Re: OFF-TOPIC mini review B5 Wars

>CONS
[...]
>
>4) The Earthforce ships have "interceptors", which are CIWS designed to

>intercept incoming fire.  To their credit, AoG change it so that the 
>interceptors can no longer intercept incoming laser fire.  However,
they have 
>added the idea that the interceptors somehow generate a forcefield that

>degrades laser fire.  Yuck.

This actually comes from the B5 producers, JMS and George Johnsen. I
have
George's post/email around somewhere tucked away about this. It seems
that
there are 2 'levels' to the interceptor stuff: the passive,
energy-dampening
'net' (eg, your forcefield above) and the active stuff we see going to
town
in various episodes. I (and I think at least one other, maybe Mark S?)
asked
George directly about this during the playtest period and he confirmed
it for
us. Just fyi.

>5) The ship sheets are in the back of the book, perforated for removal.
 Why 
>do it this way?  Why not make the ship sheets a separate booklet, where
they 
>would be easy to photocopy (which they grant permission for), like GDW
did 
>with _Star Cruiser_, TFG does with _SFB_, etc.?  Players are left with
the 
>alternatives of defacing the rules or limiting the quality of the
copies that 
>can be made.

Their reasoning was so you wouldn't have to bend the binding of the main
rulesbook to photocopy the ships. I overheard them explaining this to
someone
who asked on saturday about it.

But I agree, your idea is a much better alternative.

>OVERALL ASSESSMENT
>This is a generic tactical space combat game with the name "Babylon 5"
slapped 
>on the front.	As such, there is little to recommend it *out of the
box* over 
>simply playing  _Renegade Legion:Leviathan_, _Silent Death_,
_Battlespace_ or 
>a host of other such games. Anyone wanting to play a B5 game would be
better 
>off playing _Full Thrust_ with one of the four or five B5 rulesets
floating 
>around the net ([http://www.uwm.edu/~cthulhu/FT/thrust.html] is a good
place 
>to start searching for them), or waiting a month and getting Chameleon 
>Eclectic's _Earthforce Sourcebook_, which, as we all know, includes Jon

>Tuffley's _Full Thrust_-derived system.  

And what little I saw, is looking good...  :-}

>This is not to say that I don't intend to purchase it.  While pretty
much 
>useless as is, I think that _B5W_ can be saved by scrapping the
movement 
>system and replacing it with a homegrown system.  A colleague and I are

>working on such a system, which I will put on my website as soon as
it's done, 
>and which we hope to run at NOVAGCon in August. 

Please at least let me know (kochte@stsci.edu) when you finish; I'd like
to
see what you come up with (I dont get a lot of time to ply the web so
likely
could miss out on stuff; has happened more often than not before).

Mk
------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
If the conquest of a great peak brings moments of exultation and bliss,
which in the monotonous, materialistic existence of modern times nothing
else can approach, it also presents great dangers.  It is not the goal
of
*grand alpinisme* to face peril, but it is one of the tests one must 
undergo to deserve the joy of rising for an instant above the state of 
crawling grubs.
				       -Lionel Terray, 1965