Starwolf

Re: Starship design - How much space does THAT take up? Here are some size synopsis notes I have been working on from FRED, TUV, and SH. I am worrking on a Wing Commander Hero campaign based on the games, cartoons, and novels, not the movie. I hope this is of some use.... Hero Vehicle Size: • Exterior size (Volume) = L x W x H (H <= W or 1†whichever is greater) (TUV pg. 8) • Interior size (Volume) <= Exterior size*.5 (Fred pg. 314) • As a rough guideline assume half of a vehicles interior space is suitable for passengers and cargo (TUV pg. 10) • Payload is defined as 1 hex = 5 tons (TUV pg. 88) • Chemical rockets take up 1 hex times required delta-v in KPS. (TUV pg. 88) • Thermal rockets take up 2 hexes plus ½ hex of fuel per hex of payload per KPS of delta-v (TUV pg.88) • Ion rockets take up 2 hexes plus (1 hex of fuel per 20 hexes of ship) (TUV pg. 88) • Plasma rockets take up 2 hexes plus (1/5 of vehicle hexes per KPS of delta-v) (TUV pg. 88) • Fusion rockets take up 2 hexes plus (1/100 of vehicle hexes per KPS of delta-v) (TUV pg. 88) • Antimatter drive takes up ¼ of vehicle hexes because of shielding (TUV pg. 88) • Reactionless drives take up 1/10 of vehicle hexes (TUV pg. 89) • FTL Warp drives take up about ½ the total hexes of a ship (TUV pg. 90) • FTL Hyper drives take up about ¼ the total hexes of a ship (TUV pg. 90) • FTL Jump drives take up about 1/10 the total hexes of a ship (TUV pg. 91) • Equipment mass and volume for weapons, defenses, propulsion, and power systems = 2 kg and .5 hexes per 5 active points in the system (TUV pg. 118) • Equipment mass and volume for sensors, communications, and misc electronic devices = 1 kg and .2 hexes per 5 active points in the system (TUV pg. 118) • Weapon mass and volume = up to .5 to 1 cubic hexes and 2 kg per active point (TUV pg. 119) • A vehicle may mount up to 1 weapon per point of size (TUV pg. 119) • Defensive systems mass and volume = up to 1-3 cubic hexes and up to 3 kg per active point of defense (TUV pg. 135) • Movement systems mass and volume = up to .1 to 1 cubic hexes and up to .2 kg per 10 active points (TUV pg. 147)

Re: Looking for Black Paladin Plot Seeds OK, here's a thought that has been percolating in my mind for a while. Black Paladin is in search of an arcane ritual that will summon and bind "The Lady of the Lake" so that he can capture and use the famed sword Excalibur, for his own evil purposes.

Re: Got Export Templates? One of the programs that I use is HCS ( the Hero Combat Simulator). There is a link in the other software forum. It tracks phased movement, damage, defenses, and timed events (like how many phases a person is flashed). It also tracks END usage and Body/Stun/END recovery. And I think they are working on a Hero Designer import option. HCS really speeds combat if you have a PC or laptop availble during play. And it allows me to implement some options that otherwise tend to slow things down, such as hit locations and bleeding.

Re: Got Export Templates? In addition to quickly creating characters, HD allows you to create prefabs for races, professions, equipment lists, etc. And you can export to HTML for ready made web pages. And you can use the combat record export templates to print out accurate combat movement sheets. And there are several people on these boards that are in the process of creating HD compatible combat/campaign software. All good reasons to buy....

Re: Starship design - How much space does THAT take up? Thanks for the chart, only one question for those of us that are mathematically challenged if a displacment ton is 13.5 cubic meters how many hexes is that?

K, I spent 20 years in the Navy...on carriers and in squadrons. A ship of this size would carry about 1000 ships crew, the airwing would be in addition to this. She probably carries about 750,000 gallons of diesel fuel for her quad boilers, as she has four engine rooms (one for each screw). This ship most likely has a top speed of 30 knots. She also carries another 750,000 gallons of aircraft fuel (most likely JP5). The oldest carrier that I was stationed on was the USS Saratoga, which is about twice the size of this ship. It cosgt us about $150,000 per day to sit at berth and around $300,000 per day when underway. And those prices where back in the 70s. This fuel and the food supplies lasted us about 2-3 weeks when underway. There are in fact about 50 ports around the world that can berth this ship. Most of the time when carriers stay anchored about 10 miles outside of a port it is because we can neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons, so most foreign powers prefer we keep our distance (like 10 miles would matter). In these places we used motor whale boats to shuttle sailors back and forth between the ship and the port. The average ride was about 45 minutes. There are a couple of carriers that have been turned into tourist attractions, outside of that they cost so much to maitain and operate that most governments can't even afford them let alone private groups or entities. There is a very real reason that only the US Navy operates carriers on the Supercarrier class....no one else can afford them. An we only have 16 of them in operation. And of those only about 10 are operational, the rest are in various stages of maintenance/refit. I hope this helps and provides some perspective.

Try this website for WC ships: Wing Commander CIC It has grahics and text ship descriptions. The text gives ship dimensions and tonnage.

According to TUV pg 8, assume that height = width. Then apply the formula of height x width x length = volume. This gives a rough approximate total volume. How much space each system uses, such as bridge, crew quarters, engine room, and cargo, is up to the GM and is totally your call. I hope this helps.....

I once had some players that had a hack & slash attitude so I created a mega-assassin NPC in the vein of DC's terminator (who has taken on gthe entire teen titans repeatedly, and in a cross over fought Wolverine to a draw). I explain to the players out of game that if they use extreme lethlaity that there will be consequences. If they persist then the bad guys hire the "Worlds Greatest Assassin" to eliminate the characters. My mega-assassin was named Battlemaster and while he could stand toe to toe with any hero/target his most devastating attack was a single lethal shot from a thousand yards out. As far as redeemking your team, if the battle occured in the mall, there were lots of civilian witnesses. If the team has any official sanctioning, then while the team will have to answer questions, the whole team should not be penalized. It would however help a lot if the team had the two offenders turn themselves in (or brought them in themselves). In fact if the players have left the game, having the team track the guilty PCs, battle, then capture them and turn them in and incarcerated in Stronghold, would/should satisfy the public. Then its onto the next CB scenario as you planned.

Cool, Thanks for the info...

Hey shadowcat how come you sytarted posting in txt insteaqd of a format for HD?

Cool, thanks....

This is true to a certain extent. I am an accomplished marksman having earned Expert medals in both pistol and rifle from the US Navy. I am also a closet gunsmith having completed a correspondence course in gunsmithing. When I spoke of muscle control, I was perhaps not very clear. There is very little of brute strength to weapons control. In my experience teaching firearms use, the worst marksmen are those that attempt to use pure brute strength to control the weapons recoil. The thing to remember is that our arms and wrists are flexible. When I mentioned muscle control, I was referring to the technique of using muscle control as a sort of built in spring or flexing action to counter act recoil. This is a very real method used by expert marksmen to control recoil of large caliber weapons. If you add this technique to advanced porting of gases, a high tech blowback action mechanism, and counter weights on the weapon itself to add mass, it should be more than sufficient to counter act the reverse motion effect in zero-g. By the same token by simply stiff arming the weapon when fired you can force the very reaction we have been discussing.

Hmmm... What happened to the link for the template?

Several things should be considered...first recoil may not be as much of a problem as you would think. Most semi-auto/and auto weapons use a blowback mechanism to operate the weapons action and help control recoil. The weight of the weapon also helps to control recoil. And finally the user, if trained properly can use muscle to control recoil. In addition current weapons fire just fine in sub-zero temperatures. Military weapons used in the arctic are first degreased, then they may be fired with no problems. With lead or lead alloy bullets, brass jackets, and steel weapons, I don't think that Vacuum welding will be an issue, as the metals are to dissimilar to bond readily. I believe that a micro-temperature control system to heat/cool the chamber, barrel, and magazine would be more than adequate. Such temperature control technology exists today and is in use in some High-end computer systems, and portable food heating/cooling units.

These lists are for use in Hero Designer. However, the files are XML so you should be able to extract the content to other formats if you have programming skills. But I would highly recommend purchasing Hero Designer if you don't already have the program. It is the best RPG character generation app I have ever seen developed, and it also has the best, most responsive support here on these lists I have ever seen, IMHO. I am a software developer by trade myself and I am very impressed with HD. And yes I'm a fan (might even be becoming a Dan Simon groupie )

IIRC there was a chart of Aura colors and what they represented in the old Justice Inc. book. Will a similar chart be in the Pulp Hero book? If not would DOJ or someone be willing to reprint it either in DH or for the free stuff section?

Also IRL the US Navy follows a general policy of picking a naming convention by ship class and following it. For instance all Carriers are now named for Presidents or Admirals, all Cruisers could be named for famous battles, and all destroyers could be named for fallen heroes or important politicians. If I recall correctly all Battleships were named for states. I hope these examples give you some good ideas.

Hi gang! There is another award possibility.....the Pen & Paper RPG website is conducting it's first annual award survey. This award is based off of player/GM nominations and votes. The URL is http://www.pen-paper.net/awards.php . So lets all get out the vote and see if we can get another award for Hero Games.....

Very cool, keep-em coming.....

This is very true... I also remember that one of the tactics that was feared was; Capture an enemies dedicate that grants metabolism, then start giving that dedicate metablism, effectivly turning him into a vector.....and with enough endowments, it rapidly aged the target runelord. I seem to recall Raj Ahten thinking that if his enemy had taken 60 endowments of metabolism he could just go home as King Orden would then die of old age by spring.

I like the idea of the sliding scale. I had wrestled with the concept of Raj Ahten and his thousands of endowments. Thanks again for all of the ideas....

Yeah the ones I remember are: Brawn (STR) Voice (Pre) Glamour (Com) Stamina (BODY/CON, Adds to figured) Metabolism (SPD) Grace (Dex) Wit (Int) Sight (+Per w/Sight Group, Telescopic) Hearing (+Per w/Hearing Group, Telescopic) Smell (+Per w/Smell group, Tracking, Discriminatory)

They were called vectors! Also I recall that if someone took an endowment from an animal they took on a vague aspect of the animal, like an enlongated snout for taking smell from dogs. I figured I had the basic gist of the design, I just wanted to get input fromothers to make sure I wasn't missing something. Thanks for the input.

I am preparing a new Fantasy Hero campaign. I need some input from anyone that has read the Runelords by David Farland. I am looking for ideas on how to construct the forcibles, the earth wardens, the water mages, the flameweavers, the reavers, and possibly write-ups for force warriors, force horses, force elephants, and Runelords. I think that the forcibles/runes are essentially a NND transfer, with OAF, a delayed return rate (the dedicate must die for the recipient to loose the benefit, or the recipient must die for the dedicate to get his stats back), no range, Physical Armor/Clothing defends (the foricible must touch the skin), the dedicate must be willing (though this can be compelled through blackmail, bribery, and threat), And the transfer cannot completely drain the character (stat is lowered to one), The dedicate must make a con/ego roll to survive the initial transfer or return of the stat (there is a huge shock to the system or die. Any ideas are welcome