phavoc said:
I also was curious if people were allowed to outfit their ships with essentially military-grade hardware while not being the military. I thought how I phrased the examples would make the title make more sense (i.e. do other's let player's run around in ships with armor factor 15 and particle accelerator bays for armaments).
Depends on the campaign and the players / referee. I've played in campaigns where we were all members of a military unit, taking orders and kicking butt (and trying not to get ours busted). I've played merc games where we got to pick our fights, then kick but while trying not to get ours kicked... and we got military grade hardware. There have been free-trader games where it was a lightly armed trade ship and crew out to make a few creds, fly free and occasionally "misbehave" (but no mil-spec or need for it). Other games everyone (or most everyone) played a noble, some as high as a Count and we flew around in our own personal Agashaam class destroyer (and those often pitted us against each other in something that was a cross a wargame with diplomacy, politcal intrigue and fancy parties); we not only had mil-spec we had GOBS of it.
Currently I'm experimenting with a character solo. He started out a a pretty smart scientist with 30 shares of a lab ship. Rather than fly around in it trying to find funding he sold his shares for half their actual value to the other scientist; bought a house and started his own business designing and later building robots. In five years he went from a 5 MCr initial investment and 80 employees to a mult-million Cr corporation with 30,000 employees that produces robots, cybernetics, military grade hardware, electronics, and wonder boy just got delivery of the very first prototype Argent Falke starship (which he spent two years designing himself). He's currently got a personal net worth of around 500 MCr, not counting the shiny new ship. Its been different and that's been part of the fun, doing something I haven't done before, seeing how the story develops and writing up some fiction out of it and see what creative ideas it sparks (like the starship which I may write up and publish).
It just depends...
b) ref's tend to keep the players from accumulating too much wealth so there's a reason they need to adventure.
Honestly, running into that in a Referee drives me nuts. Money is the LAST reason most of my characters ever do anything. What money they do earn, whether its a few 100 cr or a few 100 MCr, if it mysteriously vanishes because the bank was robbed, the stock market crashed, his identity was stolen, taxes went up, etc. I tend to get annoyed... I worked for it, I wanna enjoy it. But usually the reason my characters do what they do is because on some level they love what they do. That free trader loves the trade, the deals, the adventure. The merc, god help him , loves war... loves a good fight... loves the smell of FGMPs in the morning. The Baron loves the title, the politics, the intrigue, and always having lots of guards / troops to do the shooting / getting shot at for him... duels though are another matter, that's about HONOR!
But, as others suggest... the opposition has to be a challenge to keep things interesting. So if the players have mil-spec gear, the opposition will to. Victor has a Rank 4 corporation, his main rival (ASD Corp) is also a Rank 4, or at least they were. When playing nobles, we were all nobles of roughly equal rank and power base... at least to start with. All the mil-spec gear in the world doesn't do much good if your operations manager turns out to be a spy who takes over your company (and worse now she's got gobs of mil-spec hardware to use against you)! Nothing wrong with a good devious plot twist (and a fair chance of getting your company back in the end). Adventures, campaigns and characters are only limited by our imaginations.
Playing yet another free trader on yet another 200 dT Beowulf class however has gotten old after 20 odd years.
As to the discussion of military hardware vs armed civilians. The chief reason the civilians tend to win in the long run is simply this. What's the reason for invading another country / planet: Resources... and the most valuable resource of all is often the population itself, the labor force, tax base, etc. Nuking the planet from orbit makes the planet worthless, so unless the attack was just about utterly eliminating them (in which case that would be the way to go), then you're going to end up invading and occupying. But if you can't win hearts and minds, eventually get the population back to work, paying taxes and generally becoming a productive part of your empire... then sooner or later people back home are going to start wondering why you're spending blood and treasure occupying another country or planet that is costing them for no tangible return. That's usually when you lose that other war... domestic support. The troops get recalled and "hurray, the armed civilians won!" only they almost certainly did so at a horrific cost while making it too much trouble for too little profit to occupy their patch of dirt; which may be something of a Pyrrhic victory.
What made Gandhi interesting was that he accomplished pretty much the same kind of victory without weapons (though they still took some pretty tragic losses). More recently Egypt has been interesting to watch. Video can be a powerful weapon as well in certain cases. Its all really about winning hearts and minds... not just for the occupier, but also for those occupied. If the occupied people can win over the occupier back home, or at least diminish their will to stay, then they win.
Funny thing was, some people actually fell for that after getting out of training. Right and Up I say!
