The quest for Babylon 5

4 posts ยท Jun 28 2003 to Jun 29 2003

From: Nyrath the nearly wise <nyrath@c...>

Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 07:55:24 -0400

Subject: The quest for Babylon 5

Gotta love the Internet...

I recently obtained an AOG Babylon 5 station miniature. Now all I needed was a
ship control sheet for it.

For some reason Google was being more unhelpful than usual. But I remembered
seeing something on Star Rangers site. A few minutes of looking and on this
page
http://www.star-ranger.com/GC99friday.htm
I found a reference to "Mark Siefert's Severed Dreams game".

A quick trip to the GZG list archives, and I discovered that Mark obtained his
B5 sheet from Jerry Han.

A visit to Jerry's site soon revealed a control sheet
http://www.warpfish.com/jhan/ft/sdream/b5stat.txt

I emailed Jerry, asking about the photo of the jumpgate miniature in one of
the GenCon photos. I mentioned his B5 sheet. He said that I should examine
Aaron Newman's sheet on his site
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Vault/6990/
since that one was better playtested.

So I have my sheets.

From: Roger Burton West <roger@f...>

Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 21:46:59 +0100

Subject: Re: The quest for Babylon 5

> On Sat, Jun 28, 2003 at 07:55:24AM -0400, Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:

> Question: are the ship description format wars over yet?

Nope.

But anything vaguely machine-parseable is good. FTJava XML has the
problem that weapons that aren't yet in the game aren't defined, and of course
it's bulky. My new shiptools program produces output like:

ShipClass; mass=34; race=Human; navy=FSE; classif=Destroyer; classifcode=DD;
class=Albacora; designer=Mark Kochte; namelist=; notes= MainDrive; thrust=6;
shipmass=34 Armour; boxes=2 FCS PDS PDS PDS PDS BeamBattery; class=3; arcs=F
FTLDrive; tow=0; shipmass=34 Hull; boxes=10; rows=4; standard=Average;
shipmass=34

but that's not exactly "human-readable".

From: Nyrath the nearly wise <nyrath@c...>

Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2003 17:44:41 -0400

Subject: Re: The quest for Babylon 5

> Roger Burton West wrote:
{snip}
> but that's not exactly "human-readable".

Pity that there is no standard.

I will say that your Shiptools program is my design tool of choice. However I
do use Star Ranger's Fleet Designer Excel Spreadsheet if I am creating
something with a
        cloaking device or other non-Shiptools supported system.
Both tools have their strengths and weaknesses.

From: Roger Burton West <roger@f...>

Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 10:56:53 +0100

Subject: Re: The quest for Babylon 5

> On Sat, Jun 28, 2003 at 05:44:41PM -0400, Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:

> I will say that

You'll love the new version (if I ever get it finished), then - modular
system definition files, so that any new system can be supported...

Any Perl programmers on the list feel like giving me a hand with this?
The framework is there, but a lot of donkey-work still needs to be
done...