Wednesday, February 19, 2020

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.

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

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.