So-so, Star Crusade did spreadsheet badly.
I am looking more to the Spreadsheetdom of the Vargo game a couple of years prior, where the economic system actually prompted a fair few people to enthuse about how cool it was on WORA (has anyone ever enthused about any economic system apart from that one or Kingsmouth? I totally plan to keep slimming stuff down and steal from Kingsmouth). That is still spreadsheet land but a much more abstract and easily maintained spreadsheet status.
Ideally this stuff will be code, but in practice I am probably not going to be good enough at coding to pull it off, so a hybrid with Google document spreadsheets for record keeping/status tracking but actual currency/resource tracking automated and in game. It is going to be a moderate admin burden, depending upon how many people do make fief holding characters, but nothing like as bad as Star Crusade, actually simpler than the system that was used on Vargo many years ago which worked fairly well.
I have also started some amalgamation, no more tracking of individual small starships, Frigates and Corvettes are now grouped into larger formations, making them broadly equivalent in cost and importance to individual larger vessels. This has the added and important benefit that random none capital ships can be crashed into stars or otherwise exploded in plots without it being a huge issue.
Also Ships of the Line are now Battleships, Cruisers are now Dreadnoughts, I have also added another 'sample fief' to the spreadsheet, an orbital one, as I play around with numbers to check balance. Sadly I did have to stop Loyalty from impacting the productivity of a fief directly - it was otherwise possible to make twice as much money by recruiting huge quantities of infantry then have them police state the loyalty of an orbital fief to absurd levels.
For reference the 'Orbital Barony' has a full on space dominance type military, a lineup of capital warships plus scouts and marine compliments but no real surface army outside of a small garrison force and not much by way of patrolling vessels.
Raiding and Patrolling is a mechanic I am still working on - basically though you can commit space forces to Raiding or Patrolling for an OOC month, an opposed roll is then made with the Raiding against Patrolling scores (modified by commanders if any). If the raiders win then they get to loot a lot of Wealth and Supplies from the victim or steal less and force a battle with the odds in their favour. If they narrowly win, they can steal a small quantity, or steal more and face a battle with even odds (not all of the committed ships fight in any given battle). A draw and they can steal a little and face an even battle or get nothing, etc. If the defenders outright win then they can potentially bring in standby vessels that were not dedicated to patrolling - so you can for example ambush raiding frigates with your battleships for a major 'Ohh Shit' moment.
Obviously running away (or trying to) is very much an option if you find yourself outmatched.
Basically a mechanic to create plenty of smaller scale space battles not necessarily on anyone's terms and in interesting places rather than people wanting to death ball their fleets and ram them into each other. Also a risky way for people to pay for starships if they are do not hold land, they can turn raider/pirate.
This was absolutely an issue in Fading suns where you literally would end up with formations of guys with spears and swords facing off vs tanks. This kind of thing is why I decided to lump military forces into discrete (fairly large) units and keep the tech level consistently advanced.
An Infantry Battalion on this scale is not literally 500 Infantry guys with rifles, it is 500 soldiers including armoured flying transport vehicles, light artillery, their logistical support, scouts, anti armour weapons, etc. They can hurt anything even if they might be at a disadvantage against formations with Space Tanks. That said a good proportion of an Armoured Battalion is exactly the same infantry acting in support of their Space Tanks.
If anything locking troops into a larger and less flexible formation should give a net increase in combat power thanks to improved coordination and more support weapons, but I can see it being a pain when it comes to deciding to transport them somewhere.
So for anyone interested, here is an in progress 'Fief Sheet' example: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1q66ev4ENTeBKq1__AkJ9pDQXJy_iRMBtZhicSRGl4Vg/edit#gid=343899767
The 'System Overview' tab is something that would be visible for everyone and shows details of an individual solar system, the number in each 'square' is the Wealth Factor, an abstract combination of population, productivity, etc. This is basically static unless somebody uses Weapons of Mass Destruction upon a planet.
The 'Yellow Duchy' tab is the example made up fief, I have deliberately come up with a maximum complexity fief, this is an example of a 'continent fief', one PC controlling 1/3 to 1/4 of a planet with significant Wealth and some Industry.
Most of the values on this page are derived, the ones that a player could tweak are Tax Percentage and Lifestyle, Loyalty and Administrative Efficiency would in practise be altered by a character's +sheet. People would be able to spend 'Prestige' (social/political capital) to influence their own or other's Loyalty.
The Ground Forces and Space Forces tabs show what is currently a super laborious example of what might be a maxed out player's military, with a significant fleet and really substantial ground based army. I am very much looking at ways to simplify this, probably involving large numbers of troops amalgamating into larger formations (say, 5 'Brigades' of infantry each with 5x the stats instead of 25 separate Battalions, etc).
It should be noted that Training is a direct multiplier to unit stats, this 'Example fief' has ground army with some exceptionally capable formations but a mediocre navy outside of the flagship and some of the frigates. Most troops start off with 3 Training when created, it can then be raised either through spending or PCs with relevant skills using 'Strategic Actions' (you get 3 per OOC month / 3 IC months).
The Reference tab is where a lot of the other tabs pull their values from. Exciting stuff.
In 'action', each player would have limited read/write access to their own fief sheet, they would be able to adjust tax rates/lifestyle spending (with the effects taking place each 1 month OOC / 3 months IC strategic interval) and freely state where their military assets can be found when they are 'Available' (The Location column). If a unit is then committed to an action (Scouting, joining an expeditionary fleet, etc) or actively in combat then the location field would be locked to staff.
This kind of thing would probably be much more elegant using code and in game but frankly? I am a terrible coder but can do spreadsheets.
The system is definitely too complex right now but the current design goal is that any optimisations are deliberate, there are four types of spaceship and four types of ground troops (plus conscripts, not featured in this example. Their role is emergency fodder if you suffer a surface invasion), each is supposed to be the best at it's particular thing with the optimal strategy clearly signposted. On which note:
Corvettes – Best for patrolling and perhaps scouting.
Frigates – Mix between raiding, scouting and patrolling, whilst being expendable(ish)
Ship of the Line – Raw combat and troop transport capability, slow and cumbersome.
Cruiser – Raiding, also the best ship all around (but not cost effective, it is like half engine or something)
Ground Troops:
Armoured Battalions – Best surface combatants.
Infantry Battalions – Not as powerful as armoured units but able to participate in boarding actions and more efficient for occupation/control duties.
Shock Battalions – 2x the combat power and 4x the cost of infantry, barely better for occupation. Elite, high cost powered armour infantry. Not at all cost efficient.
Drop Company – ¼ the size of normal infantry formations (useful for transportation!) and able to literally jump from orbit. Special forces, bodyguards, planetary assault troops. So cool! These are cybernetically enhanced troops with extremely advanced powered armour. Also each company costs at least twice as much as an armoured battalion with about 1/3 the base combat power.
Note, the example Drop Commando companies are very highly trained leading to them being extremely potent, this is not the 'default', but if somebody invests in Drop Commandos they are also then likely to seriously invest in ensuring they are capable. The best drop commando company (Elite grade) is still inferior in a straight fight to a green armoured battalion – being outnumbered 4:1 against people with artillery and Space Tanks will do that!
Maybe less medieval, I like the word Cataphract.
I absolutely do plan to play test then revise before going live, this is literally an order of magnitude less complex than SC was already though and I am very much concentrating on simplifying stuff not adding complexity, with as much automated as possible to make the player (and staff) facing side workable. For bonus fun my tabletop RPG group consists mostly of people with doctorates in psychology and statistics who are huge Dune nerds and they are interested in messing with it.
Also I am definitely open for revised names for space craft classes – definitely not a hundred percent happy with them. At the moment I am using the following:
Corvette – Cheap, crappy escort and patrol craft.
Frigate – Fast escort, raider and scout ship. (These two I am happy with)
Ship of the Line – Big, slow, wrecks stuff, cost effective and a good troop carrier. (I like Monitor but then I do like people being able to refer to having X ships of the line as a measure of space strength)
Cruiser – Slightly bigger, very fast, not cost effective and not so great at carrying troops, capable of independent actions. (I am open to suggestions here!)
As mentioned Space Noble class ships are something you pick in character generation for similar investment to having a fief, they do not give the same wealth/combat power as a fief turned to fielding a military would. Any given player will have only one and then if their whole 'thing' is that they want to be a special Space Captain.
For 'Standard' Space Noble class vessels there are:
Carrack – Frigate sized, a little beefier than a cruiser, super fast. Pick this for Heroic Space Adventures.
Galleon – Ship of the Line sized, Cruiser speed, about 3x Ship of the Line fighting ability. Carries as many troops as a Cruiser. Pick this for Space Adventures with sidelines into more economic and military stuff. You cannot always outrun things and cannot always outfight them but have good odds either way.
Dreadnought – Really big, flying space palace, frigate speed and about 8x Ship of the Line firepower. Carries as many troops as a Ship of the Line. This is really more of a 'support' type pick, you have serious hyper tech manufacturing capability, are really militarily significant, etc, but cannot just fly around like a maniac, a good sized fleet is absolutely able to beat up and board such a ship, but it can kill a small fleet by itself.
As you can see I did try to go for a different naming scheme here but it fell down when I got to Dreadnoughts, maybe change it to Sloop, Carrack, Galleon instead or something?
The 'Warship' Space Noble vessels are currently Destroyers and Battlecruisers, so too much overlap with conventional ship names. I am half tempted to just go full sci-fi and go for something weird here, maybe use Culture ship classes (Rapid Offence Units and General Offence Units? Or swap 'Units' for 'Ships'). These are mostly exclusive to the local Imperial Navy detachment, so they could certainly have a very different theme for their names IC. Alternatively something overblown, 'Sword Class' and 'Arrow Class' or whatever.
@bored said in Space Lords and Ladies:
You can say the fancy and conventional stuff balances each other, but from experience... no it won't. Whatever's the most efficient will be what gets made, the people in charge of those facilities/assets will win, etc.
The main thing being missed here is that you cannot build/make the Space Noble tech starships, there is no way to manufacture them in the area the game is set. They only exist where somebody has made a Space Noble ship captain and bought x type of ship as a merit in character generation, which is comparable in cost to ruling a continent or having a few orbital cities. Their ship and its power is their family inheritance and their ticket to being politically important, but it is probably not able to actually conquer anything without conventional support which has to be raised by other people.
If you are actually choosing your military as a 'landed' Space Noble then there is absolutely a most efficient path for raw offensive combat power if you can afford it, you get as many Ships of the Line as possible and load them with Infantry Battalions, which are absolutely not speed bumps. The most efficient possible composition is deliberate and will be clearly signposted rather than being left for people with spreadsheets to determine after number crunching, stuff like Cruisers loaded with Shock Troops or large formations of Drop Commandos are cool and have niche uses but will just lose to the basics given they will be hideously outnumbered.
Notably, the most powerful regular Space Noble ships are also not capable of outrunning fast conventional warships by any significant margin. A use of Cruisers loaded with Shock Troops? Engaging Space Noble (Or Space Elf) starships. A half dozen cruisers (note – this is crazy expensive but affordable for a landed Space Noble who wants to channel Admiral Fisher) will lose to their own cost in Ships of the Line every time but is also a serious threat to any Space Noble warship other than a Battlecruiser and can give that a really stiff fight (they -could- win if they damaged the engines then boarded, they would have triple the number of troops and are not much slower) – the lighter ones cannot fight them, the larger ones cannot outrun them.
A battlecruiser is legitimately terrifying but then that is probably on par with the character who decides they want their own entire planet in character generation. Welcome, you are an Imperial Admiral! You are a political appointee who has the position because they were someone really important's little sister, because that is how they decide who gets to be an admiral. You get spotlight time because everyone wants your terrifying monstrous starship and you also need the money/bullets/fuel to keep it going, not because you are super cool at anything (you are still a Space Noble and so pretty badass, but you are not the Space Noble who is the biggest badass at anything, apart from chilling on your gold plated Captain's Chair perhaps).
Added: I will be so happy if somebody makes like a 19 year old Space Admiral who is basically interested in parties and has minimal skills in actual Space Admiral-ing. But does have really well turned out bridge crew.
@bored said:
I'd say, one thing I don't quite get in your theme, is what really holds your pyramid structure in shape.
If the rare elements are the key to everything, why are the guys who control them not actually in charge (or what stops them from upsetting the social order to quickly put themselves in charge)? What stops a small alliance of orbital and planetary rulers (ie, something a few friendly players could easily organize) from having a self-sufficient empire? Also what does prestige do to make it matter, and why? (Don't take this as dismissive, but they seem like game/theme design issues).
To answer this part:
Rare elements are the key to 'the fancy stuff', but this is prone to being overwhelmed by the volume of conventional assets. They can also only be mined in shit solar systems which are not good for much else, you also need Space Noble tech starship and their on board manufacturies to make use of the raw materials. Any noble who holds Rare Element mines is super dependent upon alliances and trade but is liable to be powerful if they play the game well.
Nothing stops an alliance of planetary and orbital rulers working together her and being really effective, this is kind of how you win. Such rulers will probably have closer IC ties to their sibling starship captains than each other though and Space Noble starships are, as noted, terrifying.
Most of the Space Nobles will be NPCs, Prestige is social currency, you can spend it either to socially attack/bolster other characters or to do things like buy votes from NPCs, or increase your popularity with your subjects to counterbalance taxing the shit out of them.
The main reason is that the Space Elves have technology almost (or at least 2/3 of the way to being) on par with that of the Space Nobles, combined with the fact that exchanges of coilgun fire tend to disable but not actually destroy enemy ships and Space Noble vessels are not able to carry all that many troops compared to significant numbers of conventional warships.
Whilst Yellow could 'only' field ten ships of the line, everyone in the example solar system I statted put together could field at least fifty or sixty, assuming they also had various escort vessels, spending on lifestyles, were saving up extra cash and also have a hundred and twenty battalions of infantry onboard to serve as marines. They could potentially field more like a hundred, but if you can get 6-8 Space Nobles with starships then you can presumably also get a bunch of 'landed' Space Nobles to send in their conventional fleets to bolster them and provide troops/transport capacity, in fact you pretty much need to.
Also the Space Nobles are winning, they are advancing, despite being a snake pit quasi-feudal culture full of infighting. If your character is Space Captain Badass and you have your Space Noble Destroyer, then you can absolutely tear into conventional space fleets like a wolf murdering sheep.
Added: Space Nobles are assumed to start with a full panoply of Space Noble grade gear (unless you are deliberately poor or something). This very much includes a suit of super cool powered armour, you just do not wear this every day or if you are have decided to infiltrate an enemy world and want to go incognito. You do probably wear clothing made of crazy hypertech weave and immune to all kinetic weapons though, meaning that bare skin is a risky fashion choice outside of secure areas given personal shields only defend against energy weapons. Flechette guns (often with exotic ammunition) are the tool of assassins.
@deadculture said:
@Packrat So what kind of units are you planning for a typical space navy?
The current line up I have is the following:
Corvette: Local patrol and escort vessel, moderate to fast speed, low combat abilities, very cheap. Largely a civilian spec ship with weapons added. Assuming equivalent crew roughly on par with the kind of thing pirates might use. This is the kind of ship you use if you are being harassed by pirates or raiders, or want to collect taxes.
Frigate: Scout, patrol and escort vessel, used for fleet screening, skirmishing and raiding. Better than a corvette for everything but less cost efficient for escort and patrol duties.
Ship of the Line: Basically a battleship, not very fast, but very powerful for direct combat and extremely cost efficient for that role. Can carry two battalions (approximately 1000) of troops.
Cruiser: Largest conventional warship, faster than a ship of the line, or a frigate, and slightly more powerful than a ship of a line in a fight, but significantly more expensive. Carries one battalion of troops. Used as flagships or for independent long ranged patrols/missions, or for superheavy commerce raiders.
Space combat using ranged attacks can cripple ships but rarely kills them, boarding actions are the 'decisive' way of resolving fights in a lot of cases, especially as large warships are expensive and stealing them extremely worthwhile. To put it in perspective the Yellow guys in the example planet map I put up could probably afford one Ship of the Line every RL month (3 IC months) if they were being frugal and support around say, ten at maximum (assuming they were keeping some margin)
Ground combat units are as follows:
Conscript Battalion: Super cheap to raise, moderately dreadful. Basically used for garrison duties.
Infantry Battalion: Costs a lot more to raise (4x as much) but only twice as much to maintain, about twice as effective, though that does depend upon training. All around good investment, solid for garrison/oppression duties, affordable for use as marines if you field a lot of ships of the line.
Armoured Battalion: Very expensive but a lot more powerful (especially if you have your own Industry to equip them). Also cannot take part in ship boarding actions. These are probably what you want to use to attack a planet after you have secured a beachhead if transport capability is limited, they are by far the most capable ground combat unit weight for weight outside of Drop Commandos.
Shock Battalion: Power armoured infantry, basically like infantry but better, around 4x the cost for about 2x the combat power. (numbers still in flux). Great for ship boarding actions if you are outnumbered, or securing beachheads in planetary assaults, etc.
Drop Commando Company: Cybernetically augmented special forces equipped with limited quantities of Space Noble grade gear, meaning that they can be dropped from orbit and reenter in their fancy armour suits + energy shields. They are roughly on par with an infantry battalion (but normally better trained, also worse at occupation/oppression duty), however this is a unit 1/4 of the size of an infantry battalion. Hideously expensive but also the best way to secure landing zones on planets, do special forces stuff, have an elite bodyguard, or stuff your Space Noble super ship with mega badasses to make it win boarding actions.
I am still playing with the numbers for the super tech Space Noble ships but the basic idea is that 'Conventional' vessels come in three weights.
The lightest is significantly but not hugely more powerful than a Cruiser, faster than any conventional vessel and has moderate space palace/manufacturing abilities along with no significant troop transport ability.
The next tier is a match for three ships of the line or two and a bit cruisers, as fast as a cruiser, with greater space palace powers and about 1.5x the manufacturing abilities. Able to carry a battalion of troops.
The largest is a little slower than a cruiser, around frigate speed, but can fight five ships of the line at once, with about triple the smallest ship's manufacturing capability and mega space palace level luxury. Also able to hold two battalions of troops.
Outright Space Noble warships are altogether different beasts and come only in two flavours. Destroyers and Battlecruisers. They are far better for fighting but vastly weaker economically and are largely limited to the Imperial Navy, with likely the odd House noble captaining a Destroyer.
Destroyers go at Ludicrous Speed and are roughly a match for two cruisers at once, but have no Space Palace rating, carry one battalion of troops and have just enough Hypertech manufacturing capability to maintain themselves assuming a supply of materials.
Battlecruisers are a bit faster than a cruiser, but can fight eight ships of the line or over six cruisers at once, they only carry two battalions of troops however and have a Space Palace rating roughly equivalent to the smallest conventional Space Noble vessel, their Hypertech manufacturing capabilities roughly on par as well.
@Lithium said:
@Packrat Be careful you don't fix things to much in the Space Nobles advantage so that they don't become an insurmountable thing. When the only way to get ahead is to min max, people will min max and imho that puts a focus on roll play over role-play.
My planned mechanic there is that you have three 'Strategic Actions' an OOC month, which could be say, managing your fief, or training troops. If you have a skill above a certain level then you need to spend one of your Strategic Actions to maintain it however. So if you are the bestest sword master EVAR then you are dedicating a significant proportion of your efforts to Swording and this limits your ability to achieve other goals.
@deadculture said:
Suffice to say, @Packrat, if you go through with this idea, or go FS, just heed where your predecessors went wrong: you need to make people cap at the baron level; allows for more 'big time' players and even chances for conflict, rather than polarize everything around 4 PCs.
That is pretty much the plan, the current theme leads to a very flat structure, with allied family groups in symbiotic rather than hierarchical relationships.
Basically inheritance is tied to hypertech starships, primary heirs are given the mind interface implants to pilot and command the family starship at a young age (Implanting them later is traumatic and difficult to 'sync up' with, hence a heft xp cost that can be met by lowering stats).
These ships are extraordinarily capable, fast, dangerous, also flying super tech palaces and with automated manufacturies that are the main source of the superior technology which is the key to Space Noble power. They do need support to keep running though and those manufacturies need to be fed with transuranic elements and supplies. 'Void Lords' also traditionally do not hold any fixed assets, they have their ship and perhaps an accompanying fleet or squadron, they are taxed Prestige heavily if they try to maintain planetary or space based holdings.
They are expected to acquire such holdings for their younger siblings though, who are then expected to support their space fairing peer. (Who is liable to have better spacefleet command skills also) Space Nobles holding planetary holdings are the main source of Wealth (cash, consumer goods, fancy clothes, etc), Space Nobles holding orbital installations are the main source of Industry (Shipyards, heavy munitions, fuel, space tanks, powered armour, etc). A handful control transuranic element mines in key strategic systems and thus need a steady supply of Wealth and Supplies (produced by Industry) in order to feed their output of Rare Elements – which they can sell to Void Lords for a huge amount.
There are various Imperial administrative positions, which give a titular right to tax trade between star systems and are likely to be major points of social competition given they are quasi elective. Actually collecting said taxes requires the resources to do so though and such individuals are supposed to be maintaining the local (and cut off) Imperial Fleet presence. They also have limited and understaffed oversight meaning that corruption is likely to be very tempting.
The Imperial Fleet is commanded by Space Nobles who are related to the main landed family lines, normally those too far down the line of succession to get their own holdings or starships. It is also cut off and without any ability to maintain itself beyond that which the aforementioned Imperial Governors might supply, making them extremely vulnerable to political pressure. They do however have specialist Hypertech starships purpose built for war and a modest number of conventional warships and troops, all with crack crews. Plus the officers are at least theoretically professional military types who are loyal to the Emperor and focused on their war stuff rather than politics!
Hypertech (produced by starships using Rare Elements) is required for the absolute best personal scale equipment and personal scale spacecraft, it is also used for maintaining the fanciest levels of Lifestyle spending. Additionally it is needed for equipping Drop Commandos, the scariest special forces soldiers, repairing Space Noble starships, and also any miscellaneous super technology gadgets people might want.
Wealth is needed by all Space Nobles to maintain their lifestyle spending, the main way to gain social currency. It is also used to raise and pay armies and is required in smaller quantities for warships.
Industry is needed in small quantities for 'heavier' armies, space tanks, powered armour, etc, also for fancy space palaces. The main use however is construction and maintenance of starships, conventional starships are absolutely not on par with Hypertech Space Noble starships but they are vastly more numerous and a key factor in space combat is boarding – where they are not hugely at a disadvantage (though they are too slow to board Space Noble starships really).
The end result is hopefully going to be a cat herding clusterfuck – especially as Space Nobles are expected to duel each other at the slightest impugnation of their of honour and various houses should begin with rivalries and contentions. Fundamentally Space Nobles are supposed to have the edge though and so I am stacking the deck in their favour, having a player character Space Noble who is specialised in something running a fief, training an army, etc, should make it 2-3 times as effective as it would be otherwise.
I distinctly remember Custodius' Hazat on Vargo had a vassal who controlled basically the whole Hazat whole navy, he used to bitch endlessly about how his peace efforts were unsuccessful.
Not knowing that she was using 'his' (her) navy to pirate raid coastlines 24/7 regardless of whom Custodius had decided to be at war or at peace with.
I am honestly not sure what happened to Lextius in particular, back in like... 2002, he was the chillest staffer imaginable who went out of his way to let PCs feel and be awesome and let you tell these amazing personal stories.
On Star Crusade he was still great fun to RP with as one of his player characters but his staff decisions all seemed to be oriented around maximum fucking up of PCs in an extremely toxic manner.
I believe Paulus actually used to be Arnold Schwarzenegger's speech writer of all things.
He was definitely a journalist prior to the lawyer thing.
Right, the server is still up and I do still have a staff character, though I never logged in with it while the game was live after I quit.
I have been logging in occasionally to check through the old boards/job info partially out of nostalgia and also as a kind of forensic 'what went wrong and how can I look at ensuring it does not happen elsewhere' exercise. For that matter I still chat with Paulus on Skype very occasionally though he has been occupied by stuff like marriage and a kid so I do not believe he is actively playing anywhere now.
I mean I disagree (and disagreed at the time) with him in many ways about how a game should be run but he came up with a cool as hell theme with some great writing.
@silentsophia said:
I still can't believe the first period thing.
EGADS.
Sofia was pretty much the naval gal. Sure, she had a thing for Sans, but she had a job and things to do. Plus, Admiral Fluffnstuff was a very popular cat.
Sophia and Sans did have matching robot hands, it was fate.
Edit: Actually I just checked, they were not matching hands! San's was super strong but Sofia's had water/chemical resistance. Also I never realized that Sofia had a phobia of spiders.
The character advancement and approval on Star Crusade was just nuts, it did not work on Dark Between the Stars and I have no idea why Paulus felt it would work on another game.
I mean I actually quite liked the backgrounds merits, synergy bonuses, etc, even the slow advancement, but that did not work at all combined with it being completely arbitrary as to if you were capable or just some random (or even outright incompetent) person. Anyone who got statted by Augustus in particular was just screwed.
Attributes were also hugely important (given equal or more weight to skills) and the secret? Physical attributes were in a large part set according to how people had written their descriptions combined with their physical age. People who made female knights and had them petite were really shooting themselves in the foot given how important Vigor was in combat and given that even attempting balance was apparently anathema a lot of them did not get given Dexterity to compensate. People who made six foot plus athletic types in their twenties did pretty well though, older than 30 or so and people tended to not get a Dexterity of over 6 regardless of if they were fighter pilots or master duelists.
Also anyone who went for obvious cybernetics was just given them basically 'for free', if anyone had ever gone for a Lithe Wire system with visible external cabling they would probably have just gotten the flat +3 dexterity bonus as long as it made any sense. I know Paulus approved some broken as hell Changed and gene modded characters, though their players (or it might have been been the one player?) were more interested in sexytimes than achieving anything.
Well I now have a working desktop and so am able to work on the thing properly now, though I have been doing some work on systems and setting every day.
Fundamentally this is going to be a slow burn however – somebody mentioned how one of the big issues with Star Crusade was that the systems for everything kept changing and that is absolutely true along with the fact it was a huge problem. The game was rushed out the gate because people were eager to start playing and ultimately that was one of the big factors that killed the game.
It was like.. I do not know, attempting to finish building a car whilst driving it along the road at full speed with all the resulting slowness, fuckups and induced frustration that entails. The equipment list was never even finished during the whole time the game was running leading to bullshit like one baroness fighting a duel with a Kurgan who used a Shocker Weapon without most of the players even knowing this was a thing (they were really cheap and basically anyone can buy such a thing in regular Fading Suns).
If somebody is say a military leader and wants to meaningfully RP around that they need to know what troops they have and have a good concept of what this can accomplish, without waiting two months, then finding that everything suddenly changed because of whatever reason. If being a Space Baron is to be meaningful with meat to people plotting and politicking then I want something solid to support that which will hopefully remain mostly unchanged so that people know where they stand. The alternative is Space-Marriage Simulator 5000.
One of the mechanics I am tweaking is that a character mostly gains social currency (Prestige) by spending money and the most straight forward way to do this is to maintain an outrageous lifestyle:
Maintain a multi floor penthouse apartment in the most desirable location, two dozen servants/staff, a dozen bodyguards, a couple of fancy transport craft. Charter small and comfortable spacecraft as required.
Throw in a holiday residence or two, increase staff, maintain a small personal shuttle.
Have a luxurious space shuttle and Scarface scale mansion surrounded by acres of parkland, expand a holiday home to have tens of miles of hunting/parkland or own an orbital residence.
Maintain probably five dozen personal staff, host extravagant salons and parties every week, a literal platoon of bodyguards and security experts with their own transport.
Travel everywhere with a hundred or more minions and hangers on in considerable luxury, chartering extravagant transport or using an owned air/space yacht, own luxurious residences on multiple worlds along with even favoured followers having personal space vehicles. Personal security force is militarily significant and has useful intelligence applications.
1 Being the basic level required to maintain one's social standing as a Space Noble, costs are exponential but at higher levels this can be ameliorated by owning a proper Space Palace. Basically the idea is that people should not be trying to maximise their resources by living frugally, spending money on luxury is strongly encouraged especially given it lets you handwave stuff. If you are spending for level 5 lifestyle then want to know about your rivals machinations? You have a couple of intelligence analysts and some bodyguard/spies already! Are you shot by an assassin using a flechette gun loaded with exotic poison darts? A good job you have three doctors on staff. Does somebody need to get to Acheron 5 really quickly to deliver the secret plans? You have this fast racing yacht prepped and gleaming on the landing pad even if you never mentioned it before.
My current plan is for there to be a 'skill pyramid' in character generation, plus added on points atop of that. This would be pitched so that every character is by base amazing at something, really good at a bunch of things, and competent at most things yet mediocre at others. Extra points on top of that could be used for being literally the best at your 'Thing', rounding out to lack weaknesses, or being a Space Count, etc.
Not being a Space Noble would probably be some kind of disadvantage you would choose and then get more points for, while genetically engineered Space Nobles are on average super competent there are billions of none Space Nobles and a player character would be one of the absolute most capable of them.
The idea being that a none noble would not be Jane Farmer, they are more likely to be Space Joan of Arc. On which note I really do recommend reading the transcripts of her trial - this was a teenaged girl who had been captured, quite likely tortured, then was being raked over the metaphorical coals by a bunch of religious lawyers to try to trick her into logical and dogmatic traps and she was basically too savvy for them.