Re: [OT] Starship vs FT

>Laserlight wrote:
>> All hands--when there's a new person on the list (and I can think
>> of other recent examples besides Brad) perhaps it would be as
>> well to give a little introduction as to our expertise?  

OK, here's mine:

Playtester for FB1 and FB2. Like every other playtester, was involved in
making
a small subset of the rules, which Jon Tuffley then refined, winnowed
out, greatly
expanded and published (ie we do a few concepts, he does the real
work...)

Professionally, I've been Chief Architect for some state-of-the-art
Naval Combat
Systems, TEWA (Threat Evaluation and Weapon Assignment), GA-AI ( Genetic
Algorithm
generation of Artificial Intelligence) systems for missile defence, and
so on.
Unless a real mathematician is present, I'll usually do for exterior
ballistics,
finite element modelling, monte carlo analysis etc.

My interest in game mechanics is trying to get the best simulation (or
at least
"plausible model") with the simplest method. For example, the Planetary
Invasion
system in "Imperium" is a minor classic, it give the "feel" of drop
troops and
strategic combat with a minimum of effort. So it's DBA and DBM for me
rather
than 7th edition, and Epic40k rather than Space Marine. And definitely
FT rather
than SFB! This is why I'm both sceptical of Starship!'s ability to do
what it
promises (due to the fact that it's much harder than most people would
think),
but very enthusiastic that such an ambitious task has been attempted. If
it
is only half as good as it appears it could be, it's worth the money and
more
besides. Kudos to the author anyway.