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se of you who know me understand my dedicated ground-pounder roots. I
prefer skirmish or squad based infantry and armour games to clashes of ships
in space... but.... every once and a while, something space-y sucks me
in. B5 was one such setting.
So, when I found a new setting of interest, I naturally assumed that many
great minds of space ship design must have come up with ships and systems to
mimic the genre I was after long before I arrived at this interest. And yet,
the Weapons and Defense archive have many genres represented, but surprisingly
not the one I'm after despite the series having had more than 200 episodes and
two movies so far....
And thus, I throw out the questions:
What sorts of systems, rules and designs would be necessary to do Stargate
universe ship combat justice? (And of course, has anyone already tried?)
Some initial crib notes:
SHIELDS seem to stop or partially stop:
Ori uber-beams (something like a B5 HBW or a Graser? Giant pulse Torp?
Nova Canon?) Asgard beams (Graser? big conventional beams?)
Human Railguns (K-1 or K-2 guns or K-1s with longer range or K-2s with
more arcs and modes?) Human Missiles (SMR, SML, subpack,??) Goa'uld energy
weapons (Pulse torpedo? conventional beam?) Wraith energy weapons (Pulse
torpedo? conventional beam?) I don't think shields do much to slow down the
ancient drones (almost think these should appear like some sort of fighter
squadrons....)
HULL: Some of the ships seem to have fairly sturdy designs (the Daedelus
particularly seems to take a lot of beating, losing systems (thresholds?), but
still not blowing up generallly). I suspect this means average or greater
hulls, though the Hatak may have a weak hull. I suspect some of the ships must
employ armour.
FIGHTERS: Seem to be in use by the Ori, the Humans, the Goa'uld and Jaffa, and
the Wraith.
Dedicated PDS: Does not seem to exist. Shields seem to fulfill that roll
although railguns seem to be able to be configured in anti-missile and
anti-fighter roles as well as direct attack.
MISSILES: The humans make fairly extensive use of these. But are they closer
to heavy missiles, some form of shorter ranged missile like a subpack or
something more like SMs?
THRUST/MANOUVERABILITY: Most of the ships (Ori, Goa'uld Hatak, Ancient,
Asgard) strike me as thrust 2-4 at best. The Human Daedelus might be
thrust
4 and the smaller vessels like the Al'kesh could be a bit higher - at
least they are more nimble. The Traveller ships might be thrust 4 as might the
Wraith Hives. They seem more manouverable, though still by no means do they
approximate jinking fighters....
CLOAK: Some smaller ships seem to have this technology.
CRITICAL SYSTEMS: We seem to have sensors, fire control, ring generators,
asgard beam generators, presumably embarked stargates, and of course the hyper
drive and sublight drives. Much like star trek, these systems go offline
regularly and are fixed by the hard working technicians in the nick of time.
But beyond these basic notes, I haven't really got a good set of ideas on how
to make a genre conversion of FT.
Note that I am not looking to create systems or ships that balance with FT
ships pointwise. I'm looking to recreate the genre of the shows to get battles
that feel like the ones on the show.
Ships I'm looking to design/stat out:
Goa'uld: Hatak, Al'kesh, Death Glider, Cargo Ship Asgard: Original ships and
the later black ones Ori: Their big monster invasion ships
Humans: X-303 (Prometheus), X-304 (Daedelus, Phoenix, Korolev, General
Hammond), F-302 (fighter)
Alteran/Atlantean/Ancient: Puddle Jumper (fighter?), Cruiser
Wraith: Hiveship, Dart (fighter) Traveller: Traveller ship
So, having pulled the pin, I now lob the grenade. I'm quite surprised there
was no genre notes on the W&D archive but I don't doubt there are some FT
gurus out there who might have some thoughts on how to do the Stargate genre
justice.
Any input greatfully accepted and appreciated.
Thomas B Groundpounder out of his depth (except in boarding actions)
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think the best way to approach this is to decide how big you want your ships
to be.
If you want ships sized approximately like the fleet book ships then I think
what you are describing is fine.
Wraith hive ships and cruisers seem to be primarily carriers, with lots of
darts. They also seem to be fairly fragile and unshielded but reasonably
heavily armed.
One other thing to consider is that the Asgard and hence humans have more
advanced hyperdrive technology than the wraith, they can manouver fire and
jump all in the midst of battle.
You might well want to theme the different fleets around a different primary
weapon.
Ancient ships might be armed primarily with salvo missile racks to represent
the drones, or they could be torpedo fighters or a selectable interceptor
torpedo fighter option to represent their anti dart capability.
Goa-uld might be based around plasma torpedos just to be different and
have fighters.
Given that shields seem to stop everything and to degrade in relatively
predicable levels like Star Trek they might be better represented by armour.Â
________________________________
From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Tuesday, 14 April, 2009 8:41:03 AM
Subject: [GZG] Stepping out the airlock....
Those of you who know me understand my dedicated ground-pounder roots. I
prefer skirmish or squad based infantry and armour games to clashes of
ships in space... but...... every once and a while, something space-y
sucks me in. B5 was one such setting.
So, when I found a new setting of interest, I naturally assumed that many
great minds of space ship design must have come up with ships and systems to
mimic the genre I was after long before I arrived at this interest. And yet,
the Weapons and Defense archive have many genres represented, but surprisingly
not the one I'm after despite the series having had more than 200 episodes and
two movies so far....
And thus, I throw out the questions:
What sorts of systems, rules and designs would be necessary to do Stargate
universe ship combat justice? (And of course, has anyone already tried?)
Some initial crib notes:
SHIELDS seem to stop or partially stop:
Ori uber-beams (something like a B5 HBW or a Graser? Giant pulse Torp?
Nova Canon?) Asgard beams (Graser? big conventional beams?)
Human Railguns (K-1 or K-2 guns or K-1s with longer range or K-2s with
more arcs and modes?) Human Missiles (SMR, SML, subpack,??) Goa'uld energy
weapons (Pulse torpedo? conventional beam?) Wraith energy weapons (Pulse
torpedo? conventional beam?) I don't think shields do much to slow down the
ancient drones (almost think these should appear like some sort of fighter
squadrons....)
HULL: Some of the ships seem to have fairly sturdy designs (the Daedelus
particularly seems to take a lot of beating, losing systems (thresholds?), but
still not blowing up generallly). I suspect this means average or greater
hulls, though the Hatak may have a weak hull. I suspect some of the ships must
employ armour.
FIGHTERS: Seem to be in use by the Ori, the Humans, the Goa'uld and Jaffa, and
the Wraith.
Dedicated PDS: Does not seem to exist. Shields seem to fulfill that roll
although railguns seem to be able to be configured in anti-missile and
anti-fighter roles as well as direct attack.
MISSILES: The humans make fairly extensive use of these. But are they closer
to heavy missiles, some form of shorter ranged missile like a subpack or
something more like SMs?
THRUST/MANOUVERABILITY: Most of the ships (Ori, Goa'uld Hatak, Ancient,
Asgard) strike me as thrust 2-4 at best. The Human Daedelus might be
thrust 4 and the smaller vessels like the Al'kesh could be a bit higher
- at least they are more nimble. The Traveller ships might be thrust 4
as might the Wraith Hives. They seem more manouverable, though still by no
means do they approximate jinking fighters....
CLOAK: Some smaller ships seem to have this technology.
CRITICAL SYSTEMS: We seem to have sensors, fire control, ring generators,
asgard beam generators, presumably embarked stargates, and of course the hyper
drive and sublight drives. Much like star trek, these systems go offline
regularly and are fixed by the hard working technicians in the nick of time.
But beyond these basic notes, I haven't really got a good set of ideas on how
to make a genre conversion of FT.
Note that I am not looking to create systems or ships that balance with FT
ships pointwise. I'm looking to recreate the genre of the shows to get battles
that feel like the ones on the show.
Ships I'm looking to design/stat out:
Goa'uld: Hatak, Al'kesh, Death Glider, Cargo Ship Asgard: Original ships and
the later black ones Ori: Their big monster invasion ships
Humans: X-303 (Prometheus), X-304 (Daedelus, Phoenix, Korolev, General
Hammond), F-302 (fighter)
Alteran/Atlantean/Ancient: Puddle Jumper (fighter?), Cruiser
Wraith: Hiveship, Dart (fighter) Traveller: Traveller ship
So, having pulled the pin, I now lob the grenade. I'm quite surprised there
was no genre notes on the W&D archive but I don't doubt there are some FT
gurus out there who might have some thoughts on how to do the Stargate genre
justice.
Any input greatfully accepted and appreciated...
Thomas B Groundpounder out of his depth (except in boarding actions)
> On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
And not to hijack your topic too much but I always thought it'd be fun to come
up with a set of guidelines for Transhuman Space.
Damo
> What sorts of systems, rules and designs would be necessary to do
I don't remember any FT conversions but I do know of a Stargate conversion for
'A Call To Arms' from Mongoose that you could get some ideas from.
Rules -
http://www.4shared.com/file/38004760/30ededa5/Stargate_ACTA_v04.html
Counters - http://www.4shared.com/dir/5729064/5df4ae9/Stargate_ACTA.html
There are minis that work for some of the ships:
http://armouryhobbies.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Meteor/4155/thumbs/orderform.html
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n,
I think Wraith hyperdrive is actually considered more efficient than human.
The humans just tend to run more... (they do this when confronted by Ha'taks
too a lot of the time).
As for size, the Achilles looks about 4.5" long or so and probably slightly
less massive than a Thuerdank. On the other hand, whether 1 mass = 1 fleet
book mass is another discussion point.
My only goal is to replicate the feel of the fights fairly well. If that means
a Daedelus, at 3.5" long, is mass 400, I can live with that, although it would
look a bit odd next to a huge Ha'tak or Ori mothership.
Systems:
Ancient/Alteran/Lantean Drones: I think these are best modelled as fast
attack or torpedo fighters. They can probably be destroyed by darts that are
screening a wraith cruiser, but they pretty much ignore screens and do some
serious damage. Of course, their has to be an attritional component to the
damage - sometimes a drone will fly into a wraith hiveship and out
again, other times that encounter destroys the drone (hits something solid
enough or something).
For human missiles from the Daedelus (X-304), SMs would probably do, but
they sprout a lot of them in encounters and SM ammo mass is high. It might
make sense to cut the mass requirements to match up with the type of results
seen in the show. Maybe that could be justified by doing D3 per missile or
some such thing - half damage/half the mass.
The problem with shields as armour is the shields are sort of leaky. At full
shields, likely no damage passes through. At 50%, damage will be leaking
through, at 20-30%, a fair bit of damage seems to penetrate - or at
least overloads and such are caused.
Some sort of armour-esque model might do, but it would have to be
tweaked a fair bit.
T.
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Humans run more because they want to survive and have only 1-2 ships in
total, not fleets of the things. They are also not immortal a clone or a
zealot that doesn't care about it's individual survival.
I think if you make wraith hive ships at around mass 250 with 6-7
fighter squadrons and some beams or k1s depending on preference for
ship-ship weapons then you probably have something about right.
I think armour as shields descibes what you are talking about very well,
especially if you borrow the phalon shell armour. Many of the weapons have an
occasional armour piercing effect and so will initially only penetrate through
to hull systems in a minor way but when you get down to the last shell of
armour you will start taking damage very quickly.
The other option is to be a bit less literal about the hull / shields
definition and have no armour/ shields and jsut have lots of hull boxes.
Ships firing energy bolts and munitions at each other that rip appart
sections of planets are not going to be stopped by Titanium/ceramite
composite armour.
I suspect that in FT terms losing your last shielding is the same as losing
your last hull boxes.... massivee explosion.
You could simulate this by giving ships, lots of shell armour and only 10%
hull.
Also one thing that FT does not do well is reflect different tech levels. An
ancient missile is as effective as a human one, the only way to simulate
higher tech ships is to give them more mass that allows them to reflect their
combat power rather than their proportionate size.
You also need to consider that wraith ships with loads of fighter squadrons
would caouse havoc against enemies that don't have an effective PDS system.
They would attack from the other end of the table and launch darts and then
run before the enemy gunships ever get within range.
________________________________
From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Tuesday, 14 April, 2009 11:55:09 AM
Subject: [GZG] Stepping out the airlock....
John,
I think Wraith hyperdrive is actually considered more efficient than human.
The humans just tend to run more... (they do this when confronted by Ha'taks
too a lot of the time).
As for size, the Achilles looks about 4.5" long or so and probably slightly
less massive than a Thuerdank. On the other hand, whether 1 mass = 1 fleet
book mass is another discussion point.
My only goal is to replicate the feel of the fights fairly well. If that means
a Daedelus, at 3.5" long, is mass 400, I can live with that, although it would
look a bit odd next to a huge Ha'tak or Ori mothership.
Systems:
Ancient/Alteran/Lantean Drones: I think these are best modelled as fast
attack or torpedo fighters. They can probably be destroyed by darts that are
screening a wraith cruiser, but they pretty much ignore screens and do some
serious damage. Of course, their has to be an attritional
component to the damage - sometimes a drone will fly into a wraith
hiveship and out again, other times that encounter destroys the drone (hits
something solid enough or something).
For human missiles from the Daedelus (X-304), SMs would probably do, but
they sprout a lot of them in encounters and SM ammo mass is high. It might
make sense to cut the mass requirements to match up with the type of results
seen in the show. Maybe that could be justified by doing D3
per missile or some such thing - half damage/half the mass.
The problem with shields as armour is the shields are sort of leaky. At full
shields, likely no damage passes through. At 50%, damage will be
leaking through, at 20-30%, a fair bit of damage seems to penetrate - or
at least overloads and such are caused.
Some sort of armour-esque model might do, but it would have to be
tweaked a fair bit.
T.
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> Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com> wrote:
> Those of you who know me understand my dedicated ground-pounder roots.
I
> prefer skirmish or squad based infantry and armour games to clashes of
And yet,
> the Weapons and Defense archive have many genres represented, but
Scott Bishop had Tau'ri StarGate ships in his "What The @#$%^*?" FT game
Friday evening at ECC XII. I cannot remember all the details of the ships, but
the shields were regeneratable (slow, but they did regenerate). It's been too
long to remember any of the pertinent details, other than I ran the
Tau'ri, and I went head-to-head with the Klingon fleet run by Mike Hudak
(I
subsequently wiped out said Klingon fleet).
If he's on the list, hopefully he'll pop up and post his ship stats.
Mk
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n:
Bergstrom was where I got my Achilles.:)
I'm not happy with the Gliders and 302's the other place does - they're
way too big (to me) for the size of the carriers and such. Some of the other
ships aren't bad, although some of the pricing is a bit overblown IMO.
John:
I'll take a look at the shell armour.
I'm also wondering if some of the ships should suffer from a slightly less
potent version of the cascade failure from EFSB - maybe requiring
doubles on a pair of D6s or something to cause the loss of a row, or blowing
it only costs you half a row, or something. It seems sometimes once hull
damage is taken by a big weapon, the results can go to catastrophic fairly
quickly. Other times, the ships can take large amounts of damage and be still
largely intact (structurally) with many systems offline.
> At 7:55 PM -0400 4/13/09, Tom B wrote:
Is it? The Wraith seem to flit about and take a lot of pit stops. The Humans
can send Daedalus back and forth between galaxies which the wraith cannot seem
to do.
> Systems:
Good point. I was wondering how to model these. However they seem to have a
LOT of them on board. A typical carrier doesn't tend to have nearly enough
bays for the quantity of drones some things can launch.
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our group we created a smaller missile that is one mass in a rack or 0.5 mass
in a launcher it has 2 endurance and does 2d3 damage per hit, this gives you
volume of missiles each doing a bit of damage.
But if you want to start making up your own weapons to properly represent the
capabilities then there will be lots of ideas.
________________________________
From: Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com>
To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Wednesday, 15 April, 2009 2:55:12 AM
Subject: Re: [GZG] Stepping out the airlock....
> At 7:55 PM -0400 4/13/09, Tom B wrote:
Is it? The Wraith seem to flit about and take a lot of pit stops. The Humans
can send Daedalus back and forth between galaxies which the wraith cannot seem
to do.
> Systems:
Good point. I was wondering how to model these... However they seem to have a
LOT of them on board. A typical carrier doesn't tend to have nearly enough
bays for the quantity of drones some things can launch.
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> Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:
> At 7:55 PM -0400 4/13/09, Tom B wrote:
Can't always do things one for one (try doing BSG, for example ;-) ).
Abstract some of the numbers out.
Mk