Re: Buck Rogers and FT

  I got my hands on a copy of our rules and I've placed them on the
web.  If anyone wants to see them, they are at:

  http://sidehack.gweep.net/~joachim/fullthrust/BuckRogers/Rules.html

  There's some interesting stuff in there that I'd forgotten.  We used
the campaign to try out a fairly large number of rules modifications,
some of which worked and some of which didn't.	Some discussion
follows.

  Modified Pulse Torpedo rules:  I don't remember these having much of
an effect but the idea was to make pulse torps more useful.

  Modified battery rules: The theory here was to prevent the typical
"close to point-blank range and shoot" tactics that had characterized
our games until now.  We didn't allow A batteries to fire within six
inches, and that, with the crippled ships rules, helped to lessen the
carnage somewhat.  We also made C batteries more dangerous, which
convinced most of us to buy them (for the first time).

  Modified PDAF rules:	We didn't like missiles.  Better PDAF made
them somewhat less dangerous, but it also helped to prevent all of us
from buying only fighters, because we had very limited funds.

  Alternate firing sequence:  We allowed ships to fire halfway through
their movement.  This got us around some silly situations where a ship
turns its bow directly past an enemy but can't shoot because of timing
problems.  It also slowed the game down somewhat.

  Atmospheric operations:  These did have an effect on the game, and
it was nice to see the rules working.  On a few occaisions, ships
survived combat in the atmosphere only to die immediately afterwards
because their engines could no longer hold them up.  Cool.

  FTL:	I like the way we handled FTL.	We didn't have a lot of ships
with FTL drives, though, due to the severe cost restrictions we placed
on our fleets.	Near the end of the game they started to appear and
were mostly used as blocade running vessels, capable of attacking the
soft underbelly of a heavily defended planet by zipping past the
defenders in orbit at FTL speeds.

  Repair/Replenishment:  We devised a simple system for this and I
think it worked pretty well.  We probably didn't have enough ability
to repair larger fleets.

  Reinforcements:  Again, I think this rule worked well.  Players
could spend victory points (100 necessary to win the game) to get
reinforcements, at a cost of 1 victory point per 50 reinforcement
points (ship construction cost units).	I think this balanced out very
well and it allowed us to quickly start bringing in ships, since
holding one territory netted you 50 points worth of ships per turn.