B5 Hero: Aurora Starfury

[Aroooo]

Well, I can say one thing for being snowed in for two days, I got time to write up a lot of stuff for my B5 conversion

That being said, I've finished my first ship! The writeup for the Aurora Starfury can be found on my web site:

http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/b5/s...ury_aurora.php

(I didn't want to post something that long here.)

Please take a moment and let me know what you think - but remember this is my first vehicle (in 5th ed.) so be nice

Aroooo

[feywulf]

Originally posted by Aroooo
Well, I can say one thing for being snowed in for two days, I got time to write up a lot of stuff for my B5 conversion

That being said, I've finished my first ship! The writeup for the Aurora Starfury can be found on my web site:

http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/b5/s...ury_aurora.php

(I didn't want to post something that long here.)

Please take a moment and let me know what you think - but remember this is my first vehicle (in 5th ed.) so be nice

Aroooo

Looks pretty cool to me.

The fuzion batteries probably shouldn't be immobile, since the ship can move with the batteries in it right? And 500Rec for 500end? That might be a bit high.

The grappling arm should be clinging, not TK, and isn't the grappling arm part of the B5 hangar, not part of the Starfury?

You may want to redo the sensors and com systems individually rather than as a VPP.

[Aroooo]

Originally posted by feywulf
Looks pretty cool to me.

The fuzion batteries probably shouldn't be immobile, since the ship can move with the batteries in it right? And 500Rec for 500end? That might be a bit high.

The grappling arm should be clinging, not TK, and isn't the grappling arm part of the B5 hangar, not part of the Starfury?

You may want to redo the sensors and com systems individually rather than as a VPP.

Thanks!

I used the sample ships from SH as a guide. They did their power plants as immobile. Remember, its relative to the vehicle; so the power plants can't be moved within the ship. As for the high END, its enough to power most of the ship systems, including the forward autofire cannons, for a full turn. I too thought the number was high, but the max END usage per turn was about 480 END, so... big batteries. (It is a combat craft after all.) I originally had the weapons bought to 0 END, with the rest as req. END. I may go back to that.

The grappling arm is used to capture and tow other vehicles. Its not part of the landing bay system. I bought it at 60 STR to match the STR of the ship.

Sensors. Again, I used the sample vehicles as a guide. I left it that way for now, mainly for simplicity. Once our group figures out how we want to handle sensors, ECM, and ECCM, I may change that. But for now it works.

The only thing I have not figured out yet is if I want to go through the trouble of making to cockpit a sep. vehicle (aka lifepod). I think I'll keep it simple and leave that as an FX.

Aroooo

[NuSoardGraphite]

Just checked out your writeup.

Overall not too shabby. I have a couple of comments though.

The Body characteristic seems a bit high. Starfurys aren't that large...so I'd probably give them a BOD somewhere between 25 and 30 (for survivability purposes of course).

I also noticed you had 2 seperate listings for Defense. The base Defense characteristic of 10 and a seperate Armor power of 15/15. So I suppose that the full defense of the Starfury is 25/25 then?

Also the "Maneuvering Thusters"....I like the way you've done this. I pretty much do the same thing, though I think +10 levels with Flight might be a bit much, even for a Starfury.

Also, the combat speed of the Flight (25") is a bit slow I think. In Star Hero, the section on Accelleration was way off. 60" per turn is not 1G. The ability to travel from a stand still to a distance of 390" in 1 turn is 1G. Of course, this is assuming you are using the "cumulative" aspects of space-based movement, as would be appropriate in Babylon 5 (since that show did use realistic movement in its spacebattles).

Thats all for now. Gotta go (at work and my boss is looking at me funny)

[Aroooo]

Originally posted by NuSoardGraphite
Just checked out your writeup.

Overall not too shabby. I have a couple of comments though.

The Body characteristic seems a bit high. Starfurys aren't that large...so I'd probably give them a BOD somewhere between 25 and 30 (for survivability purposes of course).

I also noticed you had 2 seperate listings for Defense. The base Defense characteristic of 10 and a seperate Armor power of 15/15. So I suppose that the full defense of the Starfury is 25/25 then?

Also the "Maneuvering Thusters"....I like the way you've done this. I pretty much do the same thing, though I think +10 levels with Flight might be a bit much, even for a Starfury.

Also, the combat speed of the Flight (25") is a bit slow I think. In Star Hero, the section on Accelleration was way off. 60" per turn is not 1G. The ability to travel from a stand still to a distance of 390" in 1 turn is 1G. Of course, this is assuming you are using the "cumulative" aspects of space-based movement, as would be appropriate in Babylon 5 (since that show did use realistic movement in its spacebattles).

Thats all for now. Gotta go (at work and my boss is looking at me funny)

Body: I know. After looking at it it is too high. That number will be coming down.

Defense: Again I defer to SH sample vehicles. I'm not sure I like it that way myself, but at least I'm consistant Personally, I would prefer all space vehicles just have a def of 5, and the rest as armor... So yes, its 25/25.

Thrusters. Thanks for the kudo. The reason I gave it that much is this: if I understand the turn mode rules right, half the levels will allow the Fury to turn 180° as a single turn mode (based on 25" flight). The rest are for plain old maneuverability/pilot bonus. Maybe I should make them two sep. abilities? 5 levels for turn mode penalties only, the rest as pure bonus.

Flight speed. Well, there you got me I was looking at it from two points: flight as compared to other vehicle writeups; and with the non-cbt multiple giving it 1km/s/s accel - based on SH's writeup. As for realistic movement - too complex for my gaming tastes. If you want to run more realistic numbers for me, I'll look at it.

Thanks for looking and giving me feedback!

Aroooo

[NuSoardGraphite]

If you want realistic accelleration numbers here are some:

Since 1G of accelleration is 10m/s/s (actually something like 9.98m/s/s, but 10m is good enough for gov't work!) this works out to exactly 5" per segment (this is covered in the "Falling" section in the FREd)

Thus someone accellerating at 1G adds 5" to their current velocity every second/segment. This increases the distance they travel each second. Here's a chart carried out to 12 seconds (1 turn)

Segment/Velocity/Total distance Travelled
1/5"/5"
2/10"/15"
3/15"/30"
4/20"/50"
5/25"/75"
6/30"/105"
7/35"/140"
8/40"/180"
9/45"/225"
10/50"/275"
11/55"/330"
12/60"/390"

Thus a vehicle that starts with a velocity of 0, then suddenly accellerates at 1G will, by the end of the turn, have travelled a total of 390".

Remember that Combat movement only is used to determine accelleration (according to the basic movement rules in the FREd) thus, your Starfury above accellerates at 25" per phase...at 4 phases per turn it looks like this:

Phase/Velocity/Distance
3/25"/25"
6/50"/75"
9/75"/150"
12/100"/250"

Thus, your Starfury can travel a total distance of 250" in 1 turn (starting at a velocity of 0") which comes out to .64G's (250/390)

Noncombat movement shouldn't figure in to this calculation. In a Vacuum, the maximum speed is about 99% of lightspeed (or thereabouts) and a vehicle can keep accellerating (using their Combat Movement) to their hearts content until the run out of fuel so a Noncombat multiplier isn't needed.
Of course, if the vehicle is designed to be used in both space and an Atmosphere, then a Noncombat multiplier is necessary. This represents the maximum attainable speed in an earth normal atmosphere and should be based on the aerodynamic streamlining that the vehicle has. Something like a Starfury would probably have around X8 noncombat multiplier (X16 for the aerodynamically streamlined version) This might be covered in The Ultimate Vehicle, but I'm not sure about that because I haven't gotten ahold of a copy of that yet.

Hope that helps!

[Aroooo]

I was with you till you got to the non-combat multiplier shouldn't figure part. Why would it figure in an atmosphere, but not in a vacuum? When I figured acceleration, I used total inches (including non-combat). SH said "maximum inches per turn" when figuring accel. Maybe my coffee just hasn't soaked in yet.

Aroooo

P.S. I too hope TUV clears some of this up, but it hasn't hit store shelves yet.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Originally posted by Aroooo
I was with you till you got to the non-combat multiplier shouldn't figure part. Why would it figure in an atmosphere, but not in a vacuum? When I figured acceleration, I used total inches (including non-combat). SH said "maximum inches per turn" when figuring accel. Maybe my coffee just hasn't soaked in yet.

Aroooo

P.S. I too hope TUV clears some of this up, but it hasn't hit store shelves yet.

Okay.

I'm going by the standard Hero System movement rules as laid down in the FREd.

In those it states that a character or vehicle can only accellerate (or decellerate) an amount equal to its combat movement in a single phase. Thus, charactes (or vehicles) with a large noncombat multiplier can take several phases or even several turns to accellerate to its maximum movement.

Long, long ago (during the 4th edition days) I determined that a vehicles Combat Movement was its "power" or "Thrust" (i.e. its ability to accellerate) and that the noncombat multiplier determined its maximum attainable speed in an atmosphere...usually based either on mode of travel (like Wheeled or tracked vehicles) or its aerodynamic streamlining (Thus, Jet Fighters have much higher noncmbt multipliers than Commercial Jets) and I ran some numbers compared to real-world combat and civillain aircraft and everything jelled just right.

Thus, in space, since there is no atmosphere working to produce "drag" against a vehicle, there is no "maximum attainable speed" (unless you count the Speed of Light barrier)...they can accellerate to their hearts content, Adding or subtracting their Combat Move to adjust their current velocity...Noncombat movement should have no bearing whatsoever on this, since the Noncombat movement bonus is merely a determination at which a vehicle reaches its Maximum speed in an atmosphere.

However, this is my personal observations/justifications based on my experience on using Hero for Scifi. Its not "the way it should be done" or anything like that...just a slightly more realistic system than the one provided in Star Hero (and as James/Steve pointed out, the version is Star Hero is far from accurate, and those who are savvy enough to know that are probably smart enought to come up with their own system, like I did ages ago)

I understand why they did it the way they did (60"/Turn=1G) because its nice and easy, linnear math. Also, their change to the standard Hero movement rules, allowing Starships to figure Noncombat movement into G-accelleration makes it so that players and GM's don't need to give ships astronomical movement rates to reach speeds desired (merely increase the noncombat move and BAM! more accelleration). Certainly my method is more mathematically correct (if not totally accurate) but the Star Hero method is more intuitive. Use whichever one appeals to you most. I only suggested it because Babylon 5 is one of the few Sci-fi tv shows to pay attention to realism when dealing with movement of their starships (at least to a reasonable degree)

[Aroooo]

Okay, I did understand your point after all. Guess the coffee had set in enough

I see your point about accel and combat vs. non-combat inches. I had reached a similar conclusion when reading SH. But 1600 inches of flight is a bit hard for most to accept

For now I'll keep the flight speeds the way they are, just to be consistent with SH. When I get farther along I'll work on a better write-up for realistic space travel.

Aroooo

[Aroooo]

I've updated the Aurora Starfury:
http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/b5/s...ury_aurora.php

And done the Badger Starfury:
http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/b5/ships/badger.html

(Need to put the Badger into the same format as the Aurora. HTML code from Excel is a pain to clean up.)

Comments?

Aroooo

[Syberdwarf2]

Originally posted by Aroooo
Thanks!

I used the sample ships from SH as a guide. They did their power plants as immobile. Remember, its relative to the vehicle; so the power plants can't be moved within the ship. As for the high END, its enough to power most of the ship systems, including the forward autofire cannons, for a full turn. I too thought the number was high, but the max END usage per turn was about 480 END, so... big batteries. (It is a combat craft after all.) I originally had the weapons bought to 0 END, with the rest as req. END. I may go back to that.

The grappling arm is used to capture and tow other vehicles. Its not part of the landing bay system. I bought it at 60 STR to match the STR of the ship.

Sensors. Again, I used the sample vehicles as a guide. I left it that way for now, mainly for simplicity. Once our group figures out how we want to handle sensors, ECM, and ECCM, I may change that. But for now it works.

The only thing I have not figured out yet is if I want to go through the trouble of making to cockpit a sep. vehicle (aka lifepod). I think I'll keep it simple and leave that as an FX.

Aroooo

Me personally I see the ship as having a big enough END reaserve to power the weapons, but a lower REC to represent the fact that it is not, IIRC, long range capable without jump tech.

How about buying down the REC to say, 50 REC?

[Aroooo]

The B5 Tech manual doesn't really cover how fusion batteries work in B5 - although they cover a lot of other stuff. Are they batteries in the true sense, which means they just store power? Or are they some kind of 'cold' fusion tech, and merely called batteries because they are small compared to a full blown fusion reactor? I know, I'm thinking too much

If I drop REC down to 50, then its hard for the Fury to fight effectively for more than one turn or two. I might go as low as 100 REC for now. My group is going to start playtesting this weekend, so I'll have a better idea on performance soon. And like I mentioned earlier, for simplicity's sake, I may just make the weapons 0 END to ease the record keeping.

Also, don't forget that there is a physical limitation that limits the ship to 12 hours of main power. Hm... maybe a continuing charge on the weapons??? Probably not strictly legal from a Hero point of view....

Aroooo

[Aroooo]

Just an FYI, but I made some changes/updates to my B5 Hero site. The ship links have changed, so start from the top of the site:

http://www.aroooo.com/rpg_stuff/b5/index.php

Aroooo

P.S. Anyone know how to get clean html out of Excel? Its killing me...

[Monolith]

I just read that Mongoose Publishing has picked up the license for B5. They will have their first book out in May or so. It will be d20, but that is not too hard to convert to Hero. Could be some really useful stuff in there that we have all forgotten.

[Aroooo]

Originally posted by Monolith
I just read that Mongoose Publishing has picked up the license for B5. They will have their first book out in May or so. It will be d20, but that is not too hard to convert to Hero. Could be some really useful stuff in there that we have all forgotten.

Not to get into a d20 vs. the rest of the world argument, but ug!

I found info on Mongoose's forum:
http://www.mortality.net/board/read.php?TID=5234

"Mongoose Publishing is proud to announce the acquisition of the licence to produce the all new Babylon 5 roleplaying game from Warner Brothers Inc.

This is a project we are all very excited about here at Mongoose, for we are all great fans of the television series and its many spin-offs – without a doubt, Babylon 5 is the greatest science fiction epic yet created. In many ways, the television series seems almost designed for roleplaying scenarios and campaigns, and we are putting all our efforts into ensuring the new game lives up to the milestone set by the licence.

The Babylon 5 roleplaying game will be available in the latter part of May 2003 and, like other Mongoose Publishing games, will be heavily supported with material guaranteed to delight any serious fan of the show."

There's more in their forum...

Aroooo