There is a lot of detail in Starfire’s system generation chart that go to waste for the most part since the system level of play is rarely used and the STMP has basically cut out interest in where things are.
Paul, Paul, Paul. I hate when you do this.
You tempt me with talk off issues and problems and such, and then don't follow through with details!
As far as wrap around is concerned since players are restricted to a band 3-8 anyway if the NPR gets the short end of the stick so be it. I'd not bother with wrap around since it is nonsensical.
HI’s are limited to 3-8 in SM#2, but not in Ultra. Ultra has balanced things better by making T’s and ST’s occur in a 2-1 ratio (because Mass 2 planets occur on a die roll of 26-75% and Mass 3 planets occur on a roll of 76-100%), which means that the BHH ratio is a simple and clean 33%-33%-33% for both T and ST races. But while the T/ST BHH ratio balance is perfect, that doesn’t mean that the wraparound process is any less silly. It’s just convenient as a tool for Ultra’s highly balanced PvP rules.
As I said right from the beginning if all you want is a binary result then why change the HI system currently used; it gives you the binary result you want? Adjusting the stellar probability tables and how you define benign, and the planet type roll can give you a 10% benign rate and a de jour rate of the others. My point for a more complex system is it allows greater flexibility in play as it can help make far more interesting and different bonuses for NPRs leading to the NPR being more unique.
I realize that a more complex system has certain advantages and so forth. But the fact is that it will not appeal to a great enough cross section of players. There are players such as yourself and Cralis and to some degree myself, who have an appreciation for details in places. And then there are other players who don't really care. And then you have people who care about page count so much that they don't even want lots of optional rules included that more advanced players might enjoy using because those optional rules take up space, i.e. page count.
I happen to think that a place where the game is lacking is a total absence of any rules that describe NPR's. Not their governments. Their physical descriptions and perhaps more about their societies. I'm sure that there are some who would ask how that affects game play, and I'd say that perhaps it doesn't directly, but for players who role play their races it can add a lot of flavor to the gaming experience to know whether that NPR they just met has 2 arms or 4, is covered in skin, scales, or fur, and any number of other little descriptive details. We have NPR gov't types, but other than that, NPR's are boring faceless, formless entities, unless they happen to come from one of the gov't types that perhaps we can envision, like the Bugs, or Jrill (think Borg), or an AI race or robots. Such formless NPR's seem rather boring to me. But others would probably disagree, since NPR generation of this type does tend to involve a fair amount of die rolling to create unique results, unless one was content to use a simpler, cookie-cutter model. (And BTW, more detailed habitability does tend to work well with detailed NPR racial generation, since factors like gravity, etc. will affect those physical details.)
Simple suggestions are changing how you define benign, changing to HI is 0 to 19, changing the H requirements based on HI difference.
At the moment, I’m leaning towards merging M2 and M3, so that I can merge T and ST, so that I can then use a regular ol’ 1d10, but with Benign being HI_HW = HI_target_world (HI_TW), Harsh being HI_TW within 1 of HI_HW, and Hostile being all the rest. This would produce a 10%-20%-70% BHH ratio. To get any more granularity would require using a d20 (which has never been a part of Starfire) or d100.
As for changing the Hold requirements based on HD, that’s what pure ISF did.
I’m not sure of all the reasons the BHH paradigm exists within the SM#2 (or Ultra) rules. One obvious reason is the population caps. Another is colonization costs, though those wouldn’t be too difficult to adjust by HD for habitable worlds. There may be other rules where BHH comes up, but it seems that the big one is the population caps. And I suppose that one could have HD-adjusted population caps (probably linking HD to a percentage of max Benign population), but would it be worth the added complexity, though not particularly major.
Of course, another way to do this would be to come up with a couple more Habitable world environment types, so that there’d be one for each population bracket from Settlement to VLg; something like Benign (VLg), Moderate (Large), Harsh (Medium), Severe (Small), and Hostile (Settlement). And I could probably do a ratio of 1-2-2-2-3 for the 5 brackets. But I’d lean towards thinking that this might be going a bit overboard.
As for industrial technologies that is hard since the simplistic economics of Starfire don't lend themselves to much other than changing population levels on planets. IU limits changes become a must have technology and that is what I want to avoid. But yes, you have to pay for them, they don't come free. They represent an alternative to colonization of habitables, and so are for cases like a pocketed empire which would be able to remain competitive by investing in these technologies to enhance the systems they have. For some of them I would also have a use cost, so per planet you employ them on you also pay.
Well, some of the ideas already have a built-in “use cost”, like increased pop limits on non-habitables and increased IU limits, since you still have to pay to emplace the additional population or buy the additional IU’s. However, other ideas don’t have any “use cost” after the tech has been developed. But there are probably ways to create a “use cost”.
For example, with mining extraction upgrades (or upgraded refining), maybe rather than having the benefit be an increase in the mineral wealth percentage, instead perhaps allow IU’s to be purchased (under the assumption that non-habitables don’t normally allow IU construction, as is the case in the Ultra IU rules). This creates an inherent “use cost” if you have to buy the IU’s.
Teleopted mines: requires orbital habitat, allows mining operations of V worlds. This is a complex sort of technology with a number of others required first.
What do you mean by “teleopted mines”?
But regardless of what “teleopted” means, mining of Type V worlds would have to be amazingly profitable to justify the investment in technologies that could survive in a Type V’s atmosphere, not to mention the fact that so many other worlds with vastly less difficult environments exist for mining. Of course, I suppose that that’s the hook here. Mining of Type V’s would be very profitable.
Improved refineries: increase the mineral wealth modifier by +x% for a fee.
This is basically what I suggested with my mining technologies idea that improves extraction technologies.
Orbital Habitat: a SS module that holds 1 PU worth of population. I'm not sure how big one of these would be. But it would be the stepping stone to exploiting V and possibly G/I worlds.
I think that it’d be best to think of it more as adding 1 PTU of population, since in reality, the PTU is the REAL measure of population, while PU is actually a measure of economic output. It also happens that the PTU is of a fixed size, i.e. 50,000 people. This is where doing orbital habitats Starfire gets nasty.
One can only justify putting 50k people into 10 Q (i.e. 10 hull spaces) when one assumes that they’re in coffin-like cryo-chambers, and stacked like cord wood. In ISF, you could fit 50 personnel points into 1 Q. And since I assumed that 1 PP represented 10 people, that comes out to 500 people per Q. And even that sounds incredibly cramped for living space for a civilian population. I think if one drops it by a factor of 10 to 50 people per Q, it’s probably a reasonable working number. But then that means that you’d need 1,000 Q for a single PTU of population. Yikes!!!
Arguably, this might be a case where having such a known quantity as PTU makes it difficult to do Orbital Habitats on a playable scale, when a single PTU could require 1,000 hull spaces of Q’s (and 200 HS of Lh, if one assumed their requirement as per the 3E rules). And that’s just a place for them to live. It doesn’t include office space or industrial facilities or whatever.
On IU’s An easier suggestion would be to limit the amount of IU possible by EL so start at 25% and increase 5% every 2 EL (at EL 3: 30%, at EL 5: 35% etc). If you did this then you could add in a way to buy that increase early. So an EL 4 race could buy +5% or just wait. For me I would rather see IU as EVM in ISF than a bond fund as they are in SM2.
As far as IU goes I treat is as EVM. It can't be sold (or put differently none of my races will do so). Personally I think it is just a silly way to avoid players keeping a warchest and encouraging you to spend every last MCr you make every turn. But whatever.
I agree with you on IU. I strongly believe that IU’s should be permanent.
As for how IU increases might occur, I think that I favor requiring them to be developed for a few reasons. One, I see this as an actual technology. The player is making a conscious decision to make the investment in upgrading his heavy industry technology. Also, I think that the previous “generational” upgrade should be a prerequisite for the next upgrade. Otherwise, a player might skip a “generation” or 2 of IU upgrades (say the upgrades to 30% and 35%) and then think that he could save some money and buy only the upgrade to 40%.
You mentioned in an earlier post about making decisions regarding empire building. If IU% upgrades are automatic, you lose the chance to make an empire building decision.