Blake's 7 Liberator

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Yep, many happy memories of B7!

I think this is one of the places when a trav game "inspired" by B7 might work better than trying to work up a direct copy, the assumptions in ship design are very different (as in, "what cool shapes can we make out of toilet rolls? [some time passes........more time passes.......] Now lets try to reverse engineer some figures".

So, how about a small TL 10 evil empire, perhaps only a few sub-sectors. The prison transport moving politicals and criminals to the local moon bumps into a large TL15 (or TL16?) vessel (with at least jump 4) with powerful AI and a lot of automation. Throw in teleporters and some mean personal weapons as well.

And cue sound track

Egil

 

[Poi]

New Audiobooks and Novels in 2012 - http://bigf.eu/?r=314

 

[Solomani666]

What is the setting? Is it based on the actual B7 universe?

What are the average and highest tech levels of planets?

How many tons is a cruiser in this universe?

------

My idea:

I don't recall any capital ship except for the Liberator, so I would limit the ship sizes to 2000 tons or less. Only 1 or 2 50 ton bays per ship.

The tech level also seems low, or maybe it was just the cheesy BBC budget (75 pounds for special effects for most episodes WTF!?), so I would also limit ships to tech level 11. No meson guns.



Bad guys:
TL 11.
2,000 tons max (battleship).
Warp drive.
Turrets.
Barbettes.
1-2 x 50 ton bays on larger ships.
No meson.
No screens.


Liberator:
TL 15.
6,000 tons.
Warp drive.
Expert systems computer (pilot, astrogator, gunnery, engineer)
Repair drones. (many)
Solar panels.
3 x Nuclear dampers.
3 x Meson screens.
3 x Black globe generators.
3 x 100 ton meson bays (neutron blasters).
3 x 50 ton fusion bays. (plasma bolts)
1 x 50 ton torpedo bay (seeker missles).

How you want to handle the 'transporter' is up to you.
You could just add 2+ high tech shuttles.



I hope this helps.


.

 

[locarno24]

That, and the rules don't really allow for three spinal mounts...

So go with three 100 dton bays. If you want them firing forward only, put them in a fixed mount. Either way, 9D6 damage per bay is very, very scary..especially if the bay is designed as "Very High Yield".

They rip through anything, believe me. Been there, done that, got the coffin.

If you're going for the suggested million dTons, then you can quite happily have multiple rapid fire spinal mounts. Just designate the pods as permanently attatched smaller ships connected by docking clamps. Fill 'em with spinal mounts, sensors and chemical batteries (recharged off the main ship's power plant) - gives you a limited endurance using the main guns...

 

[Solomani666]

That, and the rules don't really allow for three spinal mounts...

So go with three 100 dton bays. If you want them firing forward only, put them in a fixed mount. Either way, 9D6 damage per bay is very, very scary..especially if the bay is designed as "Very High Yield".

They rip through anything, believe me. Been there, done that, got the coffin.

I designed a dreadnought with 2 spinal mounts.
I simply added an additional power plant for each extra spinal mount.
Keep the extras on standby and power them up when trouble is expected.


.

 

[locarno24]

I designed a dreadnought with 2 spinal mounts.
I simply added an additional power plant for each extra spinal mount.
Keep the extras on standby and power them up when trouble is expected.

Perfectly sensible. I always found it irksome that a ship big enough that a spinal mount was a smaller proportion of its size than a large bay was of a gunship still couldn't mount a second.


However, in this case - where trying to make something that feels right for a specific, existing sci-fi ship - the trick is to duplicate the feel of B7's Liberator - one not all that dissimilar to SGU's Destiny - of an all-but-invincible ship whose combat capability is really limited only by an unpleasantly finite endurance of the power supply for its main weapons and defences.

 

[Poi]

With a ship as unknown as Liberator, I wouldn't stat it out at all. It's capabilities should be driven by the plot, and happen in a free-form way.

 

[Solomani666]

Bad guys:
TL 11.
2,000 tons max (battleship).
Warp drive.
Turrets.
Barbettes.
1-2 x 50 ton bays on larger ships.
No meson.
No screens.


Liberator:
TL 15.
6,000 tons.
Warp drive.
Expert systems computer (pilot, astrogator, gunnery, engineer)
Repair drones. (many)
Solar panels.
3 x Nuclear dampers.
3 x Meson screens.
3 x Black globe generators.
3 x 100 ton meson bays (neutron blasters).
3 x 50 ton fusion bays. (plasma bolts)
1 x 50 ton torpedo bay (seeker missles).

How you want to handle the 'transporter' is up to you.
You could just add 2+ high tech shuttles.


.

I realize now that the above scale is off by a factor of something like 150.

If you want to actually recreate B7 then you will have to design a 1,000,000 Liberator. In that case 3 x spinal mount meson guns should do the trick. Just add two extra power plants.

As for actually playing a space opera type B7 game, this is going to suck in my opinion as each naval encounter will require barrage damage rules and probably take a whole session or more to play. If the bad guys only have particle spinal mount weapons, then you can expect really long battles when the Liberator faces a squadron. If the bad guys have spinal mounted meson guns then you will have to invent something else entirely for the Liberator. You will also have to tract 3000+ hull and structure points for 6 different ship sections. Fun for a naval campaign, but boring <yawn> for a role playing a B7 space opera.

The ships in B7 may have 'claimed' to be big but none of the ships in B7 'felt' big, and they were certainly nothing like a capital ship from Traveller, Startrek, Starwars or B5. If you want to create a game with the same feel as B7 then I would scale the whole thing down. The above ship specs should do just fine and will make the game infinitely more manageable. 6,000 tons is small enough to totally dominate ships of 2000 tons and smaller while ignoring barrage damage rules.

Also by keeping the tech levels at 11 (without meson guns) and 15 respectively, you don't have to invent new weapon systems.

.

 

[Solomani666]

With a ship as unknown as Liberator, I wouldn't stat it out at all. It's capabilities should be driven by the plot, and happen in a free-form way.

Your idea is probably the best way to go.

------

Sill, the idea of giving a few PC's a 1M ton ship is pretty ridiculous, especially the way the B7 crew used it.


Personally I would have divided my time between:

* Hunting down warships and blowing them up after the crew send out a distress signal and evacuate in their life-pods.

* Actually liberating, first the outer colony worlds and then working my way toward the capitol.

* Forming a trade/military alliance between the liberated worlds.

* Shooting Avon in the face.


.