Almost ready for release is the latest supplement for Stars & Lasers, “These are the voyages…”
This next expansion for the game is all about Captain and Crew skills and experience, it will enable you to give your spaceships an identity which will allow you to track your ships crews as they grow with skills and experience as they battle against their enemies.
These simple rules have been written to try and provide a basic framework for allowing players to use skills and experience in their games of Stars & Lasers.
And as they gain experience, they will be able to have more of an impact on the battles as they unfold, also as your Captains and commanding officers gain more experience, they will learn specific skills that will aid them in their battles.
Skills like –
Give me all power to weapons!
Emergency power to the shields!
Evasive Manoeuvre Alpha!
But of course, as your ships take damage during your battles and the hull is damaged and bulkheads are breached crew and officers will sadly perish, this will inevitably affect the crews experience as these crew and officers are replaced with fresh crew members after the battle.
Also if you should lose your ships during battle then there is the possibility that all the crew will be lost as well, but if any are rescued and survive then there experience would be very useful on their new assigned ships.
These rules will allow players to use the same ships and crews over and over again in their games of Stars & Lasers.
I am doing the final setting out and proof reading at the moment and hope to have this supplement ready for free download very soon.
Hi Mac!
Hmm … interesting it looks.
Wait for it I will.
…
I need help!
Hi Yoda!!
I have almost finished doing the supplement mate, I am just doing the last couple of adjustments / tweaks and it will be done.
I just realised it is hard work picking out which ships you want to track and name etc. when you have so many in a fleet, and so many fleets!!
Here’s a question for you, where do you get your ideas for names for your ships and Captains from?
Do you swipe them from TV shows and films or do you just make them up?
Just asking for a friend…. honest.
Mac
Hi Mac,
(I am NOT gonna try & Yoda’rise all of this! ) …
Most of my names are drawn from numerous sources … I’ll happily poach ideas that sound good from almost anywhere! And sci-fi TV, films & fiction are all chock full of inspirational ideas – eg: Captain Irunuu Masaadi is from Traveller (well, the Irunu bit anyway, Masaadi is a tweak of the place name Masada, in Israel). Another name i like is ‘Nanda Devi’ (a mountain in India, I believe), whilst ‘Shaad Illiya’ (my own Traveller character) is borrowed from the sci-fi novel ‘Jerusalem Fire’ by R.M. Mueloch (and a great read it is too).
Tyrant of the Nine Hells is a tweak of an old D&D book title … plus I have Marc Okrands Klingon dictionary
for gargling type alien names (also very useful!)
As for tracking ships, I fill my roster in normally & record which ship is who with sticky labels – so, if I fill in Captain Nanda Devi, commanding the Battlecruiser ‘Magellanic Clouds’ I add a small note (write an ‘R’ in brackets next to the ship name on the roster) and when I play that captain & ship I stick a red label (the small dot types you typically get in a stationers) to the base to ID which is who etc … usually I leave the dots there from game to game, but they’re cheap enough to use & remove).
Hmm … long winded this has been.
Shut up, I will.
Vic
lol thanks Vic,
Some of what you do is similar to how I get my names for ships and characters, although I tend to only worry about names for battle reports or campaigns, normally solo ones, I like adding the characters to them.
I have used names from books before, but I also find that the internet has many good random name generators, which I do tend to use more often, but once I have a name that I like from a book or the internet I always adjust / tweak it slightly to make it fit with what I want.
And now that these rules have been done I will be making new names for all my ships and their Captains ( actually maybe not all my ships!!!! )
And I will be tracking their experience and skills hopefully through many battles.
Mac
Hi Mac,
I don’t make names for every single ship I play, nor keep track of them all – that way is the way to madness … & Yoda’isms! Hmm …
But I do keep track of my favourites – Treveller Capt Masaadi & the CA15 Armoured Cruiser ISS Mars Ascendant are 17 years old now & Fleet Admiral Shaad Illiya & the BH14 Heavy Battleship ISS Hegemony are 29 years old, and Klingon Capt Kahg & the Battle Cruiser IKV K’t’BortasS (The Bringer of Vengeance) are over 36 years old …
I’ve always found that adding that ‘personal’ touch to some of the ships in play deepens your involvement in the game, and once you’ve invested days (or weeks, or months … years even) of time on a ship & its crew there’s something at stake too … when your favourite ship is taking heavy fire from all sides you can often discover a really good reason to flee the battle!
But with nothing at stake, you have no reason to disengage from a losing battle & so can fight on until your entire force is destroyed …
Vic
Hi Vic,
Wow! 29 years and over 36 years keeping track of a ship and its crew is… crazy, in a brilliant kind of way ;O)
No I guess naming all the ships in a fleet does seem a bit silly ( considering the size of some of my fleets! ) so I will probably only keep track of a few to start with and see if I can keep them alive for a while.
I will probably start with a few of the bigger ships and see how they go and add one or two of the smaller ships as I play more games.
Mac
Hi Mac,
Yeah, Kahg & his D7 have been in (increasingly infrequent) play since I first bought the 2nd Ed FASA Star Trek Starship Combat Simulator in 1985, and Shaad Illiya & the Hegemony first saw action in 1991 …
The trick with this is to A). just follow just your favourite ships not all of them, and B). don’t play your favourites all the time, use them sparingly.
I tend to think that even the most militaristic races will not always be in battle all the time – even Klingons need to go home for num-nums now & then (if only to tell many glorious lies of battle! … or the Bloodwine kegs empty again … )
Plus, just because Capt. Snarl ‘Kill ‘Em All’ McSlaughter of the Battlecruiser ‘Dakka-Dakka Eternum’ wants to go battle the enemy doesn’t mean the Admiralty (who’re probably sick to the back teeth of those endless glorious lies of battle & him drinking their kegs dry … ) won’t send him off to the back end of nowhere to escort a slow merchant convoy ( … and it helps to keep the trigger happy crazy idiot out of trouble … )
Of course, should pirates attack the convoy … 😉
So I tend to play my favourite ships about once in 3-5 games. Too much to often & either I get bored … or they end up dead … Sic Transit Gloria Mundi …
Vic