Starfire is still around.

http://www.starfiredesign.com/starfire/

There's around half a dozen novels in the universe by David Weber, of Honor Harrington fame, and Steve White.

I love detailed vehicle design so but Star Fire was fun.  I have always wanted to run a Starfire New Empires campaign but most of our attempts over the years have fizzled when one player or another wound up in a randomly generated dead end.

Quote from: David Johansen;858799I have always wanted to run a Starfire New Empires campaign but most of our attempts over the years have fizzled when one player or another wound up in a randomly generated dead end.

From a game perspective as well as from a who could realistically interact with whom perspective, dead ends are uninteresting. So why not change the randomization method so that dead end is not a result?

Let's just say, somewhat diplomatically, that, that's the roleplayer in you talking

Wargamers see things differently.

GURPS Vehicles is its own work of evil genius, which has a high barrier to entry unless (maybe even if) your brain already works that way, and which has a lot to do with vehicle design and standardized mechanics. Cool if your into that, but otherwise may be mostly unusable.

GURPS Space has its own system which doesn't require going anywhere near GURPS Vehicles.

There's also GURPS Spaceships (http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/spaceships/) which is relatively simple and functional.

And also GURPS Traveller.

Not to mention GURPS Lensman, which does an interesting job of streamlining space opera.

And others... So many options...

Wow, I seem to have started something here.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;858723It depends on what you're trying to do with starships in your game. More importantly, what your players are trying to do with them if they have their own setting in mind because they know nothing about Traveller's.

Honestly? Its never what my players want. I've discovered that they are pretty damn happy stabbing faces or blowing shit up, with a sideline of enjoying the scenery of whatever setting I've cooked up.

So its really what I want from starships in my game. What I want first and foremost is starships that do not exist as abstractions, but as real (yes, yes: Imaginary) objects, where putting in an aquarium isn't a matter of of juggling around abstract and usually non-scalar (I'm looking at you, Rogue Trader!) meta resources like 'space points' but actually takes real resources in terms of volume, mass and power appropriate to its function, where meaningful design sacrifices are then made to create the ship, providing it an internally consistent layout.

Which I mostly (mostly...) get from Traveller, and which is one reason I welcomed the Mongoose Second edition (conditionally), when they talked about adding back in power mechanics. I had hoped to get away from the arbitrary and frankly silly restrictions on Hard Points, allowing more versatility in design between military craft and civilian craft at the default scale of the game, though from what little I saw of the Beta, its a hack job at best.


And so far only Traveller does this. (GURPS Traveller seems to do it MORE, but its GURPS, and I already know my players will never touch GURPS...).

Also: I may have a bad edition of GURPS vehicles.  Its as complex and fiddly as everyone talks about, but it really doesn't allow for a wide range of designs unless you are talking about wooden 'age of sail' starships vs GURPS traveller starships.  Too many weird options at the low tech end of the scale, not enough options at the theoretical high tech end of the scale, if you catch my drift?


Also: This comment has been brought to you by the Parenthesis.

Quote from: estar;858204The way I handled jump in my Traveller campaigns was that it was an extension of the same gravitic technology that produced Grav Plates and Maneuver drives.
SNIP cool cool stuff

Just for the record I love this, Its the perfect scientific veneer for Traveller's Jump Drive.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;857944Traveller never explains how the crew can survive the superheated jumpspace bubble being created in the engine room.

That is because you pulled this "superheated jumpspace bubble" out of your ass. Please show us where this particular Traveller idea is detailed.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;858698Traveller vehicles are all just mumbo jumbo. Don't even try to assign scientificness to them.

Oh, fuck. You have become onto Constantine Thomas, destroyer of fun. Come back to us after reading Fire, Fusion, and Steel. Then you may pull this, "Bro do you even science?" bullshit.

Quote from: David Johansen;858822Let's just say, somewhat diplomatically, that, that's the roleplayer in you talking

Wargamers see things differently.

Not at all. If the parties aren't connected (as you suggested) then they can't interact. Which means that giving a player an unconnected star system is the wargaming equivalent of playing out the Battle of Waterloo using miniatures and giving someone command of a regiment of Allied Infantry stationed in Spain. There is nothing interesting in the Battle of Waterloo for that regiment to do. So give the guy a regiment that is actually at the battle or could reach the battle and let him run that regiment not the one sitting on their butts in garrison way the heck across the Pyrenees. That's the wargaming version of what I am saying.

Well, we did reduce it from d1000 for system identity and jump point destinations to d100.  But there was a bit of a "them's the breaks"  and "suck it up princess" attitudes among the other players.  Having a hostile and more advanced culture waiting for you on the other side of your only warp point is just part of the game.

It wasn't a particularly acrimonious end to a game, more of just a, too much work and too little fun fizzle where people just decide to do other things.

I once ran an FTL: 2448 game in which one of the players built a model of the deck plan, in scale to match our miniatures, of Legos.

FGU's Space Opera was altogether infamously cumbersome, but taken by themselves the ship design and combat systems were nifty. The assumptions were in line with Doc Smith's Lensmen, inertia negation and all.

Quote from: David Johansen;858858Well, we did reduce it from d1000 for system identity and jump point destinations to d100.  But there was a bit of a "them's the breaks"  and "suck it up princess" attitudes among the other players.  Having a hostile and more advanced culture waiting for you on the other side of your only warp point is just part of the game.

It wasn't a particularly acrimonious end to a game, more of just a, too much work and too little fun fizzle where people just decide to do other things.

In which case we have a situation similar to the patient who says, "Doctor, Doctor, it hurts every time I hit my head against the wall..." Almost no one enjoys a wargame where they can't really do anything entertaining. The vast majority of wargamers will concede a game long before it is lost because fighting to the bitter end when you know you have little or no chance to succeed isn't entertaining enough to keep playing. Which is sad when you are the one who is winning because you don't get the fun of pounding your opponent into the dust. But them's the breaks.

Quote from: Spike;858832Also: This comment has been brought to you by the Parenthesis.

Quote from: Werekoala;858726In the non-RPG realm I always loved "Starfire" and of course "Star Fleet Battles". I mean really, REALLY loved them - Starfire specifically. You could play it in 30 minutes if you wanted, or have huge battles lasting hours. Was fun.

Starfire rocked! I wish I still had that.

And SPI's Outreach, and ... < sigh >

Quote from: Bren;858869In which case we have a situation similar to the patient who says, "Doctor, Doctor, it hurts every time I hit my head against the wall..." Almost no one enjoys a wargame where they can't really do anything entertaining. The vast majority of wargamers will concede a game long before it is lost because fighting to the bitter end when you know you have little or no chance to succeed isn't entertaining enough to keep playing. Which is sad when you are the one who is winning because you don't get the fun of pounding your opponent into the dust. But them's the breaks.

Personally the player who got stuck needed to read Niven and Pounelle's The Mote In God's Eye.  Said so at the time for that matter.

I've also seen suggestions of using Battlestations! to run ship combat and boarding actions... which I thought might be cool. Battlestations! gives everyone something to do during ship combat.