LostKnightsRPG.org

Well people, it's a big job, so lets start at the basics. I haven't got you a budget yet, but what in general do you want? The space book doesn't give lists of features. Traveller may be grittier then we want, star wars is the wrong feel, but actually lensman may be a good choice. What do you guys feel like you could work with the best? A star trek feel? Battlestar galactica? golden age sci fi? any ideas at all will be constructive.

trek.

and it should be the best that our federation has to offere, but shouldn't be terribly powerful weapon-wise, not because of low tech or lack of desire, but with a peaceful galaxy, they probably stopped weapons development for the last few hundred years.

or maybe they have good weapons, but the designers didn't implement them well (super laser that uses so much power that it can't fire rapidly, poorly placed turrets, etc.)

I vote trek too. Mostly cause I've been on a trek trip lately. What books do I need to find for this?

look for gurps 4th edition, all of it or as much as you can find. There's about 24 to 28 books out there. If you want to dig deeper look for gurps 3e and the conversion documents. 4e was designed to be somewhat backwards compatible with 3e, as SJ games wanted to keep their following and respected the investment that 3e players had made into literally dozens of books. It think the PDF collection from 3e is about 2 or 3 gigs. Gurps 4e martial arts just came out, but its out there on the internet. Some of the 'successor' books for 4e haven't come out yet, like the high tech book (which ends with T8, being modern tech) and a few others. It seems that magic is included in the powers book for 4e, but also has its own book. I would suggest that since a standalone supplement for magic has come out, that magic not be built from the powers book. They are probably not equivalent. I think the magic 'superpowers' was included to represent comic superheroes that use magic.

I agree with the star trek feel. The ship that the federation has built you will be 'state of the art' at TL10. It will have the most advanced weapons that the federation has which will not necessarily be more advanced than weapons that members of the federation might possess. As cheyne mentioned, there is an 'advantage' that allows for upgrading your tech level. you might hail from a race that is more technologically sophisticated then the federation at large, but was wooed into joining the federation and laying down arms by diplomacy or economics. These weapons, however long out of use, might still be superior to those the federation has, as the GF has been at peace for a very long time.

So, from how it looks, an individual character will be unable to afford a ship of his own. Once we're at the point that we can start examining costs of things, I'll assign a "mission budget" that will include everything that is at the disposal of the party as a group. if an individual wants a special battlesuit or a cybernetic suite, that should come out of his personal funds. Perhaps there's an advantage to provide more capital, not sure haven't gone through it in detail. Having a smaller, more maneuverable and harder hitting ship would be to the party's advantage, if for no other reason then to draw fire away from the precious main ship. (your mental copies are in there, as is your ability to regenerate yourself and find a way home).

Your backup ship will have a smaller budget and designing it is unnecessary until you destroy your main ship. Also, it must by definition have a sophisticated cloaking device. Though having one on your main ship might be wise to start with, it is not required and therefore does not automatically detract from the budget. I would imagine that what you learn from using the ship you build at the outset will actually wind up making the backup ship better then the first one. Things you buy but never use might not get repurchased. I'm comfortable with this incongruity. If I give you 200 Million to buy your main ship with, I'll probably only give you 150 Million to buy the backup. Basically expect a 75% budget to build the new one, some decent portion of which needs to make it invisible.

The traveler ships are a bit more star warsy then they are star trecky, at least at first glance. If someone can find a sourcebook that provides established charts and equipment lists for what we're shooting for then please name it. I think 3e had a lensman supplement, which I have a signed hard copy of in storage in the states. (My dad worked on it.) Lensman is a lot more star trecky, but is also an older feel than even original star trek. God forbid I have to come up with charts on my own, it would delay the game tremendously.

I found a Zombietown book. Yeah!

I've been giving traveller a closer look, and I think it will suit our purposes. I'm looking to find a range of ship sizes that will keep you guys safe but not give you too much to do in a fight. Four or five (or more) players trying to manage a fleet of fighters or a battleship will mostly be bogged down with accounting for every single gun that needs to be fired. I'm thinking something in the 3000-5000 dTon range should be big enough to be dangerous, but not too big to manage. I do want you guys to get to choose what you have. The ship design rules are fairly intuitive, mostly dealing with real terms and values. Nothing so far has been listed in 'points', it's all square feet, cubic feet, megawatts, and its very consistent. It's the closest 4e book to what we want and I think that makes it a winner. The group should designate either one person to build the ship, or should find some way to communicate with each other, perhaps meeting in live, to decide things. If one of the players wants to be an engineer, then that's a good person to have design the ship. I'm looking through to see how much budget you need to have enough choice in size and design of ship without having so much money that you can't spend it all nor having too little money to adequately equip yourselves.

The only thing that really throws me off about traveller is the fuel. Other than that it's perfect. The feel that traveller gets is not really what we're after, but that's a matter of style. I will probably simply have to come up with some other type of fuel. I may also change it from 'jump drive' to something else. The space book has a lot of ideas in it. You do need to be able to detect transmissions and things on your way, so a blind jump from point to point is mostly worthless. they actually have 'warp' drives in the space book, but they don't give stats. I don't really want to deal with fuel. Somebody who has it look at the traveller book and give me an idea. I think we can just make 'fuel' code for MW of energy and give your reactor a bigger half life. So you do have to operate within the parameters of your reactor, but you don't have to add reaction mass or 'skim' planets and stars for fuel. The basic premise of the game makes a fuel dependent ship a suicidal proposition. It would go from star trek to hungry hungry hobbits really fast if we did that.

Other than that, I'm ready to assign a budget of 3 billion $ to your mission. That's enough to outfit your ship and give you mission based equipment up to and including an escort. Traveller ship building uses M$, million "solars" as their unit of currency. So basically you have M$3,000.00 to start with. If you find things missing that you'd like, that are suggested in ultratech or space, let me know and we'll work something out.

Updates:

You may buy a force screen from ultratech, or several force screens. they are TL11. There are no force fields in TL10, and it's need both for the feel of the game and so that you can take damage without carrying around shitloads of spare parts. A spherical ship of 5000 dTons could install a medium force screen that would cover the entire thing for ~130 M$. I did the math. If you come up with absurd numbers remember to find the square root of the volume to get the diameter. This screen would provide 100 dDR. There isn't anything about its power draw, I think it should require it's dDR in MW on a constant basis, and would prevent the use of MTs (matter transporters). Multiple shields can overlap. Alternately, if you want to designate shields to cover individual areas, take the longest dimension of the space and use that for the diameter when designing the shield. This would allow for more 'total' dDR and hit location specific ablation, but would allow less damage to break through. If you go with overlapping shields, remember that there must be space between them, at least one increment of diameter, which is 30 feet. So an attack must overcome each layer of your 'shell' before it hits your armor.

Speaking of matter transporters, these are also TL10 but are not in the traveller book. So. use the Bay mounted light particle beams as equivalent to a MT array in every way. Light particle cannon is equivalent to being able to teleport 50 cubic feet of matter. Use multiple MTs if you wish to be able to move more than that. Shields, atmospheric electrical activity, and other effects can block safe use of the MT array. hence the need for shuttles.

oh yeah, force screens purchased are only usable on vehicles. Sorry, forgot to mention. A personal shield should come from either an advantage to TL11 or a power of some sort.

addendum to the MT array: Such a teleportation device will be capable of time travel under specific conditions. Whatever sensory array you get can be used to detect "temporal stability", if the TS rating is low enough, time travel may be possible. This is not explicitly covered in ultratech, I'll see if there's a device for it in one of the setting books, but since it's a story effect anyway, we may as well do it like this. It won't always be available. When it is available it may not be necessary. It will last for a certain period of time, so you'll have about 10 - 15 hours in which to do your business before automatically going back to where you came from. The possibility exists, as was seen in star trek actually, to open a rift in time and transport your whole ship through. This would be a major plot point, and under this circumstance a lot more control over your stay would be possible.

The signal received from the depths of the unknown was sent a long time ago. It is entirely possible that time travel will be necessary to provide any help at all. At 'some' point we will be going back in time. And it will be awesome.

so, I've looked a little further into the ship building system. It's going to take some time for whoever builds it to build it. Enough time that they should be compensated in character. Though I honestly try to avoid over eeping people, I think nothing short of eeps is appropriate. I'm sure all of you who play want to be in a good and well designed ship, actually being responsible for it is another matter entirely. Here's what I think. The game system recommends 1-3 xp per game session. If someone or some people will sit down and try to keep track of how much time they spend designing the ship, then I'll prorate them game sessions worth of xp for their work, as though this were live. So, for each hour of work you will probably get 1 xp. This does involve coordinating with people and discussing what is wanted.

So far I like what Cheyne has proposed for the ship, high tech and civilized, and obviously not from an overtly warlike people. Though the traveller book outlines the process as very simple, it then goes on to ask for quite a bit of math. Also involved is planning out where things are, and developing a map of the ship. The system calls for hexes, so a battlemap would be ideal for designing the shape and orientation. This work can be split up rather readily, if one person designs the ship on paper and stats and another works to arrange everything. Some research into the aspects of the game that aren't present in traveller might be needed. do the wizards and psykers in the group need a line of sight without the use of a camera to target their foes? and if so, how effective would they be in space combat? Could a two man fighter allow a caster to get within range? These are questions that aren't readily answered within any single book. To some degree, the ship should be built to capitalize on the strengths of the party.


The system allows for even capital ships to be atmosphere capable, this and the size of the ship are the first important considerations. Size limits everything else, though the smaller it is the cheaper a lot of armor and shields will be. But the power plant is huge, and you need to account for a lot of systems in whatever space you choose. So the job of designing the ship is not to be taken lightly, and should consider the requests of the group, if any.

If I am delegated to build the ship, I will just build one. I'll put a little of everything into it, some of which might be wasted space.

Also, at least one player needs to be absolutely intimately familiar with everything the ship is capable of. Gadgeteering can somewhat expand what the ship can do or take one system and make it do something else. But the basic out of the box features should be discussable by at least one member of the party. The person who designs the ship, if it isn't me, would by default be that person.

couple of things...

first, i think the ship's designer should, in story, be required to go. not only would they likely want to see their "masterpiece" in action, they would also be able to repair it and build onto it better than most others. thus, a character should really be a designer. not sure if i want to volunteer for the roll however, as supers are fucking expensive, and i want expensive abilities.

second, i think that the space expansion for campaign cartographer would be perfect for alot of this, as it has actual stuff for ship deck plans. but i have found i don't like using this cad program... so, thael, i would love to let you do the designing, using said software, for this and other games.

third, i forget.

fourth, i would like to work on this sometime soon when people have books. maybe this weekend?

Sounds great. I think you're also saying that you want one or more of the players to build the ship, with group consultation. That is perfect. One of the un-fun things about starforge is that nobody kept track of what the ship could do, and it had dramatic capabilities that were never utilized. This would again happen if I designed the ship for you.

Do keep in mind that for some of your planetary encounters I'll actually randomly roll up the planet and species endemic to it, so any environment conceivable could come up. Include in your desired inventory everything you can think of. If you build a 3000 dTon ship, you should have a handsome budget that can also spring for a flotilla of smaller ships and the capacity to carry them. A fighter escort or a dedicated combat vessel of some kind would help mitigate difficult battles. Alternately, a detachable section of the ship is totally doable.

Please note, a whole lot is described in ultratech that doesn't reappear in traveller, if you want that stuff just say so, and try to find stats and costs.

A whole spectrum of vehicles are available. Since you are bringing an engineer, consider bringing the vehicles in parts. I would say that unassembled vehicles would take up about 30% of their normal size, and would be a convinient cube, though would be of same weight. This would help somewhat with keeping a dozen submarines in your cargo hold, but is pretty fair and realistic. It's also a bit grittier then the whole 'trek' feel we're going for.

So, my proposed solution for using casters and direct fire psions and supers.

A force screen can retain atmosphere, so a carefully build room in the ship could have a stairwell or elevator accessing the exterior of the ship. You would need to essentially buy the shield, the airlock, and a stateroom below it. It would also need artificial gravity. The force screen quite specifically allow attacks to come out of them.

Due to the exposed nature of the caster, and his relative importance, multiple heavy force screens should be used. At the size they would be covering they would be fairly cheap.

alternately, the 'dome of atmosphere' spell could be used to provide air for the caster, he might even enchant a large area of the stateroom with it which elevates through doors above it to reach the exterior of the ship. He would be responsible for his own protection.

Space is mana-poor, mostly being a low mana region and in places being a no mana region. A powerstone of the best you can afford would do nothing if not help you. Also look for long distance viewing to target ships within range of the shipboard batteries but not your eyes. Psions should be ok using mind powers through viewports, but if they get powers that create a linear beam of energy they would need to be outside.

I recall saying that you may not have a personal shield from TL11 without buying the advantage, and that the use of the shield in this way is essentially personal. However, it is built into the ship, and a powerful mage could be just as effective as a weapons battery, at least against fighters. (haven't looked at the damage levels of spells as yet, but I assume that it escalates, and I recall seeing that you can charge damage spells up.) A powerful touchstone is worth every penny in space, as it could fuel your for much longer fights than the ambient mana can.

With either model for the caster platform, the caster would be free to design his area and perform rituals of any kind that would enhance his range and power. This would need to happen "in game", but that just means that it doesn't come out of the ship building budget.

Low level magery is cheap, and can be improved over time with study. Many spell effects may be a much cheaper and more "addable" effect than technology, so even if a dedicated mage isn't in the party, taking magery 0 may be a useful thing to have around just in case.

I want my number of posts to be higher.