[Spaceships/Space Opera] I need an editor and/or playtesters...

[Phantasm]

I've been working a while on a number of starfighters, gunboats, dropships, civilian craft, and warships for my space opera setting. I intended use Dogfight Action for the combats, while using Spaceships as the base of the craft (and using stuff from The_Ryujin's blog for newer in-between sizes that don't fit the 10-30-100 ton size progression).

However, I've come to realize that I have almost no clue how these craft would interact with each other! Some of the oldest designs are nearly a decade old, and the last time I was able to run any combats with players was two years ago (long before the newest stuff was made) was a quartet of the sole small SM +4 starfighter against the SM +9 civilian "blockade runner" freighter.


So, please... I need an editor or two, and especially some unofficial playtesters to tell me what I'm doing wrong, and how they'd change things around. (I'll add names to the setting doc!)





The ships document.
The setting document itself.

Of note in the setting: it's been roughly 50 years and one full TL (10^ to 11^) since the last full-scale interstellar war, so the major players have not only changed but also have new equipment. And they're rusty at fighting interplanetary/interstellar wars.



Relevant excerpt from the setting document regarding the Piloting skill:

Piloting† (p.*B214)
The Contragravity specialty as written is too generalized for the various designs in this setting. As such, the larger, slower contragravity vessels use the Heavy Airplane specialty, while the smaller ones use High-Performance Airplane or Light Airplane, depending on the design of the aircraft. (Aircraft that would fall under Ultralight are too light to mount a contragrav lifter.) Aerospace has been rolled into two different specialties, listed below; Hyperspace (listed in Space) does not exist in the setting.

The following specialties are unique to the setting, though they can probably find use in other space opera settings without too much hassle.

Gunboat: Covers craft that seem to blur the lines between Light Transport and Starfighter, being craft with three to six person cockpits/bridges and as fast as and maneuver like starfighters, usually with much heavier armaments. Defaults: Light Transport at -2; Flitter or Starfighter at -3, or other Piloting at -4.

Light Transport: Covers aerospace shuttles and dropships intended to travel between atmosphere and space, as well as various small passenger craft, light merchantmen, and tramp freighters of a similar size and configuration (such as space marine assault shuttles) that may or may not be designed to cross the boundary. Also includes various SWACS and S&R type craft of similar size and controls. (Generally replaces Aerospace and larger High-Performance Spacecraft.) Defaults: Flitter or Heavy Airplane at -2, Gunboat at -3, or other Piloting at -4.

Starfighter: Any one- or two-person high-performance spacecraft operated from a small enclosed cockpit; includes aerospace fighters when making the transit between atmosphere and space. (Replaces most instances of High-Performance Spacecraft and some cases of Aerospace.) Defaults: High-Performance Airplane or Light Airplane at -2, Flitter or Gunboat at -3, or other Piloting at -4.

Starship: Any large ship (commonly SM +9 or larger), regardless of whether it can perform at FTL, is limited to lightspeed, or is strictly an STL craft. This is the primary skill of a helmsan when not following the directions of someone with Shiphandling (Starship); also replaces Aerospace for the larger craft that can enter the atmosphere, and Heavy Aircraft when maneuvering in atmosphere in these craft only. Defaults: Heavy Airplane or Light Transport at -3, or other Piloting at -4.


(I didn't post the details for Piloting (Flitter) as they didn't pertain to spaceships, being atmospheric contragrav craft.)

[doctorevilbrain]

Those links don't anything when I press them except flash.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain

Those links don't anything when I press them except flash.

They're direct links to PDFs; did they download? Or did your antivirus flag them for something?

EDIT: I just tried them, and Firefox gave me hiccups for being direct downloads/security risks, same with the stuff in my .sig. Try going to this link to the folder and downloading the PDFs from there; they're listed as "Space_Opera_Setting.pdf" and "Space_Opera_Setting_Ships.pdf".

[doctorevilbrain]

No, they didn't.

[Tinman]

I right clicked & opened them. Then downloaded from there.
Worked for me.

[RyanW]

My browser (Chrome on mobile) has been acting weird on downloads lately. What I've had to do was open the download in a new tab. When I go to that tab, it starts downloading.

[doctorevilbrain]

When I clicked on the link to the folder, it said that those can't be downloaded securely.

[ericthered]

I've gotten them. I got them on PC though. Still the best digital platform.

You're mostly just looking for fight data, right? see which options are working best and what are falling flat?

That's an awful lot of ships (which is a good thing -- I'll happily file away the finished version).

What sort of templates and skill levles were you hoping to pilot these with? that matters for play-testing.


Bookmarking the PDF would be awesome. So would a table of contents, even if its just a list without page-numbers at this point

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I've gotten them. I got them on PC though. Still the best digital platform.

You're mostly just looking for fight data, right? see which options are working best and what are falling flat?

What I'm looking for falls into a few categories:

First and foremost, is my math correct? Even using spreadsheets, this is not an absolute, especially with the older ships on the list (in general, they're the ones described in the fluff as "Colonial Defense Force" or "CDF", or possibly using terms like "American", "Russian", "Japanese", etc.; all of the older ones follow the 10-30-100 mass progression, so the in-between sizes are clearly not new). For those with in-between sizes, I've been using a post from The_Ryujin's blog to calculate stuff.

Second, how do they stack up against each other? Do any of the completed designs not make sense for their roles?

Third, what changes to the designs would you make to better fit the cinematic space opera feel? (Looking at Star Wars, classic Battlestar Galactica, 1970s Buck Rogers, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Babylon 5, Macross/Robotech (sans transforming mecha), BattleTech/MechWarrior, Aliens, and The Last Starfighter as primary inspirations for the setting).

That's an awful lot of ships (which is a good thing -- I'll happily file away the finished version).

I've been at it a long time; I probably should have asked for assistance earlier, to be honest, but the few times I let players design their own craft they ignored the setting design conceits to make stuff that didn't fit (one with Super Reactionless doing 50G, another with a hard science tramp freighter ship with four fuel tanks of reaction mass for chemical rockets and no shields). I don't know if I'll ever finish it, to be honest; I keep finding holes that need filling.

What sort of templates and skill levels were you hoping to pilot these with? that matters for play-testing.

I was thinking relevant skills - Artillery, Gunner, Navigation, Piloting, etc. - at 12 or 14. I could see some of the GURPS Space, Traveller: Interstellar Wars, and Template Toolkit 3: Starship Crew templates being used, though I don't really have those open to say exactly which templates off-hand.

Bookmarking the PDF would be awesome. So would a table of contents, even if its just a list without page-numbers at this point

A ToC will probably be easier to make, since I used OpenOfficer Writer to make and edit the document, and export it to PDF for wider distribution of the final designs. I'll see what I can do for the next updates; just not sure when it'll come out.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by ericthered

So would a table of contents, even if its just a list without page-numbers at this point

As an update, I just uploaded a version with a Table of Contents.

How are folks doing with critiquing, number-checking, and testing these?