull plating basically instead of screens) while the stasis screen would be akin to a magnetic shield which would be effective against charged partical beams. (Which are the proton and electon batteries) I'd like to suggest that in deed "electron/proton" screen be replaced with charged hull plating of the appropriate value and two levels of "magentic" shields. I'd also like to see some external weapons mounts, (like on a certain miniature which I have armed with Knetic rail guns) which add to the game I think. Guided missiles: There's already the torpedo and most other missiles are very fast (launch and resolve in that turn) weapons which keeps tracking to a minimum which I like. I'd suggest having the ability to mount some sort of rapid-fire anti-missile/fighter system on the ships. Again its something from FT but I don't see it being a burden on the KH game if done right. As for the weapons themselves I'd like to see various version rather than "more" weapons. That the fighters and assault scouts can't mount small laser cannon (in my opinion "cannon" would be fixed mounts while batteries would be multiple aspect weapons, cannons being a bit heavier hitting than equivilent batteries all else being equal) with various sizes of both batteries and cannon. (That a cruiser with a laser battery did the same damage as a destroyer always eerked me :) ) It always bothered me that the game has range diffusion for the weapons but range played no part in the "to-hit" system. I'd like to see that addressed. As noted all over the place I like the "mass allocation" system of Full Thrust as it's realitivly easy to use and I liked the basic concept of KH build but the actual effect is to make a Sathar ship pretty much the same as a Federation one and I really would like to see a racial difference evolve. Not only in the building rules but something like "iconic" weapons for the ships. Again, using the FT example, something like the Phalon versus Human weapons concepts. The humans use various species of particle beams and magnetic shielding. Meanwhile the Phalon use plasma weapons which in the rules have to be "adjusted" prior to battle to specific effective ranges. (Short/medium/long in this example) A third alien race uses rail guns pretty much exclusivly and due to this each has a different ship building basis for their ships. (The rail gun users have no shields as they are useless against that weapon but have multiple layer armor to defend against kinetic penatrators. The Phalon also have mutliple shells but thinner to absorb the plasma bursts and the humans have shield to defect particle beams) I'd like to keep the pseudo-vector system and like the idea of MR being the number of hexes before you can turn. Short of stealing (and dealing with) something along the lines of Triplanetary's map I think its a good solution. (Get me in the right mood someday and I'll tell you all about the disaster which was my attempt where you had to spend ADF equal to your current velocity to turn one hex side... OK at low velocity but quickly got cardboard ships flying off the table and not all because of their speed either :) ) Looking forward to more input. Randy |
April 5, 2015 - 5:44pm | Would the overall consensus be to keep the mechanics pretty much the same? Or to move to something like the RPG "to-hit" system with modifications or what? Randy |
April 6, 2015 - 3:36am | Would the overall consensus be to keep the mechanics pretty much the same? Or to move to something like the RPG "to-hit" system with modifications or what? Randy Good question. I'm unsure of the answer other than keep the mechanics simple. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
