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Author Topic: Space RPG with best Starship Rules  (Read 5623 times)

TrippyHippy
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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #45 on: July 24, 2017, 01:47:59 AM »
Quote from: CRKrueger;977638
Really? Not wanting to create one out of whole cloth - ok, that I can see, but the rules for creating starships also give you the rules for modifying them in most cases and I've never seen a group with a ship that didn't want to make some modifications, usually in stealth and speed to be able to avoid combat or disengage and run like hell.

Augments, for sure...."What! We need to buy some guns for this ship?!".....etc. However, much of the time it's the case that people just pick the cheap scout or free trader because they don't want an expensive mortgage. After they've been playing a while, they usually end up just stealing a craft. Personally, I like designing spacecraft, but it's the sort of thing I do sitting down on my own, for the most part.
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kosmos1214

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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #46 on: July 24, 2017, 07:29:28 PM »
Well if I where him I'd look in to battletech while by default batlletech has A  baked in setting I see no reason you couldn't expand out the weapons and A few other things if you want.
And it would give him all the customization he could want on the ship building side.
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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #47 on: July 27, 2017, 02:10:43 AM »
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;977446
Or the ships are given player character attributes like Strength, Endurance, Agility, Speed, Defense, Stealth, Range, and have similar-looking character sheets as the PC sheets. Rubbish.

Yes, equally bad.
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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #48 on: July 27, 2017, 02:11:08 AM »
Quote from: TrippyHippy;977633
It was a point of contention in the latest version of Mongoose Traveller that they kept the starship creation system out of the core rules, and put them all in entirety into the High Guard book. Some complained, but in my experience, most casual Traveller groups don't actually give two figs about designing their own craft and are happy to take a pregenerated one 'off the shelf' - which is what the core book provides.

Yeah, a good move.
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Shawn Driscoll

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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #49 on: July 27, 2017, 03:22:59 AM »
The guys that complain that Traveller 2nd Edition's core book doesn't have starship construction rules in it, still end up using the Scout or the Free Trader from the core book after buying the High Guard book. This happens with all editions of Traveller, by the way. Classic Traveller players and their default 100-dton ships. They just like sounding smart, when mentioning that their RPG has starship construction rules. Rules they don't even use.

Biscuitician
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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #50 on: July 27, 2017, 03:46:30 AM »
Ships don't have to be given the exact same stats as living characters, that's a pretty poor argument.

Having ships function like characters doesn't mean they are characters. I don't see a good argument against this.

In fact I don't see good arguments against starship rules presented thus far. The Fate fractal seems to be the way to go, or something like it. Even though the Cortex+ system is a bit convoluted, it deals with ships well in a similar fashion.

It makes sense for them to use the same mechanics with comparable stats to the PC's because it's simpler, rather than suddenly switching to a compeltely different system fo the sake of simulation, perhaps, when flying.

Shawn Driscoll

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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #51 on: July 27, 2017, 05:33:43 AM »
Quote from: Biscuitician;978630
Ships don't have to be given the exact same stats as living characters, that's a pretty poor argument.

Having ships function like characters doesn't mean they are characters. I don't see a good argument against this.

In fact I don't see good arguments against starship rules presented thus far. The Fate fractal seems to be the way to go, or something like it. Even though the Cortex+ system is a bit convoluted, it deals with ships well in a similar fashion.

It makes sense for them to use the same mechanics with comparable stats to the PC's because it's simpler, rather than suddenly switching to a compeltely different system fo the sake of simulation, perhaps, when flying.

You're right, Starships should also wear capes when flying.

jeff37923

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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #52 on: July 27, 2017, 07:24:49 AM »
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;978624
The guys that complain that Traveller 2nd Edition's core book doesn't have starship construction rules in it, still end up using the Scout or the Free Trader from the core book after buying the High Guard book. This happens with all editions of Traveller, by the way. Classic Traveller players and their default 100-dton ships. They just like sounding smart, when mentioning that their RPG has starship construction rules. Rules they don't even use.


Oh, you'd be surprised. Of course, you'd have to engage in some Actual Play of Traveller and not just do podcasts about it.
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Biscuitician
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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #53 on: July 27, 2017, 07:28:56 AM »
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;978652
You're right, Starships should also wear capes when flying.

No idea what that means.

Willie the Duck

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Space RPG with best Starship Rules
« Reply #54 on: July 27, 2017, 08:09:38 AM »
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;976144
Maybe a GURPS Space/Spaceships variety? Each edition(s) had its own play style. I don't remember what kind of spacey skills GURPS let players use onboard for ship operations though.

This is 3e knowledge, so it might be outdated. The Space rules are pretty abstract. Space combat is mostly comparing each ship's total firepower to the other ships total defense, using the ratio as a modifier to a roll on a chart, and seeing which compartment/component takes damage. Feels to me like a pretty unsatisfying combat but it does give the characters (especially with gunning, engineering, or tactics skills) something to do. The Spaceships/Vehicles rules are much more like playing giant characters with the defense and weapon damages multiplied by 10-100. Very much like...

Quote from: Krimson;976871
These days I just stat them like monsters since they're basically constructs which may or may not have some form of sentience or intelligence. That's the route I'll go should I get a chance to run something like Ultramodern5.

Quote from: jhkim;976890
In principle, I liked Star Hero's approach of treating starships like characters with variant options. This plays on the strength of the core game's flexibility, and meant that starship combat had a lot of overlap with personal combat. I like the 4th edition core rules the best, but the Star Hero adaptation for 4th ed had many problems.

...Like hero. Hero system vehicles are built just like characters. The problem is that the combats behave almost exactly like characters. That's fine for things like giant mechas or tanks or whatever, but not so good with planes and spacecraft. The rules don't line up well for adding benefit for maneuvering, for flanking, for having multiple opponents driving you or pressing you, etc. And of course the damage/DR system means you can have things like the fighter craft being literally irrelevant to the capital ships.