Posted by: boggo2300
« on: January 24, 2019, 06:53:38 PM »AFAIK, Aurora grew out of Starfire Assistant, which Steve created to help with playing the tabletop game Starfire, which has its own "universe" and is not modelled after Star Trek or Star Wars.
Much of Starfire was originally influenced by on E.E.'Doc' Smith's Lensman series, at least in terms of tech descriptions/names in 1st Ed - Primary beams, Tractors, Tractor shears, Pressor beams, some of the ship classes (Battleships, Dreadnoughts, SuperDreadnoughts, Maulers), although there was little use of missiles in the Lensman universe. Later expansions/editions introduced different stuff (fighters, gunboats etc) but fortunately didn't include the top level Lensman weaponry (Sunbeams, negaspheres, Dirigible free planets, and Nth Space planets)
Still quite ashamed I have every version of Starfire from 1 to 5, and that 2nd edition (the last Steve "Despot" Cole version) is my favourite though I seem to have misplaced my copy of New Empires (the strategic rules for SF2)