Captain Obvious

Re: Military Spacecraft Designations The OP asked for non-naval ideas, so I'm going to attempt to get this thread back on that track. The Air Force today designates its aircraft by mission...you have fighters for air superiority, bombers to attack ground targets, fighter-bombers for close air support, cargo planes for transport, tankers for refueling, etc. Expanding their sphere of influence into space will bring about some new missions that aircraft can't perform, so some new designations would have to be made. For space superiority, your smaller craft could still be called fighters...nothing too radical there. Larger craft could possibly also be called fighters, but seems a little weird to modern sensibilities. Maybe just call the whole class "space superiority craft" and break it down by size group...light space supe, medium space supe, heavy space supe, etc. Or maybe by crew size...1-2 = fighter, 3-10 = gunship, 11-50 = assault craft or something... Your logistics craft wouldn't change...cargo craft, tanker craft, etc. Less heavily armed, just as fast, but better equipped for long-term missions could be patrol craft. These couldn't be too small...they need enough crew members to account for shift changes and need more storage for food, etc. Heavily armed, slow, long-term craft could be called sentries...these are the ones that sit at strategic points as guards or besiege planets. Craft that carry large amounts of bombs could still be bombers; those that lay space mines could logically be called minelayers even though that's traditionally a naval vessel. Ships built around a huge weapon (spinal mounts) might be called mobile artillery or mobile weapons. Or all three of these could be combined into a larger classification like munitions craft or something. Craft that land troops on planets could be called assault craft or just landers. Just a few ideas...

Re: Heroic v. superheroic genres and the use of powers Heroic level games use powers too, just to a lesser extent. A fantasy dwarf's ability to spin straw into gold is a power, as is the ability to see in the dark. The Vulcan mind-meld is a power. Fonzie's ability to start the jukebox by hitting it just so is a power.

Re: Rifts HERO? For Rifts, I would make everyone pay for everything that's not trivially mundane. Cyborgs pay for their powers, Juicers pay for their powers, Glitter Boys pay for their powers, etc. Some characters may not need as many points for a by-the-book build, but they should be able to have some decent followers or vehicles to balance out the ridiculous powers the other guys have. Just because Rifts has absolutely no game balance doesn't mean Hero shouldn't.

Re: Mega-scaled space combat & OCV I forget...is it permissible under the rules to apply Combat Skill Levels to that 0 OCV, or is it 0 no matter what?

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine They go back and forth on that. Currently, the thinking is that Neanderthals were a separate species (Homo neandertalensis) rather than a subspecies (Homo sapiens neandertalensis).

Re: Order of the Stick

Re: Some basics of trade and the town/city of Saltmarsh Most of that is pretty intuitive. For the exotic bed, you probably won't find a buyer in a small fishing village, or in the tiny crossroads town. You'd have to take it to a big city to get any real chance of finding a buyer. For the poorly made, smelly goblin armor, you won't find a buyer unless you take it to a poor goblin tribe who won't mind the smell. I mean, if you wanted to, you could work up all kinds of supply and demand charts, taking into account price elasticity, production possibility curves, substitution effects, etc, but for the most part, the average GM can eyeball it and get it good enough.

Re: Prince Madoc There are those who claim that the Chinese discovered America in 1421. Aside from Gavin Mendies and the Chinese themselves, this isn't taken too seriously, but as you say, it's Fantasy Hero.

Re: Some basics of trade and the town/city of Saltmarsh I generally assume that for common "commodity" type goods, like your barrel of salted meat, that the profit margin is about 10%. If it's a luxury good, like silk or fine porcelain, the price in areas furthest from its point of origin would be at least two or three times its original price, largely dependent on distance.

Re: (Equipment) Axe vs. Sword The "average human" includes infants, the elderly, and the seriously disabled. The average reasonably-fit adult would have a higher strength than the average human, which is why characters start at 10. The average fighting man would have a yet higher strength.

Re: Western Spaghetti Samurai Frontier Feel to Fantasy Sword & Sorcery There were a lot of Mexicans in spaghetti westerns, in my experience. Or, at least, Italian-Mexicans. For some reason, a lot of them are set either in Mexico or along the border.

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares The Midnight Meat Train in the Garden of Goodfellas and Evil Dead

Re: Populating and fleshing out Saltmarsh

Re: Populating and fleshing out Saltmarsh

Re: 1945a

Re: 1945a I can see where Lawnmower Boy's coming from. If this was a trailer, it would be awesome. It would promise a nigh-unstoppable menace and desperate heroics. As a complete project, it promises a Thousand Year Reich, for real this time.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Educate yourself. If your local library has a volume of collected Flash Gordon comics, I highly recommend you check it out. I believe there are also some old Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials online here and there, and they are well worth watching. The movie made in the 80s was cheesy, but a lot of people like it. There was a cartoon in the 70s or 80s, and another cartoon in the 90s; as is the nature of cartoons, they are often cheesy but still interesting enough. The TV show that came out recently is dumb.

Re: "Neat" Pictures That is a badass display. It would be nice to see more stuff like that, from an aesthetic point of view.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible? Hmm...looking around, it seems that Trantor's canonical population density is about 600/square kilometer. That's about the same as Germany (as a whole...density is obviously higher in the cities). If the whole planet is covered in city as described, there's a lot of room that's not being actively occupied by humans at any given time. I expect a good portion of that is landing fields for the spacecraft bringing in all the food etc that they need to import, but most of it is probably just warehouses of computer memory, full of census data and tax statements for thousands of years and trillions of people in the Galactic Empire. I won't try to make sense of anything Lucas says. If he says the sky on one of his planets is blue, I'll assume it's because of midichlorians or something...it's obviously not because of the way oxygen refracts light.

Re: Are single climate/habitat worlds really possible?

Re: Populating and fleshing out Saltmarsh http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/on-thud-and-blunder/ Fantasy is still well worth picking up, even though this essay is readily available. Lots of good stories in there.

Re: "Neat" Pictures Bwahahaha! I've repped you too recently...

Re: What would be your take on She-Grond? They don't get jealous of each other?

Re: I need more Star Hero equipment. Alien Wars is full of gritty sci-fi goodness.