FT Campaign

I forgot to mention something about the campaign rules we've developed.
I tried to design a simple ruleset that forces certain scenarios to
occur
during normal play.  These include, attacking merchant convoys, assaults
on starbases with pre-placed minefields, attacks on mining outposts, and
combat in various space 'terrain' (nebula, dust, small and large
asteroid
fields, planets, etc).	With a judge we're also going to use spying
rules
and pirates.

I've written a computer program that generates a 35 x 25 square grid and
populates it with different types of starsystems, nebula, warp points
and
black space.  The map is displayed graphically to the screen and is 
colorcoded.  The program also shows the warp lines and the player's home
systems.  The judge just needs to tap the space bar for a new randomly
generated starmap until he sees one he likes.  Then he can save the data
to disk.  

Just so you know, the starting FTL drive for each race can only move one

square at a time.  Warp points go farther.  Hopefully that'll give you
an idea
of how large of a map we're using.  I'm also trying to scale the economy
such that the number of ships are manageable.  Maybe 20-30 military
ships
and 10-20 merchant.  That way, people will be reluctant to fight to the
death.	Also, players can steal ships, cargo and technology from each
other
if they can capture vessels instead of destroying them.  Might make 
boarding actions a little more common.	Outposts can reload expendables
like
scatterguns, sub-munitions, mines and missles.	Fleet repair docks can
repair damaged starships but the docks are defensless.	Better defend
them
with monitors or other ships...  I think you get the idea.

We're going to start the beta-test of the campaign rules in a week.  The
rest of the computer program isn't done yet so we're still going to need
to use graph paper to keep track of everything.  Eventually the program
will
handle everything (except the tactical stuff, of course.)  I'll post
things
here occasionally about the campaign (like bugs in the rules).	When
we're
happy with the rules I'll see what I can do about making both the
program
and the campaign rules available for all of you out there.

Pete