kjoatmon

My first Traveler 2000 character died during creation. That is a tad bit of lethality.

Star Trek chose torpedo because Gene used navel terms for everything. Many that follow the Air Force to space progression use missile. If you don't do something to make them different, they are both the same. Well, there might be one technical difference. A torpedo would always be launched from a tube. A missile may be launched from a tube or an external mount. Otherwise they are the same. Here is an example of a manufactured difference: If a system uses both, a torpedo could be a wire guided system where it has a certain distance before it is off guidance and working with its last commands. Then, in contrast, the missile would use some other form of guidance right from the get go. This makes the missile more prone to issues where something spoofs or blocks that guidance. The torpedo, in contrast, has a huge length of fiber spooling out that will be added mass and eventually lost with each shot. If it has no guidance, it is a rocket or a slug of some sort. The difference being the continued propulsion a rocket has. Hard fired rockets can have a nice stealth aspect. Say a rail gun to get the rocket out there at speed but low detection of firing location. Then, it uses propellant to get more speed to do more damage with the increased velocity. Tracking the rocket back to ignition will not show the location of firing in that sort of hard launch system. The same sort of launch propellant could be used with the missile or torpedo. That leads to another difference that could be built in. The missile tends to go hot right when it is launched. A torpedo can be sent out slowly, saving fuel, and make a stealth approach. Then, when in a good firing solution, make speed under its own power.

Ages and ages ago, in Space Opera, we devised a gravity ball game. It was played in the 0g training rooms on space stations. Round goal at each end, ball fired from one of several random chutes to start the game. Basically a 0g version of rugby. Having assorted 0g maneuverability helped, EVA only a little as that is more precise movements, psionics used to cheat, and 0g combat skill was a big plus. Acrobatics would help. We also had a few people with martial arts that had the Bruce Lee finger distance punch they used to cheat, as that was not shoving/grappling, but striking. Needs to be in a somewhat limited field with fewer players or you have the whole problem of being stuck with no maneuverability. Some places had optional rules for fan and compressed thrust. Fan was slower but unlimited. Compressed gas was faster but you had a limited tank.

Yah, I was just wondering with what looked like a 10 year release schedule if there was any good news people had heard. IMHO, getting it onto Roll20 was very good news, so I am happy with the few recent things I have seen. As for Space Opera, it was certainly a mix between fun and painful. GTA, MechA, and ElecA for example. Hero is not stats lite by any standard, but Space Opera just had so many and so much math that it could take days to make a character even if it was a basic one. We used to have home made software for making characters, powered armor, and ships. Sadly, it got lost ages ago. So taking the Space Opera points we liked and adding them to a 'simpler' and customizable system that actually has a lot of the work done? Not a hard choice. Especially when it looks like we could get it up on Roll20 without too many headaches. I even found some free assets for DungeonDraft that look useful for reworking the original ship designs into usable maps.

Anyone know if either of the HERO System Advanced Player's Guides covers vehicle combat at all? I see vehicles listed in one and some stuff on combat vs. armor listed in the TOC, but no clue if it would apply to vehicles or would be a solution to this issue. I have not invested in those at this point.

Looking at the TOC for The Ultimate Mentalist and both HERO System Advanced Player's Guides, I see a lot of overlap. It looks like 70%+ of Mentalist is split between APG1&2, with the powers in 1 and the combat in 2. Some of it seems to have been dropped. Perhaps missing things could be bundled into an APG3 to help fill in things that were missed, like expanded vehicle combat, parts of missing psionics, and other things from 5th ed that are not yet transported to 6th. I do not have a full list, but I am certain it could be put together with info from the forum questions and comments.

I was wondering if there was any timeline for the remaining 5th edition things to get updates to 6th edition. For example, I am interested in the Vehicle Sourcebook and The Ultimate Mentalist, but I do not want to pay for 5th edition if the 6th are in the works. Last time I played was Champions in the mid 80s. Like 2nd ed., I think. Now, I am looking at using it for updating Space Opera (Fantasy Games Unlimited) to remove the exceptionally math heavy nature of that game. Also, the fact there is a Roll20 engine for HG is a nice bonus since my old gaming group now lives in four different states. Getting the new version, I went for 6th ed, but am now finding a few key bits never got updated. Since 6th is not exactly new, I wonder if I need to do my own updates or if there are still a few releases set for these holes.

I have not opened a prefab from the site, but I opened one of the ones from the HSEG I bought. The file is XML. It starts with something like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <PREFAB version="6.0" TEMPLATE="builtIn.Automaton6E.hdt"> <BASIC_CONFIGURATION BASE_POINTS="0" DISAD_POINTS="0" EXPERIENCE="0" /> <CHARACTER_INFO CHARACTER_NAME="Science Fiction Communications Equipment" ALTERNATE_IDENTITIES="" PLAYER_NAME="" HEIGHT="78.74015748031496" WEIGHT="220.4622476037958" HAIR_COLOR="Brown" EYE_COLOR="Brown" CAMPAIGN_NAME="" GENRE="" GM=""> If you open the ones in question, and they are the same sort of XML, then there is no reason for McAfee to pop it as a virus. On the other hand, if it is some file that does not show up as text, well, then something odd is going on. HD is made to deal with an XML file, which is just a formatted and defined type of text file.

I was running it from the command line. However, it seems what I found was not the correct command. The 18pt works wonderfully. Yah, I planned on that when I found the original, non-working method. I tested from CLI, found it did not work, did some searches, and got tired of having to wait a minute between searches so posted about it. I am exceptionally happy with the results. Thanks people. Makes it FAR more usable for my old, tired eyes!

In my mid 50's and I have had to turn on UI scaling to be able to read things on computers. The joys of age. But Hero Designer ignores this. Everything is so small that I can not read it. I found that you should be able to use Java to change the font size, but that does not work: java -Dsun.java2d.uiScale=2 -jar HD6.jar This makes the program unusable by me and I bought the HSEG HD Files to use with them, which I can't do. Anyone found a solution to this or am I just out the money for something I can't use?