The Minus Faction: Breakout review

Title:  The Minus Faction: breakout
Team: Rick Wayne  (Author),
Robert Sammelin (Illustrator),
Karen Conlin (Editor)
Year: August 5, 2014
Pages: 124
Rating: ★★★★

I've always loved serials. Especially the old 50's stuff. The Minus Faction: breakout is not old school, it's is in the now while hearkening back to classic serials. It's concise, fast paced, and a great story. It embraces current events and calls back to ancient mysteries.

I can't wait to read the next one in the series.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 050 – Feb 19th

We spend an hour flying to the military base. We are detected and get a result of e003. We are attacked by 3 Tech level 2 tanks and 6 with infantry men with TL-2 heavy side arms. The tank guns count as boat guns. They have heavy armor, which reduces each hit by two dice. Skimmers take 2 hits to destroy. This encounter takes an hour.

Now, since we are in a ship and move far faster than any tank, we could escape at the end of the first round but they would get to shoot at me. We are going for it because if I am going to take damage, I want to some back.

To recap, skimmers take 2 hits to destroy, a hopper takes 5 and a starship takes 10. These tanks count as skimmers and are disabled on the first hit and destroyed on the second. Starship guns do 10 hits or 1d6 hits and a critical. In this case, they do one die less due to the atmosphere and because of the armor, they do 2 dice less, for a total of 2 dice. Boat guns do one point of damage on a hit to a tank, which is reduced to by 2, they are ineffective. Against a ship these guns do one hit, which may be a critical.

Those heavy hand weapons have no effect on a starship, so we can ignore them for the moment.

The Antelope fires first because of it’s speed. We roll a 2 and 5. One tank is disabled.

The tanks return fire. They have 2 due to Tech level, a plus 3 due to skill and a -2 due to movement. They must roll under a 3 to hit. They get a 4 and 5, both are misses.

Next round. The tanks stop so they can shoot better. I now get to roll 3 dice because they are stationary.  I get a pair of sixes and a 1. The second tank is disabled. The last tank returns fire and hits with a 5, which does one point of damage to the Antelope.

I disable the last tank with a roll of 1, 4 and 5.

Everyone else is fleeing. I can gun these guys down from the ship with no risk. There are 15 of them and if they roll 4 or more, they escape after I get a shot at them. The event does not say that I will be wanted if I kill them or let them flee, so there are zero consequences. I pretend to shoot at them in the next round while 11 of them make their escape roll. In the next round 2 more escape, and in the third, the last guys make their rolls and get out of dodge. This is an exercise in dice rolls, I didn't shoot and let them have their rolls out of curiosity as to how fast they could get away. Three rounds. Not bad, but if this had been timed to a number of rounds, I would have been in trouble.

The tanks take up 45 CU inside the ship, so taking them is out of the question. I use a loophole in the rules and take their guns. The loop hole is, installing guns takes a day of RRR, removing them isn’t mentioned in the rules, so it takes no time.

On to the military base with 8 hours left. The military base has only 6 contact types, each taking 4 hours so we roll 1d6 twice. We get a 4 and 4, which is only buy boat guns. I don’t need those, so we are done for the day. 

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe 117,000 secs. in principle. It has one point of damage.
1 TL-1 Ship’s Guns.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.
3 Boat guns, TL-2.
2 CU Status unit in Cockpit and Engineering, 8 1 CU Status units in Crew Quarters and 1 1 CU unit in Gunnery.
10 Fuel Units in the Ship’s Boat.
9 Repair units,
5 Life Support Units in the Ship’s boat.
7 PS-bots, 1 per character,
6 Heavy Hand Weapons for sale, 4 for characters use,
7 Side Arms TL-1, 1 Side Arm TL-3, and one TL-4.
5 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket.
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

10 empty CU in the ship’s hold, plus 10 in the Hopper.

I have 22,071 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

The USN Chesterton, Growler and Variants

I'm not feeling so hot tonight. I have a cough and cold, so I can't do detail work. I figured I will just do the write up on this ship. This is middle and largest deck of 5 levels. 

The USN Chesterton was peace-time design for a frigate. The ship featured a large central engineering bay with the bridge just fore of it. Along the front rim of the disc, a variety of weapons were mounted. In the aft area were the crew quarters along with the main elevators. The engines were mounted at an angle, which gave the ship incredible maneuverability at the cost of top speed. 

Since this was a peace-time design, the frigate never made it off the drawing board. Instead, it was re-purposed into heavy tug and transport vessel. 

This configuration necessitated switching the crew quarters away from between the engines to the forward section of the ship where the weapons would have been in the name of safety. It was felt that damage to the engines could too easily breach the hull and kill the crew. USN crews fight suited, so this was not a concern for a frigate. 

When the war started, the Chesterton dry dock facility was already tooled up for transport production and switching to frigate production was easy. Since there were a great many Chesterton tugs and transports already plying the spaceways, this variant was given the name of "Growler" to set it apart. Before the first ship was released from the dock, the class name was changed again to "Cestus".

Because the Chesterton was a proven design, the Cestus/Growler configuration was only minimally tested. The placement of the tightly packed crew quarters in the rear of the ship was never studied. The crews soon found that the engines caused vibrations in the crew spaces. Unofficially, the crews reverted to the "Growler" designation as commentary on the ship's qualities. While not a fatal flaw, the ship was strongly disliked by their crews.

The first and last ship of the Cestus class do not have these problems as they were built to the specifications of the Chesterton for special missions such as mine warfare and electronic intelligence collection.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 049 – Feb 18th

Scout Ship

Talitar is an interesting system. It’s stats are virtually the same as Regari, but it has 2 planets. They share the same wealth and tech codes, but the gravity is wildly different for each world. Talitar I has a gravity of 13 which means no Hopper use. It simply can’t make orbit and burns fuel at an incredible rate. Talitar II has a gravity of 4. Can you guess which planet I will approach?

Talitar II has the following areas: a space station, rural, city, a prison, ruins, mining, a space port, a military base, and craters.

It will take 4 hours to set down on the surface. I am heading for the space port to purchase hypercharges and to sell off some items to free space. If I get that done, I will hit up the military base for upgraded weapons.

On entry to the space port, I encounter customs. They spend 3 hours searching the ship for radioactive materials. They find none and off we go.

In our three final rolls, we are approached by a pilot/navigator (pass), buy our hypercharges for 1000 and I sell off all of the Utility Suits. I also pay this week's ship payment.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe 117,000 secs. in principle.
1 TL-1 Ship’s Guns.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.
2 CU Status unit in Cockpit and Engineering, 8 1 CU Status units in Crew Quarters and 1 1 CU unit in Gunnery.
10 Fuel Units in the Ship’s Boat.
9 Repair units,
5 Life Support Units in the Ship’s boat.
7 PS-bots, 1 per character,
6 Heavy Hand Weapons for sale, 4 for characters use,
7 Side Arms TL-1, 1 Side Arm TL-3, and one TL-4.
5 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket.
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

28 empty CU in the ship’s hold, plus 10 in the Hopper.

I have 22,071 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

If you like science fiction games, try out some of Christian Hollnbuchner's floor plans and deck plans at DriveThruRPG.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 048 – Feb 17th

Today is spent in RRR. The Antelope is repaired, finally but the day is over.

We have the following resources:

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe 117,000 secs. in principle.
1 TL-1 Ship’s Guns.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.
2 CU Status unit in Cockpit and Engineering, 8 1 CU Status units in Crew Quarters and 1 1 CU unit in Gunnery.
10 Fuel Units in the Ship’s Boat.
9 Repair units,
5 Life Support Units in the Ship’s boat.
7 PS-bots, 1 per character,
6 Heavy Hand Weapons for sale, 4 for characters use,
7 Side Arms TL-1, 1 Side Arm TL-3, and one TL-4.
13 U-suits, 7 for the crew, 5 for sale.
5 Doses of pheromones (e009) in secret compartment.
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

What does that leave for me, space wise?

All of the space suits and PS bots have to be in the hold, as there isn’t enough room in the crew quarters. I can pick up one more crewman before this becomes a problem. The heavy hand weapons also take up hold space. That is 60 minus 10+13+7, so I have 30 left. There are 10 RU in the hold plus the extra ship’s guns, which reduces my cargo space to 14. There is not much I can do with that space, so I need to get rid of stuff. On my next stop, I will try to get sell the extra guns and the heavy hand weapons. That will free up 10 spaces.

I also have 10 free spaces in the Hopper, or ship’s boat. I could shuffle stuff into there.

15 empty CU in the ship’s hold, plus the Hopper. I pay the crew today, which costs 80 secs.

I have 23,251 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Instead of giving you a new ad, check out the items to the right of this post. Find a good book, blog or podcast. My personal favorites this week are Safco Cast and Revolutions.

Dervish and Sword and Flame

The USN Thresher
Prototype

I am try to get the hang of Inkscape. It's going pretty well. I have made improvements to the Sword and the Flame (Thresher) class ship deck plans.

I have even created a variant of it called the Dervish. You can read the write up on the Thresher ship here.

The Dervish is still a work in progress and is far less bleeding edge than the first ship. You can tell that they were built on the same hull, but their operations are completely different. Owning to the fact that the Dervish does not have a unique and experimental engine, the hull is completely smooth.

The USN Dervish Class

The Dervish is a platform designed for modification. It was first designed for engine research followed by a search and rescue ship. Other varients are a scout ship, a science/explorer ship or a gun boat. The ship's interior is a wasp shaped affair with fore and aft open spaces for research. The belt of the ship provides 8 bunk rooms for the crew. As a military ship, this is luxurious.

8 domes are suitable for sensors, science experiments or in the case of the gun boat, weapons. There will be a lower deck, but is sparse on amenities. These are more like semi-optional palettes on an F-15, they contain consumables, with little space for moving around. Unlike the Thresher, the Dervish has no turret.

The search and rescue variant has airlocks on the aft domes and auxiliary thrusters on the fore domes. The test model mounts engines in the fore and aft compartments, which vent out the domes. For testing, instrumentation is mounted on the exterior.

I haven't designed the engines for the Dervish yet, but they will be powerful for a ship of it's size. They will extend the lenth of the ship by about 1/3.

Updates to Compass Rose Inn and Kobold's Folly

I have updated the files for The Compass Rose Inn and The Kobold's Folly products. These items are still pay what you want, however, in each case I have increased the suggested price to $3.99 each.

In the case of the Compass Rose Inn, the map has been reworked to be 1 inch = five feet. This now brings the page count to 63 pages. Additionally, this file has map tiles that enable you to print out additional green space for more terrain. To fill some of this space, there is now a barn map with two levels, a stable or work shed with two levels, a well and bake house map.

In Kobold's Folly, I detail what is different between the Tribe of Minwan and other kobolds and provide images of King Minwan and his sister using the two magic items found at in the folly.

If you have already downloaded these files, my thanks. You should receive an email shortly with the new files. If you can't wait, simply check your Library tab at DriveThruRPG.

Click the images below for full resolution example images from the Compass Rose Inn.

As an additional preview of the Compass Rose Inn, I have loaded full resolution images of the entire basement area.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 047 – Feb 16th

Today is spent in RRR. I promised ads on RRR days, but instead of throwing a content free post at you, I would like to consider the rules presented so far.

As far as modifying Star Smuggler for solo play, I would discourage it. The system is carefully balanced where the player must be generous with the AI, which is just series of events and rules. Were I to change something, I would allow more characters to drive skimmers, the medic to accelerate healing and both the engineer and medic would have to have some sort of die roll to perform their functions. Aside from speeding up play and forcing more long term thinking, I don’t think this would have too much effect.

Personally I like have a large entourage, so I would like to increase the crew quarters size on the ship. It’s more fun than carrying goods. In exchange for this, I would give more items a CU value, such as a box of 10 handguns taking up one CU. Currently, they take no space. That seems balanced.

I would be interested in cranking the rules up into a full game system for general play by a party of people. The solo game does a great job of handling whole parties of characters, with the exception of Duke.

The first step I would take is to list out the professions. Gunner, Pilot/Navigator, Bodyguard, Medic Skimmer Driver, and Engineer. Then I would list out the “skills” as presented. Repair, Maintenance, Hand-to-Hand, Ranged Combat, Medicine, Radio Operator, and so on. Your profession allows you one skill and you get a choice of second skill to start. Additionally, every character would have the Cunning Stat.

This means that Duke isn’t a first level character, he has 5 skills: Gunner, Pilot, Hand-to-Hand, Ranged and Radio Operator. I would assign a point value to every event or rule that depends on a character making a die roll or performing a skill with a roll. That would be worth 1 exp point directly to that one character. If the character is subject to death, that is worth 2.

Every ten points, you level up. Each level allows you to get a skill or increase a stat by one.

Additionally, I would allow each skill to have ranks, which is equivalent to one tech level. Therefore, your character can get by with a lower tech level item via their skillfulness. So as not to unbalance combat, all bonuses are limited to 6. If you have a bonus of 3 from tech levels and 3 from a skills, you’d get a total of six. It’s no help to have a tech level of 6 combined with a skill level of 6, it’s still going to be limited to 6, max.

I will have to think more on this type of game play, because the system is so multi-faceted.

The ad for today is a simple choice: Classic Traveller from DriveThruRPG.

Starship Design - Centaur Transport

The Centaur Transport is a very successful design, for a warship. It is a mediocre transport. The central hull of the ship is of fixed design with 2 mass drivers as propellant. The wing pods are interchangeable cargo spaces. In this image, the right is plumbed for liquids while the right carries 20 missiles in VLS tubes and 12 nose mounted drones.

The ship is a tumbling pigeon design, meaning gravity is generated by having the ship flip end over end along it's flight path. All work is done in the back end of the ship, in front of the spherical weapons room. Typically, the crew only spins up the ship when they are coasting for long periods of time.

While this depiction shows missiles and drones, this is actually the least commonly used loaded out. The ship's mass drivers make a very effective weapon.

When used as a transport instead of a gunship, it uses aerobraking to slow down to orbital speeds before using small thrusters to match orbits. It is a very ungainly design for a transport.

As a gunship it simple barrels in on it's target, VIFFing (Vectoring in Forward Flight) to dodge fire while using the mass drivers to bombard the enemy as it slows down.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 046 – Feb 15th

Talitar is a system with a viscous, military government. We encounter a scout on system entry.

It’s a small ship. If we want, we can take the first shot, flee or wait. 

Scout Ship from Events Page 10.
Click here to download from Dwarfstar Games.

We’re gonna kill it. Lefty takes the shot. We roll 1d6 per tech level of the guns, a result of one or two on each die indicates a hit for a point of damage. We have TL-5 guns, so Lefty rolls 5d6. We roll, 1, 5, 3, 1 and 4, which results in 2 points of damage. Normally, a ship can absorb 10 hits, but this is a tiny scout and goes down in those two hits.

Lefty is in the turret, Doc, Ratchet, Deadeye and Bones are in the Crew Quarters, and Duke and Emily are in the cockpit.

Why did I name the places the crew are located? The event says the scout gets off two shots at us, no matter what. One of the quickest, cheapest ways to die is being in a compartment that is vented to space. 

The first is a shot from TL-6 ship guns. They roll 6, 1, 2, 5, 3, and 2. If you roll a 1 and a 2 in the same series and you have no shields, it’s a pair of critical hits. Our communication gear fries and the boat hold is open to space. If any one had been in the hold, they'd be dead. We’ve taken 3 points damage.

The second gun fires. It’s a magneto-plasma gun, a unique weapon. This weapon strikes an area and kills the crew without damaging the ship. It automatically hits, and a die is rolled for location. It hits the cargo hold. Again, if anyone had been in there, it would have killed them. It does no damage to the ship itself.

We are lucky we killed this thing in one shot.

We are going to hangout in orbit and do some repair. I'm unwilling to set down before we have all of the damage fixed. I'd like to take that gun, but the rules say the ship was destroyed completely. 

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe 117,000 secs. in principle.
1 TL-1 Ship’s Guns.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.
2 CU Status unit in Cockpit and Engineering, 8 1 CU Status units in Crew Quarters and 1 1 CU unit in Gunnery.
10 Fuel Units in the Ship’s Boat.
12 Repair units,
5 Life Support Units in the Ship’s boat.
7 PS-bots, 1 per character,
6 Heavy Hand Weapons for sale, 4 for characters use,
7 Side Arms TL-1, 1 Side Arm TL-3, and one TL-4.
13 U-suits, 7 for the crew, 5 for sale.
5 Doses of pheromones (e009) in secret compartment,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

I have 23,331 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

The USN Thresher AKA Between the Sword and the Flame

In my last post, Duke Springer and the crew of the Antelope battled a Talitarian scout ship. Quite possibly, this ship is my favorite ship ever.

Rather than doing a mod of it, I have redesigned the ship from the ground up and designed a deckplan and backstory for this version.

The United Space Navy's Thresher Scoutship utilizes bleeding edge technology which is not available except for a few prototype ships. The ship is tiny. After the size, the next notable feature is it's engines.

Interior, with engines off done in Inkscape.

The engines have four nodes which manipulate space-time in some rather horrifying ways. The engine requires that the ship be sealed from the outside while the interior can have NO closed spaces. To meet this requirement, the hull was grown from a single seed of metal. The walls look organic and flowing. The engine is called "the Flame" by the crew as it throws off a flickering light throughout the interior of the ship. Anecdotally, it is reported that any one who enters the engine area while the ship is in motion is erased from the entire space-time continuum as if they never existed.

In the center of the ship is a single turret and four staterooms. While these spaces have doors, they are not sealed to be airtight. The "turret" is a standard crewspace for the gunner which can move like a regular ball turret, but the gun mount on the exterior of the ship is actually a tiny remote piloted vehicle which flies in formation with the ship at all times, as if it was attached to the vessel.

On the starboard side of the ship is a second weapon, called "the Sword". It is a gravometric weapon which will kill any humans in the target area. It can strike inside an enemy ship without passing through the intervening space or shields and armor. "The Sword" theoretically has unlimited range, but the crew must have details of the target point, which means it is limited to sensor range.

It's a surgical weapon, but is subject to considerable quantum uncertainty when fired. It often fires with no measurable results. "The Sword" has one other side effect. It will kill any crew inside the Thresher in front of the barrel. For this reason it is fired with a delayed trigger so the crew can take refuge in the turret area or staterooms.

A final quirk to this weapon is it will not operate unless it is mostly sealed away from the rest of the ship. It does have a connection to the engines. The area which looks like a hatch is welded closed before take off and cannot be serviced in flight.

The engines also have a similar disconcerting quirk. They must be operated from behind. A crew of three engineers are stationed in the back compartment and cannot leave this area while the ship is in operation. The engines require exactly 688.5 kg of mass to be located in this space and three living people. No one knows why.

This is just enough room for food, water and air for three days, plus 3 people and 3 space suits. Typically these crewmen stay suited for the duration of the flight as it makes weigh distribution static.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 045 – Feb 14th

Since we are in orbit, we are going to take a day of RRR to heal Duke. In orbit, there are no forced contact rolls. I need to do this twice.

Strangely, medics can’t heal you faster, so Duke will need today's RRR to recuperate from our last combat. Sorry about the seemingly double post.