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Starfire > Starfire Rules
New Engine Idea
Paul M:
Starslayer and I have run into the 100 HS nightmare in our campaign, basically our average TL is now 9 and so you can deploy a fairly solid defence around any WP given time: BS4-6, small craft CAP, mine fields, IDEW and so forth. But 100 HS WP restrict you to BBs as your largest assault ship. Now we have home rules and such which make construction take a more reasonable time so no one can just shovel through BBs till the enemy collapses, or at least you could do that once only and need a long time to rebuild your WP assault force.
To solve this we are allowing Ic based battle rider carriers but still...the @ works far better with Jc engines were it is arriving at a distance to the WP...this is basically only a solution to allow SDs to move through WPs that they could not fit through normally. I'm still dubious even a CVB battle rider carrier is really going to be able to bring more than 1 SD or ML through on racks and not have it blown off said racks.
I was thinking to make a new engine available TL8. The engine would reduce the effective transit size of the ship mounting it (ala Galactic starfire) so that a SD can make it through the 100 HS WP but the first generation engine would only allow a transit speed of (max)-2 (so 3 SDs per turn). The next engine at TL10 would reduce the effective transit size so a ML could transit a 100 HS warp point and allow transit speed of (max)-1 (4 SD or 3 ML per turn). The last type at TL12 would allow a MT to transit a 100 or 180 HS warp point and allow a transit speed of (max)-0 (5 SD, 4 ML or 3 MTs per turn). During transit turns they could not employ engine tuners and would need 1 turn to enter or leave transit mode.
The next option is to make this an ability like advanced manoeuvring. So it is a zero HS engine modification you can buy for a cost increase to your engines. You take a turn to turn it on and off.
The final option would be to make the is device like a 2nd gen engine tuner that you need to install on the ship. It would then be active or not. It could not be run at the same time as an engine tunner.
What do people think? I'm more or less just trying to get some brainstorming on the subject. I'm a lot dubious the battleriders will work out for assaults though that will give some strategic boost to races that till now have been blocked from even deploying SDs due to 100 HS WPs.
ZimRathbone:
--- Quote from: Paul M on April 18, 2021, 09:56:38 AM ---Starslayer and I have run into the 100 HS nightmare in our campaign, basically our average TL is now 9 and so you can deploy a fairly solid defence around any WP given time: BS4-6, small craft CAP, mine fields, IDEW and so forth. But 100 HS WP restrict you to BBs as your largest assault ship. Now we have home rules and such which make construction take a more reasonable time so no one can just shovel through BBs till the enemy collapses, or at least you could do that once only and need a long time to rebuild your WP assault force.
To solve this we are allowing Ic based battle rider carriers but still...the @ works far better with Jc engines were it is arriving at a distance to the WP...this is basically only a solution to allow SDs to move through WPs that they could not fit through normally. I'm still dubious even a CVB battle rider carrier is really going to be able to bring more than 1 SD or ML through on racks and not have it blown off said racks.
I was thinking to make a new engine available TL8. The engine would reduce the effective transit size of the ship mounting it (ala Galactic starfire) so that a SD can make it through the 100 HS WP but the first generation engine would only allow a transit speed of (max)-2 (so 3 SDs per turn). The next engine at TL10 would reduce the effective transit size so a ML could transit a 100 HS warp point and allow transit speed of (max)-1 (4 SD or 3 ML per turn). The last type at TL12 would allow a MT to transit a 100 or 180 HS warp point and allow a transit speed of (max)-0 (5 SD, 4 ML or 3 MTs per turn). During transit turns they could not employ engine tuners and would need 1 turn to enter or leave transit mode.
The next option is to make this an ability like advanced manoeuvring. So it is a zero HS engine modification you can buy for a cost increase to your engines. You take a turn to turn it on and off.
The final option would be to make the is device like a 2nd gen engine tuner that you need to install on the ship. It would then be active or not. It could not be run at the same time as an engine tunner.
What do people think? I'm more or less just trying to get some brainstorming on the subject. I'm a lot dubious the battleriders will work out for assaults though that will give some strategic boost to races that till now have been blocked from even deploying SDs due to 100 HS WPs.
--- End quote ---
I was never very happy with the hard limits on WP, so we had a house rule thst the size was the maximum volume of ships that could pass per impulse, and that ships bigger than the WP could still transit but took multiple impulses to do so. Ships greater than the WP size could transit WP Size hull spaces in the 1st impulse and 50% of WP HS in subsequent impulses eg a 200HS SM trying to transit a siz 100WP would take 3 impulses to transit (100+50+50). All transits had to complete within a single turn. We didn't have a lot of testing of this though as it was quite rare to build SDs and above since relatively few campaigns lasted long enough.
Looking at your options I would tend to go with the second option (AM-like ability) as it doesnt add another engine type and therefore need to cope with rules regarding interactions with other engine types and systems, and the ability is only really useful in the assault, so making it a device would only add a HTK, the loss of the system would not be significant to the ongoing battle if any.
Paul M:
--- Quote from: ZimRathbone on April 19, 2021, 10:23:55 PM ---
I was never very happy with the hard limits on WP, so we had a house rule thst the size was the maximum volume of ships that could pass per impulse, and that ships bigger than the WP could still transit but took multiple impulses to do so. Ships greater than the WP size could transit WP Size hull spaces in the 1st impulse and 50% of WP HS in subsequent impulses eg a 200HS SM trying to transit a siz 100WP would take 3 impulses to transit (100+50+50). All transits had to complete within a single turn. We didn't have a lot of testing of this though as it was quite rare to build SDs and above since relatively few campaigns lasted long enough.
Looking at your options I would tend to go with the second option (AM-like ability) as it doesnt add another engine type and therefore need to cope with rules regarding interactions with other engine types and systems, and the ability is only really useful in the assault, so making it a device would only add a HTK, the loss of the system would not be significant to the ongoing battle if any.
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. I find the "hard limits" not really so "hard" as most of the time it is of no matter if the WP is 200, 300, 400, or 500...the only two sizes that are important are 100 and 180. 100 HS WP are 11% of them and 180 are a further 6%. That is far too often...but I think changing the rules at this point for Starslayer and I isn't really an option...we need a tech solution. I have to admit I think the option of an engine modifier system is the better one. It stops having to have a Ix engine or whatever or worse Ia1, Ia2, and Ia3. What to call it though: "Drive Field Transit Compressor 1st Generation" (DFTC1)....hmmm just (TC1) would work. "Kay-Tell Transit Stacker" might also be an option (KTTS)...
I think a lot more things in Starfire should be like that as the ships themselves are huge so its hard to understand why systems that amount to computing power more than hardware should be so massive. What makes high tech small combatants not viable is mainly the lack of space for electronics, and clearly this was obvious as a fair amount of the higher tech electronics suddenly got a lot smaller. But even BCs and BBs end up tight for space. I suspect some crazy game balance-ing idea is behind it but I often wonder if these attempts do not generate far worse un-intended consequences then they solve issues.
ZimRathbone:
I agree about the size of some essentially computer components, but I think that much of it stems from assumptions absorbed (consciously or otherwise) from the initial source material that SVC used when creating the earliest editions of the game...
Much of the tech is largely based on E.E. (Doc) Smith's "Lensman" universe where "computer" was a job description rather than a piece of technology and datasets were held on punched cards (after all most of that was originally written in the 1930's and 40's - pre-transistors or much of the minaturisation that flowed on from that).
Certainly during the UTM era there was much argument about reducing the size of electronic components, but it was considered to be too radical a departure from what 3rdR was at the time, as the mission was to try and consolidate the rules of the tech from the five or so sources. While there were some changes in EW, and how it was calculated I don't think that it really addressed the size of components IIRC
Kurt:
--- Quote from: Paul M on April 18, 2021, 09:56:38 AM ---Starslayer and I have run into the 100 HS nightmare in our campaign, basically our average TL is now 9 and so you can deploy a fairly solid defence around any WP given time: BS4-6, small craft CAP, mine fields, IDEW and so forth. But 100 HS WP restrict you to BBs as your largest assault ship. Now we have home rules and such which make construction take a more reasonable time so no one can just shovel through BBs till the enemy collapses, or at least you could do that once only and need a long time to rebuild your WP assault force.
To solve this we are allowing Ic based battle rider carriers but still...the @ works far better with Jc engines were it is arriving at a distance to the WP...this is basically only a solution to allow SDs to move through WPs that they could not fit through normally. I'm still dubious even a CVB battle rider carrier is really going to be able to bring more than 1 SD or ML through on racks and not have it blown off said racks.
I was thinking to make a new engine available TL8. The engine would reduce the effective transit size of the ship mounting it (ala Galactic starfire) so that a SD can make it through the 100 HS WP but the first generation engine would only allow a transit speed of (max)-2 (so 3 SDs per turn). The next engine at TL10 would reduce the effective transit size so a ML could transit a 100 HS warp point and allow transit speed of (max)-1 (4 SD or 3 ML per turn). The last type at TL12 would allow a MT to transit a 100 or 180 HS warp point and allow a transit speed of (max)-0 (5 SD, 4 ML or 3 MTs per turn). During transit turns they could not employ engine tuners and would need 1 turn to enter or leave transit mode.
The next option is to make this an ability like advanced manoeuvring. So it is a zero HS engine modification you can buy for a cost increase to your engines. You take a turn to turn it on and off.
The final option would be to make the is device like a 2nd gen engine tuner that you need to install on the ship. It would then be active or not. It could not be run at the same time as an engine tunner.
What do people think? I'm more or less just trying to get some brainstorming on the subject. I'm a lot dubious the battleriders will work out for assaults though that will give some strategic boost to races that till now have been blocked from even deploying SDs due to 100 HS WPs.
--- End quote ---
Like some of the other people that responded, I just by-passed the whole issue by using rules that changed the limit from a hard size limit to a capacity per impulse limit. I have always been partial to large ships, and so was innately against anything that made them less useful.
Having said that, I get that you don't want to radically change the rules this deep into your campaign. That makes sense. I personally would lean towards a new tech system that modifies the size of the ship mounting it, rather than new engines, as that seems cleaner and easier to implement. If you are using Starfire Assistant, a new tech system that modifies ship size for transit would likely be easier to implement as opposed to new engines, as well.
Kurt
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