Doc

Hi, I've been thinking about a hotshot spacefighter pilot game, a la Battlestar Galactica (the new serie), for a while. My main bug was to create a realistic setting in wich several planets would be habitable. The idea is, as I wanted it to fit physical laws, I didn't want to include FTL travels. It's been a long and hard work, but here I'm am sharing the result with you. I hope this can be usefull to someone else, too. Of course, feel free to tell what you think about it... So there it is. As there is no FTL travel, all the planets have to be in the same solar system (as even at half the speed of light, it would be eight years to go from Earth to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, while it only takes 6 hours and a half to the light to go from the Sun to Pluto...). Moreover, to be really realistic, I choose to limit the speed of the spacecrafts to one tenth the speed of light (wich is still a tremendous speed...). Another problem is, a star system canno't realistically support a dozen of habitable planets. So here's how I solved this. First of all, the star system would be a binary star. Binary systems can have their stars as "near" as a hundred AU (the distance between the Sun and Earth; Jupiter is at five AU from the Sun, and Pluto, at forty). Two stars orbiting one around each other at a distance of a hundred of UAs offer the possibilitu to double the amount of planets in the system and to have both planetary system nearly "touching" one another, wich also makes traveling more reallistic. Then, both stars have a habitability zone wich are each orbited by two planets (yuy, is it clear? ). Anyway, each star has two planets in its habitability zone. To maximise the number of habitable planets, two of those planets are gaz giants (one around each star). Gaz giants aren't habitable per see, but their lerger moons could be. If each gaz giant has four habitable moon, then we're up to a total of ten confortable, habitable planets... You can add to this a couple of planets where there is small human settlements, but no expensive colonisation due to harsh conditions (slightly too hot or too cold, no atmosphere, etc). Life there is only possible in stations. Floating stations are also possible in gaz giant planets. Stations could also be possible on the fringe between day and night of tidal locked planets too near of a star. Tose places would only be colonised for ressources exploitation, nuclear wastes disposal, etc. Voilà! You have a star system with numerous worlds wich are inhabited by a wide variety of people. In the worst case, at ten percent the speed of light, it would take less than fifty days to travel between the two fartest orbiting planets when they are totally opposed in their revolution cycles (to go strait through one side to the other of the binary system). Ouf! Am I nut to think about this during HOURS and to take nearly one to write this here???

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads

Re: Transform on 0 Body things

Re: Idea for a robot campaign I see... Well, I first thought that Star Hero was pretty much a space opera genre than a general sci-fi section. That's why I posted my non-space related thread there...

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads Battleships probably didn't sink only because they were atop ground zero, wich was placed below water surface. And for space, the difference in speed of radiation propagation isn't really relevant in a macroscopic scale, because it is still very near the speed of light, even in the atmosphere. But the heat generated would probably be more important in space as no energy would be "wasted" in generating the blast effect. If I were a GM having to take a decision on this, I would say that a nuke in space would probably do roughly the same amout of damages than an atmospheric, underground or underwater nuclear explosion.

Re: New cool links: this time about space stations and the like Thanks! For Globus Cassus, it was more of a "style exercise" (I don't know if it can be said this way in english...). The engineer overlooked the obvious technical impossibilities to think about the way such a work would take place, how people would organise to accomplish it. Anyway, I thought it could offer a cool far future background. Have fun!

I posted a new thread about mechas in the "Other genres" section, and, well, I just thought it might be appropriate to announce it in the Star Hero genre section too, as those genres might be related. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61505 Have fun!

Re: New cool links: this time about space stations and the like Usually, when I post some links, there are people who reply to comment them, but those have been posted for a couple of days, and nobody replied anything... I was just wondering if they were interesting or of any utility to someone?

Re: Squirrel Armour Well, maybe I'm not just nut, after all. Indeed, this would be great for a campaign reenacting Brian Jacques's Redwall... That'd be cool.

Re: Squirrel Armour Maybe you missed something there, Yamamura... Or maybe I'm just nut...

Re: How do i introduce new plyaer? Feel the same about Star Wars RPG. You just have to tell your new players the Hero system looks much like a Star Wars rgp creation process than a D&D one.

Links worthing to look at them for space setting inspiration. http://www.globus-cassus.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globus_Cassus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_sphere http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization Have fun!

Re: Post Apocalypse "holidays" THE one.

Re: How do i introduce new plyaer? We're touching the very essence of D20 system right here. D20 (and its ancestors) built a yoke to gameplay not only in its own system, but in the very mind of a damn lot of players. That's why I think it's inherently Evil. Even though the first rule in all D&D was to let rules asside when they got in your way, it seems that it was only a decoil to hide its masterplan, as lots of hardened D&D players never took it into acount. Free roleplayers of the world, unite! Revolt! But to add something useful to the thread, I'd do this in addition to the previous (and excellent:doi:) suggestions: you could make comparisions with any other RPG your players might have played wich weren't based upon character classes, like old D6 Star Wars, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, etc. If they never played any game without character class concept, well, this post is nul and void, and you de facto receive the epic mission to save their minds (and even maybe their souls) from the clutches of D20 system! Congratulations and good luck...

Re: Idea for a robot campaign Well, thank guys!

Re: Vampire Hero Well, maybe a judicious in between? I'd say a 250 points character would be to powerfull, but that's only a question of taste. 250 points is still fair enough. I also thought again about your standart powers. Wouldn't it be more cool to replace the blood drinking KA by a drain BODY, STUN or END? This way, your vampires could drink on someone without necessarly killing him...

Re: Vampire Hero Pretty cool. I was wondering why do you have two regeneration powers (namely, immortal and regeneration)? And, personally, I'd go with the 70+20 points left, but it depends on how powerfull you want your creatures to be powerfull compared to humans. One thing that bugged me out with VtM is that goth-like attitude of "dark" revenge over society by role-playing immensly powerfull "creatures of the night" freely killing and torturing humans...

Re: Idea for a robot campaign Well, it seems this idea doesn't get muc support... Sorry, next time, maybe.

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads The 25MT bomb was the strongest US engine ever built. It was never tested due to its awfull yeild and is not anymore in service since the end of the 70s. As I has told, it is very rare to have yields over 1MT by those days. Those big bombs had for primary objectives missile silos and hardened underground command centers. A 500KT bomb is sufficient to rase any city.

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads One last thing: I'm sorry to have talked this much about politics, warfare, strategics and others, as this should besically be a Hero rpg forum, but I just have this Total Psychological Limitation: can't resist debating over political issues... Sorry guys!

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads Well, whatever's going on with Putin doesn't mean Russia and NATO won't fight over opposing geostrategical interests...

Re: Tac-nukes vs. Nuclear Warheads Sure! I have posted a campaign suggested yesterday in a futurist alternate history where Soviet Union didn't crash. You can look at it in "Other genres". But just to continue in the discution about the gritty reality, I'd specify that nuclear war isn't a threat that desapeared with the Soviets... Look at what's going out with Putin's Russia right now... And now, let's role play to forget a little bit about our doom!

Re: Having Star Hero Parallel this world in the 18th-19th Centuries Cool! Very concrete and realist. Congratulations!

Re: Idea for a robot campaign