Quote from: CRKrueger;976086If you're gonna pick a game with 73 different possible variations, like Traveller, be specific.

Classic Traveller, and both editions of Mongoose Traveller.

If you are talking Starship Combat for RPGs nothing beats FASA Star Trek. But those three editions of Traveller are more usable for a various types of science fiction campaign.

Quote from: S'mon;976195I have a low threshold for complexity and White Star is the first game I've found since d6 Star Wars with usable starship rules. There is a system for modifying ships. All characters modify the attack numbers, Pilot class pcs can midify most stats.

I concur that White Star is pretty elegant but the PCs generally want to know a tad more about their ships.

Quote from: estar;976210I concur that White Star is pretty elegant but the PCs generally want to know a tad more about their ships.

I make up some shit I think will be fun.

Buck Rogers XXVc combined with Battlesystem. I used to run fleet vs fleet battles.

Quote from: CRKrueger;976117How does that compare to old Spacemaster?  Isn't old Spacemaster even easier to integrate with Silent Death or am I misremembering?

I'm not real familiar with Armored Assault and Star Strike but the focus is less on hex and counter play and more on maneuver rolls.  The design system for ships and other vehicles is completely integrated though there are a lot of editing and testing issues as I mentioned before.  I'm pretty sure the attack and critical tables are new.  I really like that there are tables for determining the cost of crews and squads based on skills.

Quote from: S'mon;976214I make up some shit I think will be fun.

I get where you are coming from. But pithy one-liners aside it not as clean cut as Gronan makes it. I had a fantasy version of this come up recently.

Situation: Players have enough gold and wanted to start trading, they have enough to organize a small caravan.
Session X+1: First trade run, make up shit on the fly and the players made a small profit.
Session X+2: The players want to know more about the region. They investigate the end result is that they get with a list of who wants what. At least a list their contacts think what each settlement wants. But for me now I had to create some economic rules to generate this stuff. Because there were two dozen places they could go to.
Session X+4: After an very successful adventure they have enough gold to buy a small trading ship. Again just having a list with skiff, small ship, large ship, wasn't going to cut it they wanted options. So I came up with some seafaring rules.


The thing is that saying just make up shit that is fun is all fine and dandy and utterly useless when it comes to specific individual groups. My group wasn't unreasonable or particularly demanding with their requests. They interested in being owners of a sailing ship and having adventures that way. So I need to come with something to be consistent and not just hand them the keys to a perpetual money making machine.

I started off using the Pilot Almanac from Harn but that was way too detailed and the actual trade system a bit bland.  

I found the system from ACKS a bit too simplistic to answer all the questions the players were asking. So use it as a foundation to come up with this as a starting point.

Yeah it is 15 digest pages but it answered all of the questions they were asking me at a level they were interested in. And it not perfect for one thing. Generating what available is not user friendly during a session. Nor I am 100% happy about the list of trade goods I copied from ACKS. So the tweaking continues.

As far White Star the starship rules work well for many types of campaign. But if the players are playing a bunch of Han Solo types and the campaign is more or less a sandbox with the player choosing where they go based on rumors and profit, then you going to need to supply the right amount of information to make the players feel like they making an informed choice.

In my experience Classic Traveller or either edition of Mongoose Traveller (or Traveller 20 to come to think of it) are about at the right level of complexity for this. Enough detail that players can figure out whether that the load of Widgets would sell better on Regina or Hoth. But not forcing them to drown in an economic simulation like GURPS Far Trader just to figure the choice between the two.

Quote from: estar;976220As far White Star the starship rules work well for many types of campaign. But if the players are playing a bunch of Han Solo types and the campaign is more or less a sandbox with the player choosing where they go based on rumors and profit, then you going to need to supply the right amount of information to make the players feel like they making an informed choice.

In my experience Classic Traveller or either edition of Mongoose Traveller (or Traveller 20 to come to think of it) are about at the right level of complexity for this. Enough detail that players can figure out whether that the load of Widgets would sell better on Regina or Hoth. But not forcing them to drown in an economic simulation like GURPS Far Trader just to figure the choice between the two.

Hmm, this could be an issue for me given I've only been running a couple weeks, the game setup ( http://smonstats.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/white-star-toshe-station.html?zx=4212f84b5b310d00 & thread at http://smonstats.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/white-star-toshe-station.html?zx=4212f84b5b310d00 ) is pretty sandboxy, and could turn into Han Solo does merchant spacing. My thinking is I can probably generate reasonable trading options on the fly using 3d6xd% base price, but I guess I may need to refer to Starter Traveller or The Minrothad Guilds for more in depth trading rules.
I was thinking more about the details of running the ships, I've just been making stuff up and pulling players back a bit if they get too technical, eg the recent Public Key Encryption for data thingummy one was pushing.

To date still hands down the best has been Star Frontiers. Rules for building more than warships. Easy system for swapping stuff. Build your own from the ground up even. Rules for running space businesses. The rules could be a little more robust on the business side. But it works as is. It also lacks a starsystem generation ruleset. So I used the great one from Universe.

Combat in it I also like as it cleaves closer to hard fiction in some ways than sci-fi. Distances are huge. Each hex in the wargame half is 10000 klm and rounds are 10 minutes long due to the scale. An earth size planet fits in a single hex. (Jupiter would be 9 hexs wide) Ships are towers and down is a result of thrust. No damn artificial gravity. Ships can and will coast in the direction of movement and there is some factoring of gravity into close planetary movement.

Runner up is Mekton Zeta Plus. Its really more a wargame than a RPG. But its got rules for building stuff from the ground up, weapons, vehicles, and with some creativity even other things. Its a bit lacking on the non-combat rules though. Like really lacking.

Another runner up is Universe. I liked the modular system it used. But it is nowhere as good as Star Frontiers. Where Universe really shines is its very robust starsystem generation system and the amazing 3d co-ordinate starmap the game came with. I just plugged Universes starsystem rules into Star Frontiers instead. Though Universe has a rather nice, though complex, chargen system.

I have been reading the Stars Without Numbers Beta (in my continuing quest to read or play as many starship and sailing ship rulesets as I can). Public Link from that other forum: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4qCWY8UnLrcUWk5UkVuNTVWeUk/view

I think I managed a better ship combat/maneuver turn-flow when I designed my Airship rules for Earthdawn 4th Edition, but everything else in the book is solid OSR Sci Fi.

Quote from: S'mon;976225Hmm, this could be an issue for me given I've only been running a couple weeks, the game setup ( http://smonstats.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/white-star-toshe-station.html?zx=4212f84b5b310d00 & thread at http://smonstats.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/white-star-toshe-station.html?zx=4212f84b5b310d00 ) is pretty sandboxy, and could turn into Han Solo does merchant spacing. My thinking is I can probably generate reasonable trading options on the fly using 3d6xd% base price, but I guess I may need to refer to Starter Traveller or The Minrothad Guilds for more in depth trading rules.
I was thinking more about the details of running the ships, I've just been making stuff up and pulling players back a bit if they get too technical, eg the recent Public Key Encryption for data thingummy one was pushing.

I see that house rule document growing . What I recommend is look at the Cepheus Game Engine, a Traveller Clone as a starting. Mostly because it has a editable document here. Mesh it into what you got posted and dial in the level of the detail the way you want it.

Quote from: estar;976220I found the system from ACKS a bit too simplistic to answer all the questions the players were asking. So use it as a foundation to come up with this as a starting point.

Yeah it is 15 digest pages but it answered all of the questions they were asking me at a level they were interested in. And it not perfect for one thing. Generating what available is not user friendly during a session. Nor I am 100% happy about the list of trade goods I copied from ACKS. So the tweaking continues.

Oooo... nice!! Snagged that trading guide for OSR, Thank You!! ...and will reciprocate with an OSR guide of my own to ancient ships and galleys which I uploaded to Google Drive and made available as a free download here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B65-0hl0Ei4bc3U0bUNjVldMbTQ/view?usp=sharing

Also, if you happen to have any of those Inspiration Pad Pro .ipt generator files I mailed you a few years back, I could really use them as I am rebuilding all of my generators this year. Currently working on a 0D&D generator, and still replacing language, and other D&D generators as I happen to need them. Have a Github archive you can push to, pull, or download from, to get the generators I have rebuilt located here: https://github.com/GameDaddy2/IPP-Repository

Cheers!

Quote from: estar;976231I see that house rule document growing . What I recommend is look at the Cepheus Game Engine, a Traveller Clone as a starting. Mostly because it has a editable document here. Mesh it into what you got posted and dial in the level of the detail the way you want it.

Thanks for the heads-up, I'll take a look.

Quote from: GameDaddy;976283Oooo... nice!! Snagged that trading guide for OSR, Thank You!! ...and will reciprocate with an OSR guide of my own to ancient ships and galleys which I uploaded to Google Drive and made available as a free download here:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B65-0hl0Ei4bc3U0bUNjVldMbTQ/view?usp=sharing

Also, if you happen to have any of those Inspiration Pad Pro .ipt generator files I mailed you a few years back, I could really use them as I am rebuilding all of my generators this year. Currently working on a 0D&D generator, and still replacing language, and other D&D generators as I happen to need them. Have a Github archive you can push to, pull, or download from, to get the generators I have rebuilt located here: https://github.com/GameDaddy2/IPP-Repository

Cheers!

Nice!
You can download what I got here.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bx9oLF40m-b8cUF3MklnbTNKVFU?usp=sharing

All my recent work is in the Majestic Wilderlands RPG folder

Quote from: CRKrueger;976086So what's your opinion?  Looking for the best in:
Creating your own Starships
Modifying existing Starships
Having PC crew able to use skills to effect in Starship travel, maintenance, and combat. (ie. not completely separate RPG and Starship Combat Boardgame).

If you're gonna pick a game with 73 different possible variations, like Traveller, be specific.

I had some fun with Star Frontiers: Knighthawks, back in the day. Probably hard to find now.

Quote from: Nexus;976307I had some fun with Star Frontiers: Knighthawks, back in the day. Probably hard to find now.

Not hard at all...it's legally available as a free PDF online. I don't know the site but if you Google it, you should have no trouble finding it. Pretty much everything TSR made for Star Frontiers is there and legal.