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I thought I would kick on dicussion in this forum by mentioning that I have put "To Live and Die in Starlight" (TLADIS) on the back burner for awhile so that I could test some other aspects of the Star Charts rules -- and it is a good thing I did, because I discovered some things I needed to tweak when it came to random star system generation.

My new solo test campaign, entitled "To Boldly Go...", is a crossover campaign using the Star Charts Celestial system generation rules. I am not using any predetermined star system list, so I am generating new systems as I go.

As with some of my previous campaigns, the conceit behind the "To Boldy Go..." is that there was a hyperspatial collapse that cut the races off from FTL travel for an indeterminate period of time.

As the name indicates, this campaign's protagonists are the Humans from the Star Trek universe. However, these Humans are remnants of the United Earth Coalition from an alternative timeline where the Federation was never formed and Earth remained non-aligned. The Human "home system" is Terra Nova, the once forgotten system encountered during Enterprise's run. I am using the ships from The Starfleet Museum site for convenience, but the Coalition may some day field ships from later periods (if they last that long).

As far as exploration goes, the Humans in this campaign have faired better so far than those of TLADIS. They have discovered several important jump point nexi, including one binary system that contains *8* jump lanes, and they have also made contact with an IND-3 power: the Yinchorri from Star Wars. Never heard of the Yinchorr? Yeah, neither had I. I rolled randomly to see what universe the new IND-3 power was from (Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Farscape, Stargate, Star Control, Starflight, etc.) and then used Wookieepedia to randomly view articles until I found one that mentioned an alien species/faction that I could use. Thus the Yinchorri were born...

I haven't had a chance to get back to the campaign for awhile, but so far the Celestial system seems to be holding up. I had to tweak some charts and am adding a number of new terrain features to the game (about five new nebula types and several other terrains that should probably have been added before), and have also found a few more spectral types that needed added as possibilities.

I have set myself a deadline of October 31, 2007 to have Star Charts completely done. I have the rules about finished (they need editing, and a few remain incomplete), but the major time investment will be creating the pregenerated stats for nearby stars. However, I think two weekends of crunching information will let me get those hundreds of star systems finished up.

Cool!

That reminds me I need to get back to mine. Since it's so early into my campaign, I think I'm going to retcon the Star Charts material to give it a workout.

I'm waiting for Star Charts before redesigning my Aloft campaign into Commodore Level from the CC book. That Wookiepedia is a wonderful resource I stumbled onto it on accident one day Googling for "horse aliens" for my Struvans. Heh.

-Emiricol

I am about 2/3 of the way into creating a campaign that was based off information in both 'TLADIS' and 'aloft' (it's sad that they have simmered down for the time being). I am curious about the star chart book since you have been talking about it for a long time.

If you want to post your info for "To boldy go...", you know I'll read it! :0
-Bren
PS. I am using the large empire that broke apart due to a lost of hyperspace as the basis for my campaign. I even created a new system generation level... Are you reading my thoughts?!?

Aloft! isn't simmering down, I've been waiting for the battle results and makig a bunch of changes to the guide in the meantime (plus doing conversions to the Savage Worlds system for a role-playing setting down the road).

I've had a peek at Star Charts and can say it is all I hoped it would be, I'll definitely be buying it the day it comes out.

And I'm addicted to campaign reports, so I hope you post yours too

-Emiricol

jygro wrote:I am about 2/3 of the way into creating a campaign that was based off information in both 'TLADIS' and 'aloft' (it's sad that they have simmered down for the time being). I am curious about the star chart book since you have been talking about it for a long time.

Yeah, trying to get both Jay's MAS book and Star Charts done have put a kink in my campaign playing. I had hoped to get a few more turns played today after taking a break from Star Charts development, but I didn't get to a stopping spot until 10 PM and don't think I will get in there now before I head to bed.

jygro wrote:If you want to post your info for "To boldy go...", you know I'll read it! :0

I will post up the diary once I have a few more turns done. I will also try to post an update here after each major round of play to keep people up to date on what's going on, and let some discussion build in case I introduce new rules or do something that gives anyone else some neat ideas for ways rules can be implemented or tweaked.

jygro wrote:PS. I am using the large empire that broke apart due to a lost of hyperspace as the basis for my campaign. I even created a new system generation level... Are you reading my thoughts?!?

Of course I am reading your thoughts! If you could only see through to this side of the screen... my orange robes look wonderful, and this silver bauble in my hand allows me to peel back your thoughts like layers of an onion. My only problem is when the Muton running the mouse bumps me and makes me drop it. I hate it when that happens. Oh, there, you see, he did it again! Chryssalid, go get me another mind probe!

Emiricol wrote:I've had a peek at Star Charts and can say it is all I hoped it would be, I'll definitely be buying it the day it comes out.

It has taken two years to get the product to the point that I think, a few tweaks and layout issues aside, it is ready to go. I just have to finish writing some new elements into play, do an edit, and then get 250 star systems generated (oi) and four star maps (double oi).

I am getting there, and I think another weekend of work (and some help from some friends!) I should be able to get it ready to go. I need to get Mercenary Air Squadron's layout done in the interim, too, but small steps... small steps.

And it's coming along nicely, too! I think everyone will be more than pleased with the outcome.

For those that have been waiting for a small tidbit about this campaign, I have posted a copy of the campaign diary and map up to the following address:

http://www.epsiloneridani.com/TBG

The address doesn't work with the url tags here in PHPBB because of the spaces, but you can just copy and paste to grab the PDF. Most of the document is still very rough, but I tried to clean some aspects of it up a bit as I played a few turns.

As for current status, the United Earth Coalition continues to explore and is now to the point of using its large point pool reserve (100+ EP) to begin financing colonization expeditions to Zeus and Cardiff to put a UEC presence in those systems. Also, the UEC is now building a prototype heavy cruiser to integrate some of the new system advances that they have earned the last few years.

Meanwhile, the Yinchorr have reached INT-1, developing the Hyperdrive, and are now building their first FTL starship.

Really cool. I like what you are doing with FTL travel to, though I bet it is a challenge to get it balanced.

The Yinchorr clearly have delusions of grandeur calling themselves an Empire

-Emiricol

Emiricol wrote:Really cool. I like what you are doing with FTL travel to, though I bet it is a challenge to get it balanced.

I thought it would be another interesting aspect of play to try out and see just how well it works out. As discussed in the document, we end up with:

FTL (Warp): +2 Cost, +-1 Scenario Length, only FTL-capable ships can traverse jump lanes.

FTL (Hyperdrive): +1 Cost, only FTL-capable ships can traverse jump lanes.

FTL (Jump Engine): +3 Cost, squadrons are FTL capable so long as one ship has a FTL drive, non-FTL units can cross jump lanes if the lanes are of normal quality or higher.

Emiricol wrote:The Yinchorr clearly have delusions of grandeur calling themselves an Empire

What? Their four Vetar attack ships and cadre of fighter flights doesn't make them a major military power? The UEC is being incredibly cautious in dealing with them, and the development of the Asia is largely in response to the Yinchorri. I figured that putting one Asia Heavy Cruiser in Damocles to back up the ships already on station should make that jump nexus impervious to Yinchorri attack.

Very interesting campaign so far. I'm curious how the different warp engines are going to work. I'm also going to follow your idea on the personnel points since I think it looks cool (How do you figure how many PPs a ship needs and what happens if you don't have enough).

By the way, are you figuring out shipyards and the like per normal rules? I must be missing something, but I didn't quite understand the issue with the Asia class HC. I guess if you have only have 3 shipyards and a Productivity of 7 it would give you a value of 21. I might have just figured this out myself... (yeah me)

-Bren

jygro wrote:Very interesting campaign so far. I'm curious how the different warp engines are going to work. I'm also going to follow your idea on the personnel points since I think it looks cool (How do you figure how many PPs a ship needs and what happens if you don't have enough).

I have my ship design spreadsheet that gives me crew numbers for the ships, then I divide that by 100 and round naturally. For example, the Asia class heavy cruiser has 759 crew, which gives it a personnel cost of 8. When the ship first launches it will be a Green unit that will need to receive some shakedown (and personnel points) to get it up to Regular. Now, IIRC, when its built I could allocate the 24 personnel points to get it up to snuff, but that would be cutting things close, because Terra Nova can only provide 25 personnel points per turn, and they don't carry over (unless I want to finance a reserve officer corps, which would let me carry them over, but then I would have to pay maintenance on them).

I was just trying to find a way to make the personnel point rules more relevant in both a peacetime and wartime environment using the same rules. The amount of crew available does jump during Gear Up and Wartime (1.5x and 2x, respectively) to help represent increased mobilization.

jygro wrote:By the way, are you figuring out shipyards and the like per normal rules? I must be missing something, but I didn't quite understand the issue with the Asia class HC. I guess if you have only have 3 shipyards and a Productivity of 7 it would give you a value of 21. I might have just figured this out myself... (yeah me)

I am using a variant shipyard rule inspired from conversations in the old days with Dan Waugh about how the traditional shipyard doesn't scale well in all cases. The shipyards in this campaign are equivalent to 1/10 of the old ones. Each shipyard built provides 1 dock space and an amount of construction capacity equal to 1/10 the planet's output (rounding up).

Terra Nova currently has 5 shipyards, giving the colony 5 dock spaces and 21 construction capacity. Michele Arrington then bumps this up to 24 with her Taskmaster trait.

I am trying to limit the maximum size/cost of ships in this campaign to available capacity, even though the standard VBAM rules allow for one ship to be built even if it exceeds the planet's construction capacity. I am trying to think of some other optional rules that would help balance this fact.

One option I have is to add 1 turn of construction time on to a unit for every 2 EP of cost (round up) it exceeds the yard's available construction capacity. This would allow a ship to be build anywhere, but would drastically increase construction times. In that case, if the 22 EP prototype Asia CA was built at a planet with a total construction capacity of 10, it would take 11 + 6 = 17 turns to build, ~50% more because of the lack of available construction capacity.

I love the images you dug up for the ships. The Starfleet Museum site?

Charles Lewis wrote:I love the images you dug up for the ships. The Starfleet Museum site?

Yeah, I have been stealing images from the Starfleet Museum and using them for the Coalition

I am tempted to switch back to a hybrid Starmada X tech system now that I have found that, while my ship design spreadsheet worked great for TLADIS, it isn't working very well for ships with a lot of special equipment (yes, Star Trek ships, I am looking at you!). Sigh.

I will have to decide if I want to do that or try something else. If I do go back to SX, I am probably going to heavily modify the system for ship design... not that there's anything wrong with that. If I do that, I'll probably modify the underlying formulas to expand tech from TL -6 to TL +6 and add some more special equipment to do more VBAM-y things.

-Tyrel