Re: [GZG] Stepping out the airlock....

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think the best way to approach this is to decide how big you want your
ships to be.

If you want ships sized approximately like the fleet book ships then I
think what you are describing is fine.

Wraith hive ships and cruisers seem to be primarily carriers, with lots
of darts. They also seem to be fairly fragile and unshielded but
reasonably heavily armed.

One other thing to consider is that the Asgard and hence humans have
more advanced hyperdrive technology than the wraith, they can manouver
fire and jump all in the midst of battle.

You might well want to theme the different fleets around a different
primary weapon. 

Ancient ships might be armed primarily with salvo missile racks to
represent the drones, or they could be torpedo fighters or a selectable
interceptor torpedo fighter option to represent their anti dart
capability.

Goa-uld might be based around plasma torpedos just to be different and
have fighters.

Given that shields seem to stop everything and to degrade in relatively
predicable levels like Star Trek they might be better represented by
armour. 

________________________________
From: Tom B <kaladorn@gmail.com>
To: gzg-l@vermouth.csua.berkeley.edu
Sent: Tuesday, 14 April, 2009 8:41:03 AM
Subject: [GZG] Stepping out the airlock....

Those of you who know me understand my dedicated ground-pounder roots. I
prefer skirmish or squad based infantry and armour games to clashes of
ships in space... but...... every once and a while, something space-y
sucks me in. B5 was one such setting. 

So, when I found a new setting of interest, I naturally assumed that
many great minds of space ship design must have come up with ships and
systems to mimic the genre I was after long before I arrived at this
interest. And yet, the Weapons and Defense archive have many genres
represented, but surprisingly not the one I'm after despite the series
having had more than 200 episodes and two movies so far....

And thus, I throw out the questions: 

What sorts of systems, rules and designs would be necessary to do
Stargate universe ship combat justice?  (And of course, has anyone
already tried?)

Some initial crib notes:

SHIELDS seem to stop or partially stop: 
Ori uber-beams (something like a B5 HBW or a Graser? Giant pulse Torp?
Nova Canon?)
Asgard beams (Graser? big conventional beams?)
Human Railguns (K-1 or K-2 guns or K-1s with longer range or K-2s with
more arcs and modes?)
Human Missiles (SMR, SML, subpack, ??)
Goa'uld energy weapons (Pulse torpedo? conventional beam?)
Wraith energy weapons (Pulse torpedo? conventional beam?)
I don't think shields do much to slow down the ancient drones (almost
think these should appear like some sort of fighter squadrons....)

HULL: Some of the ships seem to have fairly sturdy designs (the Daedelus
particularly seems to take a lot of beating, losing systems
(thresholds?), but still not blowing up generallly). I suspect this
means average or greater hulls, though the Hatak may have a weak hull. I
suspect some of the ships must employ armour.

FIGHTERS: Seem to be in use by the Ori, the Humans, the Goa'uld and
Jaffa, and the Wraith. 

Dedicated PDS: Does not seem to exist. Shields seem to fulfill that roll
although railguns seem to be able to be configured in anti-missile and
anti-fighter roles as well as direct attack. 

MISSILES: The humans make fairly extensive use of these. But are they
closer to heavy missiles, some form of shorter ranged missile like a
subpack or something more like SMs?

THRUST/MANOUVERABILITY: Most of the ships (Ori, Goa'uld Hatak, Ancient,
Asgard) strike me as thrust 2-4 at best. The Human Daedelus might be
thrust 4 and the smaller vessels like the Al'kesh could be a bit higher
- at least they are more nimble. The Traveller ships might be thrust 4
as might the Wraith Hives. They seem more manouverable, though still by
no means do they approximate jinking fighters....

CLOAK: Some smaller ships seem to have this technology.

CRITICAL SYSTEMS: We seem to have sensors, fire control, ring
generators, asgard beam generators, presumably embarked stargates, and
of course the hyper drive and sublight drives. Much like star trek,
these systems go offline regularly and are fixed by the hard working
technicians in the nick of time.

But beyond these basic notes, I haven't really got a good set of ideas
on how to make a genre conversion of FT.

Note that I am not looking to create systems or ships that balance with
FT ships pointwise. I'm looking to recreate the genre of the shows to
get battles that feel like the ones on the show. 

Ships I'm looking to design/stat out:

Goa'uld: Hatak, Al'kesh, Death Glider, Cargo Ship
Asgard: Original ships and the later black ones
Ori: Their big monster invasion ships
Humans: X-303 (Prometheus), X-304 (Daedelus, Phoenix, Korolev, General
Hammond), F-302 (fighter)
Alteran/Atlantean/Ancient: Puddle Jumper (fighter?), Cruiser
Wraith: Hiveship, Dart (fighter)
Traveller: Traveller ship

So, having pulled the pin, I now lob the grenade. I'm quite surprised
there was no genre notes on the W&D archive but I don't doubt there are
some FT gurus out there who might have some thoughts on how to do the
Stargate genre justice. 

Any input greatfully accepted and appreciated...

Thomas B
Groundpounder out of his depth (except in boarding actions)

-- 
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http://www.stargrunt.ca

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