Originally posted by Aramis:
RoS (Chris, is it?):
Yes! I am me, and me is I . . . what?
Originally posted by Aramis:
MektonZeta has a unified design system (an expansion of the Mekton Technical System book from Mekton II); these two provide Ships as Units, not ships as Backdrop. (I do, however, Like ME's setting and psionics rules....)
<Looks at wallet, then at bank account; grrrr />
Originally posted by Aramis:
Fasa's Renegade legion: more gearheadish than Battletech, and a killer setting, but far less well known. Like Battletech, has roleplay, tactical ground, tactical space, and fleet engagement space scale games.
Oh yeah! I owned all those games, and played Interceptor extensively.
The Interceptor design sequence was highly enjoyable to work with. However, it was also plagued by FASA's pandemic fixed engine table system. I designed somewhere between 10 and 15 serious Interceptors, and maybe another ten experiements or failures. I played most at least once, and my favorites quite a bit. I also designed gunboats, etc. Although I never played them.
The combat damage chart was revolutionary, and hardly anything has ever equaled it to this day (although it could be a bit much to interpret, on some occasions).
I had Centurion, and designed a few tanks. The design sequence was a little different than for Interceptors, and wasn't as enjoyable to work with. I only played a couple of times, as my other friends only had Interceptor.
As for Ships of the Line, what a total joke! The design system was hideous. You slapped on the engines and spinal mount (if you chose to include one), and then the laser bays, and a missile system, and as long as you didn't exceed energy or bay geometry limitations, you were done. I actually designed a number of capital ships, but at the time I was designing an RPG campaign and wanted to fill out some OoB tables, etc.
The combat system for Ships of the Line was worse than than the design sequence. Essentially, you closed to missile range, and fired. If you had the right missile system, you pretty much either destroyed the enemy you hit, or burned off so much armor that laser bay fire would be likely to finish them off. Missile systems had either 1, 2, or 3 shots (IIRC); period. Spinal Mounts were pretty powerful, although less so than the missile systems. To the game's credit, spinal mounts were quite difficult to use (you had to line up an enemy on a hex-row). We only played it two or three times before throwing up our hands in disgust (whereas we all thought Interceptor rocked).
A book was published containing 55 Capital Ship designs. I was using them as examples to help me design my own vessels, when I noticed one of the official ships didn't conform to the design sequence rules (and there were only a total of two (2) rules that really mattered, energy and bay geometry). I was puzzling this over, when I noticed the ship on the next page suffered from problems, as well. I then sat down and went over every ship in the book. 26 of 55 designs were illegal by the game's not-too-restrictive design sequence. Hilarity stacked upon insult.
I really got the impression that FASA hadn't spent much time on SotL, perhaps it was a poor orphaned cousin project, or something.
Unfortunately for me, I loaned quite a bit of this game, "for a couple of days", to a "certain individual", who never returned them; and was never at home after that to let me retrieve them. He'd seemed like a good friend before that, too. The thief has never returned them and never given me their value in return. After this happened, I packed up the rest into a box and haven't looked at it much since then.
