Alien Space/SFBM (was: Stardestroyer stats)

On Sat, 09 Mar 2002 10:46:58 -0500 Jon Davis <davisje@nycap.rr.com> 
wrote:

> Roger Burton West wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 09, 2002 at 09:40:47AM -0500, Richard and Emily Bell 
wrote:

>>> Evidently the fire control scanners had failed horribly, as fire 
was conducted by writing down the bearing of the shots, not the 
targets. The thread was pulled taut on that bearing, and if it passed 
over a silhouette, damage was scored. <<
 
>> Sounds like... was it "Alien Space"? It had one weapon for which 
one wrote down two bearings, four grads apart. If both passed over the 
same enemy ship, it was automatically destroyed. <<

> Alien Space...  What fond memories.
 
> The "Gapper Zapper" :-P Range was 36"

Range of _all_ the "Special Weapons" was 36", from memory, as opposed 
to 60" for beams; the player with the double-strength beam battery and 
no special weapons had an interesting time trying to keep out of SW 
range so that he could zap everyone else.

> Stalker Pods
> Javelin Torpedoes
> Tentacle beam
> among others.

Oh, yeah... The Nytron Cube/Lance, the infamous Magma Beam (not unlike 
an FT nova cannon), Proton torps (long before Star Wars gave them to 
fighters), Blazers... ah, nostalgia. I was a GZ ace in bygone days, and 
had quite a few kills with Javelin torps, too. Lotsa fun.

Made more so with the group I played with by our house rules (uprated 
weapons, hyperjumps, base stations) and the notorious typos in the 
copies of these rules that were distributed to players. I never saw an 
Electron Stalker Pod in use, but $Torcker Pods were a source of great 
hilarity, as was the Tenticlee Beam.

As for the fire control "problem", I've always thought that people who 
complain about that were missing the point! You got to crawl about on 
the floor (or I did; we ran our games in university common rooms and 
the like), carefully sighting your shots (especially with the GZ, where 
both beams had to hit or nothing happened), and the satisfaction was 
great when the shot hit, particularly when you managed to get _right_ 
on target so that the weapons damaged life support and sensors, which 
were located in a narrow mid-section region; ahead of that, weapons and 
defences were hit, behind it engines, etc. Of course, with a GZ, any 
hit was enough... <g>

Oh, and AS used degrees, not grads, and IIRC, the GZ beams were one 
degree either side of the nominal shot bearing. The SFBM introduced 
grads ("metric" angles, I presume).

Most people here know of the story of AS and the StarFleet Battle 
Manual, so I won't repeat it, except to curse yet again the 
non-appearance of the semi-promised AS minis. I really wanted a couple 
of sets of those ships...

Phil
----
"I think... I think I am! Therefore I am... I think?"
				       -- The Moody Blues