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Misieq79 In reply to ShadowedAcolyte [2010-02-26 16:09:22 +0000 UTC]

Thanks

As for the size & overall design, the group playing our campaign came to a conclusion that some parts of the system need to be written from scratch, especially the economy and starships.

(WARNING: BOOORING LECTURE INCOMING. NOT CONSULTED IN ANY WAY WITH REDBRICK LTD, TO BE TREATED AS FAN MOD ONLY)

The rulebook assumes that a ship needs around a week to travel from planet to jumpgate. Thus, if we talk Newtonian propulsion, a starship would need to accelerate at 40-50g's to achieve that.

So, we based "our" starship rules (including combat) od David Weber's Honorverse, subtracting one or a couple zeros from the stats and shifting from missile to artillery combat. And we came to an agreement that ship's length would be around 150% of its 20th century naval counterpart.
Frigates would around 100-150 meters long.

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ShadowedAcolyte In reply to Misieq79 [2010-02-26 16:33:55 +0000 UTC]

Right! Well, FS isn't a starship combat system by any stretch of the imagination. For my game I use a modified version of that presented in the Alternity RPG game books (which TSR published in the early 90s, I think), which has a lot of different crew members making a lot of different interrelated skill checks to get combat done, overlaying that on the FS skill system (the captain uses Warfare: Spaceship Tactics and adds his VPs to everyone's goal number, a sensor operator can add his VPs on a Science: Sensors roll to either the gunner or the pilot's roll, the Engineer making a Tech Redemption roll to deal with firecontrol, etc, etc). It's fun and marginally more detailed, and in general works really well.

As for length, no problem. I was just asking.

One thing that bothers me about FS is the use of starfighters, which is pretty unjustifiable from an energy perspective--a lot of missiles makes a lot more sense than a starfighter.

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Misieq79 In reply to ShadowedAcolyte [2010-02-26 16:48:40 +0000 UTC]

Amen! When most people think "starfighters" they see Star Wars with its atmospheric flight physics.

IMHO a starfighter should be sort of a torpedo boat/torpedo leader, such as in Honorverse or Joe Haldeman's Forever War novel. The sheer acceleration and distance would make "conventional" dogfight impossible, and their onboard energy weapons would do little harm to capital ships. But they could carry torpedoes to a greater distance and aid in guidance and countering enemy ECM.

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ShadowedAcolyte In reply to Misieq79 [2010-02-26 16:54:32 +0000 UTC]

I suppose there is some validity in that, having the starfighters accelerate, release ordnance, and either angle way off or reverse thrust sharply, or to serve as picket defense of certain capital ships.

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