Re: [DS] Why play DS?

On Mon, 7 Dec 1998 JDoch226@aol.com wrote:

> I'm a big fan of FT and SG, but every time I try to read DS I long for
the
> elegant simplicity of FT and SG.  In contrast DS just seems too
cumbersome and
> detailed.  Now I haven't actually played DS yet, and it doesn't seem
like Jon
> can write a bad set of rules, so my question is, what am I missing? 
Do the
> rules actually play clean and fast, despite appearances?  Are there
any
> sizable chunks of the rules that could be ignored easily (like ECW)?
> Jed Docherty 
> 

I'm a frequent DS2 player and occasional SG2 player (no FT yet) and find
that they're similar in speed of play. I also don't have a problem with
the chit system - I know people moan about it but it's no slower than
SG2's buckets-of-opposed-die-rolls system. 

Far from ignoring rules, we've added a few house rules to cover what we
see as holes/oversights in the original ruleset; check the URL in my
.sig
for those.

As for ignoring ECM, I don't see how you can, unless you also ignore GMS
systems. Unlike the fullblown Electronic Warfare systems of SG2, DS's
ECM
is solely an anti-missle system...get rid of the missles, and you can
get
rid of the ECM. Otherwise, your GMSs are going to eat tanks for
lunch...

Most of the other 'special' rules are things that happen once or not at
all in most games - orbital drops, nukes, that sort of thing. 

Another post to this thread mentioned that the various aspects (direct
fire, artillery, aerospace, etc) of DS2 seemed 'tacked together', not
working from a single system. Given the widely varying modes of attack &
operation of these various systems, I'd be surprised if you _could_ come
up with a single, simple & realistic mechanism for dealing with them all
well.

SG2 actually goes into far more detail on nearly everything than DS2
attempts. There's also a large overlap of concepts and systems. If
you're
already an SG2 player, DS2 is fairly easy to pick up - I certainly found
the reverse to be true after buying SG2, having played DS2 for a
while.

My $0.02,

Brian (burger00@camosun.bc.ca)
- http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nebula/9774/games.html -DS2/SG2/misc-