[GZG] Empire of Man kit (was: More advanced screens)

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hard Bell wrote:
> Langston Fields were very peculiar pieces of kit. The Tuffleyverse 
> analog would be ships with a phantom first row of damage. While the 
> Field is operating, the ship takes no damage, but a first-level 
> threshold check is made whenever the phantom row is filled (to model 
> burn-through). If the Langston Field generator fails a threshold while

> the Field is active, the ship is lost with all hands in a cataclysmic 
> explosion.
I know it's (anecdotal?) canon, but rather than instant destruction on a

Field failure, I'd have a portion of the energy stored in the Field 
applied directly to the ship as damage; only a portion, because the 
energy in the Field goes out as well as in when a Field collapses. A die

roll could be used to decide just how much -- (1D6 + 4) x 10% of the 
Field strength (no. boxes in the phantom row)?
> Ships with Langston Fields also have a heat track with one box per 
> row. Each time a threshold is inflicted, one box is ticked. One box on

> the heat track is regenerated each turn. If a threshold is inflicted, 
> while no empty boxes are available on the heat track, the Field 
> overloads, and the ship is destroyed.
Again, see above for the overload idea. Rather than the heat track, 
might it not be simpler to have multiple phantom rows? Burn-throughs are

modelled by threshold checks when each row is filled, and total Field 
collapse when all boxes are filled. Each turn, a number of Field boxes 
regenerate, but each Field threshold check can only be taken once. I 
know that's a bit clunky, but it depends on what actually causes a 
burn-through. IIRC, burn-throughs are localised overloading of a Field 
-- "hot spots" -- so the alternative could be to have directional Field 
rows (a set for each arc, say), with burn-throughs occurring when a row 
is filled. Remaining damage after a burn-through can be distributed to 
all Field rows.

Okay, maybe it mightn't be simpler... :-D  The Langston Field is a 
difficult thing to simulate in a simple fashion, and expanding Fields 
and superconductor-plated ships just make damage resolution even more 
tricky.
> Ships destroyed by Field failures leave no survivors and no wreck. 
> Naval combat is complicated that when a ship surrenders, it is only 
> lightly damaged. As the Field was a side effect of the hyperdrive, 
> piracy was difficult and may have been extremely rare.
You wouldn't know that from all the comments about "outies"... and I 
think you'll find that the Field and Drive are quite independent 
systems. The fusion (normal-space) drive that starships use works with 
the Field, since otherwise the energy in the drive would just feed into 
the Field, but the Alderson Drive is quite independent of it.
> Naval combat is possible because hyperspace can only be entered/exited

> at certain points and travel only went from one star to its nearest 
> neighbours, with each route having its own entry point.
It's a minor point, but Alderson travel is not always from one star to a

"nearest neighbour"; often, yes, but not always because it depends on 
thermonuclear flux potentials which result from the geometry and 
activity of local stars, so that there may not be a "tramway" from one 
star to another because other stars mess up the flux levels -- or one 
may come and go as stellar activity fluctuates, as shown in /The 
Gripping Hand/The Moat Around Murcheson's Eye/.

On a semi-related note, I gather that the space battle that was 
originally part of the opening of /The Mote in God's Eye/ and then cut 
out has been published in the first War World book. Is there much in the

way of ship combat in the story, or is it mostly about Horst Staley's 
bomb incident?

Phil