MinO: Game Starting, Discussing House Rules & Stuff

[glitterboy2098]

one way of making the ship mounted stuff viable compared to hand held stuff would be to increase the effective ranges on the ship mounted stuff by at least 10x, if not 100x. (realistically, even a small cannon would have an effective range of hundreds of miles when in space. no air to slow it down. the range would be restricted more by targeting issues..)

in general, energy weapons (lasers, particle beams, plasma, ect) will have shorter effective ranges (due to diffraction and/or dispersion issues), while missiles and projectile weapons will have quite long ranges. the offset is that missiles and projectiles are substantially slower than an energy weapons (which move at lightspeed or close to it), and thus the missiles and projectiles will take longer before they hit the target. time during which the target can make small course adjustments to avoid getting hit.


while most people probably know how much i promote this site. it's a big help in getting the feel of space travel and combat right, regardless of how "gritty" you make your campaign. while the site goes into some very specific details, keep in mind most of that is abstracted and basically just fluff as far as RPG rules go. things like probability plots are really just nifty fluff info you can use to impress your players. (" your longscan display shows a good probablity you'll hit. roll for your weapon systems skill to see if your targeting computer can get a firing solution, then roll your to strike")

it's the ranges and how the weapons are used that are the important parts of getting space battles to feel "right" in an RPG.

i'd also suggest looking at the page on sensors and Missions. the first shows the relative importance of things like FLIR and radar as detection mechanisms, and the other has a lot of good stuff on travelling through space and why most ships tend to be designed to do specific things. (example: a shuttle is good to get from ground to orbit and back or getting around in orbit, but not good to travel between planets. a big interplanetary ship will usually be bad at moving around in orbit, and really bad at landing. so in general you'll see big interplanetary ships that travel between planets, but 'park' in a high orbit and transfer their people/cargo to smaller shuttles to move them/it to the stations or the ground.)


i can tell you that when it comes to things like "speed", just treat the listed Mach #'s as more of an abstract indication of how agile the ship is instead of actual velocity limits. just decide "can this ship travel between planets or not and if so, how long does it take". save yourself the headache.

[gordyzx9r]

In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't found any set of vehicle combat rules for an rpg that work any better than palladiums. I can't get any of them to work.

For vehicular combat, Car Wars worked well but it wouldn't for an RPG. For space, I always thought the old Star Frontiers worked well and it's vehicular combat wasn't that bad. But, to be honest, I don't like to get too technical, it's a role playing game and it's a story that if you take to long trying to ensure you've got the mechanics and dynamics down you'll probably spoil the ride.

I sometimes use MiO with my AtB campaigns in conjunction with TMNT Guide to the Universe. In my campaigns, the same devastation that has befallen Earth has taken hold over all the universe and Earth is the stage for the last intergalactic battle between the various races of Guide to the Universe. The last Triceraton general has rampaged his way through TCRI space towards Earth and there he faces the last bastions of opposition only to have what's left of his armada destroyed (along with the opposition as well). With what dropships and transports he has left he takes the remnants of his army down to Earth to start anew. I usually put them somewhere in North America.

Usually, I'll have this happen at some point in time later when the PCs are a bit more experienced and savvy. Usually, I'll start in on having SAECSN and EoH starting to communicate. With AtB2, I'll have the EoH (to include New Kennel), Imperial Mexico (notably Mexico Grande), Skandia, SAECSN, & the Danish wing (along with some French separatists) of the Yuro Station form an axis of human elitism. In this instance, I'll probably have the EoH try to stage a coup and prop up a puppet government for SAECSN.

[Nowhere65]

1a) All ships built by the Moon Base (which is about 8% of newly minted shuttles) have landing gear. There are other ways, and I welcome counterarguments, but I'm thinking of the landings more than the liftoffs when I apply this rule. Sure you can lift off with a carriage, but would you want to land on one?

I think this is mainly due to the fact that station to station ships don't need to "land". They dock with the stations and whatnot.

2) No ranges stated to other planets, and there have been clear references to getting asteroids from the Belt in order to keep the oxygen levels and ice-based economy up back at home.

Well, this is still the solar system. So there are plenty of sites to get ranges to planets. Plus, things in orbit rotate at different speeds and are not always a set distance away from each other, but the asteroid belt, as a ring, will always be about the same distance away from the Earth. Now getting to a certain place in the belt would be different.

4) Any character which is not given the prerequisites for skills which are required for it automatically get prerequisite skills. This means the Guard OCC, because three of four piloting skills clearly require Read Sensory Equipment and the OCC requires you to pick 2 piloting skills, gets RSE at base skill plus any possible station bonuses.

Sounds good to me. You run across the same thing in Robotech with pilot Cyclones and VTs vs. pilot motorcycles and jets.

[Library Ogre]

Given what I think every time I see the title, you need at least 1 person named Gilligan.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip...

[acreRake]

1) Ship construction. Old topics in this thread have some creative solutions to this matter, but when it comes down to it, I'm lazy and usually just try to work it out with the players. Particularly irritating is the fact that many character classes get "a small spaceship," or even "their own ship," with no specifications or budget provided. On those rare occasions when a budget is provided, it's roughly 1/6 the cost of the cheapest available shuttle. I assume this refers to add-ons, roughly akin to the way an Aboriginal Airship Captain customizes a captured vehicle (though not really like that; just akin in system), but the canon vehicles are expressed so vaguely anyway...

Yeah, i had that question too. My rule was to add an extra zero on the budgets provided: Shuttles on pg 77 are listed at 300-900K, so a character from Laika would have a really nice one (800K), Freebooter, fair (500K). The "OCC"s (roll my eyes) that get ships (what, trader, freebooter, salvage...) should all probably be in the 500K range.

1a) All ships built by the Moon Base (which is about 8% of newly minted shuttles) have landing gear. There are other ways, and I welcome counterarguments, but I'm thinking of the landings more than the liftoffs when I apply this rule. Sure you can lift off with a carriage, but would you want to land on one?

Almost all shuttles (ie ships in orbit) have landing gear, it's listed under "Extras" on the "Typical Shuttle" and the last sentence of the 1st paragraph of "Shuttles" says that most (particularly the new) shuttles can safely come and go from both the Moon and Mars.

1b) On page 81 "Designing Spaceships", under "The Hull", it is stated that all spaceships have radar. Damn but that's vague. On that note, pg. 84 offers space vehicles the robot (not Supervehicle) special sensors from HU2 at three times the cost and six times the range. Nice, really, but very limited... and unbelievably expensive if IOUs are equal to dollars. Unbelievably expensive. I've decided "radar" translates to the "Micro-Radar" at three times cost and six times range, amounting to IOU 750,000 and 6 miles range. That's an incredible bit of salvage if you take one intact, so I'm not comfortable with it. Thoughts?

That's a good point. I've always played fast and loose with MiO radar, because picking up anything near the ship is a major plot point in my stories... According to the listing for Radar-Invisible Armor (pg82) there are (at minimum) two kinds of radar: "normal" and "long-range". Well page 142 of HU2 lists "Radar (basic) System" at 25 mile range for 40K. so, 120K for 150 miles. Sounds pretty high (1/3 the cost of a cheap shuttle...). Then there's Radar targeting and advanced radar targeting listed as "military". 1.2M IOU for 180 mile range + targeting data (with no mechanic for what that means) and 2.97 M IOU for 372 mile range + lots more tracking capabilities. Then again, Robot-wise: MICRO: IOU 750K for 6 miles, MAXI: 1.8 M IOU for 300 miles... Hmmm. MAybe a good solution is to make the cost double instead of 3x?
Personally, i would use the vehicle feature for ships, robot features for robots...

1c) I allow the TMF upgrades at the given dollar price in IOUs as stated in Guide to the Universe. Ah the strange things required to make this single important part of the game work!

Right on.

2) No ranges stated to other planets, and there have been clear references to getting asteroids from the Belt in order to keep the oxygen levels and ice-based economy up back at home.

Well, distances to Mars are listed on pg 38: 48.7M miles beyond the Zone... closest: 46.8 M, farthest: 234M miles... and a trip from the asteroid belt slingshot around Jupiter to the Zone takes up to 2 years...

3) Statting out things what aren't actually covered. The Moon Base is xenophobic, but they do allow limited mining of their surface by other stations, so run-ins with moon rovers might well come up. Hence Automotive Mechanics and Pilot Ground Vehicles being in the skill list. Nothing's indicated about what this means, so I usually assume it's equivalent to cars; I also assume there are roads in well-traveled portions of the surface, such as well-developed mines with a rich mineral strike and their surface support and landing pads. And don't get me started on the Samurai and Mikado powered armor...

Sam and Miki are in the Rifts section, and can be safely ignored. In the character origin table i substitute a CAN Hard Suit.

4) Any character which is not given the prerequisites for skills which are required for it automatically get prerequisite skills. This means the Guard OCC, because three of four piloting skills clearly require Read Sensory Equipment and the OCC requires you to pick 2 piloting skills, gets RSE at base skill plus any possible station bonuses.

I thought one just always does that for all Pally games

5) It's not clearly stated whether or not station-based skill bonuses (Laika's emphasis on espionage and piloting, Mare Imbrium's emphasis on physical skills, etc.) apply to secondary skills, or are actually Scholastic bonuses. I usually assume they're to apply to secondary skills.

Yeah, i always added them to scholastic and secondary... (it does say "any".)

Given what I think every time I see the title, you need at least 1 person named Gilligan.

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip...

Actually, i think that describes MiO perfectly.

[glitterboy2098]

It seems like all the Robot sensor systems are overpriced for the setting. Frankly, I'm thinking of improvising off the cost of functional, salvaged satellites. Satellites, especially sensor satellites, simply must have relevant sensor packages; otherwise, they'd be too blind to identify a target or do a doppler read of Earth weather patterns. Salvage costs for functional varieties aren't anywheres near the three-quarter-million mark, often much lower, and some of these must have decent RADAR. Seriously.
Hell, smart missiles have a RADAR range of 100 miles built in. I'm not sure the radome of a smart missile is what you'd want on the front of your large cargo vessel, but surely it would suffice for an interstation shuttle.
Frankly, I think the "robot systems" it was referring to, and the costs the whole thing is built around, is Rifts stuff. Wallis probably wasn't much of a TMNT or HU player and didn't think over the difference between dollars and credits.

agreed. i'd suggest x100 to the ranges of the HU Robot systems to reflect that in space the area the radar covers is going to be huge, even with the smaller sets (no atmospheric interferance to degrade the signal).

also keep in mind that a few hundred miles is actually rather small compared to the distances in space.

long range detection will generally be by thermal imager (ships will be very hot compared to the background).but that system would be harder to use to target stuff.

You found a distance between the Zone and Mars. I'm embarrassed. I've scoured the book for years, and I feel like a fool. Thanks, though. As to the two year mark, I found that now (pg. 34). Do you think that's an appropriate method and timeframe for manned missions?
Gods, what are we going to do about these ranges? Solar sail vessels and traction drives do seem the natural contenders at those distances, but I just feel there's something wrong here.

my suggestion? just ignore the ranges and speeds. either take the speeds as the indicators of how agile the ship is, or use TMF for that.

for range, shuttles can only operate in orbit, while big ships can go between planets. it's complicated in real life, so having hard stats on mileage is just going ot give you a headache.


as for travel time, a trip between earth and mars using a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit]hohman orbit[/url] (the most efficent kind) will take 8.6 months to get from earth to mars. the draw back? you can only launch once every 26 months.
handy referance for trips

now, you can seriously cut that down by using a continious boost drive, or one that is running the whole trip, constantly accellerating you (well, half the trip will be be decell, but that just accellerating in the opposete direction.)
basically this is only good for Fusion drives (MiO plasma) and Traction. maybe Ion, but thats a very low accell...

i have a useful chart for those trips.

Instead of equations, I can just give a list, too. With 1G of acceleration available, you can travel...

from Earth to the moon or Earth-moon Lagrange points (~400,000km) in 3.5 hours.
0.3 AU in 37 hours (Venus-Earth closest approach)
0.5 AU in 49 hours (Mars-Earth closest approach)
0.6 AU in 53 hours (Mercury-Earth closest approach)
1.5 AU in 84 hours (Asteroid Belt-Earth closest approach)
2.5 AU in 108 hours (Mars-Earth farthest opposition)
4 AU in 138 hours (Jupiter-Earth closest approach)
10 AU in 217 hours (Saturn-Earth almost closest approach, or Earth-Sol Jump Points)
40 AU in 434 hours (Pluto-Earth closest approach)


G's do not linearly decrease travel time. They do the square root thing.

That means if you travel somewhere at 2Gs, you do not divide the 1G travel time by 2. You divide by the square root of 2.

If you want to get somewhere in half the time as at 1G, you need to travel at 4Gs. It gets progressively worse. To get somewhere in 1/3 the time, you need to travel at 9Gs.

please note i doubt most MiO drives able to do constant boost would be able to keep up 1g. .5g, maybe, at most. .25g is going ot be more likely for civilians. (ion drives are like .01g...)

[acreRake]

I gotta say, if the Speed Classes given represent their atmospheric speeds (always my assumption, since that would make sense)

It must be, since in the Typical Shuttle description under Speed it says: "Twice as fast in space". I always thought that was dumb. Why not tell us "half speed in atmo" instead? (Most of these ships are unlikely to ever see atmospheric use).

I guess that brings up a question i've had for a while. It seems like most people assume that their characters should easily visit Mars or the asteroid belt on a regular basis. Do you guys?

The only conclusions i ever reached in this game was that a trip to Mars would be a once in a lifetime event (unless you're soldiers in a Laikan battle cruiser with a traction drive or whatever). I thought the whole point of the setting was that these people are, for the most part, stuck in Earth orbit. The PCs are, generally, extraordinarily independent. And have the option of settling/exploring on another planet (i guess, if that's what they want to do) or to go prospecting in the "ice rush". Actually, that's exactly how i see the setting. Earth circa 1849: Sure you can go to the New World but it will take months, many will probably die and there's very little chance you'll ever come home again. (OR) Yes, there's a fortune to be made in California but it means getting there and working your tail off for years to see any return. I guess the traction/plasma/solar drive would be like a taking a steam-ship around the tip of South America, faster and more comfortable than walking/driving a team of cattle, but still quite a trip.

I think what i'm trying to say is, i hear a lot of complaint about the low level of technology destroying the feel of the setting. To me, that is the setting. It's lonely, it's hard, it's a fight just to survive, everyone hates everyone else and there's no where else to go. Sounds fun to me!

[glitterboy2098]

Thanks for the equations. Square root of 2, though? Dear god.
I gotta say, if the Speed Classes given represent their atmospheric speeds (always my assumption, since that would make sense), we're not talking about an acceleration of .1G. Actual acceleration isn't important here, since going at maximum thrust might burn more fuel than necessary efficient travel, but what it says is that we're not looking at a realistic ion drive. We're looking at comic book ion drives, the sort which can lift their own weight in atmosphere plus a ship, much less at mach speeds.

i know. drive me nuts. i tend to prefer a more "semi-hard scifi" approach where i can fit it in. (actually along the lines of Naturalistic science fiction, albiet with better research and thought involved on technological impact than the new BSG had... )

unfortunately comics are not the sole source of this kind of 'super-ion drive', it's common in scifi, even some of the harder stuff, where it usualy is just a case of "ion sounds futuristic". usually giving them performance in line with NERVA or fusion than the real deal.

(in a note on drives, chemical drives made on the moon for landers could easily be Aluminum-oxygen drives. Aluminum is fairly common on the moon, and you can 'bake' Oxygen out of the rocks with enough heat and the right devices to capture the result. pathetically weak drives, not very good for shuttle or ships, but for getting fro mthe moons surface to lunar orbit and back, they'd work reasonably well)

It hurts, doesn't it? If it's any comfort, I feel that Iron Man is going just that extra bit too far and I won't stand for that kind of power in that small a package without, say, mutant powers making up the bulk of it. There are some things which, once I see the numbers given, I just throw my hands up in the air and say "what the hell." Usually, it's things with little practical consideration. Sadly, travel times are too important to me, so this stuff's damn useful.

no kidding. as with most of palladium's space settings, you have to choose exactly how 'hard' of scifi your aiming to do, and decide how much of the rules to just outright toss out an airlock to get it. (the one setting that doesn't have this problem, for the most part, is aliens unlimited. which does a semi-decent job capturing the comic book space feel. my dislike of it's FTL set up is based on personal opinion, not any real flaw in the rules.)

Oh, and I actually always thought of the plasma engine as being sort of a cross between a fusion power plant and the VSIMR. Is that what you had in mind?

actually i usually fudge things and call palladium's 'ion' drive a VASIMIR, while Palladium's "plasma" drive is a D-T Fusion drive as per it's fluff.

if i was rewriting the setting, i'd probably drop chemical all together (except as a footnote possibility), and use a NTR drive as the simpilest drive in use. uranium isn't exactly hard to come by in space, and for fuel you can use simple water. plasma and Fusion would be the next two big ones (VASIMIR and D-D fusion), which also only need water for fuel. plasma would be prized for efficency, fusion for high thrust. fusion would still be at a semi-reliable "production prototype" stage though.
traction would be left as is (but as a very rare drive type, requiring hand built assemblies since none of the stations have the factories to mass produce the parts).
solar would be set up as light sails. added to that would be magnetic sails. both of which would be more used for automated cargo hauling than manned misions. (very slow, but ultra-efficent).

but thats how i'd run things....obviously it may not work for others.