[OOC] Astroduel Tournament

[Michael Thayne]

I'm going to try a probably-one-off scenario using the Astroduel setting from Pyramid #3/111. The premise is simple: a free-for-all, last-ship-standing tournament.

Characters should be built on 100 points, with up to -50 points in disadvantages (where "disadvantage" means "any negative point value trait, except quirks") plus five quirks. Characters shouldn't have any cybernetics or bio-tech (most possible instances of which won't matter in this game). Characters should have at least Very Wealthy wealth, so they can afford their own ship, and should take any additional crew they need for their ships as Allies with Constantly as the frequency of appearance. Use of cost-saving tricks like 5-point talents is strongly encouraged.

For those who don't have the relevant Pyramid article: campaign is TL9. Spaceships should be SM+4 to SM+6, and omit superscience (superscience star-gates exist in the setting, but don't require the ships that use them to have any superscience devices of their own). Missiles cost 1/5 the normal price, but have nerfed damage (roughly cut in half). Habitats are unnecessary, because stargates allow for sufficiently fast interplanetary travel. Nuclear thermal rockets are the most common propulsion system, but the only hard and fast rule is that ships need some propulsion system other than space sails.

I'll probably use standard combat rules with 1-minute rounds, but might use tactical combat rules if someone can point me to a good online tool for handling hex combat maps.

[ericthered]

I'm interested.

Does the ship need to be submitted at the same time as the character?

How will you handle people who want to look at the opposition before building their own craft? Is is possible to swap weapons in and out but not the actual ship?

How much character role-play will we see? Will there be scenes right before the arena starts, and opportunities to sabotage opponents craft? Or is this a pure arena fight?

I'm thinking of making a wealthier than strictly necessary megalomaniac with an aristocratic streak. May very well give him a fine mustache while I'm at it.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'm interested.

Does the ship need to be submitted at the same time as the character?

Yes.

How will you handle people who want to look at the opposition before building their own craft? Is is possible to swap weapons in and out but not the actual ship?

If you have the Pyramid article, I'm going to throw in some NPCs using standard designs found there, mostly (entirely?) of the Paladin type.

How much character role-play will we see? Will there be scenes right before the arena starts, and opportunities to sabotage opponents craft? Or is this a pure arena fight?

I'm willing to play out attempted sabotage, though probably people are on the look out for that sort of thing and odds of success aren't great. It would be odd if that frequently determined the outcome of arena fights, after all.

I'm thinking of making a wealthier than strictly necessary megalomaniac with an aristocratic streak. May very well give him a fine mustache while I'm at it.

Hehe, I like this idea.

[ericthered]

I present: Fort YorkenBurg!

SM +7 with enough armor to change its size to SM+6. (page 4 of pyramid 34). This doubles the DR of each armor system as well.

Front:
1-5: advanced metallic laminate armor [DR100]
6: Tertiary Battery of 30 very rapid fire 30 kj lasers
Center:
1-5: advanced metallic laminate armor [DR100]
6: Secondary Battery of 20 cm missiles. 700 shots, max 10 at once
Core: Control Room
1-4: advanced metallic laminate armor [DR80]
5: Fuel Tank (12 mps)
6: Fusion Rocket Engine (.005 G)
Core: Fusion reactor

That costs...
14*600k = 8.4M for the armor
2* 1.5M = 3M for the weapons
600k for the control room
100k for the fuel tank
3M for the fusion rocket
3M for the fusion power plant

18.1 Million Gurps Bucks.

TL 9
Fort Yorkenburg
dST/HP 50
Hnd/SR -
Move: .005/12
LWt: 300 tons
Load: .6
SM +6
OCC: 3SV
dDR: 100/100/80
Cost: 18.1 Million

Piloted by one Lukas Von Yorkenburg

ST 10
DX 10
IQ 10
HT 10

Advantages:
Multimillionaire 2 [100]
2 Allies: Crew, 50% of points, almost all the time [12]
Hot Pilot 2 [10]


Disadvantages:
Megalomaniac [-10]
Selfish [-5]
Bad Temper [-5]
Nearsighted (Mitigator, monocle) [-10]
Code of Honor (Gentleman's) [-10]
Quirk: Twirls mustache when he's up to something


Skills:
Gunner (beams) 14 [4]
Artillery (missile) 12 [8]
Navigation (space) 12 [2]
Pilot (Low performance spaceship) 12 [2]
Saviore-faire (high society) 11 [2]
leadership 10 [2]
Tactics 10 [2]


He still lacks 7 points and 4 quirks. I'm still deciding how to spend those.

I'm unsure how much input I should give for the crew. They're very much his employees, and they should be able to fly the ship, repair it, and fire the weapons. I also still trying to figure out the rules for how many folks I can cram in this ship: the more, the better, as each man is another layer of point defense. Additional crew will need to be bought as allies, and probably even more cheaply than his control room backups.

Yes, this ship is pretty much a ball of armor with point defense and missiles. It won't be able to manuevuer in combat time, but it has more mps than any of the sample ships and should be able to tank most commonly encountered missiles and shoot down anything bigger.

Yes, he's got 25 more points of wealth than he needs. I'm torn on this, because I don't want him to be ruined by a single loss, or to have pumped all of his wealth into the ship, but wealth isn't very granular at that point. Is there a more granular progression I can use?

and yes, he's very much a mustache twirling villain. Of course, they can be slightly more sympathetic in an arena environment, and he's actually not much of a traditional cheater. Just a rich kid showing off.

[Michael Thayne]

Hmmm. Probably won't run this unless I get at least three more players. That said, I will try to keep an eye on this thread in case more show up.