Re: [FT]Star Trek rules?

--- Richard and Emily Bell <rlbell@sympatico.ca>
wrote:
...
> I would actually recommend FASA's Star Trek Starship
> Combat Simulator, or Lou Zocchi's
> StarFleet Battle Manual.  StarFleet Battles is an
> acquired taste, and overly
> complicated.
> 

I like them both, especially the FASA game.
SFB is VERY complex and is not so much a game 
as a way of life. 

> If you must use FT, you must make some changes to
> reflect the Trek atmosphere.
> One change is that no ship has all of the power that
> it needs to everything that it
> wants to do, at any given time. 

This is true in FASA, not true in the Last unicorn
RPG and not really that true in SFB. Certainly
it is NOT true in Lou Zochhi's game. There have been
so many variations on the theme, that whether you
feel the need to do energy allocation (Savasku
rules) is up to you. I don't think you have to.

> The other change is
> that shields stop damage. 

In the show, shields seem to be highly variable
in effectiveness, but seem to stop any potential
damage at least for a while. SFB works like FT
armor that works against any damage. FASA works
like a small amount of regenerating armor, but 
lets damage through on a regular basis. There
is a weapon/defense archive which has some
shields that look good for Star Trek.

Frankly, as long as the Kra'vak are excluded
(not in the ST universe), screens, in combination
with a little armor aren't bad as Star Trek shields.
Pulse torpedoes get a little damage through, but
that's not that inconsistent with what we see 
on screen.

It all depends on whether you want to get complicated
or not. Beams (3's usually), pulse torpedoes (for
photon torpedoes) and possibly gravitic movement
would work pretty well. There's a decent set of
rules for disruptors on line, or again you can just
use pulse torpedoes again. For romulans, SOME kind
of different weapon should be used. The simplest I
thought of (but haven't playtested) is "banked" 
pulse torpedoes. A type 2 plasma would be two
pulse torpedoes banked together with one to hit roll.

Anyway, good luck and let us know how it goes.

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