A Campaign in Space / Balancing of Spaceships with different SM

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Brett

Icelandic krónur?

Inter-Stellar Kredit. :)

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

Your problem has nothing to do with SM. Your problem is that the kinds of adventures a freighter captain, a scientist, and a fighter pilot want to go on have little or nothing in common.

Well...you could probably come up with a common mission. I think the tricky bit is figuring out what job needs a bulk transport and a science ship at the same time. The fighter is easily tacked on by adding "in lawless space" onto whatever you come up with.

Maybe some sort of prospecting...or slash and burn tomb-raiding astro-archaeology. Though you'd need a lot of labor to fill an SM+10 hauler with loot...

If you just pull random ship-appropriate jobs, yeah, all three ships will part ways in minutes and never meet again.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

Your problem has nothing to do with SM. Your problem is that the kinds of adventures a freighter captain, a scientist, and a fighter pilot want to go on have little or nothing in common.

That is an excellent point. Indeed, it is a compelling point. This campaign idea ought to be reformulated from terms of what the player characters are to terms of what they do together.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Brett

That is an excellent point. Indeed, it is a compelling point. This campaign idea ought to be reformulated from terms of what the player characters are to terms of what they do together.

That's key, I think. You could have a scientific-type, and a dude in a big ship, and somebody in a zippy little combat vessel, if you have them doing the right thing. For instance, prospecting for rare ores beyond the boundaries of patrolled space, gives them all a common purpose. The science guy has to find the deposit (heavy metal asteroid or moon), the big ship is a mining/hauling vessel, and the fighter-jock is security.

Come to think of it, the gang of you should probably just sit down and play EVE Online (speaking of ISK...). It does everything you want in your space campaign. Set up a PnP campaign with a different theme.

(Sigh. I miss EVE. No more gank-squads for me, until I get a new computer, though. The graphics crash this old clunker.)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Onkl

Good point, I'm not sure how to model that... Laser Mk1 < Laser Mk2, but there is only one Laser in the book.. Any ideas?

Oh no, there's more than 1 laser in the book.

Look at p.28 of Spaceships. There are regular lasers, UV alsers X-ray Lasers and Grasers as wel as Improved and high or very high ROF versions of all of these. These are mixed up with TL changes too.

The way you handle thsi is to not let the PCs have the top of the line gear to begin with. Sure the Imperial Navy is full TL11^ but PCs looking for an armed ship on the frontier will be lucky to get TL10 stuff. This leaves them someplace to advance to as they get lots of money and good connections.

[panton41]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

Your problem has nothing to do with SM. Your problem is that the kinds of adventures a freighter captain, a scientist, and a fighter pilot want to go on have little or nothing in common.

I played a WEG Star Wars game in high school were I flew a modified freighter that carried the other player's Y-Wing (barely). If a SM10 freighter easily carry these other ships there's an option. (And adventure ideas as they try to make the relationship work better on the technical side.)

Originally Posted by Onkl

Good point, I'm not sure how to model that... Laser Mk1 < Laser Mk2, but there is only one Laser in the book.. Any ideas?

Battletech and its descendants didn't have that kind of advancement and it work pretty well. You really might look to those games for inspiration. For that matter, there's quite a few options that can be applied to weapons to add variety. (Rapid Fire, Very Rapid Fire, Gravitic Focusing, etc. and the fact there's like four different kinds of "lasers".)

Edit: Ninja'd by Fred...

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Onkl

One of the groups I play with recently decided that they are interested in playing a high TL space campaign. Their idea is to play a group of space-faring adventurers, each commanding his own ship, making a buck by any means available. ...

We are still in the brainstorming phase, still I already have a major problem, that of spaceship size and the corresponding cost. It makes a lot of sense that modules on larger ships cost more than modules on smaller ships. I now have a problem with balancing that..

If you handwave vigorously enough there is no reason for them to care about the actual value of their individual ships. Never put them in a position where they can sell or buy ships or modules with money - just have them find salvage, swap with aliens with no common currency and barely comprehensible motivations, and so forth. One simple way to ensure this is to make the normal monetary economy and organized civilized space in general inaccessible - maybe their ships are stolen, or a Bad Guy framed them for a Bad Thing.

They live on the fringe, by their wits. Fighter guy protects them, science ship guy investigates the strange for potential advantage, and freighter guy handles logistics and habitat.

[Onkl]

Thanks for all your replies and reflections. You made some very valid points. The point for them for working together will be "plot 13A": They know and trust each other being former squad members in the Army of the Federation/Empire/Whatever. They tried to improve their pensions by stealing an old freighter with x escort craft during one mission... unfortunately they got caught and dishonorably discharged, fortunately the spacecraft were never found. So they now founded a Corporation X to do Y for any customers paying hard credits.

If the smallest ship has SM+5, the biggest SM+8, then a module for the smallest costs approx 3% of the module of the SM+8... they could divide loot accordingly...

But as I have already played a few rounds with these players, I know them to be very fair loot sharers, so I think they will just upgrade the ship which benefits the group the most.

I'll just have to figure out what to do about the money they must make to upgrade the ships and the money they can spend on personal items - of course I'll have CR being very strict and "illegal" weapons and armor have exorbitant prices, any other ideas to balance this for personal/ship gear?

I guess one of the players just has to be the accountant of the group and keep a ledger ;)

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Onkl

If the smallest ship has SM+5, the biggest SM+8, then a module for the smallest costs approx 3% of the module of the SM+8... they could divide loot accordingly...

Note that that's not necessarily representative if the big ship is a freighter, and the small ships are higher-performance craft.

For instance, a freighter (in addition to having Cargo Bays which cost nothing) is going to have a fairly thin (1 system per section) skin most likely of steel. If the small ship is sheathed in Hardened Nanocomposite, it pays more per system, and it may have more than 3 systems of armor. And for weaponry, note that you buy the same weapon for the same price whichever ship it's going on...or maybe effectively less on the big ship, if you can make do with a larger but less efficient version. Of course, arming the freighter may not help much...

Originally Posted by Onkl

But as I have already played a few rounds with these players, I know them to be very fair loot sharers, so I think they will just upgrade the ship which benefits the group the most.

If they're communist with their upgrade (and upkeep!) budget, that takes the whole relative cost issue off your hands nicely.

Originally Posted by Onkl

I'll just have to figure out what to do about the money they must make to upgrade the ships and the money they can spend on personal items - of course I'll have CR being very strict and "illegal" weapons and armor have exorbitant prices, any other ideas to balance this for personal/ship gear?

If you have profit levels comparable to the cost of spacecraft, you can afford powered armor and shiny guns, and maybe even a tank or two. If that's what you want to spend your money on. Is it really a problem if they have a hover-tank of their own, given that they already have a warship?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Brett

Icelandic krónur?

It's the currency used in EVE Online, the MMO. It stands for InterStellar Kredits, but yes, the CCP guys have no doubt been heavily inspired by the acronym for the Icelandic currency.

(And, by the way, in EVE Online the Freighter ship is enormously expensive. For the cost of one Freighter, I can buy half a dozen Battleships.)