[FT] Henti was Re: [FT] Command FireCon (long)

G'day Schoon,

 >So just for clarification...
 >Slave everything, if the CFC goes, you loose it all!

Sounds cool.

 >Cool. Not quite what I'm looking for here, but I do like the idea.
 >What were you developing it for? I'd like to see the rest.

Basically its a bit of a lost colony kind of thing. In a nut shell:

There's the Henti Hayaxa ("we are companions" in ancient Persian). These

guys are the descendants of a UN sponsored colonisation mission that
went 
badly wrong - everyone on Earth thought they had died in an explosion,
but 
these guys had actually been sent 300 yrs into the past and parsecs away

(this was inspired by somebody's lost USAians idea, sorry I've forgotten

who that was). They didn't end up exiting the jump as one group but got 
smeared across a few systems (some ships in quite a literal sense) and
by 
the time they run back into the human sphere of influence (conveniently
in 
the middle of the Xeno war) they've developed some quite strong and
unusual 
cultures, created an alliance and system of government to federate them,

had wars with themselves and 4 alien species and generally been around.
The 
aliens include the 2ft tall teddy bear like Horocca (based on the Hoka)
who 
are all for peace love and understanding (just don't get them annoyed);
the 
rather aggressive (amongst other things) Shlandarsh, which are 8ft long 
aquatic repitiles; the arthropoid Glacdu who are probably best described
as 
a cross between an insect and a starfish, they use changes in skin
colour 
to comunicate; lastly there's the Narpo, they have a true hive mind
which 
requires a critical mass to operate (separate one out for too long and
its 
as dumb as a well educated door post), there culture is exceedingly
complex 
as it follows a strict caste system based on an individuals current sex 
(there's four) and life stage (only two of those).

The extra tech used (I don't claim these are balanced, as I haven't had
the 
time and because they don't need to be for the storyline) includes:

Henti: It took them a while to get over the setback of crashing into 
somewhere so completely foreign so they've only just made it back to an 
equal footing with the rest of humanity (i.e. no new tech, though they
tend 
to mix weaponary more and go for wings similar to light horse, shield
walls 
etc of ancient battlefields)

Horocca: These guys use massive FTL spines to transport whole fleets
around.

They have no screens or amour, but they do have directional shields.
These 
cost 1% mass of the hull per arc they cover (the arcs match the fire
arcs). 
They reduce 6s to 1 hit (re-roll unaffected), they do not effect 4s.

To try and reflect their small size they get twice the number of hull
boxes 
for the same cost/mass, but their ship size bands are only half as big. 
They also get 12 fighters per group, but their fighters only do one hit
on 
a 5 or 6. They only have 3 fighter classes (standard at cost 24, attack
at 
cost 30, and interceptor at cost 24) and all have the speed of human
fast 
fighters (36" normal move and 18" secondary move).

They have the same main thrust rules, but in addition they have "solar 
sails"	(probably a very poor choice of name as Laserlight has pointed
out 
to me before) which add extra thrust. If you have partial sails (mass=5%
of 
the hull mass, cost=2xmass) then you get 2 extra thrust and with full
sails 
(mass=10% of the hull mass, cost=2xmass) then you get 4 extra thrust.

Their beams are EFSBish and have a central charge storage site (mass = 
(#dice it holds)/2, cost = (capacitor #) x mass  so for the first
capacitor 
on the ship its 1xmass, for the second 2x and so on up to a maximum of 4

capacitors on any one ship) which feeds into the different beam heads.
Each 
beam head may only connect to one capacitor. The class of the beam is
how 
many dice it rolls at 0-6", for each 6" after that it loses one dice
until 
all dice have been exhausted. Thus a class 1 would only have a range of 
0-6", whereas a class 6 (the biggest class) would have a range of 36" 
(starting with 6 dice at 0-6" and ending up with 1 die at 30-36"). All
the 
beams hit on a 5 or 6 with 6 being 2 hits and a re-roll. They are not 
effected by class 1 screens, but a class 2 screen does see a hit on a 6 
only inflict one point of damage. The class 6 has only 1 arc, the class
5 
has 2 arcs, the class 4 has 3 and the class 3 has 4 and only these 4 
classes may target ships. The class 1 and 2 have all 6 arcs (i.e. 360 
degrees of fire) and may hit either fighters, missiles or ships with the

same chance to hit (i.e. 5 or 6 etc.). One functioning fire control is 
required per target.

Their mines have two forms (inspired by narn energy mines in EFSB). The 
first are single large mines. These are placed during the missile fire 
phase (i.e. before ship movement), to do this one mine per launcher is 
fired out up to 24" and then they sit at that position for 3 turns. 
Anything which gets within 3" during that period causes the mine to go 
off  they have a 3" blast radius. Any ship touching that blast takes 1D6

damage and any ship with more than half of its hull within the blast
takes 
2D6 damage. If the mines are not activated by the completion of the
third 
turn then they are simply removed. The second form is a net  3 small
mines 
in a triangle formation, with each side of the triangle being 2" long.
You 
also place these during the missile fire phase. They have the same
3-turn 
life expectancy as the single large mines, but they only have launch
range 
of 18". As with the large mines anything which comes within 3" of one of

the 3 smaller mines sets that mine off and they inflict 1 D6 damage 
(regardless of how much of the ship ends up within the 3" blast radius).

However, the explosion also sets off the other 2 mines in the group and 
anything within their blasts also take 1D6 damage - so if a ship is
touched 
by more than one blast it takes damage from each blast. One functioning 
fire control is needed during mine launch regardless of the number of
mines 
or types being launched. The launcher and loads (2 mines per load) are 
bought separately. The launcher costs 2 mass, 10 points, normal mine
loads 
cost 1 mass, 6 points and nets cost 2 mass, 8 points.

Shlandarsh: They do not have fighters, but they do employ a lot of STL 
(sublight) ships (carried in specially built hangers on baord their
mammoth 
ships). They rely almost solely on cloaking and reflex fields for self 
preservation. They have little use of conventional weapons (though their

smaller ships do use railguns and submunition packs), their larger ships

all carry wave guns with the exception of their SDN which has a nova 
cannon. Apart from this they are only armed with PDS. <This is a
shockingly 
difficult race to play... though lost of fun!>

Glacdu: Being a radially symmetrical species their ship design follow
suit. 
Their propulsion systems take up 10% of the mass per thrust rating, but 
this allows them the equivalent of a main drive in all directions. They 
also use a fuel which produces a more inert plasma, tactically this
means 
they may fire through an arc in which the engine has just performed a
main 
drive, but can only do so at one target in that arc (regardless of the 
number of fire controls the ship has).

They do not possess shields or screens of any form, though they do
employ 
armour quite extensively. They only have 2 fighter classes (standard and

interceptor, both at cost 24) and they act as if have a class 2 human 
screen	in actuality they are very heavily armoured. There are 3
fighters 
per group (unlike the humans who have six), but they are more resilient
due 
to their armour a PDS roll only does 1 hit + a re-roll and a 4 is no
hit. 
Some of the elite fighters also have an endurance of 9... but these are
few 
and far between and only given to the best of the best.

The ships encountered so far seem to be built around the philosophy of a

huge number of class ones, a sturdy hull and a lot of armour (allowing 
prolonged short range combat) with a single 6 arc beam of higher calibre

and some missiles or submunition packs for added firepower. They have
also 
developed what can only be termed a class 5 beam in human terminology. 
These mammoth beam weapons take up 16 mass with one arc and 4 mass for 
every extra arc (though the Glacdu only ever seem to build them with the

full 6 arcs in keeping with their design philosophy). Due to the
enormous 
energy they put out they can overheat if a 1 is rolled on a firing roll 
then you immediately do a threshold check on that weapon as if the
current 
hull row (i.e. one which is currently being marked off in the damage
taken 
process) had been filled.

Narpo: Their ships possess extendable boarding arms (actually I haven't 
figured out what these really are, whether they tunnels of energy pods
move 
down or what) which fire out as if a weapon and attaches to the target
ship 
on a 3+ at 0-12", 4+ at 12-24" and on a 5+ at 24-36". In every movement 
phase after attachment movement is plotted and carried out as normal,
but 
if the two ships end up more than 36" apart then a D6 is rolled and on a
3+ 
the target ship is pulled back to 36" (adjusting its speed/vector 
accordingly), however there is a -1 to the roll for every 6" beyond 36" 
that the two ships end up apart. If the firing ship is still alive and 
attached during the fire phases (beginning with the turn after the
initial 
attachment) then a boarding action may be attempted. The arms are 4 mass

and cost 3xmass. If an arm holding a ship is going to let go it must be 
announced/done at the beginning of the turn (before missile/fighter 
movement) and can not be fired again until the next turn.

The Narpo do use screens, missiles and beams (so far only class 3 or
below 
have been reported) and these do not function any differently to human 
ones. They have only 2 fighter types (which seem to fly in pairs, 
consisting of one of each type) and these are the equivalent of human 
interceptor and attack fighters.

Their ships can also display an unusual sensor array that allows them to

lend out FC to neighbouring ships (this appears to have been an
incidental 
technology accruing from their need to get around the problems of long 
range communication). The array is 2 mass and costs 5xmass and allows
the 
ship to lend its FC to anyone ship (per functioning array) within 6". 
Obviously the ship itself can not then use those FC to fire its own
weapons.

No ships smaller than a FF have been sighted and it's theorised that
these 
smaller vessels do not exist in the Narpo fleet as they don't constitute
a 
large enough colony to function efficiently in the long term. This 
initially caused a storm of controversy as they have been observed to
use 
carriers in much the same way as humans. It is now thought that the
theory 
is a valid one as the restricted task list and short term nature of
fighter 
missions would not be a problem whereas long term small ship missions
would 
be if some critical density is required for complex task completion.

Cheers

Beth

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Elizabeth Fulton
c/o CSIRO Division of Marine Research
GPO Box 1538
HOBART
TASMANIA 7001
AUSTRALIA
Phone (03) 6232 5018 International +61 3 6232 5018
Fax 03 6232 5053 International +61 3 6232 5053