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Posted by: bolfry
« on: April 12, 2009, 07:00:10 PM »

If anyone is willing to part with a copy of Imperial Starfire, please let me know.  I have some fellows here that want to learn to play and I thought I would start them with what I used to play prior to getting into something we all would be new to.
Posted by: crucis
« on: August 28, 2008, 07:26:02 PM »

Sotak, I've tried contacting Marvin recently and got no replies back.  Perhaps he's on vacation or something.  Try to be patient.

BTW, Marvin's comcast Email address listed above is current to the best of my knowledge.
Posted by: Sotak246
« on: August 28, 2008, 05:22:57 PM »

I have tried both emails and the mrlamb one comes back as undeliverable and the other one never gave me a answer either way.  If anyone knows another way to get in touch with him, I would appreciate the help.  I really would like to get those books replaced. They are the only collection, of mine,  with missing books that I am willing to go through all this trouble for.
Posted by: Shinanygnz
« on: August 27, 2008, 02:22:55 PM »

Quote from: "Sotak246"
I have tried the email address and phone number on the SDS site but got no responce to the email and the phone number is disconnected.  Anyone have a current way to contact him?


These are the two email addresses I've seen Marvin use:
mrlamb [at] acd [dot] net
marvlamb [at] comcast [dot] net

The Starfire mailing list is very quiet these days, but I can ask there if neither of those two work.

Stephen
Posted by: Sotak246
« on: August 27, 2008, 12:35:52 PM »

I have tried the email address and phone number on the SDS site but got no responce to the email and the phone number is disconnected.  Anyone have a current way to contact him?
Posted by: xtfoster
« on: August 24, 2008, 04:42:42 PM »

Quote from: "Shinanygnz"
Quote from: "Sotak246"

Now a cry for help.  I recentlly moved, and got a new computer, and  between the two somehow lost my copies of:
Interstellar War 4
Insurrection
Unified Technical Manual
Sky Marshal 2.

Anyone know where I can get them replaced since SDS doesn't sell them anymore?  I lost several other books/CDs to other games, but the Starfire ones are the ones I am most upset about.

Even though SDS doesn't sell them, they were all electronic things you had to buy from them, so Marvin should have records of this (in theory & depending on how long he has to keep this kind of stuff for US law), and I very much doubt he's deleted his master copies of the files.
Have you tried asking?
Stephen
Correct, I have never had a problem getting Marvin to send me replacement copies of any electronic media I have ordered from him. BUT, I haven't needed to since after the decision to only sell 4th Edition.
Posted by: Shinanygnz
« on: August 23, 2008, 05:20:21 PM »

Quote from: "Sotak246"

Now a cry for help.  I recentlly moved, and got a new computer, and  between the two somehow lost my copies of:
Interstellar War 4
Insurrection
Unified Technical Manual
Sky Marshal 2.

Anyone know where I can get them replaced since SDS doesn't sell them anymore?  I lost several other books/CDs to other games, but the Starfire ones are the ones I am most upset about.


Even though SDS doesn't sell them, they were all electronic things you had to buy from them, so Marvin should have records of this (in theory & depending on how long he has to keep this kind of stuff for US law), and I very much doubt he's deleted his master copies of the files.
Have you tried asking?
Stephen
Posted by: SteveAlt
« on: August 23, 2008, 08:45:43 AM »

Quote from: "Sotak246"
Now a cry for help.  I recentlly moved, and got a new computer, and  between the two somehow lost my copies of:
Interstellar War 4
Insurrection
Unified Technical Manual
Sky Marshal 2.

Anyone know where I can get them replaced since SDS doesn't sell them anymore?  I lost several other books/CDs to other games, but the Starfire ones are the ones I am most upset about.

I have them all in PDF files or Word docs but the problem is that Marvin is extremely protective about the copyright of the "out of print" electronic products that he has chosen to stop selling. Even though he refuses to sell them, he doesn't want anyone else to share them either and has threatened to sue if anyone does. This seems a little strange but it's the unfortunate reality of the situation. However, if you can get Marvin to agree, I would be more than happy to forward them on to you.

Also maybe if Fred Burton is listening, he might be able to influence Marvin in this area. Worth a try :)

Steve
Posted by: waresky
« on: August 23, 2008, 06:26:02 AM »

Srry guys,an single example:
i LOVE Aurora,ive love too SA,but..ok ear that:

am play Campaign from 2054 (my choice date) and now r 2136..Colonizing,managing,palnning to mining,how who where and when are VERY addictive.
From 2054 at now ive 2 "indipendent" colony,1 dipendent from cargo and JumpGate lane,2 mining merely outpost colony..and 98 systems discovery,67 surveyed.

Aurora are the very BETTER (near traveller),realistic,difficult and addictivie for who love explore and colonizer,strategical sci-fi program.

Am must use paper for check galactic maps,and am use deepest the "Notes" for every single systems in galactic map,for planning,enjoiing or simple history of the Colony:)..
But in near 1 hundred years..ive 2 truly Colony indipendent..THIS r real.
Posted by: Sotak246
« on: August 22, 2008, 08:11:32 PM »

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With missiles, for example, what I'd prefer to do is to try to subsume the complexity of the options into limited versions of each grade of missile at each TL, so that players didn't have to worry about picking and choosing from a menu of options when it came to their missiles. I might just say that, for example, a TL12 Capital Missile had X, Y, and Z capabilities and that was that. I'd be trying to make the options and so forth invisible to the player and merely upgrade the overall missile every so often (TL wise).

While I am partial to this idea, I have played around with Aurora and Steve did an excellent job with his missle development sliders.

Now a cry for help.  I recentlly moved, and got a new computer, and  between the two somehow lost my copies of:
Interstellar War 4
Insurrection
Unified Technical Manual
Sky Marshal 2.

Anyone know where I can get them replaced since SDS doesn't sell them anymore?  I lost several other books/CDs to other games, but the Starfire ones are the ones I am most upset about.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: March 17, 2008, 09:23:42 AM »

Quote from: "crucis"
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Again, this is similar to how Aurora handles damage. For missiles you can develop warhead tech, engine tech, fuel efficiency, active/thermal/EM sensor strengths, ECM strength, etc and then combine these in different ways to create different types and sizes of missiles. There are literally millions of potential combinations. Then you need to design appropriate missile launchers and missile fire control systems and combine them on a ship with all the other various ship systems.

Steve, this sounds like far more detail than I'd want to have to manage.  And I'm a pretty detail-accepting guy.

Remember that supposedly plenty of people don't particularly like all of the options that come with missiles at HT10+ in Starfire.  What you're describing for Aurora seems to step that level of complexity up a few notches.  That level of complexity may float some peoples' boats, but not everyones'.

With missiles, for example, what I'd prefer to do is to try to subsume the complexity of the options into limited versions of each grade of missile at each TL, so that players didn't have to worry about picking and choosing from a menu of options when it came to their missiles.  I might just say that, for example, a TL12 Capital Missile had X, Y, and Z capabilities and that was that.  I'd be trying to make the options and so forth invisible to the player and merely upgrade the overall missile every so often (TL wise).

Missiles aren't very complex to design. You just have a set of sliders with each slider representing the amount of space devoted to warhead, fuel, engine, etc. and as you move the sliders, the design for the missile appears below. You just press create when you have a design you like. There is a little more to it than that though. In Aurora its important to decide how you want to fight and then design ships and systems that fulfil that goal.

As a simple example, lets say you wanted to design a fast attack craft intended to launch one-off missile attacks. As FACs are restricted to 1000 tons, you need to decide how much of that tonnage will be devoted to sensors, fire control and missile launchers. You also need to make sure you design fire control and missiles that have similar range. Its quicker to use a previously designed system if you can so you don't need to research new systems. One way to approach it may be to decide that you will devote 100 tons to a missile fire control system and that you want to be able to target ships of 1000 tons or more. If your Empire has active sensor tech for strength 12 that gives you a fire control with a range of 14.4m kilometers. You might have a missile suited to that range, or you might design a new one which only devotes enough space to fuel to achieve that range while the rest goes to speed, warhead, armour, etc. Once you figure out how big the missile needs to be, you then need a suitable launcher. You also may need an active sensor with that type of range to find targets or you might design a whole new class that will serve as a long range scout intended to operate as part of a squadron with the missile armed FAC. That FAC would require larger sensors and may perhaps be unarmed. That is a simple example. Once you starting thinking about creating an escort group it can get more in-depth. Thinking about how you want to fight and the type of systems you need is a lot of fun. Getting all the new systems developed and the ship into production is also a challenge The actual mechanics of designing those systems is easy to do.

That is rather a long way of saying that adding a lot of variety isn't necessarily the same as adding a lot of complexity.

Steve
Posted by: crucis
« on: March 16, 2008, 02:17:02 PM »

Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "crucis"
Why to build to less than max speed? Can't think of any reason.
That is really the problem. Its a no-brainer to put the maximum number of engines on a ship so there is no design decision involved.

True.


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Why to build to less than max size?  Well, under the old ISF SYD rules where build rates weren't always the same, I always found that it might be advantageous to build units at sizes that took advantage of the build rates.  For example, if my SYD's had a build rate of 27 hs/month and I needed some DD's ASAP, then maybe 27 hs DD's that I could turn out in a single month were more advantageous to build than a full sized 30 hs DD that'd take 2 months to build.  Or if your build rate was 25 hs/month, then perhaps a 125 hs SD (DN under the new nomeclature) that could be built in 5 mos. was a better option than a 130 hs SD that took 6 mos. to build.
That is a meta-gaming reason to build smaller hulls though rather than a realistic reason. If ships could be delivered partway through the month, they would all be full size.

Maybe and Maybe not.  You might want that 125 hs SD a week or 2 sooner than you could get the 130 hs SD.  ;)


Enuff for this reply...
Posted by: crucis
« on: March 16, 2008, 01:49:58 PM »

Quote from: "sloanjh"
Note that the comments below are merely observations - I'm NOT trying to be argumentative on Aurora vs. SF.  The main observation is that many of the inconsistencies in SF flow from the fact that it's a paper-and-pencil system (and I realize that I'm preaching to the choir on that point).

A)  Don't worry.  I'm not in any Starfire vs. Aurora pissing match.  Just having a good discussion.  :-)

[/quote]

Well, "realistic" can be viewed in a number of different ways when you're talking about a game like this.  But that's neither here nor there.

Re: high-power engine tech:  As I recall, one presumption for fighters is that their development only comes about once one is able to develop succificiently high power, fighter sized engines.  


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However, you will almost always end up a bit "cookie-cutter" because why would anyone build a ship less than max size and speed?

IMHO, the reason for the whole max size/speed issue is the fact that 7 "I" engines push a 33HS DD just as fast as they push a 30HS DD, rather than having the 33HS ship be 10% slower.  As you point out, this is necessary for a paper-and-pencil game (to avoid fractional speeds), but the step-function nature of the speed vs. HS curve leads to these "unrealistic" optimizations.  If the incremental speed gain from adding engines was smoothly decreasing, then different ship designs would end up at different optima.

I see no reason to presume that a 10% larger ship would mean that it's 10% slower.  Hell, for that matter, other than for game design reasons, I see no reason that one couldn't decide that the theoretical max speed of a given drive system doesn't even vary with size.  As much as anything, it's mostly a game design issue to me.  And sometimes I think that we can overthink these things.

I suppose that it comes down to different people having different mental tolerances for giggle tests and pseudo-science stuff.




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I don't buy the concept as any sort of advanced "hull".  
Actually, I think Steve got advanced hulls right in Aurora - they're made up of stronger materials and so consume less hull mass (or volume).  And if your speed is based on the ratio of engine power to hull mass, that leads to faster ships.

I'm not so sure that I agree here.

Part of some people's view of of the psuedo-science of Starfire engines is that their inertialess drives tend to mean that a ship's mass is largely meaningless, and that it's all about volume.  If that is one's working assumption, then I don't see how advanced materials are going to do much of anything for volume.  1000 cubic meters of starship is a 1000 cubic meters.    Oh, I suppose that advanced materials might make the hulls cheaper to build for the same weight of material and lead to cheaper hulls.  But I'm not really sure that I see any performance benefits.  (But I could definitely be missing something.)



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It occurs to me that this might be an optional rule (or maybe technobabble) for SF advanced hulls.  Let's pretend that there's an invisible 30% "tax" on hulls made up of lowest-tech hull-material.  So a 35HS DD has an extra 10.5HS of "dead" space that doesn't show up on the ship sheets.  A first-level advanced hull could cut that penalty in half, so that you could have a 40HS DD.  A second-level advanced hull could cut the penalty by 2/3, resulting in a 42HS DD.  Note that I picked the ratios to match the levels of armor improvement - that's what Steve did in Aurora (the hull is just considered to be level-1 armor).

I'm a little confused by what you mean by dead space.

Still, I prefer the idea that more efficient and powerful engines (as in more powerful per HS of engine) lead to an enhanced ability to more more volume.  Where seven 1st gen I's might be only able to move a 30 hs DD at a speed of 7, perhaps seven 2nd gen I2's could move a 35 hs DD at that same speed of 7.  And so on across the hull type table.

It seems like an elegant enough idea, IF (!) one sticks to the current SF hull table paradigm.





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Re: max speed.  I think that one can assume that not all ships at speed 6 (for example) really have the exact same speed.  Some may go a smidge faster and some a smidge slower than what a tactical speed of 6 translates to in MPH or KPH.  However, since Starfire speeds necessarily have to be defined in tac hexes per tac turn, any minor differences that might exist are glossed over in the game system.  It's just the price of doing business, so to speak.
This is actually one of my big "realism" peeves with SF (and to a lesser extent Aurora).  ITRW, two different ships of the same class will have slightly different performance characteristics - one will be a little bit faster than the other at max speed.  It just doesn't seem right to have a pursuit across a solar-system where both fleets (and all ships within each fleet) are moving at exactly speed 6.  It would be a lot more interesting if big fleets had to make a choice between losing cohesion and slowing down to wait for stragglers.

That's all well and good, but since movement has to be defined in tactical hexes per turn, not KPH or some other measure, we're stuck with the limited and simple granularity of the system.

If one ship is doing 100% of speed 6 (whatever that is in KPH), and another ship is doing say 96% of speed 6, exactly how are you going to represent that?  A major point of the Starfire game system is simplicity, and trying to manage that degree of speed granularity seems to run counter to the entire Starfire design philosophy.




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Think about it.  If you really, REALLY wanted to kick around cookie-cutterism, a game process that allowed for non-standard tech system sizes in, say, 0.1 hs increments would really throw that proverbial monkey wrench into the works.  No two races would probably ever have the exact same sized tech systems across the board.  
I think this is precisely what Steve was going for in Aurora.

Good for Steve!  ;)



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Add this all up, and you have a MAJOR accounting nightmare.  But you'd also have a way to nuke cookie-cutter-ism.
Exactly - the computer handles the accounting nightmare.

John


But what if you don't WANT to play a computer game?


Frankly, I think that it wouldn't be all that difficult to manage ship construction and design in Starfire with tech system being variably sized in 0.1 hs increments.  Rather, designing that ships wouldn't be all that difficult for anyone with decent math skills and a calculator.  The trick would be in keeping track of the varing sizes of all of your tech systems.
You'd almost need to keep custom tech lists for every empire, so that you knew what size each empire F's and Rc's and so on were.

And as cool as it might be to have that degree of variety, I think that once you start factoring in a bunch of NPR navies, it could start getting a bit overwhelming.  Of course, I suppose that one could rule that only player races have to worry about it.  (And maybe any major multi system NPR's that start looking like player races.)
Posted by: crucis
« on: March 16, 2008, 12:18:53 PM »

Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "crucis"
Quote
One of the things I liked most about 3rdR was the epic scale and the way in which it lent itself to fiction ...

I agree with this FULLY.  I also think that one of the major strengths of 3rd ed was the canon history.  It gave a deep flavor to Starfire that is totally lacking in Ultra.  While I believe that there are a number of interesting things in Ultra (particularly in the strategic rules), I find the lack of any historical background to be a devastating blow to Ultra's likeability.  Also, from a business standpoint, 3rd's canon history provided the opportunity to produce historical module products that were another source of revenue.  OTOH, Ultra's only source of revenue is Ultra itself.  
Yes this was a great disappointment with 4th. The problem was that Marvin just saw the background material as unnecessary fluff and could never understand why 3rdR players thought it was so important.

I think that he understands it now.  Unfortunately, probably too late.  ;)[/quote]
That's very true. There was far more 3rdR fiction and the 3rdR fans seemed far more devoted to the game, probably because 3rd appealed to role-players and 4th appealed to competitive gamers. The problem for 4th is that almost every successful game that take months to play is a role-playing game, because you need to keep people's interest and competitive players don't stay interested once there is little chance of winning. If I want to play competitive games I usually play something that lasts a few hours, or at most a weekend. [/quote]

I've never played an ISF campaign "competitively".  From everything that I've read of other people's observations on the matter, it seems incredibly difficult to keep a decently sized group of players together long enough to play a good, competitive strategic starfire campaign.  It almost seems better suited to solo play, since the solo player can guarantee his (or her) enthusiasm over a long period of time, and he could even set the campaign aside for a time and come back to it later, whereas coordinating the availability of multiple players seems like a nightmare.


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While 3rdR is one of the best games I have played and far superior to 4th and its successors, it still has a few issues (for me anyway)
Frankly, some of these issues with 3rd ed are not uncorrectable or aren't really that big a deal (IMHO, of course).  

The "sameness" of planetary systems would be terribly easy to correct.  Simply edit the existing system generation rules to produce a wider variety of star systems.  Ultra produces a somewhat wider variety of star systems, and I have no doubt that it's possible to take it even further without that much effort.
The system generation in Aurora was written before I gave up on Starfire and was originally intended to be added to SA for 3rdR Starfire. However, it is really a computer-only process because of the detail level. There is just no way to get that level of detail in a paper-based game. I remember playing second edition starfire with no computer support and it took about 30-60 minutes to roll up a star system.

Star system generation is one thing in particular that greatly benefits from computer support.  I never particularly spending time on managing my empires' economics and such.  But time spent rolling up star systems seemed rather wasteful, since I wasn't getting any enjoyment from the process.  Odd as it may seem to some, I suppose that I have a bit of an accountant's soul (my father was one, after all) and doing the "books" for my empires always seemed like fun to me.  But that was a "creative" thing.  Rolling up star systems is just tedious.  Thus, star system generation programs are a major boon to any ISF campaign that I played.


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The "magical" CFN:  The pre-SM2 IFN was more complex than the SM2 CFN.  But I think that the point here is that when you're playing a paper game, you have to make choices about balancing "realism" and playability.  Sure, using an assistant program can allow for more complex processes for handling such things as a CFN, but not everyone may want to use an assistant program ... so the rules should really be written for a paper-based game.  
The IFN was more complex (probably too much so for a paper game) but also more realistic. I agree that simplication is necessary but the CFN was very oversimplified and unrealistically flexible. You could lay a million mine patterns anywhere in the Empire in about an hour. Any ship, anywhere, always had full access to maintenance and missile resupply. It wouldn't have required much imagination to come up with a slightly more realistic system based on proximity to major population centres.


The thing that I don't particularly like about the SM2 CFN is that there's no apparant time constraints.  Money just instantly moves across your empire.  I don't mind the idea of an IFN/CFN without any freighters that you had to build yourself.  But resources should take time to move in the CFN.  If I want to send 10,000 Mc to a planet that's 12 systems away, it ought to take about 3 months to get there.

I'm less bothered by the CFN relative to the maintenance issue, although I do have my own issues on the topic.  I wouldn't mind seeing fleets of ships that want to operate far from large bases/major populations need to have a "real" (as in not CFN) fleet supply train of freighters that carry maintenance resources for the fleet.  I haven't given this much thought, but maybe if you're going to operate a fleet a distance from major population, etc. you should have to have an overall fleet train H capacity equal to the number of months travel you are from your source of maintenance.  And, BTW, those freighters actually have to HAVE that amount of Megacredits of maintenence resources in their holds, meaning that you had to pay to fill the holds with maintenance "stuff" prior to leaving your base.  Something to think about....




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Now, mind you, I'm not outright defending the SM2's version of the CFN.  But I can fully understand where the desire to simply some rules, particularly on the economic side, comes from.
I understand the need for simplification and I am still a huge fan of 3rdR in general, but the CFN just failed the giggle test for me.

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"Unrealistic timeframe": Repeat after me... It's a game!  You've got to make things happen in a (real time)  time frame that won't cause players to lose interest.  Frankly, I don't find the time frame of ISF to be particularly offensive, as I understand that it's yet another decision made in the interest of playability.
The Rigellian Empire was a huge star-spanning empire with knowledge of almost a thousand systems and a population of over one trillion. It somehow managed that in 14 years from single starting planet. The problem is that from a fiction perspective it's hard to maintain an illusion of reality given those timescales. Symon Cook played a Starfire campaign with much reduced growth rates and from his description of events, it played very well. It wouldn't have been too hard to give Starfire more realistic growth rates and shipbuilding times and it would have also made larger campaigns much more playable. One of my goals with Aurora was an epic campaign system that really felt epic in terms of historical timelines. When writing a history, it should cover decades and even centuries.

I suppose that it's entirely a personal matter.  What offends your sensibilities, may appeal to mine.  

I'm not terribly sure that I could get particularly excited about playing a campaign where it took a hundred turns (10 years, if you go with 10 month years) to go up a TL, and so forth.  

I've never terribly minded the time compression in the campaign game, since I tend to prefer "getting on with it".  But that's just me.


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"internal inconsistency in the area of weapons and fighters": I'm a little unclear on this particular point, so I'll let it pass.
A fighter in Starfire is less than 1 HS in size. A fifth generation fighter could carry 3 internal weapons and 4 on XO racks, so it could carry seven fighter lasers, each of which could do 3 points of damage at point blank range. A ship-based HET laser is 6 HS and can do 8 points of damage at point blank range. If that ship used fighter lasers instead, seven of which can fit into one HS along with the fighter itself, it would have forty-two lasers doing 126 points of damage (and still space for the six fighters). If fighters can carry such powerful weapons, why can't ships? Keeping fighters and ships consistent has been another Aurora design driver. Fighters can be powerful in Aurora but they still have to abide by the same physical constraints as larger ships.

Yes, this is just what Shinanygyz said.

And like I said, I'm not sure that you can do after the fact, given how heavily this topic is covered in the canon history and the "historical" Starfire novels.

I mean, a number of solutions are possible, if people were willing to accept some divergence from the novels.

a) ban all beam weapon packs, only allow internal beam weapons on fighters.

b) downgrade the damage of fighter beams.  Perhaps 1 dp for fL, and 2 dp for fL2.  Or maybe even just 1 dp for fL2, but increase its range.

c) rule that fighter's XO hard points are for ordnance or non-weapon packs only.  That is, only fR, fM*, f?, fQ, f, fXr, and so forth.

It should be noted that DW's original fM2's and later FM's were 2 load point missiles, and that these were downgraded to 1 lp in the UTM (maybe even 3rdR).  And of course, this has an impact on the damage potential of fighters.

I suppose that one can even get touchy about even 1 dp fighter lasers.  But unless you're going to go the route of Ultra with replacing individual fighters with fighter squadrons, where you could then rule that an entire squadron could do only a single dp of laser damage with its lasers, there's no much lower you can go than saying a fighter laser can only do a single point of damage.

I suppose that another alternative would be to ban fighter anti-ship energy weapons altogether, and rule that only their expendable ordance, which have either nuke or anti-matter warheads, have the punch to damage ships.  Of course, this idea smashes headlong into the historical novels.  But it certainly might be a viable solution.



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"a tendency toward cookie-cutter ships because of the set speeds and hull sizes"
To some degree, I understand what you're saying here, but I think that part of the problem here is in a lack of advancement in engine tech in 3e.
Because of this, there is a total stagnation of ship speeds throughout the canon history.  Also, the stagnation in ship sizes compared to the tech system needs throughout the tech progression causes ships to end up feeling progressively smaller as the TL's advance.  That is, a TL3 DD will feel like it's got a lot more combat potential than a TL13 DD, because the TL13 DD will feel the need to include a lot of tech systems in it that didn't exist 10 TL's earlier (such as cloaking ECM, and so on).

Were I in charge of things, one of the concepts that I'd seriously consider is having more advanced versions of the tried and true "I" increase the amount of hull spaces in each hull type.  Huh?  What I mean is that an I2 engine might have the capacity to move larger (in terms of HS) hulls within each hull type.  That is, an I2 might be able to support a 35 hs DD, and an I3 drive migth be able to support a 40 hs DD, while remaining a "DD" with a DD's turn mode and max speed.  Indeed, improved generations of I would also have greater max speeds.

The end result of this sort of concept would be, for example, at around TL12-14, an I3 driven, 96 hull space BC with a max speed of perhaps 8.
The benefit of such a concept, aside from increased max speeds, is that larger hulled ships (i.e. 40 hs DD's, 96 hs BC's, and so on) are able to counteract some of the space requirement needs imposed by advancing TL's.  Thus, your TL~13 40 hs DD might be able to be viewed as a viable DD design, whereas in the current system, the poor ol' 30 hs TL13 DD seems to have the armament of a frigate.

Another benefit of such a system is that designs would have to adapt to their increasing sizes and to some degree, they'd end up seeming somewhat less cookie cutter.  You'd have DD's and CL's and BC's (and so on) of varying sizes.  Well, true, you'd probably fall into smaller buckets of cookie cutter sizes, dictated by engine types, but that'd be better than a totally static list of hull type sizes.

The problem though is that because hull sizes are fixed, you will always have the max number of engines so every destroyer of the same TL will be the same size and the same speed. You will also tend to build the largest hull for each level of speed. This was something else I tried to avoid in Aurora by allowing players to build whatever size of ship they wanted and give that hull whatever name they liked. There are no hull sizes or restricted maximum speed, except those limited by physical constraints on engine power vs ship mass. In addition, most ship systems, including engines, are designed by the players so you get a great variety of ship types, speeds and capabilities. Obviously this is more of a problem in a paper game, although the Traveller design system is very physics based and has had a significant influence on some Aurora concepts.[/quote]


What to say here?

For starters, nothing's really stopping players from calling their hulls whatever they want.  The "official" hull type names are largely IMHO a common point of reference.  

I remember reading in the List archive about someone's campaign where the SM allowed every player to name their hull types whatever they wanted.  All they had to do was provide the SM with a "translation table" to cross reference their empire's designators with the official hull type designators.  And IIRC, one player did some sort of espionage that told him that his enemy was going to have X "battlecruisers" in system Y, so he showed up with a number of his own (official designator) BB's to deal with the BC's. However, the BC-owning player had actually designated his BC's as 130 hs ships.  That is his "battle cruisers" were SD's on the official hull type table.  And the spying player had forgotten about the naming hulls whatever you want house rule, and assumed that BC's were BC's... to his regret.


Regardless, I don't mind the hull type table per se.  Personally, I think that a number of minor changes could be made to the table to help matters.  

For example, start with having a common cost per hullspace, regardless of hull size.  

Secondly, have the base turn mode be defined not strictly by hull type, but by the number of hullspaces in the ship.  For example, maybe the turn mode should be a flat 1 per 30 hs of ship FRU.

Third, maybe the number of engines per movement point shouldn't be hard coded to hull types, but should be defined as (for example) 1 I per 30 hs of ship, possibly rounding to the nearest 1/2 hs.  (ships/hull types  below, say 20 hs, might need a special table.)

BTW, these three ideas are concepts that we used in our unpublished Crown of Stars game.

Another idea might be to set no max speed, but let the player decide how many engine rooms he's willing to pack into his ships and how much of all the other stuff he's willing to give up.  Of course, this really goes against Starfire "traditional" rules, but it would seem to create variety of designs, as player would have to find their own balance between speed and combat potential.

Another related idea would be that more advanced engines would be defined by improved power to mass (in hs) ratios, this allowing for less space being required to produce the same speed in a less advanced engine, and allowing for more space devoted to other things.



Of course, if you start defining turn modes and engine power (i.e. I/MP) by hullspace ratios, and you have flat per hull space costs, hull types tend to disappear (for better or worse), since currently turn modes and engine power and so on are tied to hull type designators, rather than hull size ratios.





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A current concept for a mod(s) that I'm working on (for my personal gratification) is something I'm calling "The Expanse".  It'll take place either about halfway between 4th ISW and Insurrection, or immediately after Insurrection. (snip rest of description)
Sounds fascinating. I would be very interested to read the full history. 3rdR had some great scenario books and I have often reread the books just for the interludes.

Same here (i.e. reading the stories, the profiles, and the interludes).

Right now, the problem that I'm wrestling with is getting from the start point (i.e. the Tesaggha Supernova creating new WPs, yada, yada, yada) to one of my envisioned goals (a really, big nasty, blowout of a war with multiple star nations on each side).  Trying to create a viable political situation that seems justifiable in a WP paradigm with multiple races is tricky.  

I'm also hesitant to go ahead with the first phase of whatever might be the first (chronologically speaking) conflict(s) without trying to plot where I want things to go longer-term.  

Simple example:  The Shoknavoon and the Osadda are blood enemies and have been for centuries.  That's a given in my mind.  The trick is that I have two mutually exclusive views of how the Shoknavoon and more importantly the Osadda are viewed by the Star Union and the Zarkolyans.  One version has the Sh and the Os both being seen as pretty decent peoples by the Crucians and Zarks  (even if the Shoknavoon and Osaddans hate each other) which of course creates its own future issues.  OTOH, my second version has the Shoknavoon as the nice guys and the Osaddans as the evil guys, which in turn takes things in a different direction long term.

Truth is that my original ideas leaned toward the first version.  But as I've expanded my vision for The Expanse, I've come to see that I may need to have the Osaddans be "bad guys" to create some sort of balance of power in my longer term vision.  I'm trying to avoid a ISW4 situation where it's everyone against a single big bad guy (even if the Bugs weren't quite that "big" as was feared at first).  I'd prefer to create a situation where there are multiple star nations on each side of a possible future big war, rather than everyone against the big baddie.  And this seems to make my planning that much more complex.  If my long term story ended up with an "everyone against the Biggggggg bad Empire", it might be easier to plan, but it might feel too much like ISW4 and not be as fun.  Of course, I suppose that I could just wimp out and have the big, bad Galactic Empire of Meanness show up to try to conquer everyone.  (Yawnnn.)  One thing I do want to avoid on any large scale is some sort of machine race attempting to purge the galaxy of all that evil organic life.  Sounds like nothing more than Bugs with mechanical bodies. Yuck!



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(BTW, refering back to Steve's "sameness of star systems" comment, one of the things that would like to incorporate into The Expanse is the use of some very non-standard star systems.  Nebulae, for example.  Imagine having to fight a major battle in a nebula and not having your Shield working.  Ouch!  And this battle happens with ~TL13-ish weapons...  double ouch!)
This is something I have added to Aurora for v2.6. No shields, no missiles, reduced sensor range, degraded fire control and a maximum speed, all based on the density of the nebula.

Yep, definitely good stuff!


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That's about all the detail I want to release at the moment.  I'm currently taking a break from working on The Expanse, cuz I ran into a bit of a writer's block in coming up with ideas, but I hope to get back to it very soon.  Hopefully, my muse will return.

I don't know if I'll be able to maintain the enthusiasm to complete The Expanse, but for now, it's a very entertaining diversion to work on.
Can you work on this stand-alone without the need to have "official sanction" to work on 3rdR? I know Damon Bradley has developed extensive scenarios and optional rules for Starfire.

Steve


Oh, I can certainly work on the product without any official sanction.  That's not a problem for me.

Steve, I've sent the rest of my reply on this specific question to you as a PM.


BTW, I notice that you've already replied to my first reply to Shinanygnz.  I think that I've got to step away from my computer and get something to eat before I start writing my next tome-like reply.  ;)

 

It's too bad that back in the late 90's that I wasn't involved in Starfire.  I think that things may have gone in a different direction if I'd had a strong voice in the development of SF back then.

And it seems that you and I tend to think along similar lines.  You and I might have made a formidable 3e development team.   Sigh.  Oh well.
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: March 16, 2008, 12:17:22 PM »

Note that the comments below are merely observations - I'm NOT trying to be argumentative on Aurora vs. SF.  The main observation is that many of the inconsistencies in SF flow from the fact that it's a paper-and-pencil system (and I realize that I'm preaching to the choir on that point).

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Well, short of getting rid of fighter beam weapons and only letting them use ordnance, or getting rid of fighters altogether, I'm not sure how one solves this issue.  Furthermore, doing this would end up going very much against the canon history, which also seems to be something that 3e devotees are loath to do.
Yeah, it took the Aurora list about a year to a year-and-a-half to figure out how to get any sort of beam weapon at all into fighters and GB in a "realistic" (by Steve's definition, which includes not overthrowing game balance) way.  Interestingly enough, the important idea was a high-power engine tech - didn't I hear you say something about that? :-)

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However, you will almost always end up a bit "cookie-cutter" because why would anyone build a ship less than max size and speed?
IMHO, the reason for the whole max size/speed issue is the fact that 7 "I" engines push a 33HS DD just as fast as they push a 30HS DD, rather than having the 33HS ship be 10% slower.  As you point out, this is necessary for a paper-and-pencil game (to avoid fractional speeds), but the step-function nature of the speed vs. HS curve leads to these "unrealistic" optimizations.  If the incremental speed gain from adding engines was smoothly decreasing, then different ship designs would end up at different optima.
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I don't buy the concept as any sort of advanced "hull".  
Actually, I think Steve got advanced hulls right in Aurora - they're made up of stronger materials and so consume less hull mass (or volume).  And if your speed is based on the ratio of engine power to hull mass, that leads to faster ships.

It occurs to me that this might be an optional rule (or maybe technobabble) for SF advanced hulls.  Let's pretend that there's an invisible 30% "tax" on hulls made up of lowest-tech hull-material.  So a 35HS DD has and extra 10.5HS of "dead" space that doesn't show up on the ship sheets.  A first-level advanced hull could cut that penalty in half, so that you could have a 40HS DD.  A second-level advanced hull could cut the penalty by 2/3, resulting in a 42HS DD.  Note that I picked the ratios to match the levels of armor improvement - that's what Steve did in Aurora (the hull is just considered to be level-1 armor).
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IMHO, it's all about improved ENGINE technology being able to move around larger hulls.  Of course, this may seem like semantics, but in a game where people worry about things feeling at least somewhat realistic, I think that this particular semantic matters.
Yep - the fundamental limiter on speed in Aurora is an engine's power/HS ratio, which goes up with engine tech.
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Re: max speed.  I think that one can assume that not all ships at speed 6 (for example) really have the exact same speed.  Some may go a smidge faster and some a smidge slower than what a tactical speed of 6 translates to in MPH or KPH.  However, since Starfire speeds necessarily have to be defined in tac hexes per tac turn, any minor differences that might exist are glossed over in the game system.  It's just the price of doing business, so to speak.
This is actually one of my big "realism" peeves with SF (and to a lesser extent Aurora).  ITRW, two different ships of the same class will have slightly different performance characteristics - one will be a little bit faster than the other at max speed.  It just doesn't seem right to have a pursuit across a solar-system where both fleets (and all ships within each fleet) are moving at exactly speed 6.  It would be a lot more interesting if big fleets had to make a choice between losing cohesion and slowing down to wait for stragglers.

STEVE - have you considered putting a random 5% "jiggle" on individual ship speeds?  I'm of two minds - the extra "realism" might just end up being an annoying level of micromanagement.  Maybe putting a random up-to-5% bonus on individual ship speeds that would only be used in combat (similar to the order delay penalty that fleet training affects).
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Think about it.  If you really, REALLY wanted to kick around cookie-cutterism, a game process that allowed for non-standard tech system sizes in, say, 0.1 hs increments would really throw that proverbial monkey wrench into the works.  No two races would probably ever have the exact same sized tech systems across the board.  
I think this is precisely what Steve was going for in Aurora.
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Add this all up, and you have a MAJOR accounting nightmare.  But you'd also have a way to nuke cookie-cutter-ism.
Exactly - the computer handles the accounting nightmare.

John