(FT) Crew Quality

Has anyone (or are there any plans for) used crew quality modifiers in FT?
Either the Good/bad/average style of SFB or breaking it up into the same
classes as DS/SG?

Any thoughts on effects and point costs?

The same question goes for "Legendary Officer's"

Ditto

> -----Original Message-----

I've been working on (i.e. thinking about) using a subset of Fudge to model
captain/crew values.  On the surface this looked pretty good but if I
was to use the full line of Fudge statistics for this I would end up with
modifiers
in the -4 to +4 range.  A crew suffering from a -1 modifier on their
gunnery
should be eaten up by a crew with a +1 modifier (all other things being
equal).  Or what about an Legendary (+4) Engineering crew that could
repair items on 2 or higher instead of the regular 6?

Modified 6's don't get rerolls.

I had a sensor operation skill which either reduced or increased the range
of active/passive sensors, crew morale statistics, etc.  You didn't have
to use Fudge Dice to use the mods as they pretty much just acted as modifiers
to the regular D6 rolls. You would use the Fudge Experience system to
improve the  abilities of your crew -- assuming you survived long
enough.

The above is all part of a campaign I'm design as we play it. We havn't gotten
into the Fudge aspect yet but we will shortly.

Damond

<<Major Snippage>>

> The above is all part of a campaign I'm design as we play it. We

Don't know the Fudge system but I am looking at some of the same questions and
issues for campaign play.

> On Tue, 22 May 2001, "David Rodemaker" wrote:

> Has anyone (or are there any plans for) used crew quality modifiers in

I've thought about it. The problem is that the weapon systems are pretty
different. You'd have to come up with modifiers for the different systems
based on quality, and that would get fairly convoluted. For instance
subtracting 1 or adding 1 to the die roll for pulse torpedoes is far different
from doing the same thing with beams.

The easiest ways to handle crew quality is as follows:

1) Initiative rolls. Give, say, three qualities: Excellent, Average, Poor. All
Excellent ships fire first. If both sides have excellent ships, roll a die to
see who wins the "excellent" initiative. The winner picks one "excellent" ship
and fires it. Then alternate between players until all the "excellent" ships
have fired. Then, fire all the good ships. Finally, fire all the poor ships.

You can play around with this a little. The player with the fewest "excellent"
ships, for instance, gets to fire first with the "good" ships, and the player
who fired the fewest "excellent" and "good" ships, in total, get to fire the
first "poor" ship.

2) Crew repair rolls. Same quality, but give excellent crews +1 to
repair systems. Give poor crews no modifier, but if they roll the 6 to repair
a system, make them roll another die. Perhaps a 4, 5, or 6 on the second die
repairs the system. Two poor crews working on the same system makes them equal
to a normal damage repair crew.

You could try mixing and matching both ideas. I have no idea how you'd price
this in point values.

For Legendary Captains, I don't use such a rule. For one thing, it's up to the
player to move his ships. It's hard to imagine a "legendary captain" making
bonehead ship movements. Imagine Kirk or Sheridan letting the enemy get into
their rear arcs...

But, if you wanted to do this sort of thing, I'd probably keep it at the
"fleet commander" level. Put the Legendary Captain in a specific ship. Let the
fleet add 1 to the initiative die roll for the legendary captain. If you want
more than one L.C. in each fleet, add 1 per L.C. You may, if you want, hide
the Legendary Captains by writing down the ship they occupy.

Note, you could do this same thing with fleet quality. The fleet with the
better quality gets a bonus roll to the initiative (this saves having to
calculate quality per ship). You could let a fleet with the most Legendary
Captains automatically win initiative.

Just some suggestions.

> On Wed, 23 May 2001, "laserlight@quixnet.net" wrote:

> Not so. A simple way of doing it would be: Excellent increases weapon

I thought of something similar, but I think you end up skewing the
probabilities for various weapons. Goosing the range a pulse torpedo makes it
easier to hit but makes no difference to its damage. Goosing the range band of
a beam essentially doubles the damage. Some weapons would be far more useful
in the hands of a good crew than others.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, mind you, but it makes "pricing" crew
quality a really dicey issue.

> On Wed, 23 May 2001, "Bif Smith" wrote:

> How about using the system in B5 fleetbook, and allow better crews a

Hmmm... That's interesting, and may be better balanced.

> Don't know the Fudge system...

You can find out more about Fudge at:
http://www.fudgerpg.com

> "laserlight@quixnet.net" wrote:

Allan said:
> I thought of something similar, but I think you end up skewing the

I'm really short on caffeine today, but I'm not seeing why this is so. If we
assume that all weapons are balanced as is, then why would adding 16% or 33%
range across the board unbalance them?

> Allan wrote:

> Not so. A simple way of doing it would be: Excellent increases

Huh? If you change the range bands of a P-torp, you change its hit
probability and therefore its average damage at various ranges. If you
change the to-hit number, you change its hit probability and therefore
its average damage at various ranges. There's no *conceptual* difference
between those two...

The only difference is that if you modify the range bands by the same
percentage for all weapons (as Laserlight suggested), you don't change the
game balance between the different weapons much... in fact it won't change at
all if your gaming table is big enough and all ships have the same crew
quality :-/

Later,