kjoatmon

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

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

Space Opera and Aftermath are the first things I think of when I hear complaint that refer to Champions as "recreational math."
 

 
Space Opera was a product of the moment, though- even TSR gor in on the "math means realism" wave with Star Frontiers- sure, it is the least complex of the math-heavy games, but for TSR, it was a departure from all that had gone before.
 
I am told that Pheonix Command was the high-water mark of over-math, but I never played it, so I can't say with certainty.  In my experience, BTRC's Armory books combined with Aftermath led to a series of calculations to determine damage based on projectile weight and shape and muzzle velocity, meaning that if you were ever mad at someone and wanted to bring the game to a screeching halt, all you had to do was grab a different gun....
 
 
Eventually, my players talked me into doing what you are talking about, though- moving the Space Opera campaign onto Champions running gear.
 
My Traveller players waffle between HERO and Traveller systems: the prefer the quickness of Traveller, but they also prefer the significantly reduced lethality of HERO.  It tends to vary depending on their desire to be violent.  Ha!
 
 

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.
 

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.

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.

HD6 Issues Under Windows High Resolution Screens
 
You need to run Hero Designer from the command line.
 
javaw -jar HD6.jar [font size] for example, the following would set the default font size throughout the application to 18pt:
javaw -jar HD6.jar 18