Interest Check for Space Piloting and Crew Game

Gorganslayer said:

in - reminds me of FTL lol

Click to expand...

Ok. I'll try and get an excel up to help me with organizing soon.

Bialaska said:

In.

Click to expand...

You say in without even knowing what it really is.

aedan777 said:

Might be interested. Depends on stats and more developed rules. Without a solid base, these types of games can quickly die.

Click to expand...

I concur. This is why I am currently hashing out the specifics for a demo test thing, so that people can analyze and help me to refine my concept. Seem fair enough?

Ok, so here are the Basics.

You will have a ship, which will have the following stats:
Hull Points: How much direct damage the ship can take before being destroyed.
Shields: How much damage the ship can absorb/reflect before taking direct damage.
Power: How much energy can be diverted to the various tasks needed to do basically anything. (Ex: Move, fire weapons, power shields)
Guns: How many, where they are (which matters), and what damage they do/power they use
Fuel: The fuel source for power, and how much of it is left.
Cargo: How much and what the ship is/can carry.
Base Rolls: Any action that uses the ship's systems (AKA, uses power) will be affected by the status of the ship (Ex: Accuracy of the guns, maneuverability of the craft)

Then there will be the various "Classes", which for the sake of the planned demo, will be:
CAPTAIN/NEGOTIATOR: Commands the ship, is the leader amongst the players (though other than this they may organize however they wish), and does all the talking for the crew.
-Leadership: A skill that only the leader has access to, for every 2 points put into the leadership skill, every other crew member will gain one base skill.
-Bargaining: Makes buying/selling more profitable for the crew, i.e. cargo sells for more while refueling costs less.
-Charisma/Persuasion: Whatever you want to call it, this skill will allow the captain the option to attempt to talk his way out of tricky situations rather than trying to fight it out. (Ex: If a pirate player is caught by a Cruiser (which would be bad), they may have a high enough persuasion to get lucky and convince the Cruiser's captain that "these are not the droids you're looking for")
-Base Captain Skill: For every level that the captain ranks, he gains a base point in the Captain's skill, which in effect allows him to gain a +1 to his bargaining/persuasion rolls (there may also be a pre-battle "rally" roll that may be affected by this stat and leadership). Ranks are also important because they allow the captain to invest in these base skills.
-Other: While the above is the typical setup for the captain (and 3 of your starting skill points MUST go into at least one of the three categories above), the Captain can make himself a jack of all trades, as he, unlikely nearly any other class, is not limited by a locked choice of skills.
ENGINEER/DOCTOR: Aside from the Captain probably the most necessary crewman. Repairs the ship, improves its function, and has other handy skills besides.
-Engineer Base Skills: What makes the Engineer truly unique, and perhaps the second most important person aboard, is their ability to specialize in a particular skill that would other wise be outside their range. In fact, they can do this in a way that is different from the Captain, in that they simply improve the ability of another crew member. (This is not effective with the Captain's "Leadership, Bargaining, and Persuasion" Skills). For every two ranks in Engineering, not only does the Engineer/Medic gain a +2 for their base skills, they also gain a +1 that they can invest to "specialize" in a certain aspect of the ship (Ex: +5 Ps of Power, +1 on Combat's accuracy roll, +1 on Pilot's Maneuver roll, etc.)
-Repair: One of the more vital aspects of the Engineer's job, they can repair the ship if it is damaged (more useful in expanded game). This also serves to prevent the ship from taking as much damage during an attack. Takes Power.
-Healing: If a Crew member is injured in fighting (a possibility), the Engineer can also take on the role of Doctor, and heal them.
-Modify: While in Port, given the right amount of credits, the Engineer can make a roll to improve the capacity of a certain function of the ship (cheaper than paying directly for upgrades, caps with skill level)
PILOT/NAVIGATOR: This person is responsible for the flying of the spaceship, and for maneuvering the craft in combat. They are vital to getting from place to place.
-Evade: Adds to the evasion roll for dodging chance encounters in between destinations. Can also help should a player decides to ambush a merchant ship.
-Maneuver: Helps determine the number of guns facing the enemy, and the thickness of shields blocking enemy fire. The roll + skill number + base PILOT skill will be compared to that of the opponent to determine who has which guns facing whom, and how many. (Ex: if a small gun with only 2 layers of shields and 5 guns is facing off against a larger ship with 5 layers of shields and 10 guns, it is still possible for a superior pilot to outmaneuver their opponent, and negate the enemy advantage, and put themselves on an even playing field (aside from health, of course))
-Base Navigating/Piloting: For every rank in Piloting, this crew member gains a bonus to their two combat stats, as well as bonus efficiency (fuel wise) when charting a course. This in effect means that a high-level navigator can get further without being detected while spending less power and saving more fuel, therefore $$.
COMBAT: This character comes into their own when fighting the enemy. They excel at combat, whether that be on foot or while in a gun turret.
-Accuracy: While how many guns are pointing at the enemy depends on the pilot, how effective they are depends on the Gunner. In this case, every additional point in this category makes the gunner more likely to hit his target, thus damaging shields. This also applies to ranged ground combat.
-Timing: It takes the ability to wait for the right moment, when the enemy shows a weakness, to make the most of your firepower. Gunners with a high timing skill have a much better chance to critically hit their opponent. This also applies to ranged ground combat.
-Melee: Fighting hand to hand is often the only way to safely battle on-board a ship (blowing a whole in the side of a ship is VERY VERY BAD). In boarding actions, or while on land, a player with a high Melee skill A.) has a better chance to dodge oncoming fire (so they don't get shredded before reaching their target, in effect this reduces the target's accuracy roll), and B.) gets a bonus to their melee roll determining damage dealt and whether or not the attack is blocked (only those with the melee skill can block melee attacks).
-General Combat Skill: Combatants gain a bonus to their skills (detailed above) with each rank increase. In addition, after rank 5, Combatants can spend money while in port to buy weapons that increase their non-gunner effectiveness. (gunner effectiveness can be improved by the engineer). This rank also affects how many guns the Combatant can fire in one turn of combat.
-ENERGY MANAGEMENT (EFFICIENCY): Many actions in this game use power, as has already been said. Every single character has the ability to put points into the Efficiency skill, though this skill is never buffed by rank increase (as Accuracy is for Combatant, for instance, or Leadership for Captain). This trait is arguably the most useful, however, as it has far-reaching consequences. Usually, offense is more expensive than defense (Shields are hard to take down, and relatively easy to keep up, power wise. Defenders can be overwhelmed in a single turn if enough guns are focused at them, but even then the attacker must spend more fuel powering weapons than the defender loses powering their depleted shields.), but a good efficiency skill means that a Gunner can effectively NOT spend as much powering weapons as an enemy spends powering shields. What's more, this means that the Gunner can fire his guns more with the power allotted to him.

EDIT: Health and Armor wil also be a factor, and the base level for this is determined by Class.

LatinKaiser said:

In

This sounds really cool.

Click to expand...

Welcome aboard!

This is a Map of the solar system that I will be using to decide where you can move, and how far a distance that is.

I have not come up with fuel equivalents for this map, yet, but when I do I will update this post with that knowledge.

There are 4 asteroid belt Super-Stations, and another two Super-Stations besides. One is the control hub ad nexus for the solar arrays that feed power to Earth and other inner-system planets. The other is a refugee, pirate, and renegade base set far out in the solar system, that has only a few access points. Any Moons not connected by a red line (such as Luna and Earth are) are assumed to be able to reach each other. The distinction was made for Luna as I had to push it away from Earth in order to accommodate all of the routes heading to our moon. Luna is the trade hub and military base for Earth, although our home planet does have impressive facilities itself.

While I finalize ship stats (which is important), I'd like you guys who care and have signed up to think up an interesting name for this experiment.

And here is what the ship looks like:


I did leave out one small thing about the Gunner/Combatant, which I will edit into the main stats post, the gunner's rank determines how many guns he can fire.

Our Ship, the Sirius, has the following statistics:
CLASS: Falcon A-8 Chieftain
HULL POINTS: 15
POWER: 120 PU (Power Units, a generic term that applies to a lot of stuff, every 120 PU uses up one Fuel Cell)
GUNS: 5-Frontal 4-Side-Oriented (x4) 0-Rear (This means that we are fairly weak to attacks from behind our craft, unsurprisingly.
SHIELDS: 3-Frontal 2-Sides (x4) 1-Rear (Again, the rear is our weak spot and the front is our strong point)
FUEL: 48/100 Cells (This particular scenario starts us off with a reduced fuel tank, more details about the backstory later)
CARGO: x2 1 Ton Weapon/Ammunition Crates (These will sell for a lot in certain places, and again they are inherited from the backstory)
BASE SYSTEMS: This will give the base die roll which rank and skill points will be added to in order to determine action outcomes.
-Accuracy: Fairly basic Weaponry; d5 (meaning a die roll of 5)
-Timing: The weapons are relatively mediocre in how they handle, and can be difficult to control properly; d5
-Evade: This craft has fairly good scanners and limited cloaking while in flight; d10
-Maneuver: The Chieftain series was designed to be a dog-fighting, combat craft; d10

It should also be noted that maintaining one layer of shields costs 5 PU; Reaching Maneuver Capacity (because it's d5) costs 50 PU; and firing each individual gun (there is no other limit on how often they can be fired in one combat phase) costs 10 PU. Hence, defense is easier to maintain than offense. Notice, however, that even with 5 guns fired once, maneuver at operational capacity, and all shields fully charged, there is still additional PU left over. So, PU management can be used to devote more power to one system. For instance:
-Every additional 10 PU allocated to Maneuver gives a +1 on the maneuver roll.
-Every additional 5 PU allocated to shields overcharges shields to give an additional 5 PU of protection. This is capped by the number of shields. For Example, one can assign an additional 15 PU to provide additional protection for the frontal 3 shields.
-Every additional 10 PU allocated to the gun systems gives another fire with that weapon.

Once again, there is a caveat, as the Efficiency skill can reduce the PU cost for every single use of it in the above segment. Engineer's efficiency affects shields, the pilot's affects maneuver, and the Gunner's impacts weapon usage. If there any questions in relation to this, please feel free to ask.

Dr.Livingstone said:

In.

I call being Bones.

Click to expand...

I'd let you in for the testing run, but 4 people have already signed up for it.

Those people are:

1. GorganSlayer
2. Bialaska
3. Dexander
4. LatinKaiser

Okay, for the 4 people who have signed up to test this game out, I would like each of you to state your preferences for what class you wish to be. I'd prefer for you guys to all be comfortable with your roles, but if it comes down to it, this is a first come first served system.

Because people are going to be picking their classes now, and because it's useful info to have, I'll lay out some basic stats.

Captain: Health: 8; Armor: 4; Starting Rank: 6 (must invest at least three of his resultant skill points in a "Leadership" trait, the set of three "specialist" skills specific to the captain. it should also be noted that starting credits currency) will be based upon the Captain's Bargaining skill.)
Engineer: Health: 7; Armor: 3; Starting Rank: 5 (Can invest some of his skill points on upgrades for the ship, if he wishes, at he expense of starting credits (if somebody wants more info on this, I will decide what benefits can be made and at what cost))
Pilot: Health: 7, Armor: 3, Starting Rank: 6 (he is a veteran of the colonial militia, more on this later)
Combatant: Health: 10, Armor: 5, Starting Rank: 5 ( Can invest his skill points to improve weapon capacity, at a cost, which, like the Engineer, I will decide upon prompting)