Re: Jon's latest ideas

Well, now I've read what you guys have to say, and I'm leaning more
towards 
heavy houserules all the time.

Essentially, I agree with a lot of the comments, but I think Jon is
going to 
have to clearly set a tone in the rules that comes from the reading of
the 
rulebook, not from the rules themselves.  I think he should make clear
that 
generic FT might, for example, have fighters that move after orders and 
before ships, but that players who play in a different universe can try
i) 
moving fighters last ii) writing orders for fighters as if they were
thrust 
12 ships before others move or iii) after.  Similarly, there needs to be
a 
generic FT universe ruling on arc restrictions, aft firing weapons,
etc., 
but a good list of alternative rules, too.  Too many people play FT/B5
or 
FT/ST or FT/SW or FT/BG for any rule to stick hard and fast, and Jon
just 
might succeed in making the game all the more accessible by
acknowledging 
that many variant rules exist and citing enough examples to get
imaginations 
going for the many players who just don't do enough thinking.

4 even arcs, 4 uneven arcs, 6 even arcs, 8 or 12 possible arcs.  I think

these are all playable/doable.
4% MASS per thrust for one nation and 5% for another is likely not very
doable.
If there's an easy way to break thrust purchases down, I'd like to see
maybe 
5% for 1 Thrust (acc/deceleration) and an additional 5% to allow 2
points of 
that thrust to be usable to turn.  That means a Thrust 8 ship that can
put 4 
into a turn spent 50% of its MASS on drives.  High thrust Kra'vak begin
to 
have prohibitive engine costs, so maybe they need a discount or less
thrust 
freedom than they currently enjoy.
The recommendations for having to allocate crew quarters seems
unnecessary; 
say each system's MASS includes sufficient crew.  Extra DCPs might cost 
MASS, or just represent higher quality crew.
I too expect to see some ships that are just an engine, a cloak, and a 
weapon.  Once you do that, though, it's a very small, vulnerable ship,
one 
hopes.
Oh, and Jon, maybe some of the many variant cloaking rules floating
around 
should be in FT3.  Seriously, if FT3 is going to suggest possible rules 
variants for the universe being represented, a lot of good stuff is on
the 
net.  If there's several variants of it, it's probably an SF staple that

should be in there as an option, like the mecha rules in DSII that make
them 
available if not generally the most efficient tool for the job.

That's all for now,
Tom