Starwolf

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign "Shows what Intel Analysts know... I wouldn't have to RAM anything if Sam stayed back where I could protect her instead of always trying to stop unsavory individuals from hurting her... or if we had a ship that could shoot instead of just fly" Wade

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign I like those Z'Qruin... and I agree kind of creepy. Now we need to discover how humanity made first contact without wiping them out as a species... They may have their own hive ships? And a pitched battle against warrior/drones would not be something to involved in, sheer numbers could be devastating. And to make matters worse a screen of worker drones could cause invaders to waste precious resources and ammunition, only to discover that the real threat was those other bugs.... And Doc made faces at that squishie remark No really, its face stretched into some really wierd shapes...

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Yep thats good for me!!!

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign It appears that Hero 6th won;t be released at Gencon due to print delays. I am not sure whether the PDFs will be available by then or not. In any case with Gencon ending the 16th we may not be ready on the 19th. That only gives us 3 days to tweak character sheets, and macros, plus digest the rules changes.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign /me sits in a lotus position AAAooooUMMMM!!!!! I am good!!! So I have macros completed under 5ER, Do you want me to upload the tokens or wait for 6ER and crank out new ones then. They should be very simple to modify once I have the 6ER stuff in hand.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Yep something like that. Ok So tentative (firm) release of Aug 19th... Hmmm... will there be a PDF? Are they taking pre-orders... Anything suggestions outside of actually going to Gencon (not in the cards this year) to get it early.... Hmm could I send you some money and have you grab a copy for me at Gencon and then send it to me via priority mail from the convention? If so has Hero announced a price yet? I am sort of freaking out here as you can tell

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign So.... I guess we are actually on hold until at least a week after 6E comes out? Or a bit longer so we can get some copies of the book or PDF? Or perhaps if GA gets the characters converted he can send us word/pdf copies of the sheets and then give me a primer on the way new die rolls function? I need both to re-do the macros

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign When is 6E coming out? I need to know how it is going to affect my macros...

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign I think these discussions are, for me almost as enjoyable as playing.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Ok good points all... Artificial gravity is to new to allow for Jump interdiction ships... I too like the idea of different type of stars (don;t forget black holes) having different jump horizons. As for journey length and food, I actually think it would be air and water that present the most challenging problems, but even here in the 21st century we are beginning to work on those. The ISS recently installed a device to reclaim purified drinking water from human waste... Still you can only store so mush water. Food can be grown and you can store a suprising amount of emergency rations in a very small space. I have a years supply of food for 5 adults that fits in 20 5 gallon buckets (each bucket holds 200 adult meals and has a 20 shelf life). Granted you would get very tired of soups and oatmeal, but the meals are balanced mixtures of protien, carbs, and fats, and they are vitamin fortified. I know air can be scrubbed to remove C02, and hydroponics could produce both food and air, but unless the ship is very large I don;t think hydroponics are a viable option. I think a 6 month supply of air even assuming scrubbers is probably about max. I am not sure how subs or the ISS produce their air but the ISS has been in orbit for years now, and a standard sub tour, submerged, is 6 months. Though subs might scavenge their air from sea water?

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Ah OK... I had to go back and re-read what originally posted. I must be getting old timers disease, as I thought you had said 1 day to reach a 1 ly jump horizon. 10 days works great... and now I see the reason for needing/wanting to jump... in an emergency, I could see doing a speed run up to half your fuel then coast (you don't lose velocity in zero gravity) for days/weeks/months if needed (so long as LS - Air/food lasts), then decelerate back to normal planetary speed burning the other half of your fuel rods... This would take musch longer than jump, but would be doable in a pinch. heh it even reminds me of the Book "Voyage of the Starwolf" (and yes I had the handle long before the book came out). In it the crew loses its FTL drive and has to take months to limp home.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign OK.. crazy like a fox sometimes I think You are right... Earth is 1 AU... and you are right the earth is nowhere near 1/3 out... I had this image in my head from some old school books and planetarium thing that for some reason made me think it was that far out. As for the jump tugs... if the clamps were physically strong enough to stand the strain of the jump, that should be the only consideration. And if we can create hulls with antenna, dish arrays, and gun mounts that aren't torn free, then strong enough clamps should be no problem. The limit on how many ships/tonnage a jump tug could move would be more a limit of the Jump/lift capability of the engines minus the tonnage of the tug itself. I actually iamgine some type of elongated frame with a brodge at one end and engines at the far end, with a the fram like a long spine with huge claw like clamps that could encircle smaller ships with a band like claw. once closed the smaller ships crews would actually stay inside their own ship during the jump. The tug crew would be very small in comparison to the ships length. Small bridge/crew module with maybe a two man capacity. and a larger engine section with several engineers, mechanic/tug hands. The bridge module, and the engineering module would have seperate crew quarters, small but cramped. As for the gravity inderdiction thing... I think whether it would be effective woul depend on how much gravity it takes to cause a disruption. If you have to be a whole light year away from a star to jump, then a smaller vessel in much closer proximity would only need to generate a small gravity well (bigger than a ship but much less than a star), to disrupt the drive. One more thought. If the Ion drive is already FTL, and you can reach a 1 ly jump horizion in 1 day, and you have 30 fuel rods (each good for one day of travel), that gives even a non-jump ship a 30 ly range. Alpha Centauri is only 5 LY from earth... Why would I want to jump with a range like that.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Oh yeah... I really like the fuel rod idea.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign My only problem with 1 ly for a jump distance is that to reach a jump point in less than a YEAR we would have to be traveling FTL... did you perhaps me one light day? Just for a point of reference... Earth is about 8 light minutes or 480 light seconds from Sol, and we are about 1/3 of the distance from SOl to the Systems out edge, so accounting for orbital eccentricities, 1 light hour should clear the system. How far past that we would need to travel would just be game mechanics... I vote for 10 Light hours. That way we are extremely clear of the systems gravity well, and ship can still make it to the jump points in 10 hours at light speed or somewhat longer if traveling slower. On another note this would give rise to a couple of things. Carriers would be prominant on space navies. Once a system had developed its industry sufficiently they would certainly build system defense ships, fully space and combat capable but not Jump/void capable. They would be cheaper to build and could have a greater speed/weapon to mass ratio as they would not need the superlight engines or fuel, giving extra space for better sublights engines and ordinance or shielding/armor. A couple of ships design I would push for if running such a star spanning society would be Jump tugs/Barges, basically a large cargo type ship with docking clamps instead of cargo bays so that I could clamp onto non-jump ships and transport them through jump space. Another would be a special type of system defense boat, instead of main weapon she would mount a gravity field generator, and really fast sublight engines. Her job would be to project a gravity field thus disrupting an escaping ships jump capability, while her escort companion ship dealt with the offender using more conventional weapons.... Have you considered the idea of Jump points? Fixed or variable points in space where the fabric of space is more susceptable to manipulation, and thus a ship mounting a jump drive can engage their drive and Whammo.... there they go... With this type of thing you can put the Jump point anyplace the story dictates, as GM regardless of gravity and such. So if you wanted to place the jump point in one system a light year out so be it, and in another system the jump point might be inside and asteroid field, and it could be a rare system indeed that had more the one jump point (unless jump points where specific corridors that only took you to one place and back again).

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign There is a website... if I can find the URL, that has a calculator that computes escape velocities, and the distance you must travel away from a planet to be free of its gravitational influence. It shows the varying distances based on the planets size and mass. It also has calculators that show how long it would tke to reach that distance based on a given amount of G acceleration. Realistically it assumes accelerating half the distance and then decelerating the second half of the distance. I'll see if I can find it again if you want that level of granularity... Just let me know.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign I don't think he is burning out so much as just getting very busy. He has a new born he is dealing with, and work. Plus he is busy updating the MT Video Tutorials. Squeeze in a little actual game time, some family time, and a dose of sleep... well you get the idea.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Sheesh... my butt is dragging. I am up for a start whenever you say the word. I have been very busy work wise and have not had a chance to finish the Token packages. I have about two more hours of work on the first Package of generic tokens (megaman, and several Generic NPC types like a child, and incompetent, a normal, a competent, and a heroic level NPC). I will get them out to you guys before Friday night... honest... Man this is killing me...

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign yeah, what the ADMIR...uhm cough cough captain said

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Good enough, I will go with the generic set. I should have a zip posted before sunday night. It will include the base campaign file (brad's creation), and the megaman and generic NPC tokens (my creations).

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign yep, I have a single input box that pops up asking for skill levels, GM Modifiers, and Range Modifiers. Also for speed they default to zero so when it pops up if you just hit enter it enters all three with zero and proceeds with the roll. One question though. IRRC everyman and familiarities are not allowed to have SLs applied, to use SLs you must actually have the full skill, is that correct? PS: If you prefer we can hard code the modifiers, but I thought that since mods can vary so much from phase to phase, it would be better to ask for them on the fly.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign I need group guidance (especially from those of us that GM). I am putting the final tweakage on my Maptool Macro package this weekend. For the Megaman Token, would you prefer a token with one pre-built macro for each skill, power, disadvantage, etc... This option would allow you to duplicate the entire Token on the fly and have ready built working macros for almost any need. Very little GM prep time. or Would you prefer a Token with several more generic macros that can be quickly duplicated and renamed. For example a generic Dex based skill macro, that can be duplicated and then renamed to acrobatics, and then duplcated and renamed to riding? This option retains the generic macro while creating only those that you need. This is how mageman is built right now. Minimal, but some GM prep time required to use the Token. All of the Generic NPC tokens will be built using which ever option you guys choose. I now have the macros set to roll and display whether you succeded, the actual die roll, and how much you succeded or failed by. If you succeded the Macro then continues and does other things, like display text or rolls to hit, damage, and hit locations. If you failed it simply displays the failure, and ends. Let me know what to setup for the group. These were all built using MT1.3b56. Oh yeah one bug has crept into MT. When you launch a server, the test server function is broken. If you click it, not only does it not see you, but it will crash your server, requiring you to shut down MT and restart to get the server going again. So when you start a server you just have to trust that its working and test by having someone outside your network connect to the server.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

Re: Poison Star Hero Drawing Wow Poison, you really did Sam justice... awesome work there. Wade, my character in the Gemini Ascendant campaign, it has been revealed is Sam's genetic twin, created in the same batch of Super Soldier/Pilots, 250 years ago. But he has not come to the full understanding of his past yet, as Sam has. Though he is beginning to piece it togther. Like Sam, Wade was born to fly... and only feels comfortable when screaming through the cosmos like his hair was on fire. In spite of his mad piloting skills he has had multiple ships blown out from under him, yet survives. He has snatched Sam out of space mid-manuever, rammed other ships, straffed a ground colonie, attempted murder, piracy, insurrection, and general mayhem. All in the name of saving Sam. He is insanely loyal to all of his companions, but his attachment to Sam goes to a whole new level of fanaticism... He denies , even to himself that it could be romantic, though that doesn't stop him from hitting on her, he is just afraid to follow through. Wade is supremely confident in his abilities, but does not always think through the consequences of his actions on others... thus he comes across as rash, impulsive, and juvenile.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Hmmm... as for our replacements for the Drasalite name, how about the Marphisians as the name given them by humanity (a contraction of marshamellow and physician ). Also one thing that might make them unique to your universe could be a recton that make the race low level telepaths, which I think would fit due to both Doc and Some other Dras Superspy dudes that we have the pleasure of acquanting. The Marphasian name for themsleves comes across as a compound smell with aroma of roses tinged with almond. They shoudl remain metamorphs, but I think rather than changing sex, they should be unisex, being able to either spawn offspring or impregnate another Marphasian. They would require another Marphasian to reproduce though to maintain genetic stability (we don't want them to be galactic apalachians ) One other thing, if you would like to feed me the new "standardized abilities" I can macro-ize them on a copy of Megaman and then send you the token. Or if you prefer I can send you a copy of Megaman to modify for yourself. Once we have a generic "base" token we can share it amongst ourselves, and use it for the new tokens in the Gemini reboot. I would be up for some Shadowrun one offs... I have read through the rules and game basics, and it looks interesting, I just didn't want to use it for this specific campaign. I would be up for a fantasy or SF type run with it. In my fantasy game, we acquired a new player, he goes by the handle Ragdoll. if you guys are ok, with it he might want to join us.

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign Oh yeah... /me waves at Merovign Hiya... welcome back. You have been missed!