Jon's latest ideas

Well, now I've read what you guys have to say, and I'm leaning more towards
heavy houserules all the time.

Essentially, I agree with a lot of the comments, but I think Jon is going to
have to clearly set a tone in the rules that comes from the reading of the
rulebook, not from the rules themselves. I think he should make clear that
generic FT might, for example, have fighters that move after orders and before
ships, but that players who play in a different universe can try
i)
moving fighters last ii) writing orders for fighters as if they were thrust 12
ships before others move or iii) after. Similarly, there needs to be a generic
FT universe ruling on arc restrictions, aft firing weapons,
etc.,
but a good list of alternative rules, too.  Too many people play FT/B5
or
FT/ST or FT/SW or FT/BG for any rule to stick hard and fast, and Jon
just might succeed in making the game all the more accessible by acknowledging
that many variant rules exist and citing enough examples to get imaginations
going for the many players who just don't do enough thinking.

4 even arcs, 4 uneven arcs, 6 even arcs, 8 or 12 possible arcs. I think

these are all playable/doable.
4% MASS per thrust for one nation and 5% for another is likely not very
doable. If there's an easy way to break thrust purchases down, I'd like to see
maybe
5% for 1 Thrust (acc/deceleration) and an additional 5% to allow 2
points of that thrust to be usable to turn. That means a Thrust 8 ship that
can put 4 into a turn spent 50% of its MASS on drives. High thrust Kra'vak
begin to have prohibitive engine costs, so maybe they need a discount or less
thrust freedom than they currently enjoy. The recommendations for having to
allocate crew quarters seems unnecessary; say each system's MASS includes
sufficient crew. Extra DCPs might cost MASS, or just represent higher quality
crew. I too expect to see some ships that are just an engine, a cloak, and a
weapon. Once you do that, though, it's a very small, vulnerable ship, one
hopes. Oh, and Jon, maybe some of the many variant cloaking rules floating
around should be in FT3. Seriously, if FT3 is going to suggest possible rules
variants for the universe being represented, a lot of good stuff is on the
net. If there's several variants of it, it's probably an SF staple that

should be in there as an option, like the mecha rules in DSII that make them
available if not generally the most efficient tool for the job.

That's all for now,