Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 121 – April 11th.

We blast off for Imperia. One of the special rules I made for the Buffalo was that it couldn’t double jump. So we have to jump from New Karma to Nipna, Talitar and finally Imperia. Surprisingly, nothing happens on any of these jumps.

We spend the last two hours moving two units in. Tomorrow, we will set down at the palace.

We have 54,723 in cash, have 4 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 120 – April 10th.

At the colony on New Karma, we find these books have a base price of 12,000 secs. The crew is elated. The multiplier is three, but hold on to your hats. Duke uses one of those pheromone vials and doubles the price. That’s 72,000 secs. Each crewman gets 720 while Duke pockets 64,080. 

Our first 2 rolls are to purchase side arms. We want to sell them so that is annoying. Our last two rolls are to sell skimmers for a base price of 30 multiplied to 90. So we take in another 450 secs. Instead of pocketing these funds, Duke shares it among the crew. It makes the math easy and the crew happy.

We have 249,586 which is more than what we owe on the ship. We pay it off.

We have 54,723 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 119 – April 9th.

I now have the calendar sync to at least the last digit, which is easier on the mind.

Based on all of the stuff we found, our best bet is to head to New Karma, then Imperia. Skimmers are hot commodity at Colonies and the books we have are worth a lot there, too.

On landing at the colony, we get hit up for custom fees for vehicles. 5 secs. per vehicle, including the ship and boats. How annoying. It burns up the rest of our day and costs us 40 secs.

We have 185,506 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Digging Deeper into Star Smuggler - Surprises in the Events Booklet - Battleship (e081)

Star Smuggler was a set of rules with two small booklets. The rule set was a 24 page booklet which included everything you needed to play. It was seamlessly integrated with a 20 page event booklet. In doing some careful analysis, I have yet to find a mistake not covered by the short errata sheet.

One of the fascinating things about the rule set is how well it plays off the event booklet. One of the complaints about this game is the number of "game breaking" events that can end your game via a single die roll. Well, those are flaws, those are features of a choose your own adventure style book.

Within the events booklet are hidden 30+ new items for the player to enjoy or be challenged by. They range from axes to battleships and when such items are stat'ed out, they never break the system laid out in the rules booklet.

I'll be taking a look some of these items, as this system can easily be fleshed out into a full rpg, complete with a campaign setting.

The first surprise I would like to look at is a ship described in one of the events - The Battleship. This is a TL-2 ship with 12 turrets and 120 hits. It's a beast. I took the time to stat it up in the normal parlance of the game. To say it's OP is an understatement, but Duke can be victorious over this beast with careful game play.

Using the basic ship, the Antelope, I extrapolated what a battleship might look like. I'm not happy with the re-skin of the Buffalo Transport, so I will be revisiting this ship's layout soon.

The first conclusion that I came to was the fact that this might be a Pocket Battleship. The limitation comes from the description of the ship itself. It's TL-2 ship, which is pretty weak.

Even so, it is a massive ship. The Pocket Battleship is 410 CU in size and it's the largest ship in this image. The Antelope is the smallest ship.

Let me know what you think. I'll be continuing this series on a weekly basis.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 113 to 118 – April 8th.

The Buffalo with cleaned up spaces
so we can take on more cargo

I want to resync the calendar to the days in game, so we are spending 6 days in the Ruins. Here is my game plan. Duke and Emily will form teams for alternating days. Any day that Engineers aren’t repairing found junk, they will be doing maintenance.

When an engineer does this, it causes a +2 on breakdown rolls for the first day and a +1 on the next two days. Breakdown occurs when a 2d6 roll is equal to or less than the tech level of the item in question. This is why TL-1 items are valuable. They never breakdown. Since the start, I’ve been tracking breakdown, but not really mentioning it. The reason is two-fold, for every item I had that could breakdown, I had a spare, which makes this a boring exercise. The breakdown roll on those healing tanks are kind of important, so I will be looking at that.

Since Lucy and Ratchet have been assigned skills first, they has reported an accounting error in yesterday’s activities. No one got their cut when we sold the guns. Duke and Emily confer with the crew and decide that the best plan of action is to apologize profusely and hand out some bonuses. 100 secs. each. This costs us 1,100 total. The crew seems happy and Duke breaths a sigh of relief. Emily cusses about Duke’s lackadaisical record keeping.

None of this in the game mechanics, I just happened to notice that glitch and thought this would be fun and easy way to fix it.

We are starting with 20 repair units and 14 fuel units. I’m not tracking Life Support as Nipna has good air. My scouts won’t be wearing U-suits, either but will have their PS bot on hand in case they are knocked to zero wound points.

Duke is out with David and Lefty. Emily will lead Deadeye and Audrey on opposite days.

Day: 113 – We find two skimmers. One is intact and the other needs repair. Lucy and
Day: 114 – Emily finds 30 secs. in coins then blunders into a building collapse. We roll very low and Emily takes 1 hit, Audrey takes one and Deadeye takes 3. Lucy begins repairs on the skimmer while Ratchet and Doc ready the tank for Deadeye. We are down to 19 repair units.
Day: 115 – Emily and Audrey heal up. Deadeye is fully healed in the tanlk and it doesnt' break down. The skimmer is now repaired. Duke’s team finds a single repair unit and a very large bed (e088). We have 20 RU.
Day: 116 – Emily finds a damaged GM-Bot and another damaged skimmer.
Day: 117 – Ratchet and Lucy have repaired the GM-bot and skimmer. The GM-bot starts doing maintenance. We are down to 18 repair units. Duke’s team finds a single U-suit and a set of books (e088).
Day: 118 – Last day. We find a pair of intact skimmers.

Based on what we have found, we need to go to New Karma and Imperia. We have a bed, 5 skimmers, a GM-Bot which we are keeping and a set of books.

The Buffalo packed full of found items. 

We have 185,546 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 111 and 112 – April 7th.

We blast off for the space station, because that is the only place you can sell starship guns apparently. We spend an hour moving to orbit, another to get to other planet’s space station.

We make a contact on the way in and purchase 3 vials of pheromones for 720 secs. Good deal.

Our first roll is nearly as fruitful. We get repair, life support and fuel units. For some reason, you can’t sell life support units here. We can sell fuel and repair units for 10 and 5 each. It turns out that we can’t really sell any fuel units and still have a reserve, so we purchase one for 20 secs. We take in 75 for this transaction.

We spend the whole rest of the day rolling to no effect. 95 secs isn’t very much so it’s distributed among the crew.

The next day (112) we get our roll for starship guns. We managed sell for 200 each. We also make another 600 secs interest payment. I have to be honest, I am only making sure we pay every ten days or better. I am pretty sure we are two weeks in advance but I’m not tracking that.

We have 186,646 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 110 – April 6th.

Duke, Emily, Deadeye, Audrey and David are out attempting to make contact with a buyer or seller of those high tech items we found yesterday. We get a few meaningless rolls, such as a repossession team before we get that offer. The repo team ignores you so long as you are current on your bills and not wanted.

We can purchase a regrowth tank, which will heal someone 1d6 a day. If it breaks down at the end of the day, it will cause 1d6 points of damage. I like it. They have a base price of 2000 times 2. So, I purchase 2 for 8,000.

We also purchase our hypercharges at 1,500.

We have 186,290 in cash, have 5 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 109 – April 5th.

Every planet has a theme.  Mynkuria’s theme is to win the war with Nipna via unusual tech. Nipna’s theme is to win the war via high tech.  Mynkuria isn’t working out for us, so we travel back to Nipna.

On our way back into the system, we encounter gun buoys. Emily manages to get the ship away before they can fire on us.

We head for the spaceport on the first planet and are detected on entry. We are approached with the opportunity to purchase some high tech items. We’re offered starship defensive screens for 2,500. We take ‘em.

This uses up all of our time for the day, but it was a super effective use of time.

We have 195,790 in cash, have 5 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 106, 107 and 108 – April 4th.

On Day 106, we take a day of RRR to heal up the entire crew. We also pay 300 in interest.

On Day 107, we get cracking on those Stasis Units we picked up from e103. In the first stasis unit, we find a wounded pilot. The medics lead him off to the crew quarters.

The next unit is more problematical. We open it and 4 guys jump out. Based on the last encounter, I’m going to decide that Duke tries to talk to them. Everyone except the medics and the newly found pilot are here.

The bodyguards open fire. They have the following stats:
Marksmanship: 4
Melee: 1
Endurance: 6
TL-5 side arms.

Duke makes his cunning roll and they do not surprise us. Lucy, Ratchet, Jon and Mike all have TL-6 side arms so they shoot first. All of them hit, but only Lucy scores a critical. 3 of these guys take a single point, while the last takes 5.

They return fire. They shoot at Duke, Mike, David and Lucy. Each needs a 9. Duke, Mike and Lucy are hit. Duke takes 3 points as a critical, while the other two take one point of damage.

To finish the round, Duke, Lefty, Deadeye, Emily, and Audrey shoot back with heavy weapons. Ace shoots with a TL-1 side arm. All four guys go down in a hail of gun fire.

We call for medical help and all of the wounded, including our newly found pilot, are transported to the city for treatment. This is expensive, but it avoids encounter checks. We pay 600 for the service.

On Day 108, Emily brings the ship to the city to pick up Duke and the gang. Nothing really interesting happens. On entry to the city we have a chance to sell TL-5 or six side arms, but the crew doesn’t want to sell. This is a rest day for Duke, Mike and Lucy.

Emily makes her rolls for the ship as we would like to sell these TL-1 level weapons. No deal on those, but we do get buy life support (1 secs. base), repair units (2 to buy, 1 to sell) and fuel (1 secs. to buy and sell). Twice, each actually.

This creates a dilemma for the solo player. If a player first makes all of their rolls for the day like I did, effectively, they can see the future. So, in order to blind myself, Emily decides to purchase 10 each at the first transaction, then possibly sell some on the second transaction if the price is right.

The first round results in Life Support for 3 each (30 for 10), Repair units for 2 each (20 for 10) and fuel at one each for a total of 10. This is due to the price multipler. We paid a more for the LSU, and base price for the other two. In the second round, the multiplier is 1, so we would lose money if we sold, so we don’t. A player can always refuse to buy or sell based on price, the problem comes in when you know that you have multiple chances.

We have 195,790 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 105 – April 3rd.

This has been a bad deal all around. We are hauling back to Mynkuria and our entry contact is r328. This gives us an advantage to sneak into the area of our choosing, until we are detected. We pick the military base on Mynkuria. This gives a bonus on detection rolls.

We grab our 13,500 credits, 1,485 goes to the 11 crew members.

Duke decides to make a large payment on the principal of the ship, dipping into our savings. We map our 4 rolls and thankfully get Stasis Units. This time we can buy units in any size we want for a base price of 50 per CU. Since the wealth code is 30, we get them for 50 per CU.

I need two stasis units to open the 2 stasis units we found. For that, we need 2 five CU units. That’s 500 secs. Next, I want to put a Stasis unit in the pilotage and improve the ones in the crew quarters. Another 5 CU unit. The crew quarters are going to be broken in to 4 parts, so that is 4 seven CU Stasis Units. That is another 1400. While I’m at it, I might as well cover engineering for another 350 secs. All told, that is 3,250 secs.

We can discard all of the old stasis units, as they can’t be sold. What waste. This approach hardens the ship against attack. In the crew quarters area, up to 7 people can be protected in each of 4 areas. Each 7 unit device takes up 8 spaces.

This hardens the ship against attack.

We have 196,750 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 103 – April 2nd.

Duke isn’t pleased with all of the guys packed in the hold of the ship. Emily had the engineers install the TL-6 guns. If we get in a fight, we are going to be in trouble. All we can muster is a pair of Hoppers as the turrets are down.

If we get caught, explaining 45 freedom fighters will be hard. They’ll execute us. It’s really not worth the 13,500 secs. we will get for dropping them off and returning to Mynkuria. Sigh.

Our outboard trip is peaceful and arrival in system is boring. We find a second 3 CU stasis unit floating in space. We haul it on board. There is just enough room to store it in the crew quarters.

They weren’t really specific about where we drop them off so we head to the craters. There is a -2 on entry detection there. We don’t get detected, but we zip right through a radiation zone which causes a hit of damage to everyone on board.

We keep going and land to let these guys off.

The Engineers get those guns installed at the end of the day.

I have updated our deck plans as I notice a few mistakes on the last upload. Boat Guns take up five CU, the two groups of 5 CU of space next to the ship's boats are not inside the boats but in the bay they sit in. I didn't bother to draw in the fighters we were transporting as they got off.

We have 218,686 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We now owe 225,564 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek. 

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 102 – April 1st.

David and Duke need healing and rest, so we are off to the Spaceport. This is a player choice, David was downed by concussion and really doesn’t need healing, just some time off.

We are of course detected on entry. We get an offer transport men to Nipna. They take up 2 CU in the ship and we will be paid 300 for each guy we transport. Emily agrees.

Emily makes the weekly payment of 600 on the ship. We still have a few hours of daylight, so Duke get healed up at a price of 450 secs. Emily purchases more hypercharges (1000) and two sets of ships guns, TL-6 for 1200 each.

3750 secs. well spent, so Emily makes a calculated desision to pay off 14,436 on the principal of our ship. We now owe 225,564 on it.

We have 218,686 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 225,564 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

You probably noticed a lack of ads in these posts. That's because affiliate clicks have jumped off a cliff. However, if you have $5 or $18 or $20 lying around, I would like to suggest The Gardens of Ynn. It is a procedurally generated adventure, which has a curious setting which allows for plug n play into any adventure setting. Personally, I'd use it for D&D, but the book is pretty close to rule set agnostic.

A Great Book from DriveThruRPG Gardens of Ynn

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 101 – March 31th.

Duke and David are regulated to the ship’s med bay, wherever that is. Emily leads Deadeye, Lefty out to look for stuff.

One of the problems with a high tech world is, you are always detected on entry. In this case, the contact roll leads us right to the table I want to roll on. However, this one time only takes an hour instead of 5.

I probably should have scooted back to the Spaceport Med Center, but we are here.

They find one intact PS-bot and one repair unit. We get one extra chance to roll for stuff, but all we find are damaged U-Suits. They aren't worth the effort so we discard them. While this isn’t a great haul, I can now assign a PS-bot to Audrey.

We have 218,186 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

100th Day Post Celebration

Today, I made it to my 100 day playing Star Smuggler. I thought I should do something to celebrate. A few weeks ago, my dad sent me a foam cutter, so I decided to try it out using my drawing of the Buffalo Heavy Transport. 

Not bad so far. You'll notice I have a very shaky hand. My Dad uses these foam cutters like a kid uses crayons. I'm not very good right now, so why not check out one of his castles? 

Top view	Cockpit, top down	Cockpit, bottom up
Rear of ship, bottom side	Bottom of ship

I've only cut the rough details and not even all of them. The aft bottom of the ship is nearly featureless. I can't wait to finish this project.

Wish me luck!

And thank you for sticking around for 100 days of game play.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 100 – March 30th.

If Duke took off his beret, he
wouldn't look like this. 

If Han Solo had a beret, he wouldn't
look like this. 

This trip was unrewarding, so we are off to Nipna.

We enter the system in the middle of a space battle. We slink away and make landfall in the ruins. We get an interesting roll on landing. We are attacked by a Mynkurian death squad. Two guys have suicide vests, two have poison darts and the last two have heavy hand weapons. The event describes them as attacking no matter the tactical situation.

I call BS and decide that we need something more cinematic for day 100!

If that last instruction is followed, they will run up to the ship as it lands, and I will slowly gun them down as heavy weapons, bombs or poison can't hurt the ship.

Instead, let’s try this. David, Lefty, and Duke are leaving the ship via the ramp when they get charged by these guys. They have Tech Level 6 equipment, while Duke, David and Lefty have TL-4 Heavy Weapons, Military U-Suits and PS-Bots. There is no air on this world, so this will be brutal and short.

All six guys try to charge to the ship's ramp in their first round. Deadeye, from the gun turret has a shot at them. Audrey’s turret can’t turn that far, so she doesn’t get a shot. Besides, we won't ask her to kill anyone on her first day. Deadeye has tech level 1 guns and a 6 marksmanship. He needs to roll 7 or less.  He rolls a six and one guy takes 10 hits.

Duke needs a 9, Lefty a 10 and David needs an 8. All three hit. Duke hit’s the other guy with a suicide vest and he explodes (The guy had 3 Endurance, so he's toast on a 2-7 and dead by vacuum on 8-12). Lefty hits one of the poison dart guys as does David. One takes 4 points of damage while the other takes 2. That doesn’t kill either of them, but their suits breach and they go down. They’ll die if no one helps them. None of us are all that helpful.

Next round. The guys with heavy weapons stop running and open fire. Each has a markmanship score of 4, with TL-6 weapons, gives them a 10 to hit. They shoot first. Both hit, one on Lefty and one on Duke. Duke takes 7 points of damage while Lefty is knocked out by concussion. Duke’s suit is breached and the PS-bot begins emergency life support. David fires and hits one guy, knocking him out by concussion.

At this point, Emily realizes something is wrong and jerks the ship into the air, allowing Deadeye another shot (they were too close to the ramp before). The last guy is vaporized, but Deadeye and Audrey take a moment to hose the bodies with the ship’s guns. This takes 3 more rounds.

In the aftermath, Emily sets the ship down and investigates. I am going to rule that all of attacker’s equipment is destroyed.

Emily takes a team out to search the ruins while the medics patch up the team. Emily comes home with a small collection of coins worth 30 secs. Instead of adding them to our inventory, she distributes all of them among the crew.

We have 218,186 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

You probably noticed a lack of ads in these posts. That's because affiliate clicks have jumped off a cliff. However, if you have $5 or $18 or $20 lying around, I would like to suggest The Gardens of Ynn. It is a procedurally generated adventure, it has a curious setting which allows for plug n play into any adventure setting. Personally, I'd use it for D&D, but the book is pretty close to rule set agnostic.

A Great Book from DriveThruRPG Gardens of Ynn

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 99 – March 29th.

We have reduced the outing party to David, Lefty, and Duke. By leaving Emily back we can have a hopper and the ship come to our rescue.

We get the same option to ransack an office and again we pass on it. We interview and hire a Starship gunner. We hire her on for 100 right now and the typical 1% for the crew. I totally made that up on the fly, she would normally get much less. We outfit her from the Cargo Bay, so she has weapons and a U-suit. I'll get her a PS-Bot soon enough.

Our final roll is for Hopper Guns, again. They are not armor piercing, so we pass.

While Duke and the gang are shopping, our engineers are engaging in RRR to install those boat guns.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 98 – March 28th.

This planet is dangerous as they are at war with Nipna. Duke, Lefty, David and Emily are out to get supplies. Michael and Jonathon are at the ready to pilot the ship and one of the hoppers. Deadeye is manning the guns for the ship.

Each roll is four hours, but if we can start an activity we are allowed to finish it. So that is three rolls.

We start with a 2, ransack an office. This is a bad idea which could get us arrested, so we pass on it.

Next we purchase some boat guns. Before the buy, we check to see if these are military grade, armor piercing guns (e54). They are not. They are tech level 6, so we’ll take that. They cost 150 each times 10. Well worth the money at 3000 secs. for two.

We get heavy hand weapons as our final roll (e50). They are Tech Level 4, have explosive rounds and cost a base price of 30. They end up costing 150 each, so we pass on them. We will try again tomorrow.

We have 219,360 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 97 – March 27th.

We have some choices to make. New Karma is a double world system with a Tech Level of 1 and a Wealth of 70. I need higher tech items at cheaper price. The two systems with connections to New Karma are Uruskop and Mynkuria. Mynkuria has two planets and each are Wealth 30 and Tech Level 60. They are also at war with Nipna. Uruskop is a single isolationist planet with an asteroid belt at Wealth of 40 and a Tech of 40. Given my choices, we are off to Mynkuria for the tech code.

We don’t make any contacts on the way in and we land on the second planet, at the military base. This planet has no air and a gravity of 5. The gravity ain’t bad, but combat here will be deadly.

Our contact roll indicates we found a strange device of unknown purpose. You know what? This ship is new and I’m not touching anything.

With that done, we settle in for bed.

We have 222,360 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

Star Smuggler - Elegant Agency

So far, I have played 96 days, game time or 86 days in real life of Star Smuggler and posted an synopsis of these adventures here.

One of the criticisms of Star Smuggler and many other games is a specific type of flaw in the system: a single die roll ending. In playing this one game for many decades, (yes, decades) and other solo games, I have noticed that the great ones have a very strong amount of user agency baked right in. This means that single die roll endings are relatively uncommon despite perceptions otherwise.

Over the years, I have noticed a rhythm and tempo to solo games. They are intended to be completed in an afternoon, however, since I have run through 86 days of play on this one game, this can be extended for an arbitrarily length of time. It doesn't even take practice, all games ending in failure or success can be replayed, on whim.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, I have had enough time on my hands to map this entire game using pen and paper.

 In doing this sort of analysis, I have noted that there are 5 basic structures to the story. There are events based on planetary locations, events based which system you enter,  events which lead to other events in a story format, electable or avoidable combat and standard events which are singular.

Working backwards, the standard events are usually options to purchase a mundane item such as hypercharges or weapons. There is no way to end the game in these events. Combat is often elected and therefore avoidable, so only the player is responsible for endings in combat. There is no way to quantify how many ends are a result of combat.

The next 3 items require some explanation and numeration. There are 230 events described in the whole game and one of those is for setting up game play. I have counted that in all of my calculations even though it is not "really" a step or event, it merely describes assumptions for the rest of the game.

Duke starts on the planet Regari, at the spaceport. The mechanics of the game are slightly altered in this one scenario. Duke doesn't have to move and therefore is only subject to a contact roll which may or may not result in a specific entry from the booklet. If he moves to another system, he is subject to an entry roll and a contact roll when landing, which are random events based on one or more die rolls.

System events and contact rolls are largely thematic to wherever Duke is. Each system has a specific set of themes and these are reflected in the list of possible events. All of them assume Duke is in his spaceship, although events may force him away from the ship. Contact rolls are also thematic, so events in the City are different than events on a Spacestation. Typically, Duke is not in his ship, although if the player decides he is, he generally is. This ruling is ambiguous.

The third and last type of entry is one entry that leads to another entry, as the story line progresses. They also tend to be thematic to wherever they occur.

Type of Event	Number of Entries	Number of Endings	Percentage of endings
All	230	21	9%
Contact	53	1	1.8%
System	27	4	14.8%
Story Entries	135	3	2%
Mundane Purchase	41	0	0%

As you can see the most game endings, outside of combat, occur when they player changes systems and is forced to roll an entry event. Since the player doesn't really have to change systems, owing to the fact that many systems either have Ruins or gambling which generate free money and equipment or have two planets where a trade route can be established, game play can continue in a repetitive fashion for a long time. 

When in comes to endings, there are very few that simply stop the game with or without a die roll. I didn't bother to count, because these are a standard trope of choose your own adventure style products. They complete a particular story in a special way.

Star Smuggler does have a trope all it's own, called "Going to Prison". Escaping prison is ludicrously easy, but it strips your player of all resources. It's an end without a solid ending because unless your bank account is higher than the price of a ship, it's all over. Every single game that ends this way lands on e023. Modification of this one entry would remove these limbo like endings.

Events	Number of Entries	Number Limbo Endings	Percentage
All	230	7	3%
Contact	53	0	0%
System	27	1	3.7%
Story Entries	135	3	2.2%
Mundane Purchase	41	0	0%

When looking at the game structure from the perspective of limbo endings, other details become apparent. The events booklet has 230 entries divided in to two groups, events numbered 1-199 and 31 events numbered over 400. Judging by this fact, I suspect that either two people were working on entries and widely spaced the numbers for speed or a lot of information was cut to reduce the printing cost. There is no telling which.

Armed with both this structural knowledge and a sense of how game mechanics work, a player can keep this game going for a good long time. So why don't they? Well, it is meant to be played in a single afternoon AND some players have expectations which are not aligned with the possible outcomes. For example, the rules booklet does not deal with psionics or extreme technology like time machines, ECM, power armor and forcefields. The player literally doesn't see these events coming unless they played enough to know that they are possible. Once that happens, the player can guide him or herself to or away from these entries.

In producing this series, I have noticed one other style of play that results in a quick ending. When polling my children on what I should do next, given a lack of background, they tend to select options that have a specific goal in mind, no matter how improbable that goal is. And they have a tendency to make that choice consistently over long periods of time to the exact same end. Their expectations are unrealistic given the limited options in the game.

By using foresight, I have been keeping this series on Star Smuggler live for a very long time. Probably longer than most players would.

One other item is briefly mentioned in the rules booklet, which is easily overlooked. The author intended the reader to repurpose Star Smuggler to other rule systems without naming a system. Traveller comes to mind, but with the resurgence of all manner of old school games, it could be anyone of hundreds of systems. Keep that in mind when you download this great game.

I hope you have been enjoying this blog series on Star Smuggler.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 96 – March 26th.

I need to change the dynamic of the game to make continuing a meaningful endeavor. Right now, I have 200,000+ secs. and no deadlines or meaningful limitations. I love NPC characters, as evidenced by D&D supplemental Zero to Hero, so having a veritable army of them also means I fewer challenges.  Heck, I increased their pay to 1% of all sales and still have hundreds of thousands secs.

I need to put the lock back in place. We are going to purchase a ship via my rewritten e036 rules. We will trade the Antelopes for a new ship. When I rewrote e036, I did not anticipate having multiple ships. I made that detail up on a whim. To even things out, Duke will trade his ship in for 60,000 credit on the principal and Emily will sell hers for half of that or 30,000. Used car dealers…

Our choice of ships is the Buffalo Class Heavy Transport. It costs 300,000, which is reduced by 60,000 to 240,000. We pay a reduced interest rate of 600 per week because of the trade. We make that payment now and I do not have another payment until Day 106.

Here is a blank sheet which assumes that the player has two hoppers in the bay.

To soak up more cash, the used Buffalo Heavy Transport doesn’t come with boats, guns, boat guns and has a single hypercharge. We decide to purchase all of them at the dealership, which comes at a premium price. We pay 1,300 for each hopper, 900 for each starship guns, and 1,800 for boats guns (each) plus 3,500 for hypercharges. This planet is Tech Level 10, so all of our stuff is Tech Level 1.

That sets us back 11,500 which is subtracted from Emily’s trade in of 30,000. We made 18,500 today in the trade. Since this wasn’t a “sale” per se, the crew gets nothing off the deal except new digs. We spend the rest of the day transferring cargo from the old ships to the new. The new e036 rules specifically state that we cannot transfer hoppers, guns, or the stasis unit in pilotage. It's a shame, because those guns were sweet. We'll have to upgrade what we have later.

Here is our new "Buffalo as Character Sheet". I have moved all of the cargo to the ship except for the 4 vials of pheromones and crew equipment, which are on each individual's character sheet.

We have 222,360 in cash, have 8 hypercharges and a new ship.  We are wanted on Palatek.