Re: Idle Langston thoughts (was RE: Idle Full Trek thoughts)

In message <11.1a18a33a.2cb6476a@aol.com>
	  ShldWulf@aol.com wrote:

> Beth:
> >While on the topic of idle thoughts has anyone ever done up Langston
field 
> rules for
> >FT*, ok the Motie books don't detail too many spectacular space
battles but 
> I can
> >always play what if ;)
> 
> I've always been 'enamoured' with the idea of using some modification
of the 
> old BattleTech heat chart to do a Langston field. Threshold points on
the 
> chart would result in internal damage, localized burn throughs,
hot-spots, and 
> (finally) make the roll of have the field collapse and your ship take
all the 
> remaining damage.
> 
> Never got around to figureing a good way to play the 'energy bleed' 
> (heat-sinks) but I still love the idea :o)
> 
> Randy
>
A similar idea I had for these a while back (bear in mind that I have
only read "A Mote in God's Eye" and "The Moat around Muchinson's Eye"
of this series, and so may be missing some of the subtleties):

As a ship without a functioning Langston field is pretty much dead, so
I decided to treat the majority of the ships hull boxes as representing
the shield capacity, crew fatalities and threshold checks represent the
effect of localised burn-throughs.

For CoDominion ships, I decided the standard design would be equivalent
to a standard Full Thrust ship with 4 rows of hull, and 1 row of armour
with the same number of boxes as the first row of hull. Only the last
row of hull actually represents the ships hull.

Motie 'Expanding' Ships could have the equivalent of Phalon Shell
Armour with each row of armour of the same length. This represents the
effect that the shield can absorb more energy and that burn-throughs
are less effective. They also have the effects of screen generators.

It has the advantage of not requiring new rules, and simplicity :)

As a digression, I considered either:
Treat _all_ human ships as civilian hulls for CF determinination &
treat _all_ motie ships as military,

or: treat human ships as civilian/military by role,
give motie's _lots_ more CFs.

Charles