Tuesday, March 3, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 063 – March 3rd


Ok, we are still at the Spaceport on Imperia. We need to get out of here, because everything that doesn’t have a base price is going to have inflated prices. We lift off and make for Regari via Palatek. I could double jump at the cost of 3 hyperchargers per ship or I can risk an encounter passing through Palatek space. Since we are all armed up, we will take the risk of entering Palatek space.

We roll a one on entry, which is e092. We receive a radio message and can proceed as we wish. In the Regari system, we are spotted but ignored. We take the next four hours to land.

We have 54,171 secs. and we need a lot of supplies from the Spaceport. We land with two hours left and make two rolls. We get Usuits or repair units. As of this moment, we have enough of both and end our day.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
1 TL-1 military U-suit,
5 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
7 Side Arms TL-1,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.

Cargo:
1 TL-2 Boat guns,
10 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

I have 54,171 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Monday, March 2, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 062 – March 2nd

Ok, I have to do some book keeping. We are taking a day of RRR. I have two engineers, so I have them get to work on the new ship. They install some guns and stasis units. Lucy, Duke and Emily are healing up.

We decide to name the second ship the Alicorn.

I am dividing the areas protected by stasis units among the ships. There are 4 CU of protected space in each ship’s crew quarters. I move the 2 CU stasis unit from engineering to the other ship’s pilotage. The turret of the Antelope has 1 CU of protected space. There is a 4 CU stasis unit in the cargo hold of the Antelope. I have created a pair of sheets to mark all of this down.

We also redistribute cargo and the crew.

Four crew members are on the Antelope: Duke (pilot/gunner), Bones (medic), Ratchet (engineer) and Lefty (gunner). Five are on the Alicorn: Emily (pilot/gunner), Deadeye (gunner), Doc (medic), Lucy (engineer) and David (gunner). We lose the capacity to fly the hoppers and the ships at the same time. We have 9 crew and need another pair of pilots and one gunner.

In order to protect all of these people, I need to buy some more status units. In doing this, I will refit the crew quarters with 4 3 CU stasis units. This will allow me to protect up to 12 crew per ship in groups of 3. I can move the single CU units to various parts of the ship to protect workstations. I’m almost OSHA compliant. :)

Since I am being so nice to the crew, I am going to cut their salaries and simply give them a 1% cut off of all profits. This is 1% each, not total. Cheating, yes, but this will make record keeping easier. Payouts will be much higher than a measly 15 secs. a week.

As an additional cheat, I will no longer be tracking personal items owned by the crew as cargo. That removes side arms, PS bots and USuits from the cargo hold and presumably into the crew quarters. I am simply going to assume the weekly cost of the bots as a loss, per week.

You'll note on these sheets that I am only coloring very large items like big guns and multiples of repair units, fuel and life support units. The Alicorn has no boat, so the fuel and guns are simply sitting in the boat bay. Since I am actually working on paper, I merely have a sheet with penciled in notations. I may share that later.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
1 TL-1 military U-suit,
5 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
7 Side Arms TL-1,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.

Cargo:
1 TL-2 Boat guns,
10 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

I have 54,171 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

The TEK - Februrary 2020

Sales lagged in February, no help for that. People are done buying stuff by now. The end of the year explosion carries people for at least a quarter before they come back for more. 

February 2020 Downloads via DriveThruRPG:
AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 1
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 3
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 2
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 1
Swashbucklers Character Class - 5

Webstats were much better.



Webstats (Updated):
Google Analytics Pageviews - 1,270
Google Analytics Sessions - 800
Pageviews per Session - 1.59

Page views were also down 13.84%, which was to be expected with a short month and the end of my 52 Weeks of Magic series. Post Christmas lags through January and the dries up mid-month. I am not disappointed as I had some great feedback on my new series, Strictly (Duke) Springer.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 061 – March 1st

Obviously, I am trying to do something in particular. So we make 10 more rolls at the spaceport.

It takes all day, but I finally nail the roll I want. E036 – Buy a Starship. It costs 120,000 in cash. I got that. The ship is a Tech Level 1 ship, has no boat or guns and no crew. It has a single hypercharge, but I can buy up to 5 more for 500 secs. each.

Well, here comes the major rule breakage. I buy the ship for Emily as she is a pilot and heir to Duke's Smuggler Empire. Not much an Empire, but hey. This gives me a fleet of two ships. I suspect the rules weren’t designed for this but there is nothing saying I can’t do it. There are two rules, r220b and r220c which covers abandon crew and isolated crew. Neither really fits because I plan on having the two ships stick together. This would be no different than having Duke flitting around in the Hopper while the Antelope follows along.

We are going to sit tight at the spaceport and do some RRR tomorrow.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Boat guns, TL-2 in the cargo bay.
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.
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
10 Fuel Units in the Ship’s Boat,
8 Repair units,
5 Life Support Units in the Ship’s boat.
7 PS-bots, 1 per character,
10 TL-1 military U-suits.
6 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons for sale, 4 for characters use,
7 Side Arms TL-1, 1 Side Arm TL-3, and one TL-4.
10 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket.
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

1 Antelope starship with no guns or ship’s boat,
1 TL-1 Ship’s Guns in the cargo bay.
1 Boat guns, TL-2 in the cargo bay.
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

I have 54,171 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.