Travellers Needed! High Guard Updates

[Anstett]

(Yes, Matt, I'll be working on it... soon as we get our one remaining cat back from the vet... after that bill, I'd better write a couple of books this year...)

Happy to buy a couple more books for the cat.

 

[mavikfelna]

Batteries (not the power kind...)
I'm supposed to be putting together an outline for the Compendium, which should include rules not in Core, Highguard, or the Companion... I think the battery rules are in Elements? They should be tied to crew size and I think I can be a little creative... once I find the rules.

Unrelated to Highguard, but not the Compendium: Will also try and pick some useful bits out of Mercenary... and see if I can sneak in a Snapshot rule while I'm at it.

(Yes, Matt, I'll be working on it... soon as we get our one remaining cat back from the vet... after that bill, I'd better write a couple of books this year...)

Work on a Fusion Fire & Steel unified construction system maybe, please?!

 

[Terry Mixon]

Happy to buy a couple more books for the cat.

Write some cat (Aslan) themed books and we can support your cat in a meta way.

 

[Geir]

Batteries and Crew Sizes: found it the third place I looked. Imperial Navy p. 113-114. Needs to be a little scrunched for the Compendium, but... this Book is going to a be treasury hunt with my memory and mediocre organization skills racing my aging brain. Fun!

 

[tytalan]

As I was supposed to be doing something else, I decided to take a look at updating the Spinward Extents books to the 2022 High Guard standard and then decided to do the entire Corellan League Star Fleet and one thing I really noticed: Ships between 2000 and 5000 tons are not optimal: You need to be 5001 tons to get a crew size reduction (which actually is a bit silly - making the minimum exactly 5000 tons would be better. Same applies to Military Hulls and Distributed Arrays. All the ships I started at 4000 tons ended up being much better designs at 6000 tons, with about the same sized crew. And exactly 5000 tons really sucks. Also, the sensor operator thing for 7500 tons seems unnecessarily one-off - making that 5000 tons as well would be less obscure.

(Didn't go though all 19 pages of this thread, so I apologize if these issues have already been brought up)

Yea I found if you use Barracks for ship crews you go a long way in fixing this problem especially with ships under 2000 dt which often can run military crew levels.

 

[Geir]

Another thing that I think is just a misplaced sentence: p.72 Weapon Disadvantages:

The sentence: "Not Applicable to turret weapons." applies 'Energy Inefficient', but makes much more sense if applied to 'Increased Size' instead. Not only does this avoid 1.2 ton turrets, but it matches the logic of the weapons advantage above.

I'm going to assume that the suggestion above is true and incorporate it into my overly complicated ship spreadsheet.

 

[wintertraveller]

Batteries and Crew Sizes: found it the third place I looked. Imperial Navy p. 113-114. Needs to be a little scrunched for the Compendium, but... this Book is going to a be treasury hunt with my memory and mediocre organization skills racing my aging brain. Fun!

I miss the 1980 HG Batteries Bearing mechanics a bit. I think they added a flavor dynamic to hull configuration.

 

[wintertraveller]

This is true. I just don't want to build 5001 ton destroyers. But a way to potentially balance it would be took look at the cut-offs holistically. If the same breakpoint gives a bonus and a penalty, then the 'advantage' of wonky 4999 and 5001 destroyer classes will decrease.

So, giving it a little more thought. Each breakpoint should have a pros and cons chart (and they should be 'round' numbers and match so it wouldn't be a case of one entry saying 'less than than' and another saying 'more than' leaving a sliver of confusion). So target size, bridge size, crew size, feature size, armour /hull point mods, should all line up: 5000+ gets you this, 25000+ gets you this, 200+ gets you this, etc.)

Although, I've experimented with Mongoose 2e ship designs in these weird non-standard size, I've started to constrain my ship designs to just sizes found in the 1980 HG ship codes for Chartered Space 3I ships. I am overall happy with the state of our modern HG, but I figure these standard sizes work cleanly and perhaps make sense from a standard size components perspective. This helps me avoid munchkin tendencies.

One old HG design rule that might be of value bringing back is the limit of no more than one weapon bay per 1,000 tons. With the effectiveness of modern bay weapon multiples, this would help maintain balance. It would also enhance the value of turrets for ACS ships. It also introduces new break points for 1,000 and 2,000 ton ship designs. This would make a 2,000 ton ship better than a 1,999 ton ship in my mind. A two-bay Frigate would hit hard at wide range of conflicts.

In general, more ship designs in the 2,000-5,000 range would be great. The Spinward Extents books does this well. The Sred'Ni Fireship is a Spinward terror. It's the reason a Spinward travelling adventurer to want a Meson shield. The Murian ships are big and full of flavor. The Aslan Yurletyashi is a dominating Spinward Frigate that you seriously don't want to find among the ihatei bands. It would be like finding a troll among the orcs.

 

[Condottiere]

In the spacecraft gunnery hierarchy, turrets are south of tertiary armament.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Another thing that I think is just a misplaced sentence: p.72 Weapon Disadvantages:

The sentence: "Not Applicable to turret weapons." applies 'Energy Inefficient', but makes much more sense if applied to 'Increased Size' instead. Not only does this avoid 1.2 ton turrets, but it matches the logic of the weapons advantage above.

I'm going to assume that the suggestion above is true and incorporate it into my overly complicated ship spreadsheet.

Reduced or increased size should not be an option for turrets, barrettes or bays. The other possibility is building bespoke weapon mounts of any size you want - The FF&S method.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I miss the 1980 HG Batteries Bearing mechanics a bit. I think they added a flavor dynamic to hull configuration.

A better rule is to use surface area for hardpoints - GT ISW shows how this can easily be incorporated.