[Spaceships] Fighter Pilot Campiagn

[scc]

OK, at some point in the future I want to try and run a game based on works like the Star Wars X-Wing books or the TV show Space: Above and Beyond, you know where everyone is a space fighter pilot. The setting will be what starts out as a mostly hard science setting with the exceptions being in megascale engineering, that is the terraforming of Mars and Venus, otherwise everything is Tl9-10 following a mainly Conservative Hard Sci Fi pattern, the game is about flying fighters after all, not trans-humanism.

Politically mankind has come together in peace, more or less, with emphases on the less. Earth is broken up into several EU style organizations that are in the process of merging. There's enough people living on the Moon for there to be a nation involved in this process there, but beyond cis-Luna space there's it's a lot on untamed wilderness with light policing by the Terran Union. There may be 'independence' movements in some quarters, but they're made up of people who believe that independence is good no matter what and are more rebels with out a cause then anything else.

Plot wise I'm considering having a few sessions dealing with pirates and rebels in whatever cobbled together ships they can make and scaled down to SM+5 Red Arrows Aerospace Fighters with the players in SM+5 Nova Space Fighters before getting to the main event of a bug war. The bugs will have a standard propulsion setup of 2 TL10 standard reactionless drives and a set of ether flukes, giving them 1.3G acceleration, meaning the players will be faster but have far lower endurance. My explanation for why fighters are used is that reactionless drives have a 10% drop in efficiency for every SM you increase the ship, so a SM+4 fighter gets 1.3G out of the arrangement I mentioned before, but it's SM+8 Carrier only gets 0.86G, a SM+12 Battleship only gets 0.56G and a SM+15 Super-dreadnought gets 0.41G.

Now the bugs will be psychic and the fighters and other vessels the players will face will be cybershells, fully organic ones but cybershells none the less, controlled by AI's. These AI's will range from mindless and disposable NAI controlled to Worthy Opponent LAI controlled ones similar to Scar from nBSG and to SAI controlled ones serving as generals or filling a role analogs to princesses, Sara, Corg and Arial from The Next Generation part of Robotech, complete the the potential ability to assume human form. These last three groups (Worthy Opponent, Generals and Princess) will be potential reoccurring characters as they can move from body to body as long as one is in range to receive them or re-transmit them (Note: I won't actually be stating this Ability, apart from figuring out the range). I'm thinking that in defiance of conventional behavior for bug opponents that these guys actually value the individual, of course the individual is a self-aware AI program running on an expendable body.

One thing I'm playing around with is the ability to get higher quality components, after all enemy elite mooks and generals are often simply better then normal. Unfortunately I can't use the rules on Supers84 like Mecha Operations suggests, they're likely to go through bodies fairly quickly and the body should still have better performance then normal when not inhabited by the personality that 'owns', which means it's property of the body, not it's 'owner'. So I'm thinking that's it's possible for a component to be made to higher specs in ONE area at a cost premium equal the the square of the performance increase. If multiple increase are desired add the increase numbers and then square multiply by cost. So a chemical rockets that has twice the Acceleration OR Delta-V per fuel costs 4 times as much, one with both is 16 times. Now monetary costs don't mean anything to organic Spaceships, but I felt that the mechanic needed to be there.

Right now Bugs will actually have access to a racial Power. In addition to the previously mention telepathic abilities it will have at least two other: Forcefield Armor and Thrust Boost. Forcefield Armor is SM dDR with the Forcefield, Psionic and Costs FP Modifiers. It's SM dDR so that it doesn't end up either pointless or overpowered depending upon the size of the ship currently controlled. Multiple levels are possible and can be brought up separately. This creates interesting question when a personality moves between SM's, but it does a good job of scaling the FP provided by the body. Thrust Boost is Flight with Costs FP and Newtonian Space Flight and that last with Doesn't Eat or Drink. That set up allows additional acceleration at Basic Speed * 2 when active with no need to take on remass when done. Note that as Basic Speed starts at 5 for most beings, double is 10yps, or 1G. I am open to suggestions of addational powers

Two more items that I can think of: The bugs will take double damage as they don't have Injury Tolerance (Unliving), and they'll have an edited list of components to represent the fact that their organic, with some unique options like psychic powered fusion plants.

Now the hard part: players. There are only two paradigms or archetypes that show up in this sort of thing: The young hot shot and the experienced old salt. To balance things out there will be a single mandatory template the represent high school + basic training with stat boosts and it will have two lenses, one for each archetype. The Hotshot will have two levels of Hot Pilot plus Daredevil or something like it, the Old Salt will have +2 levels in Piloting and Gunnery skills, a bit more Rank, and possibly other Advantages gained from being in the military for some time. That costs the players nothing, it's unusual, but it's the best way I could come up with to balance things between the two types. After that they get 100 points to customize their character, with the stipulation that nothing they do can adjust the Piloting and Gunnery skills.

OK, that's all for now, this post has taken far too long to put together (A few days).