Space Battles: Harrington or Star Wars?

[hdrider67]

David Drake's (http://david-drake.com/bibliography.html) RCN is the Royal Cinnabon Navy. (possible bad spelling). The first book is "With the Lightnings" and introduces Lt. Leary, the central character of at least the first few books (I'm still on book 2, "Lt. Leary Commanding").

A list of the books in this series can be found at http://david-drake.com/RCN.html

For STL/Normal Space it is much like the Harringtonverse in that it is like the 'age of sail', in like that ships have momentum and a vector and don't turn on the dime due to inertial-less drives or some such thing.

A great game for realistic starship combat is the "Saganami Island Tactical Simulator" (or SITS) published by Ad Astra games (http://www.adastragames.com/products/adastra/sits.html). Once you get the hang of how it handles 3D combat (yes, 3D!) the game plays quickly and is quite a bit of fun.

Cinnabar, though I kinda like your spelling. Mmmmnnn Cinnabon...

For those who do not know, Baen (Harrington and RCN series publisher) hands out a LOT of their old books as free downloads. First book for HH is On Basilisk Station and the first RCN is (as stated) With the Lightnings.


EDIT:
Looks at Deniable's post. What he said. I guess I should have refreshed after I got called away from the computer.

 

[Deniable]

Thanks, as far as I'm concerned Baen are worth mentioning twice.

Another place to look is the CDs that were in some of the Baen hardbacks. If you can find one laying around, it will be a good start.

 

[Knightsky]

Mmmmnnn Cinnabon...

I, for one, welcome our new and tasty overlords.

 

[GamerDude]

Damm...

one mistake... one simple mistake...


At least it was a 'tasty' mistake.

 

[captainjack23]

Damm...

one mistake... one simple mistake...


At least it was a 'tasty' mistake.

Yeah, well, I once referenced "Suppliment 7: Tards and Gunboats"....

sigh.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

The guys who wrote Aerotech (The 1st Battletech space system) are all FASA guys who worked on Traveller products. FASA starts off as a Traveller 3rd party adventure and supplement company, and branches out with Battletech and STRPG...

Right... but so what? The FASA people may have started with Traveller but then they made their own line based more on Japanese giant robot anime than anything else (to the point of directly ripping off designs from Macross/Robotech). There's still little evidence for any evolution from Traveller there.

I think you're seeing a connection between the two games that isn't there.

Not wanting to engage too much in threadnomancy (or sound argumentative), but there's enough of a link between the original BattleTech designers and Traveller - and similarities in the settings to assume there was at least some influence in there. More of Traveller's setting and philosophy informing BattleTech than anything more direct.

Oh, and FASA didn't rip off the original 14 mechs from Macross (and Crusher Joe and Dougram) - they genuinely thought they had a right to the images, but it turns out the company that sold them the rights conned them.

 

[Voodoo B Do]

Can we have carwars style please?

EDIT: i am joking!

2ND EDIT: ...but then again...

I did like the old Trav graph paper spaceships which nearly matched the carwars mapscapeboard. We used both for our Traverse. The carwars combat timescale would be called "bullet time" these days. Not having too much detail makes good imagination and is good for wider utility.