Re: Buck Rogers and FT

First, allow me the pleasure of reveling in returning to the list. Been
way
too long.

The first few seemed timed too well to be coincidence; I'm trying to
work
up a campaign using the map myself! Of course, I can't refrain from some
comments!

Here I go interjecting myself in a thread I haven't had a chance to
follow;
hope I don't cover anything already done.
;->=

jheck@East.Sun.COM on 09/24/97 02:42:14 PM

Please respond to FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk

To:   FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
cc:    (bcc: Doug Evans/CSN/UNEBR)
Subject:  Buck Rogers and FT

campbelr@pop3.kunsan.af.mil writes:
@:)  Joachim Heck - SunSoft <jheck@East.Sun.COM> wrote:
@:) > It's probably hard to find now but you should be able to get it
@:) > cheaply if you do find it.
@:)
@:) Hard to find? I haven't seen a copy since Florida, (over a year
@:) ago) and the shop I saw it in, said "..since it's a (quote)
@:) classic (un-quote) game, and no longer in print. We couldn't part
@:) with it for less than 35 dollers" (Ten more than I paid for my
@:) original, when it was brand new!) So I'm still looking, maybe I'll
@:) get lucky in Utah.
-  !  Mine cost me $10 in 1989.  I wasn't even interested much in
-gaming at the time, and I only bought it because it was cheap and had
-such a neat map.  I got mine at Toys R Us in their clearance section.

My first copy cost me $7 at a local K-Mart. The memory of piles of the
boxes and me only getting one copy has me shaking my head to this day;
I'm
pretty certain it was well before '89, but don't know for certain.

On newsgroup auctions, it tends to get at least $20-25US, which is what
I'll be putting my unpunched copy at minimum when I get around to
selling
it someday. I've been very lucky to find other copies in thrift stores.
;->=

One thing that bothered me about the map was that the ship/fleet
movement
was between nodes with no other considerations. I've decided each line
'tween orbits will be one-way. Gets complicated to explain, but I think
it
more appropriately mirrors orbital mechanics(not that I'm doing that
well
remembering high school physics). Moving between orbits, you'd boost to
get
to the next, retro to drop to the lower, but tend to maintain the same
direction. The details of when movement of ships and movement of planets
happen is still sketchy in me head, though.
@:) I aalwaays considered the "Fighters" in the game to be more like
@:) an Escort ship, (Frigate or Destroyer. Face it, ain't no "one man
@:) fighter" going to cross interplanetary distances by it's
@:) lonesome:)
-  I bet there's more info on this in the Buck Rogers RPG, which was
-part of the same license as the Battle for the XXVth Century game
-we're talking about.  There were some video games as well, which
-seemed to assume that the minumum rocketship size was maybe
-corvette-like.  It was a rocket with room for something like 20-30
-people, IIRC.
Well, as far as the ship models go, the RPG you need to look at was
T$R's
Star Frontiers. However, the game's(BR's) combat was rather vague,
everybody fighting everybody without much difference between ships and
groppos.

Personally, I think the fighters, at least in my copies, look more like
corporate jets. Span the solar system in a LearJet... However, I don't
recall this one from Star Frontiers...

@:) and the "Battler" to be a Capital class ship.
-  Weren't there three types of ship?  Fighters, Cruisers and Battlers?
-Well, I don't know but we used the Battlers to represent capital ships
-and had some other way of distinguishing between escorts and
-cruisers.  The game is out of my closet at the moment so I can check
-when I get home.

Fighters, battlers, transports. The battlers, to my dim recollection,
were
rather like Star Frontier's Sather's smallest ship. I have some lead
minis
from that game, and all the Sather's ships were of bigger ships.

>From the previous post:

@(Anybody else notice that there were a couple of extra ship type models
in
the
@photo	on the back that were no in the game? Or was mine just missing
@something?)

I think you'd find that there were DIFFERENT ships in the pic on the
back
of the box; box art often precedes finalization on production detail. I
was
disappointed that those long ones weren't in the game in place of the
ugly,
squat transports. In Star Frontiers, those were privateers. There ARE
some
lead figs of those.
@:) Heck if I find a copy, there's a fleet or three in there, once I
@:) paint em.
-  There are six (small) fleets if you don't paint them.  One each for
-Buck, Wilma, Queen whatever, Doc Huer, The Bad Guy and Black Barney,
-space pirate (no he's not a dinosaur).

Ardala(Princess in the TV show), Doc Huer(NOT the sweet guy from the
show),
Killer Kane. In T$R's BR comic books, Black Barney was a super-gennie
with
limited life like the androids in Blade Runner. I never did look that
closely at the RPG.

Do remember that those lil plastic ships were probably molded with a
silicon resist, the stuff that lets the pieces slip out of the mold,
should
you decide to paint them. Clean 'em with strong detergent/degreaser. In
the
US, I hear Pine Sol's excellent.

And I WOULD paint 'em. Those pastel colors, particularly the green, are
sick!
@:) Joachim: What was the turn time? (A "month" terran, I believe in
@:) the oriiginal, was yours the same?)
-  I've been looking for our rules, to refresh my memory and see
-whether we ever specified it.	I think we were assuming a month or
-so.  It was all deliberately left pretty vague, though.
-joachim

If that was WAY more than you could possibly want to know, please mail
me
direct. Obviously, I do tend to go on...

The_Beast