Sci-Fi Abilities in VBAM

[Tyrel Lohr]

This is just an open thread to solicit ideas for what unit abilities, racial traits, government types, combat situations, etc. from various science fiction settings the game might be missing, and (perhaps more importantly) if you have any ideas as to how they could be expressed within the game.

While I was on vacation reading books I came across several small things that picqued my curiousity and got my creative juices flowing. I am hoping that if we all share the same here, we might be able to come up with some neat new ideas

[logan400k]

I have always been a British Sci Fi fan, in the vein of UFO, Space 1999, Invasion Earth, Blake's 7 etc...

VBAM does not currently model the weird kind of stuff like that. I mean it would be pretty cool to model rules for the moon flying through space and having to build and maintain a base of operations while also exploring space.

OR Visiting an alien world on the QT. With most games you come into a system and boom, there is a new race and its instant two way knowledge that you both exist. VBAM (to my knowledge) does not allow you to kidnap aliens from low tech worlds and study them.

Just a couple ideas...

[MarkNorfolk]

I don't have all the supplements for VBAM so I might be recounting something already covered, but just off my head....

Interstellar superweapons: The arachnids in Starship Troopers (movie) projected asteroids at Earth and the Daleks in Doctor Who had the Reality bomb, weapons that could fire from one system and affect planets in another.

Mobile planets (or very, very big spaceships): The daleks again (in the b&w days), Eldar Craftworlds, the moon in Space:1999, the Death Star, the self aware ships from the Culture and V'ger

Other high end sci-fi stuff like Dyson spheres and ringworlds.

Cheers
Mark

[Charles Lewis]

Dyson spheres and ringworlds are definitely a gap in the current rules. On the other hand, I'm not sure how well VBAM would handle a race capable of building a dyson sphere.

Stuff like the Death Star would basically be a *very* large ship with a correspondingly high construction and maintenance cost. Plus you would need to come up with a special construction facility to build it. But the point is I think the existing rules could be tweaked with minimal effort. Considering the first one took about 20 years to build, at 12 turns a year, that's 240 turns. Using the extended construction rules (as you do not want to be able to crank one of these puppies out in one turn), that would mean it should cost about 480 EPs. Maintenance would be, say, 20 EPs a turn? I'll leave the actual stats to someone else.

[Chyll]

Stuff like the Death Star would basically be a *very* large ship with a correspondingly high construction and maintenance cost.
<<SNIP>>
Considering the first one took about 20 years to build, at 12 turns a year, that's 240 turns. Using the extended construction rules (as you do not want to be able to crank one of these puppies out in one turn), that would mean it should cost about 480 EPs. Maintenance would be, say, 20 EPs a turn? I'll leave the actual stats to someone else.

Dang it. Quit distracting me. I've actually played solo games that long and now I want to build one.

[Chyll]

Other considerations, direct planet-to-planet teleportation.

Stargate being the best known probably.
The Dorsai series comes to mind too.
(Of course, that would radically change ship roles and elevate ground combat.)

What about ship capture tech - virus or AI sufficient enough to gain control of a ship? See several Star Trek examples or the vampire ships from Traveller