 November 8, 2013 - 11:08am | Hello all... I'm new to the boards. Tried to play SF back in middle school (when it was new) and everybody dies so we never warmed up to the game. I'm itching to run it now for my crew and I'm hoping our gaming will be better, I am having them all make Space Fleet officers with 15-30 XP points to spend "advancing" characters because I don't want them to be "green" starting characters. They will be the command staff on a UPF Frigate. My adventure is meant to be short involving some ship "stuff" and also some planet based "stuff". I'm planning to have them each make two character, one that will go on the "away" mission and the other to man the ship in orbit. So I have a few questions about how you handle the space stuff. During a Space battle, some of the character whom are not gunners or the pilot of the frigate will do what exactly? I'm trying to decide how to make the experience fun for all the players. I was planning on having them be the crew of just the one frigate, so I'm not thinking of giving each one thier own ship. This is my first question... what do you do with the non-pilots/gunners during the space action? During a battle, that every three round "Repair" round is not actually a seperate time segment but meant to reflect efforts during the prior three rounds... so my second question is how do the engineers not end up blood smears on the inside walls of the ship if they are crawling around fixing things while the ship is using its MR and ADF? My last question. Other than the Assault Carrier, no capital ships carry fighters. I was wondering if fighters could be attached to the exterior of a Frigate and also possibly a Frieghter in the same fashion a life boat or launch might be? Or even if the fighters had some kind of clamping machanism the fighter pilot could spacewalk to get into the cockpit. Oh.. thought of a forth question. I've seem some posts here mentioning "Laser Pods" as some kind of fighter based weapon. Is that just somebodies home brew thing or is thier an article or post about alternate armermants for fighters. I find it amusing that some of the KH's art shows what I think are fighters dogfighting using Foreward Fire laser/projectile wing mounted weapons... when the game doesn't have such a thing. As in fighters have rockets and even assault scouts have a laser turrent not something that is FF. ----------------------------------------------- |
 November 8, 2013 - 12:58pm | Welcome to the board. You have great questions that we have all asked. Fortunately Star Frontiers is a game very open to fan improvements. The published material is very concise and freely available. We use this site to expand and address all the things the game designers did not focus on when they were building the frontier. We welcome and embrace everyone's soltions. The pod lasers are from a Dragon magazine article. You can find it at starfrontiers.com. We have had many discussions about movement by people inside a ship during combat. Inertia screens can be worn by the crew to provide some protection. Robots would serve to do much of the work when crew are forced to hunker down. Also some of the g forces are spread out over the 10 minute turn. However you are right to notice that ADF and MR are not scientifically accurate or realistic. There has been work here to develop a better system. I let the engineers work during battle on large ships and require all crew to be in acceleration couches on smaller ships because they are doing higher g maneuvers. -iggy |
November 8, 2013 - 1:35pm | I was just basing my question about engineers getting creamed is based on the rules specifying that people not strapped in are at danger of taking damage. I'll look for this dragon magazine thanks! I was assuming it might be in SFman or frontier explorer. That sounds like good material for SFman if there are not copy right issues. Is this the right forum area to ask questions like this? ----------------------------------------------- |
 November 8, 2013 - 1:39pm | You can craft a KHs combat so that everyone gets a ship- In fact that may be in the rule book. I allow for ships to dock to a hatch and piggy back- it would make sense on a frigate on a deep space mission. Clearly high ADF and MR should be blacking out most crews and anything not strapped down will become a deadly projectile. I've chosen to assume that the inertia field from the AD equipment list which clearly deals with inertia to save a character's life on the battle field. I like to assert that the Frontier scientist have simply applied the principle of physics that make the inertia field possible to create an inertia field for star ship decks that allow for the survival of the crew. Its a little bit of hand waving away of scientifice problems but lets face it we're playing a game that hand waves away the problems of interstellar travel with void space. the laser pod is from a Dragon or Polyhedron magazine article. the articles are archived and bouncing around here somewhere and the SFman fan magazine has been the platform for digitally remastering all the old Dragon, Ares and Polyhedron magazines. Couple of things you did not ask: You should consider: "A Skilled Frontier" article form SFMan #9 its a fan modification of the old rules and one that is a bit more flexible to use (less wonky then the original AD rules) "Spacer Skills Revisited" from SFman #11 This article dumbs down the prerequisites for spacer skills making them less them more progressive in nature and starting characters will not be One hit Wonders with the AD skills that are the foundation of their spacer skills as per the KH rule book. You should also check the Ares or Polyhedron archives for the articles "Big Ship Campaigns" and "Of Great Ship's and Captians" (I believe those are the titles) They go into the nuts and bolts of running a big ship campaign like what you are considering- in fact the author considers the UPF frigate the smallest ship you would use for the "big ship campaign" In fact you find that these two articles will answer many of your questions. It also goes into the problems of combat and the dangers of combat turning you "big ship" into a big lifeless hulk. Finally you should also consider running some space combats abstractly and not on the KHs map. The principles of abstract combat were covered in the old STar Trek RPG (with kirk and spock on the box cover) and to a certain extent they are covered in the Star's Without Number RPG (there is a free version of that RPG and a pay for version I beleive the description of star ship combat is in the free version but the rule set is a fabulous rescource and I recommend dropping the dime on it. In a nut shell you describe abstractly whats going on in a ship on ship combat and allow for everyone to contibute to the combat. for example the the navigator who is usually manning the ships scanners can be making skill checks to get a better lock on the enemy ship, the pilot might be invoking evasive manuevers and with a skill roll he reduces the enemy's target lock on but the enemy ship has closed the distance a little. I keep meaning to do an article on abstract KHs action and it keeps getting shelved for one reason or another I really need to get off my butt about that. Also dont forget to get your hands on all the SFman and the Frontier Explorer fan magazines for fan produced content from the past decade on this 30 year old game, also RPG Review magazine has carried an article for Star Frontiers in the past 2 issues. I just went looking for those archives of magazine articles and found the ares archive in the Port Loren project http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/3437 I believe you find them all there. shout out if you dont. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 November 8, 2013 - 3:29pm | Welcome, Abub. This forum is absolutely the correct place to ask these kind of questions. Beyond what iggy and jedion357 have already said, here's my take on a few of your questions. On the space battles, I've never really had that many games run into that issue as most of the stuff I've run/played has happened "off ship" In the cases where we have run bigger battles, I typically follow the suggestions from the Campaign Book and run it as a board game battle letting everyone run a few ships. But jedi's suggestions about the old articles are spot on as well. On the movment around the ship during combat, my personal flavor is that it's not possible if the ship is using more than 1 ADF/MR in a turn as I don't allow for any sort of inerial damening/artifical gravity/etc. Everyone needs to be strapped into an acceleration couch/chair. (This is one of the few areas where jedion357 and I have differing opinions  . It's not that I don't want to allow it, but I think if you follow the implications of such tech there are other thing that the Frontier would have that I just don't like in my game.) I get around this by assuming that the ships have myriads of maintenance robots (astromechs if you want) that have magnetic grips and can move around under the sever accelerations. The engineers direct these robots from their stations during combat and it is this effort that allows the repair turn every 3 rounds. When I design a ship, I typically try to build in robot storage and maintenance facilities to reflect this.Docking fighters. It should definitely be possible. The standard rules don't cover it but there is no reason why, logically, it couldn't be possible. Starting from about the frigate upward in size, the volumes of the ships are such that they could easily accomodate bays for a small numbers of fighters (or large numbers on the bigger ships). I actually did a whole alternate ship contruction system (posted in the Knight Hawks 2.0 project) that included this capability. Depending on how you do it, you might limit the ADF/MR of the "mothership" when it has things hanging off it but that's up to you as the GM. If done properly, having a few small fighers strapped on shouldn't affect the ADF/MR at all as long as the docking/clamping mechanism can handle the forces. We also reprinted the Laser Pod and Pod Laser Turret stats in issue 4 of the Frontier Explorer (p 18) in the Saurian Spacecraft section. On the character generation, is that 15-30 XP beyond what they get coming out of the acadamy? If so, that sounds about right. If not, it's not going to be enough to get spaceship skills under the canon rules, you need 250-300 to really do that. You can do it in less but you then have to have a laser focus on getting the KH skills and don't have room for "branching out" and diversifying the character. But it would work with the "Space Skills Revisited" rules jedion357 mentioned (that article is actually on-line at http://starfrontiers.info/wiki/index.php/Spacer_Skills_Revisited if you don't have issue 11 handy), although you might want to raise it a bit as you can spend 15-30 XP fairly quickly. I look forward to hearing how your game goes. 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 8, 2013 - 5:47pm | I'm not familiar with what KHs specifies for advanced characters coming out of Space Fleet academy, primarily because I jumped on the Skilled Frontier/Spacer Skills Revisited horse. One thing you could do, this is just an idea that occured to me the other day in the Dragon article on creating Star Law characters (also I reviewed these requirements in the Albatross article in Frontier Explorer #5: http://frontierexplorer.org/book/albatross ) the long and short is that it specified something like this: one 6th level skill, one 3rd level skill, one 2nd level skill, and one 1st level skill - you could do something similar but modified to suit your purposes. EDIT: there was a lot of discussion about frigates in this thread: http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/3468 Which might be of help too. I never did the deck plans when my software proved such a brat. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 8, 2013 - 6:32pm | The rule on characters coming out of the Gollwin Academy was that they had the following: Pilot, Engineer, or Astrogator at level 2 Energy or Rocket Weapons at level 1 All necessary prerequisites to obtain those spaceship skills. Tack on an extra bit of XP to allow for some diversity and it should work well. Obviously the total XP of the characters will be different and the bio-social skills won't be represented but it gives you a good foundation and a well rounding of the spaceship skills. If you have a player that wants to be the Medical Officer, you could do something like give him Medic level 5 or 6, Pyscho-social level 2 or 3, one weapon skill at level 2 or 3 (every officer should be able to defend themselves) and melee at level 1 or 2, plust the extra XP everyone gets. While I pulled those numbers off of the top of my head, if you work it out, that's probably less XP than the character that picked Pilot and Energy Weapons as their skills (but might be more than Engineer + Rocket Weapons) 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 8, 2013 - 7:37pm | ..... and the bio-social skills won't be represented but it gives you a good foundation and a well rounding of the spaceship skills. If you have a player that wants to be the Medical Officer, you could do something like give him Medic level 5 or 6, Pyscho-social level 2 or 3, one weapon skill at level 2 or 3 (every officer should be able to defend themselves) and melee at level 1 or 2, plust the extra XP everyone gets. While I pulled those numbers off of the top of my head, if you work it out, that's probably less XP than the character that picked Pilot and Energy Weapons as their skills (but might be more than Engineer + Rocket Weapons) In other words, no Deanna Troy in the Frontier. For myself I would take the challenge of playing a ships doctor or councillor and that sounds reasonable, Terl Obar. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 8, 2013 - 10:32pm | Thanks for all the advice I am using ship skills revisited but not the skilled frontier article. I might reconsider skilled frontier at some point and I plan to use its 1/2 ability + 10% per level if something they do isn't covered in a sub skill. I wanted to try and keep my house rules to a minimum right out the gate. @Terlobar I wasn't going into detail on my method for their starting Xp just for brevity. I'm having them pick from spacer skills and giving them the revisited prereqs and then balancing those choices with more or less XP. My spacer roles are the normal ones plus Medical but I'm also leaving them the option of making "standard creation" characters in case somebody wants to try and make a bio social PSA into a spacer. I suppose they could ask to make marines which might be on the ship without actually being spacers but I'd hate it if I ended up with four marines and nobody to be involved in the space combat beyond boarding attempts or defense. ----------------------------------------------- |
November 9, 2013 - 1:23am | You could make up the ship officers you feel the campaign needs and hand them out as NPCs for the players to enfluence during ship combat if your players don't choose any PCs that fit. -iggy |
 November 9, 2013 - 2:27pm | Abub, During a Space battle, some of the character whom are not gunners or the pilot of the frigate will do what exactly? I'm trying to decide how to make the experience fun for all the players. I was planning on having them be the crew of just the one frigate, so I'm not thinking of giving each one thier own ship. This is my first question... what do you do with the non-pilots/gunners during the space action? You have pilots, co-pilots, gunners but, also engineers, medical officers, technician (mechanical, robotic & computer) and crewmen can be on security duty. During combat, crewmen are organized into damage control teams. if something goes down - a rocket battery or ICM launcher, the team would need to get to the item and then start repairs. Or, the frigate has a pirate captain as prisoner, the brig locking device goes down - you have to capture him OR a boarding party is trying to get him and you have to repel them. Someone with medical skills can help the injuried crewmen. I thing SF magazine has an article on crewmen injuries during combat. Equipment in the galley, gym or cargo bay comes loose and the team needs to secure it...the possibilities are endless. During a battle, that every three round "Repair" round is not actually a seperate time segment but meant to reflect efforts during the prior three rounds... so my second question is how do the engineers not end up blood smears on the inside walls of the ship if they are crawling around fixing things while the ship is using its MR and ADF? You can wear an inertia screen as previously discussed. There are velcro shoes, magnetic shoes, armored spacesuits and you could have a type of G-suit to compensate for the pressure and extra G's. One magazine discusses some type of coveralls as standard for most crews. I think, it included a disposble mask for temporary oxygen supply. My last question. Other than the Assault Carrier, no capital ships carry fighters. I was wondering if fighters could be attached to the exterior of a Frigate and also possibly a Frieghter in the same fashion a life boat or launch might be? Or even if the fighters had some kind of clamping machanism the fighter pilot could spacewalk to get into the cockpit. Yes, Streel Corporation developed an item called the "Fish-Hook". It was designed to work with their S-series fighters. This was developed during Laco's War and they try to keep it secret. External docking facilities
(EDF, or "Fish Hooks" as the pilots dubbed them) allow groups of four
craft to be carried outside a ship's hull, accessible via an airlock and
scaffolding. One EDF can be attached for every 5 hull sizes, with a MHS:5 for
the first facility. This can be in addition to any fighter bays a ship may
have. |
November 9, 2013 - 2:28pm | As for the Frigate - it does not have to be standard. Here are some varients:
|
