[GZG] Stepping out the airlock....

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se of you who know me understand my dedicated ground-pounder roots. I
prefer skirmish or squad based infantry and armour games to clashes of
ships
in space... but.... every once and a while, something space-y sucks me
in.
B5 was one such setting.

So, when I found a new setting of interest, I naturally assumed that
many
great minds of space ship design must have come up with ships and
systems to
mimic the genre I was after long before I arrived at this interest. And
yet,
the Weapons and Defense archive have many genres represented, but
surprisingly not the one I'm after despite the series having had more
than
200 episodes and two movies so far....

And thus, I throw out the questions:

What sorts of systems, rules and designs would be necessary to do
Stargate
universe ship combat justice?  (And of course, has anyone already
tried?)

Some initial crib notes:

SHIELDS seem to stop or partially stop:
Ori uber-beams (something like a B5 HBW or a Graser? Giant pulse Torp?
Nova
Canon?)
Asgard beams (Graser? big conventional beams?)
Human Railguns (K-1 or K-2 guns or K-1s with longer range or K-2s with
more
arcs and modes?)
Human Missiles (SMR, SML, subpack, ??)
Goa'uld energy weapons (Pulse torpedo? conventional beam?)
Wraith energy weapons (Pulse torpedo? conventional beam?)
I don't think shields do much to slow down the ancient drones (almost
think
these should appear like some sort of fighter squadrons....)

HULL: Some of the ships seem to have fairly sturdy designs (the Daedelus
particularly seems to take a lot of beating, losing systems
(thresholds?),
but still not blowing up generallly). I suspect this means average or
greater hulls, though the Hatak may have a weak hull. I suspect some of
the
ships must employ armour.

FIGHTERS: Seem to be in use by the Ori, the Humans, the Goa'uld and
Jaffa,
and the Wraith.

Dedicated PDS: Does not seem to exist. Shields seem to fulfill that roll
although railguns seem to be able to be configured in anti-missile and
anti-fighter roles as well as direct attack.

MISSILES: The humans make fairly extensive use of these. But are they
closer
to heavy missiles, some form of shorter ranged missile like a subpack or
something more like SMs?

THRUST/MANOUVERABILITY: Most of the ships (Ori, Goa'uld Hatak, Ancient,
Asgard) strike me as thrust 2-4 at best. The Human Daedelus might be
thrust
4 and the smaller vessels like the Al'kesh could be a bit higher - at
least
they are more nimble. The Traveller ships might be thrust 4 as might the
Wraith Hives. They seem more manouverable, though still by no means do
they
approximate jinking fighters....

CLOAK: Some smaller ships seem to have this technology.

CRITICAL SYSTEMS: We seem to have sensors, fire control, ring
generators,
asgard beam generators, presumably embarked stargates, and of course the
hyper drive and sublight drives. Much like star trek, these systems go
offline regularly and are fixed by the hard working technicians in the
nick
of time.

But beyond these basic notes, I haven't really got a good set of ideas
on
how to make a genre conversion of FT.

Note that I am not looking to create systems or ships that balance with
FT
ships pointwise. I'm looking to recreate the genre of the shows to get
battles that feel like the ones on the show.

Ships I'm looking to design/stat out:

Goa'uld: Hatak, Al'kesh, Death Glider, Cargo Ship
Asgard: Original ships and the later black ones
Ori: Their big monster invasion ships
Humans: X-303 (Prometheus), X-304 (Daedelus, Phoenix, Korolev, General
Hammond), F-302 (fighter)
Alteran/Atlantean/Ancient: Puddle Jumper (fighter?), Cruiser
Wraith: Hiveship, Dart (fighter)
Traveller: Traveller ship

So, having pulled the pin, I now lob the grenade. I'm quite surprised
there
was no genre notes on the W&D archive but I don't doubt there are some
FT
gurus out there who might have some thoughts on how to do the Stargate
genre
justice.

Any input greatfully accepted and appreciated.

Thomas B
Groundpounder out of his depth (except in boarding actions)

-- 
http://ante-aurorum-tenebrae.blogspot.com/
http://www.stargrunt.ca

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy
from
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will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine

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