I'm plugging away at the final missing bits of the beta test version of StarCluster 3 - Vehicles and Spaceships. Spaceships are a matter of time. I have to judge what parts are appropriate for each size hull, and create some examples. I'm using the Starship Combat section from SC 2E rather than the In Harm's Way: StarCluster rules, as the older ruleset is much more focused on the PCs in single ship fights rather than epic space battles. I don't want to make this game all about the battles, and made a similar decision on the vehicle combat rules.
I'm really nerfing Civilian ships and vehicles compared to SC 2E. SC 2E covered both civilian and military gaming, and as a result, didn't distinguish between the two with regard to equipment, ships, and vehicles. This lead to civilian ships being armed equivalent to Navy ships, which is absurd. Civilians should not have access to the more powerful weapons and devices of the military. All governments depend on coersion to make their rules stick, and no government would allow the outrageously powerful weapons available to them to be used by civilians.
I'm limiting civilian armament to lasers and missiles on ships, and machine guns, lasers, unguided rockets, and autocannon on vehicles. This makes things much simpler. They are deadly enough to be useful fending off pirates and nasties, but not too powerful.
Now I have to mesh the civilian vehicles with the rules for generating military vehicles! :D
-clash
Why not go on and work up both? Giving people the ability to do either type of campaign? After all isn't a lot of this similar to your planets notes? Like "Civilian" "Merchant" "Unrestricted Weaponry." type tags to describe them work for ships?
ReplyDeleteHi Tim!
ReplyDeleteI'm splitting military and civilian games because encompassing both would entail a mammoth book of at least 700 pages, with three separate space combat systems, six resolution mechanics, two methods of chargen, and a bunch of other options. It would be harder to find anything you need to, and be more confusing. I also think the division is more logical. With a traditional GM/Player split, the group needs to buy both games in order to play. With this split, you only need to buy both games if you want to play both types of games.
-clash