TOR

[BSDOblivion]

has anyone started work on getting the mmo TOR stuff transferred to d6 stats yet.
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[Guardian_A]

I've seen a little discussion around here about the game, but I havent seen anyone talking about doing a sourcebook for it yet.

[CRMcNeill]

I've seen some stuff done for ships, but the problem is, how do you convert ships that are a thousand years old for use in the modern era? Technology will have advanced (drastically in some cases), and the ships will just not be compatible with modern, classic-era ships, so stats will need to be adjusted accordingly.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[KeldorKatarn]

There is a thread in this forum with D6 ship stats for TOR....but they are disputed, because they are looking too powerful...

[Ankhanu]

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

[Ankhanu]

Aye, I've noticed the lack of real difference in performance of ships from the distant past through the distant future in Star Wars... The X-Wing is superior to other ships of its age... but, ya know, on par with common ships of 6000 years ago

It's an issue throughout the WEG material.
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[Guardian_A]

In my own campaigns, we always figure that ships from previous eras would need more frequent maintenence, and the parts would be much harder to come by. As a result, many of the parts would be upgraded over the years, resulting in ships that are at least somewhat compairable with newer ship in power level.

[Ankhanu]

Neat idea...
Doesn't address the issue of "new off the showroom floor" ships from prior eras (in those eras).
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[CRMcNeill]

[vanir]

I like the classic cars vs modern cars analogue, since that's been my hobby. Did old 60s-70s muscle car projects about 20yrs ago, but perspective changes and these days I have a strong preference for 80s Euro car projects (current is an AMG baby-Merc).

And it's not just higher cost of necessarily remanufactured parts, but the tech is actually old school, mechanical injection or carbs just isn't the same thing at all as EFI, and drag coefficients on older cars just isn't in the same class of modern ones: it takes about 150hp to push an 80s Mercedes through the wind at 125mph. It takes 200hp to push a typical 1970 sedan to the same speed. And it takes a lot more horsepower to give good high speed acceleration at say, 60-100mph in an older car like the classic musclecars.
The very way they drive is very different and that's just discussing shape and styling. Engine tech is so different, a modern DOHC engine with MFI at full throttle acts exactly the same as an old school iron-block with a race cam and multiple carbies. Only it idles silently, uses no fuel and your grandma probably drives one to the shops on sundays. A modern stock V6 sedan has about 190hp when a large bore 70s six cylinder sedan was lucky to make 135hp...and needed a lot more hp to perform similarly.


So in our game, based on this kind of analogue I'm tasked with converting older ship stats not already using the TotJ method of stats, ie. separate particle/energy shields, slow hyperdrives (typically a factor of 3), and sublight speeds dependent upon reactor size (ie. bigger the ship, faster the sublights, with the only real benefit of small craft being higher manoeuvrability dice), greatly reduced consumables, and greatly diminished computer systems of all types, weaker weapons...

If an old Republic ship's stats are published which aren't equivalent to those standards, I rewrite them and issue an update printout to the Players so it is.

(I also adjust the stats on prequel era ships to make more sense).


So in our game we have clear and established technological conventions based upon era. We can (and do sometimes) have Old Republic games as well as Classic era games with the same Players, and they know how to modify and build starships or equipment depending on the setting, and which skills to concentrate on developing as PCs. And they're different.
It's more fun.

[CRMcNeill]

Perhaps instead of modifying the ship stats (as crossover ships would be rare in the extreme across thousands of years separating the two eras), modifiers should be applied to travel times. We already know ships are going to move more slowly, both in hyperspace and real-space, so instead of tacking on ridiculously low speeds and hyperdrive modifiers, we just double or triple the basic travel times. Any ship that survived long enough to still be operable in the classic or prequel eras would obviously need to have their stats re-written, but if you are going to actually play an in-TOR-era campaign, why add to the complexity by using low Space values and Hyperdrive modifiers? Just use what you are used to, then apply a x2 or x3 modifier to the given travel times in the core rulebooks.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[vanir]

I use an older era map of the explored galaxy in the Essential Atlas (the Hydian for example, doesn't exist and the northern dependencies and trailing arms have only been explored as far as the mid rim).
There are much fewer local routes in any given area and hyperspace beacons are required for high speed navigation so the period 'gazetter' can only follow some major routes. All other travel is plotted cold.

If you do it the way set out in TotJ what you wind up with is taking weeks not days to get across a sector in a small transport/scout, but also if you follow the beacons on the main paths it also takes weeks to cross one heavily populated part of the southern galaxy (say, Tapani sector) all the way to Coruscant, which is cool because a light transport/scout only has a a couple of weeks consumables capacity in that era. The effect is you can go big distances along the beacons, or very short distances plotting cold, but in either case you don't want a mishap and you don't want to go too far off your path or you'll wind up stranded in deepspace, which wasn't that uncommon.

Thing is too it's not just a matter of let's make older things slower and whammo, it's older. The tech is actually different. Most smaller ships don't have a navcomputer so you need to stick with the beacons or plot meandering, safe paths at double difficulties (further complicating long distance travel outside the major routes). Toss a Jedi Knight with Instinctive Astrogation in one of these craft dramatically alters things obviously (the Great Hyperspace War started when a scout Inst.Astrogated from the Core to Sithspace in a matter of hours, and the local SithLords captured them and followed their path back to make an attack on Coruscant that otherwise could never have been possible by conventional hyperspace travel at the time).

Yet at the same time Hyperdrive multiplier is largely dependent upon the mass of the craft in the OR (larger ships/mass-shadow go slower due to navigation difficulties...hyperdrives are a combination of navcomputer, drive system and reactor core which work in conjunction), on the flipside the sublight speed is dependent upon power output and not overcoming inertia or anything like that (larger ships with bigger reactors, more fuel cells and more engines go faster than smaller ships with limited sustained power output/fuel to burn).

Also ship classes are effectively one class reduced (class not scale) compared to Classic era ships because hull technologies, shielding and construction materials are less advanced (actual steel, alu-alloy and graphite-composites rather than things like hyperalloy, ceramics and transparisteel are used and so armouring say, weighs several times more in mass and takes up more space for similar protection).
So a 250m cruiser is pretty much a battlecruiser rather than a frigate, which will probably have a hyperdrive multiplier about x8 and a sublight rating of 8, but 0D manoeuvrability. Hull probably 3D+1 capital but particle shielding is deleted from the hull rating and separately listed (requires shields operators to use), so it might have 3D of particle shields and these will actually be gigantic plates of steel on deflection mounts outside the hull. Energy shielding is low powered and resource heavy so likely only to be 1D+2 to 2D in capital scale for this.

Meanwhile, if it has fighters to release these will be extremely frail, low powered so not very fast, with little space for anything like consumables, hyperdrives, computer systems, very basic and just highly manoeuvrable really. These might be hull 2D, move space: 4, manoeuvrability 4D+1, consumables 12hrs.

Energy weapons of course low powered downgraded versions. Laser cannon are very new (Old Republic is Information Tech age), and whilst giving excellent damage have poor beam coherence at this stage so range is greatly reduced, 1-2/5/12 with 1D fire control, 5D damage might be the sort of damage you get with them in space, even worse in atmosphere with hundreds of metres at best and not kms.
Pulse weapons are more reliable in atmosphere, not as much damage, but no better in space and even less damaging.
Concussion weapons and warhead launchers work very well in this tech.

It essentially means space combat is at very close range, and any sustained space combat must be done with cruisers, starfighters and small craft are completely useless in a shooting war, even as defensive interceptors. They're really just personal shuttles, military scouts and policing/security craft. If someone in an even basic cruiser the size of a classic era corvette approaches you could send out a hundred starfighters and they won't even slow it down, each will only get one pass before it can't catch the big ship again anyway.


See what I've been getting at here? It's a whole different setting and theme, it's like a different gaming world the Old Republic of ca.4000BBY than the Classic/Prequel/JedAcad eras. It's not just a simple sweeping value adjustment, the tech works differently, a capital ship then is nothing like a capital ship later, a starfighter or scout then is nothing like those two craft later, they perform completely different roles by tech necessity.


Also, I wasn't talking about rewriting crossover ships but because the so many different sources are used to compile WEG sourcebooks, and they have different authors contributing starship stats, and this is further complicated by Fan material like the Starships of the Galaxy, which has every source and authorship you can think of contributing, the stats and tech isn't consistent.

So when there is Old Republic era starship stats older than about 1000BBY I convert them to the older Information Tech as per the TotJ sourcebook as described in this post.
Sometimes authors contribute starship stats clearly using the classic era guidelines of starship tech, to describe a picture of a starship in the comic series. Those ones I rewrite. There's a few.

I did the same thing with the prequel era ship stats. Just cleaning up the mess kids left in the kitchen.

[crazydanny1]

I realize this is a fairly old post, but I have to chime in on it. I completely agree with vanir on this. As I was working out stats for the ships from TOR, I started to see that the player character ships in the game translated over to stats that pretty much competed with or blew away a lot of the Classic Era ships. SO I started writing up some guidelines for Starships stats for eras prior to the Classic/NR/NJO periods.

One of the things I think you have to look at is how our own technology advances in the real world. Some of our greatest advances have come out of military technologies that were developed during times of war or conflict. The Old Republic is set during a time when the galaxy has been through a lot of conflicts since 5000 BBY. Jump to 3643 BBY. That's almost 1500 years of conflict with the Sith or various other factions. There's a lot of room for advancement over the stats we're given in Tales of the Jedi. I don't agree that the TOR ships should be equal to Classic era ships, but I do see them as being greatly superior to the TotJ ships.

Also consider that up until 2000 BBY to 1000 BBY, the Republic sat and stagnated. The New Sith Wars would have spurred advancement into the Rise of the Empire era (999 BBY to around 0 ABY). I think after 999 BBY, tech would have leveled off until the classic era, where we start seeing advancement again.

The main things to look at are:
-Scale:
-Crew:
-Consumables:
-Cargo Capacity:
-Hyperdrive cap:
-Back-ups:
-Nav. Computers:
-Maneuverability:
-Space Units:
-Shields:
-Sensors:
-Weapons

I'm also breaking it down per Era/period markers:
-Dawn of the Jedi
-Tales of the Jedi
-The Old Republic
-New Sith Wars
-Rise of the Empire/Clone Wars
-Rebellion

I'm not sure if I'll go into the NJO era or Legacy era just yet, especially since we've got stats on most of those eras.
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