clarence

About naming armor, I came up with an idea: Multi-Primed Armor (Standard), Single-Primed, Duo-Primed, Tripple-Primed and Quad-Primed. This way it is very obvious how the system is working.

Well Mecha has particle (for particle beams-gets past thermal armor and does a bit more damage than a laser. Basically your blaster), Electric (ya got ion guns), Heat, Cold, (neither of which would be common on spaceships), Sound (shouldn't be any in space), and corrosion (nasty possibilities).

I get it to four or five types of damage (laser, particle/blaster, electric/ion, corrosion (will this work in space?), kinetic/missile/projectile) and a corresponding number of armors. Is that right?

And I have started adding Capital Ship scale to the rules, trying to keep it together under one heading so far, with some small adjustments here and there too.

You're welcome! I hope you find some use for it.

Ah, so Standard armor is the best, with downgrades possible if you need to cut costs or perhaps simulate low-tech armor. Yes, I think that will work. Maybe the term Standard is a bit misleading though - is there another convenient word for "protection from everything" (English is not my first language as you may have noticed, so I'm sure you can come up with something better than me…)?

You mention kinetic, laser and missile - any more types of damage needed?

Not to many. You got most of them covered. I might add one or two that you don't have, but that's about it.

Looking forward to seeing that!

Maybe not. My thought was:

Armor get's proofed or rated against certain types of damage, and protects at full value against that type. Standard armor can be that.

Armor that isn't rated against something only protects at half value against that type of attack, but costs less, say about 400 or 500 Cr. less per module per step for each category it isn't rated for.

Intriguing! Could you elaborate a little on this? I'm not sure I follow you all the way through here...

I also like the idea with up- and down-gradable weapons. Simplicity and complexity united. How many different types of weapons are you thinking about adding Atgxtg?

Capital Ship scale it is! And the x4 concept I think will work very smoothly, and solves one of the problems I have had with large ships. I will try to integrate it with the other design rules.

With armor, I'm afraid it will make the rules unnecessary complex, if certain weapons are better against certain types of armor. Naming different types of armor might be good though.

It seems to work out very well!

A thought though: Lots of different lasers you have there - will you have as many power levels for the other weapon types too? Won't that be too much?

With armor I went the simple route of not naming different types of armor, but only assigning a number to it. Would it benefit from a little more detailing à la BRP Mecha?

Yes, that seems to work fine! I was considering buying BRP Mecha when writing the first draft, but decided against it as I have some difficulties with giant combat robots… I will better get it now, I think.

Well, if you think it will be easier to make the rules work with 1:10, I'm ready to abandon the old scale.

The problems I had with scale was that I very early tied the number of Modules tightly to Hit Points and Size, to make the system as simple as possible. If you start changing damage made by weapons, that close link will not remain. And probably rightly so - a multiplier of some sort would make as much sense, and reduce the problems involved with scale. It will be slightly more complex, but I think that's ok. So, go ahead and try 1:10!

Please do! That part is a bit simplistic as it is now, and fleshing it out would be a welcome addition.

It looks very promising! Sometimes it's good to forget, I believe - and instead get some thinking done and take down a few notes to get the larger picture right.

I have dug up some old notes on alien species creation, and have slowly started to structure and improve on them - still a lot of work to be done though. It is quite difficult to devise a system for the unknown - either it gets very superficial or way too detailed. I hope to find a good balance eventually. One of the ideas I'm toying with is a kind of "weirdness scale", determined very early in the creation process. Further decisions can then be evaluated with this in mind - a long thin neck for example, could be very different if the weirdness scale is set to "Human-like" (thin and long neck compared to the average human) or to "Really strange…" (a giraffe's neck might be a better starting point to picture this).

I just uploaded BRP Starships 1.5 to the Downloads section here on BRP Central, to make it slightly easier to grab. It's in the Science Fiction folder.

@NathanIW: How is your hit location system developing? Any progress?

New version of BRP Starships uploaded to http://ge.tt/7ID2lsY1/v/0?c!

Changes in 1.5:

- New chapter on world building. I have been trying to find a way to make a world come alive with these simple rules, with some selected parameters to make the creative work easier for the GM.

- New modules for Engine and Maneuvering Thruster, and consequently a new way to calculate Speed and Handling. (Thanks to Atgxtg for inspiration!). Old rules included as a simpler option.

- New rules for upgrading engines, working better with the above changes.

- Slightly changed Starship Sheet to make room for more Modules.

- Layout re-flowed and re-bookmarked.

As always I appreciate all comments!

It's actually a quite neat system. A bit intimidating at first (it took me a while to get through the examples and their differences), but once I got it it's not that difficult. How important do you think it is where the different modules are placed? Do you just place them anywhere or does it require careful consideration to get best results? In a way it's a graphical representation of a deck plan, but avoiding the design aspects. Looking forward to seeing how it develops!

The hit location system sounds intriguing! In all the rules for starships I have seen, hit locations are difficult to manage, because of the wildly different layouts. Your ideas seem to get around that problem - maybe for the cost of being more time consuming to set up for a ship. But please keep us posted on your continued work! It's always interesting to see different approaches to these things. Have you seen the system in Gurps Spaceships? It seems like a good solution too, though requires a bit more rigidity when designing ships.

I have skimmed through the world building rules for Stars Without Number and, as you say, they seem quite good. I especially liked the Tagging rules, dealing directly with the problem of filling planets with interesting conflicts, people and locations.

My own world building rules are nearing final proof-reading. I hope to get some insightful comments on it here on the forum.

And looking forward to your take on the personal shields!

That's great to hear! Let me know how it develops.

The grid system for hit locations sounds interesting. Would you mind describing it a bit more? And combining it with more detailed rules for damaging specific systems seems like a good idea.

And about the word artillery: I used gunnery first, but I wanted to use the same skill name as in the main rulebook. I prefer gunnery though…

A write-up on a personal energy shield is essential to sci-fi! Could I maybe add it to the rules when you have finished it? I haven't added any equipment at all to the rules, because I find it exceptionally boring with those lists.

I have almost finished work on some simple rules for world building - it seems to add up to 10+ pages. Focus is not so much on astronomical details, but more on the societies' internal conflicts. Hopefully some fodder to make the creative parts of sci-fi world creation a little easier. I still remember the combined fascination and disappointment after reading Travellers' world creation rules for the first time in the mid-eighties. Lots of information, but not much help in creating a world that could actually be used in play.

Latest download on http://ge.tt/1tpFKDS1/v/0?c

Changes in 1.2:

New Module: Extra Sensors

New Module: Robot Arm

Bookmarked pdf

–30% Pilot skill for non-streamlined ships in atmospheres

List of useful occupations from BGB

Hit Points for NPC pilots on NPC Starship sheet

Plus some more details

I hope you'll enjoy those small additions! Next update will probably bring larger chunks of new material.

@Aramone: Good to hear! I will give it some more time then to see where it's leading.

@nerdvana: You didn't miss it - I just got held up on the finishing line by the engine module stuff. I can probably post it on ge.tt this weekend. Only some small changes in this update. I will post something here when it's available.

Atgxtg, here are some scribblings I made while testing your idea.

Engine Module & Thrust rating example:

Thrust Rating: Cutting edge 100/Module, Standard 70/Module, Economy 40/Module

Fighter (5 modules): 1 Engine Module. Thrust Rating 100. Speed 20 (100/5)

Cheap Fighter (5 modules): 1 Engine Module. Thrust Rating 40. Speed 8 (40/5)

Trader (30 modules): 1 Engine Module. Thrust Rating 100. Speed 3 (100/30)

Trader (30 Modules): 5 Engine Modules. Thrust Rating 5x100. Speed 17 (500/30)

Explorer (60 Modules): 1 Engine Module. Thrust Rating 100. Speed 2 (100/60)

Explorer (60 Modules): 5 Engine Modules. Thrust Rating 5x100. Speed 8 (500/60)

Interesting to see how a cheap/old/low tech ship can have a larger volume taken up by the engine.

I like it so far! How do you feel about this nerdvana? Would this work in your campaign?

Thank you for your comments!

I think I see your point Atgxtg, and I agree that one system is a cleaner setup. The problems I ran into with everything as modules (if I remember correctly - the rules has been slowly forming for quite some time), was that a small fast fighter would, to keep it simple, need 20 engine modules (equaling Speed 20 to keep it consistent with the other rules). And a large trader ship would also get Speed 20 if it got 20 engine modules. None of these alternatives are particularly good I think. And I guess that is what you mean with getting more complex calculations: Engine size and ship size should in this case be correlated in some way.

What I did was to remove the conflict between engine size and speed. Instead you pay for speed without knowing how big the engine is, but the engine gets more expensive the bigger and/or faster the ship is. And I figured that the engine would take up approximately the same percentage of ship volume for all ships, and in a way can be ignored because of that. Except for the game-critical value for speed. Hence it ended up as a stat, without a corresponding physical extension. Hyperspace and Handling went through the same reasoning.

You ask for some generic hulls. Would pre-rolled ships fill the same role?

And yes, the rules will fit some settings better and some not at all. Probably not so good with hard sf… I tried to hit the sweet spot between too abstract and and too technical, and that is probably the type of gaming style it fits.

Well, it actually started with everything as modules: Engine modules, FTL modules, Shields modules and so on. But after a while I felt that a few basic stats would be clarifying to separate from other functions, a bit like characteristics versus skills. Strength I guess could be a "skill" (a bit like they do it in Tri-Stat), but to me it seems reasonable to define some things as more fundamental. I might be wrong though and maybe just complicate things... Strangely enough, it ended up as a more streamlined system when I didn't work with everything as modules - not sure why though.

Looking forward to that!

Adding some small bits here and there for version 1.2...

Yes, it seems you have counted too many things as Modules. Only Modules are Modules : ). The other (Speed, Handling and so on) are Stats and do not count against Size or Hit Points. I hope that clear things up for you.

I would love hear how the rules fare in your BRP/Star Frontiers/Traveller game!

You're welcome Aramone! I'm happy if you find some use for it and it's good you ask about things not very clearly described.

The hit points for the example ship are taken from the number of Modules (31), plus I bought some additional (11) according to the rules on page 12. I'm not sure how you got it to over seventy modules? Could you elaborate on how you got that number? Have you included other things as well in the total Module value? I will double-check my calculations, but I think I got it right in the example.

@NathanIW: Sorry, I misunderstood you. I agree about the small phone screen problem though.

@Atgxtg: I will check Calibre out. Is it common to convert rpg pdf's like you describe? I don't think I have run into it so far (though I'm not buying that many pdf's either).

I'm sorry to hear it's not ideal for your e-reader NathanIW! I tested it on my iPad for readability (working fine in several apps) and didn't have access to any other reading devices (and, I admit, was actually too short sighted to even consider it). I don't think I will make that big changes to the layout, but I can send you the file in a different file format if that would help. Not sure though what format it should be - txt, html, rtf? Just let me know and I will try to solve it.