Re: Campaign rules?

Chad Taylor writes:

@:) How about even more random.  Each turn you roll a d6 for each ship
@:) underconstruction and keep a running total.  You then base the
@:) total points needed to finish the ship on the size of the ship
@:) being constructed.

@:) Kind of like this-
@:) 
@:) 
@:) Use a d6 for:
@:)	-normal construction rate.
@:) 
@:) Use a d4 for:
@:)	-low priority construction, reduce cost by some amount.
@:)	-for first construction of a ship type.
@:) 
@:) Use a d8 for:
@:)	-high priority construction, increase cost by some amount.

@:) Number of points needed for an Escort:  25
@:)			       Cruiser: 45
@:)			       Capital: 75

  I like this but I don't see any reason to arbitrarily assign
required "construction points" to _types_ of ships.  Why not just have
it depend on the mass, or maybe even better on the cost of the ship?

  It should take an average of 7(.14) turns to roll up 25 points on a
single d6, 13 turns to roll up 45 points and about 21 turns to roll up
75 - so we're talking something like seven turns per class on
average.  To roll 100 _cost_ points (pretty near the maximum cost of
an escort) would take about 30 turns, so I would suggest rolling 5d6
per turn until your total has reached the cost of the ship you want to
build.	Increased (or decreased) production can now be handled simply
by varying the number of d6s to be used, thus relieving non-RPG people
like me of the task of procuring hundreds of expensive weirdo dice
(I'll just order my pink and beige d6 blocks from American Science &
Surplus, thank you).

  In sum:

  Roll <=3d6 per ship per turn for decreased construction speed.
  Roll 5d6 per ship per turn for normal construction speed.
  Roll >=6d6 per ship per turn for increased construction speed.

  When the total rolled equals or exceeds the cost of the ship, the
ship is completed.

  This system could be modified to work on the basis of mass, and that
might make things somewhat more tractable (note that a 700 point ship
will take about 40 turns to build with this system) but I don't know
if it'd be more realistic.  In any event, you can always change the
numbers around to suit your particular campaign.

-joachim