I was just reading the latest bolos novel, and have some questions to you DS
aficianados out there.
Has anyone designed a bolo, and how was it sized (probably a oversized
modular/sectional vehicle, but how big? These bolos are BIG!)
How would anyone represent the hellbore main gun? The closest example I
could think of is a DFFG (but larger than a DFFG/5) with the range of a
laser (after all, they could hit anything upto close orbit). And how would you
represent ground to orbit fire in FT using one of these?
[quoted original message omitted]
> bif smith wrote:
I started working on a Bolo conversion for DS just because I loved the books
so much. I think I figured them around size 86 or so but broken down into
smaller section like a modular vehicle. Each section would have to be
individually targeted. The sections would only have the systems that were
mounted on it. Fro instance one section would only by track, while another
would be the main turret. The tracked section wouldn't have any sensors
(unless specified in construction). For armour I had some problems. The *bang*
chit make the bolo much more frigile then they were in the books. My thought
was to layer armour. A size 86 bolo would have 12 layers of class 7 amour and
one of class 2 at the bottom. You could make it more frigile by picking a max
armour for it. Each time you got a *bang* chit that layer of armour would by
crossed off.
> How would anyone represent the hellbore main gun? The closest example
I figured on a DFFG with a HEL range. I think I figured a Mk XXIII Bolo would
have something like a class 25 DFFG.
> bif smith wrote:
> I was just reading the latest bolos novel, and have some questions to
According to the technical notes in Bolos, Book3:Triumphant, the smallest bolo
with a hellbore (25cm, in the MkXIV), weighs in at 728-900 tons, based
on
This was written:
> According to the technical notes in Bolos, Book3:Triumphant, the
Seems to me, that at this scale, you'd do well to rescale your game. Make
Bolos the top of the scale, with weapon selections simulating batteries.
Design smaller vehicles accordingly, and perhaps fielding particularly small
vehicles built as squads with an appropriate size factor.
I won't guess at specifics, but i know with enough bashing it could be worked
out.
Eli
On Sat, 6 Jan 2001 13:53:19 -0800 "Eli Arndt"
> <emu2020@wattosjunkyard.com> writes:
Maybe us 2mm AFV Miniatures?
> I won't guess at specifics, but i know with enough bashing it could be
I love the Bolo series. It was one my first introductions to sci-fi
reading. I had similar issues with DSII and made some suggestions a while back
for mods to oversized vehicles. The larger Bolos, as more common in the
series, don't seem to work well with the current DSII system. The idea of a
single boom chit possibly taking out a Bolo was not inspiring to say the
least. I redid the modular vehicle rules with some simple mods to allow for an
improved representation of these large units. I recently moved and everthing
here is in chaos. I'll look through my stuff and try to find my mods when I
get some time.
The later Bolos are a bit large for DS. A simple approach, without changing
the rules, is by shrinking everything else down in size knowing that the
largest weapon class of 5 would be used by the Bolos and factor everything
else smaller.
Mike
[quoted original message omitted]
> At 12:00 PM -0500 1/7/01, Mike Miserendino wrote:
Ditto. Baen lists the fifth of the anthology novels (Bolo went
shared-universe in 1998 or so) as being due any day now. The Bolo
brigade novel is absolute trash though, I expect a lot better from Keith.
Volume 3 of the anthologies has vital stats for each of the various amrks. My
copy, naturally, is misisng.
> The later Bolos are a bit large for DS. A simple approach, without
Yeha, DS2 isn't really scaled for the later marks of Bolo. Below, oh
Mark XXX say Bolos gain serious anti-shipping firepower. At that
point, we should be looking at Full Thrust to rate them.