[GZG] Empire of Man kit (was: More advanced screens)

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> hard Bell wrote:

> the Field is active, the ship is lost with all hands in a cataclysmic
I know it's (anecdotal?) canon, but rather than instant destruction on a

Field failure, I'd have a portion of the energy stored in the Field applied
directly to the ship as damage; only a portion, because the energy in the
Field goes out as well as in when a Field collapses. A die

roll could be used to decide just how much -- (1D6 + 4) x 10% of the
Field strength (no. boxes in the phantom row)?
> Ships with Langston Fields also have a heat track with one box per

> the heat track is regenerated each turn. If a threshold is inflicted,
Again, see above for the overload idea. Rather than the heat track,
might it not be simpler to have multiple phantom rows? Burn-throughs are

modelled by threshold checks when each row is filled, and total Field collapse
when all boxes are filled. Each turn, a number of Field boxes regenerate, but
each Field threshold check can only be taken once. I know that's a bit clunky,
but it depends on what actually causes a
burn-through. IIRC, burn-throughs are localised overloading of a Field
-- "hot spots" -- so the alternative could be to have directional Field
rows (a set for each arc, say), with burn-throughs occurring when a row
is filled. Remaining damage after a burn-through can be distributed to
all Field rows.

Okay, maybe it mightn't be simpler... :-D  The Langston Field is a
difficult thing to simulate in a simple fashion, and expanding Fields
and superconductor-plated ships just make damage resolution even more
tricky.
> Ships destroyed by Field failures leave no survivors and no wreck.
You wouldn't know that from all the comments about "outies"... and I think
you'll find that the Field and Drive are quite independent
systems. The fusion (normal-space) drive that starships use works with
the Field, since otherwise the energy in the drive would just feed into the
Field, but the Alderson Drive is quite independent of it.
> Naval combat is possible because hyperspace can only be entered/exited

> at certain points and travel only went from one star to its nearest
It's a minor point, but Alderson travel is not always from one star to a

"nearest neighbour"; often, yes, but not always because it depends on
thermonuclear flux potentials which result from the geometry and activity of
local stars, so that there may not be a "tramway" from one
star to another because other stars mess up the flux levels -- or one
may come and go as stellar activity fluctuates, as shown in /The
Gripping Hand/The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye/.

On a semi-related note, I gather that the space battle that was
originally part of the opening of /The Mote in God's Eye/ and then cut
out has been published in the first War World book. Is there much in the

way of ship combat in the story, or is it mostly about Horst Staley's bomb
incident?

Phil