Author Topic: What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?  (Read 2418 times)

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Offline pyrotech

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What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?
« on: October 30, 2014, 03:29:08 PM »
Hey all,

I've been working on making my own vehicles for Harp Sci-Fi for a while now and I've been thinking of putting some of them up on the forums or in The Guild Companion.  So my question is what vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-fi?  I've come up with a short list of my own, but I figured others may have needs for other vehicles.

Harp Sci-Fi Xtreme really does have a very good cross-section of game relevant ships so I'm not sure how many ships are really needed by most people.


Ideas I've come up with include:

a blockade runner/smuggler (smaller faster light freighter - lightly armed and stealthy)
a colony ship
a space cruise liner (multi-day recreation)
a space passenger liner (for multi-day transport not recreation)
a private space yacht (such as for megacorp executives)
Silth ships (plus ships specifically tailored to the other PC races)
a light armed ground personel carrier (like a armed Humvee)


And this list does not include my work on converting Battletech Mechs (which I should start working on again soon).

So does anyone have any other ideas on what would actually be useful in their games?

Thanks for the input,

-Pyrotech

Offline RandalThor

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Re: What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?
« Reply #1 on: October 30, 2014, 03:49:46 PM »
Hey, if you feel like it you can always do the ships from Star Frontiers. That would be pretty-cool, huh? Not that I have an ulterior motive or anything... I just think that you might like that.  ;)
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Offline pyrotech

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Re: What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?
« Reply #2 on: October 31, 2014, 12:44:55 AM »
You are talking about the 20 or so designs in the campaign guide correct?

I don't actually have my copy of Star Frontier in my house (it is still in my old bedroom at my parents house - thats how long since I looked at that game) but I've found some great resources for it online.

If I get bored this weekend I may take a stab at converting one or two of these.  If it isn't too bad I may even do some more.  But I can tell you from converting the Bughunter ships, the devil is in the details.  You don't know how painful it is going to be until you get in neck deep. 

regards,
-Pyrotech

Offline markc

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Re: What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?
« Reply #3 on: October 31, 2014, 01:38:45 AM »
  I do not remember just what ships are in the HARP SF books but I think you have hit the high points with your list. I especially like the "racial" ships as I think that can be a huge factor. Just think of humans trying to assault a gnome ship with 3' high (cramped) passageways. It would be more like crawling through AC/Heating ducts that what most humans are used to.
MDC


P.S. I also always thought that a ship designed for Naga's would be interesting in so many ways.
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Offline Wolfhound

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Re: What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?
« Reply #4 on: October 31, 2014, 06:58:15 AM »
  I do not remember just what ships are in the HARP SF books but I think you have hit the high points with your list. I especially like the "racial" ships as I think that can be a huge factor. Just think of humans trying to assault a gnome ship with 3' high (cramped) passageways. It would be more like crawling through AC/Heating ducts that what most humans are used to.

That brought funny images into my head, including (sorry to get off-topic) the brothers arguing about rope and wrestling around in the air ducts and falling through the ceiling in the "Boondock Saints" movie and hanging there suspended and tangled up in the rope and shooting up the room full of gangsters.  But I agree that exploring ships by other races could be very interesting and entertaining in some cases. 
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Offline RandalThor

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Re: What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?
« Reply #5 on: November 10, 2014, 01:26:07 AM »
You are talking about the 20 or so designs in the campaign guide correct?

I don't actually have my copy of Star Frontier in my house (it is still in my old bedroom at my parents house - thats how long since I looked at that game) but I've found some great resources for it online.

If I get bored this weekend I may take a stab at converting one or two of these.  If it isn't too bad I may even do some more.  But I can tell you from converting the Bughunter ships, the devil is in the details.  You don't know how painful it is going to be until you get in neck deep. 

regards,
So, anything on the Star Frontiers starship front?  ;D
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Offline pyrotech

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Re: What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2014, 10:36:36 AM »
Well I have looked into it a bit more.

1) I found the Knight Hawks ships.
2) I found that they don't have a lot of details on mass or volume for components
3) I found that the core propulsion systems were much lower tech than standard HARP

Point 1 is a good thing.  It lets me make direct conversions
Point 2 is a mixed thing.  It makes it very hard to do direct conversions, but makes it easy to do "inspired by" designs.
Point 3 is a bad thing.  I've already built one lower tech propulsion system for my Bughunters conversion.  It took a lot of fiddling to make it somewhat consistent with the other rules, but still match fairly close to the source material. 

So all around it is a mixed bag for making Harp rules starships from Star Frontier's ships.

My main gaming PC lost it's boot sector last week so I've found myself with more free time lately, so maybe I'll take another look at it.



-Pyrotech

Offline pyrotech

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Re: What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?
« Reply #7 on: November 10, 2014, 11:22:55 PM »
Well I've found some more data (perhaps even too much data) on the Knight Hawks ships for Star Frontiers.

So I took a stab at one of the ships.  I strongly suspect it is way out of balance however.  I suspect it really needs more hanger space, plus it's damage to defence ratio is way skewed to the damage side.  Survivability against itself would be *very* short.

Hargut Class Cruiser

Cost                 163M
Mass                 4601
Passengers         330
Cargo         30 tons in cargo hold (90^m3)
                      100 tons of hanger space
Speed/Accel      3g/.03c
Energy          25F(75)

Init                  -16
Hits                  61
Armor          30 ab and kin
Shield          10
EW                  10
PD                  10
Man                  -1

Weapons: 4x +0 huge warheads (torpedos, 15 medium capital scale nuclear warheads each), 8x +0 Medium missiles, 1 +0 Huge Capital scale Laser, 2x +0 medium capital scale lasers, 4 +0 Large Lasers, 2 +0 Huge negative charged blasters, 5x +0 Huge positive charged blasters          
         
Other Features:    Both Abalative and Reflective Armor, redundant comms computer and damage control.  Crew is 80 + 250 marines.
   
A ship of this size should have more hits, but going by the hull size this is what the number came out to.  I would probably go with 125 hits if I wasn't building to a target.

I had to make some unpleasant guesses at the capital scale weapons since Sci-Fi Xtreme doesn't give specs for them.  But calling a class 10 laser cannon a Huge capital scale weapon seemed about right.  I would have this ship take damage as a capital scale vehicle.

Let me know what you think.  My understanding of the setting is spotty at best so the balance is probably way off.

Regards,
-Pyrotech

Offline RandalThor

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Re: What vehicles are missing from Harp Sci-Fi?
« Reply #8 on: November 11, 2014, 02:55:35 AM »
So I took a stab at one of the ships.  I strongly suspect it is way out of balance however.  I suspect it really needs more hanger space, plus it's damage to defence ratio is way skewed to the damage side.  Survivability against itself would be *very* short.
Very neat, thanks for doing that.

I would say the damage/defense ratio is not too far off as ship combat in that game was not a long drawn-out slug fest. The biggest change is that skill did not matter (at least in the original version, not sure what Zebulon's Guide brought to the table), it was weapon vs defense type resulting in a percentage chance to hit. If you hit, you rolled the weapons damage - though Masking Screens only allowed half-damage from lasers if they got through. (Sort of like a D&D Rogue's Uncanny Dodge.... ah, TSR, you stuck to your guns, at least.) Damage wasn't very detailed (TSR, remember?), though the "Advanced Game" brought in a D100 Damage Table (ooohh.....ahhhh) that could mean lessening or loss of some ship function.

Thanks again for doing that.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Scratch that. Power attracts the corruptible.

Rules should not replace the brain and thinking.