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 Hello, I'm back with another gamebook from the 80s that we can play through together. This time it's Void Racers (1987):  The Two-Fisted Fantasy series was one of many lesser-known knock offs of the Fighting Fantasy series. These were gamebooks which were popular throughout the 80s and early 90s, mainly in the UK. Fighting Fantasy was beloved among the nerds that bought them by the millions - Two-Fisted Fantasy not so much.Their print runs were short, the books tended to wind up in the garbage and the few that remain in circulation tend to be in horrible condition. Fighting Fantasy went down when computer games made their product obselete and are cherished objects of nostalgia, whereas Two -Fisted Fantasy went out a couple years earlier admist a sea of lawsuits, firebombings and bizarre union disputes over worker safety and are vritually forgotten today. Void Racers is the last book in the series and is unusual because it's set in space rather than the usual sword and sorcery elf world of Sword of the Bastard Elf. It's still a pretty unpleasant universe, everyone is horrible and nothing works the way it probably should, but instead of elves and pixies there are Americans and robots. It's the distant year 2047 and you are the captain of a spaceship who has to flee across the galaxy to avoid some dire threat or another. Here are the first few pages of the book:   We can choose from four species, another difference between this book and most of the gamebooks around at the time. Each has its own abilities and questline:   So we come to our first choice. Which species do we play through with? Humans, Cattes, Robots or Crocs? I will go with whichever gets the most votes, and in the next update we'll get ready to set up the crew and ship, and I'll explain some more of what we're doing out in space.    
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Sep 15, 2015 14:38
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Star Map: Final Starship Manifest:  Final crew roster posted:
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Sep 15, 2015 14:38
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. Turning to 5:
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Inbred crocs it is! Now that we've chosen, let's move on to the next step:  Actually, let's do this the hard way. The author really wanted the reading public to pick up the advanced rules. Apart from his being rude about the intelligence of anyone using the simple rules I don't think the game is actually winnable if you use them. Luckily the advanced rules came in the box set:  We'll refer to these from time to time like we did with the Bestiary in the last adventure. Here is some of the info contained for the Caimans, who we've just picked:  and the ship, the Supergalactic:  As you can see the ship goes a long way towards making up for the crappiness of the crew, which we will need to select soon. Anyway I rolled the Captain's stats and got a total of 6 for Expertise and 70 for Energy. For any other species this would be a disastrously bad captain, for the Caiman's it's ok. The Caimans have a couple of special rules which are outlined in a bit more detail in the book. I'll discuss that when it comes to it. For now there are a couple more steps before we get started. Firstly, the captain gets a free choice of three items, one of which can be a ship upgrade. Secondly, we need to pick a crew. If you want I have a few ideas for crew and items. I can supply something that will work. I think though that enough of you have played through this before and know what you want to try. So - 1. What three items do we take? (one item can be a ship upgrade) 2. Do you have any preferences for which horrible lizard goes into each crew position? in the meantime, here is our first adventure sheet:  Edit: most updates won't be as word heavy as this one, just need to set the game up. Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 02:34
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These are all good. Applewhite's crew suggestions are the usual min-max combination for the Caimans (to the extent you can do that) but they're an unpredictable bunch. I want to avoid scanning all the instructions and tables in (there are a painful amount of them) so I'll tell you about crew here. Each race has a deck of 20-30 crew that can be used as senior officers. Usually they have specific areas of Expertise (for instance Weapons) and that limits where you can place them. Caimans don't have that, they just have a general (low) Expertise that covers everything. This would give them a lot of flexibility except that they're all terrible and once they're in a position they act as though it's their feudal property. You can dismiss a crew member that's a particularly bad fuckup but only by taking a nasty hit to do so. Even once that crew member's dismissed you don't get to select his replacement - we shuffle the deck and take whoever comes up (unless it's a Skink, who gets eaten and we reshuffle). This is to reflect their stupid inheritance system. Bridge places are a vital commodity to be hoarded because they let the crew live in utter luxury and steal things out of the ship banking system. Every race also has what's called a "Command Issue". Every so often every character on the bridge contributes to this issue. Once it accumulates beyond the captain's leadership score you have to check to see if the issue is triggered every time you make a star jump. For the Caimans this score is Crapulence, because the crocs are greedy, wasteful crooks. The score given for Crapulence on each card indicates how corrupt and awful each croc is. You can reduce this score by kicking the worst offenders off the bridge once they've accumulated some crapulence. It'll become clear how this works pretty soon. Here's the card for Blind Pew as a sample:  Current crew Weapons: Chubbs McKenzie Shields: A drinking bird toy Sensors: Blind Pew Engineer: Ghengis Rex Nav: "Wrongway" Peachfuzz Valet: someone with the exact voice and personality of Starscream, but a lizard. Possible items (listed so far) Ten cases of Chartreuse (personal) Extra batteries (ship) Space bong (personal) Stain resistant togaforms (ship) Ship vomitorium (ship) Motivational prod (personal) Regurgitation stick (personal) Matter Modulator (personal) Agag posted:Requisitioned by skinks, but vetoed by the captain to make room for ten cases of Chartreuse. All other races have to take a ship upgrade but crocs get the choice not to for exactly this kind of reason. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on the items you pick I guess. Nuclear Pogostick posted:we need a matter modulator for marvin the martian style earth-shattering kabooms Yeah do consider taking a weapon along, it's a violent universe and lots of problems are solved in this game by punching, shooting and stabbing things. I'll keep voting open for a bit and check back later on today.
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Sep 16, 2015 10:31
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Hogge Wild posted:it's been a while since i played this, but iirc the cloacaing device for the ship is one of the best items in the game. not sure though if you could get it at the start That is a good (if disgusting) device. Even with the AI crocs tend to be a little worse at doing things than other species so avoiding being shot out of space in the first combat round is helpful. Al Borland posted:From what I remember of the series while there are four PLAYABLE races there are plenty of other races we may encounter along the way. The worst of which was a crab empire that was basically like fascists in space. God help us if we dont go in with a friggin death laser on our ship. Yeah there are a lot of other space aliens out there, and those crabs are horrible. Even if we avoid running into the aliens chasing us and somehow don't come up against the other playable species we won't avoid every other godawful life form. Peebla posted:Can we upgrade the ship with a harem or is that included in the libo deck? It's included but you can always upgrade the reptile brothel as a ship upgrade. The crocs have a thing about their lovely jaws (the flag is what they hope people see them as) so prosthethic jaws are popular amongst insecure or fighty crocs. To keep this moving I think the following crew lineup is the go: Weapons: Chubbs McKenzie and his dippy bird Shields: that weird shutin croc who no one's ever seen for some reason. Sensors: Blind Pew Engineer: Ghengis Rex Nav: "Wrongway" Peachfuzz Valet: Bugglesworth (an ancient skink with a "spice" problem) They'll mostly wind up dead so there'll be a chance to pick replacements. Item choices are a bit all over the place so I'll leave it a little while before posting the update later on. Tonight is the last of the instructions and we finally get to start the adventure and make an actual choice. So far the motivational prod looks to be a little ahead which would serve as the captain's weapon and crew wrangler, nothing else really stands out in the lead right now.
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Sep 16, 2015 17:38
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Update We won't get to take off just yet - I ran out of time while digging around in the cards and scanning tonight, sorry about that. We'll definitely be taking off tomorrow though. Here's the crew: Weapons:  Shields:  Sensors:  Engines:  Navigation:  Valet:  We now know about the captain, the ship and its crew. Here's our current adventure sheet which will give us most of the info we need:  We're trying to drag this ship and its ungrateful crew across a large stretch of galaxy. Helpfully there's a game map printed in the book, we start at the bottom just right of center:  The map isn't completely exhaustive but usually you'll be given options to jump to the sector(s) nearest to you in the general direction of travel. Aside from the names these sectors are uncharted - anything could be in them. Those little numbers you see on the right-hand side are the number of star days we have to get past that line before we get overtaken by whatever's chasing us. So we always have the choice to mess around some more in the system or travel slowly to save energy, but at the cost of time. Going down to planets, repairing damage or spinning the engines to generate power will all slow us down but will be unavoidable at least some of the time because the ship doesn't have the resources for a straight sprint. Even if we're a bit ahead of the pursuing aliens it's best not to take it too easy as the other races will reach certain points at a pre-determined time - get there too late and the zone might be stripped bare or trapped. The Nav officer is the one that affects travel speed. I'd also like to mention a bit about how this game works. It's a lot like the Sword of the Bastard Elf in that energy is often more important than anything else - your shields and hull are less likely to take a beating than the batteries, and if you run out of either ship's energy or captain's energy it's game over. Since weapons, shields, jumping and most other activities waste energy it's best to avoid combat if possible. Unlike Sword of the Bastard Elf though if you engage in space combat there's a good chance we'll wind up dead or crippled because it's a really lethal activity, especially in the advanced ruleset. Weapons, being computer-guided and firing munitions at the speed of light (or maybe faster) basically never miss, and if they bring the shields down they'll cut through the hull like a hot knife through butter. Tomorrow in the afternoon I'll finalise the item choices : so far it looks like the following is in the lead: Cloacaing Device (ship upgrade) Motivational Prod (personal item) Matter Modulators (crew weapons) but the other choices are still viable. After that's settled we'll start with the first choice tomorrow evening. I will refrain from dumping rules from now on and just mention them as they come up. I'll do my best to prevent or at least explain any bullshit deaths early on if there are issues, but you guys did fine with the Elf and I'm sure you'll manage here too.
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Sep 17, 2015 01:47
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Al Borland posted:how much space credits do we start with? It might be wise to hire a space pole guide. The ship is a self-contained economy which can print its own money, but there's no galactic currency. Fellbat posted:Maybe we can both saber and flintlock in one by asking for the crew to be equipped with the Laser Bayou-nets. The Captain will also get any crew weapon but they're not as good as personal weapons in general (still way better than nothing). Peebla posted:That's why we need a sexy and practical electro-jaw extender. Goof food, good fights, and our captain will look fine as hell wearing a jaw extender. Plus it'll make up for our unfortunate mandible devolution over the past however many millennia. Yeah this is the Caiman katana, equal parts ridiculous, impractical and impressive to beta males.
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Sep 17, 2015 08:48
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Applewhite posted:Eyegems are valuable no matter where you go. True enough, but those you can't start with. I'm just scanning in the first page of the adventure now along with the cards we've more or less selected, so bear with me. For anyone who didn't live through Sword of the Bastard Elf, the update schedule is once per day to allow time for choices to be made and scanning to be done. Any faster and something or other breaks.
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Sep 17, 2015 23:01
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Update Items chosen. Flipping over a few of these:  we get:    Crocs fight with skill 5 at ranged or close combat unless otherwise specified so this brings that up to 6 (rising to a very respectable 9 if the ship is boarded). The captain uses his expertise plus ship bonuses. We don't get the benefits of both the weapons at close range though, just the highest bonus. I went with the Jaw rather than the prod because they sort of do the same thing but the jaw does it better. Cattle prodding crocs just annoys them anyway. Moving onwards, we begin!   Full disclosure : I bought this cheap from "Two-Fisted Steve", who you might remember from the last game. The reason he was selling it cheap was because he'd torn out all the parts with decisions on them and was selling them separately, the prick. I bought them but now I've got a baggie of torn up bits of paper and I can't afford both food and electricity anymore, so it'll take a while for me to find the pages to turn to, reattach them to the right pages and scan them in. (don't worry though, I'll pay for electricity to keep this game running). Two-Fisted Steve is a monster but where else can you buy these books these days? Anyway as usual I'm going to need to rely on those of you who remember how this book runs (or can guess) to let me know what the next move should be. Here's the map once again for reference, we're somewhere below the Haldus system on the Day 0 line: The date is 2047-254 and we have to be in that Nebula at the top of the map by 2047-304 at the latest or we've had it. What's our first command? Adventure sheet:  (and I'll keep the second post in this thread updated with items and crew cards, etc) Edit: vvvvvvvvv good point, the map's a bit hard to read. The box set has a colour version too which I probably should have scanned in earlier: 
Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Sep 19, 2015 |
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Sep 18, 2015 02:45
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Looks like we'll be going to KRLOUS after a pre-launch check/party! I'll check back in a couple hours and make it so. (suspecting the government of a scam is the first possible ending, so I'll scan that in too if I've got time tonight)
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Sep 18, 2015 12:33
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Claven666 posted:i think we should eventually make our way to the Forge. if memory serves, there's a hidden shipyard there with really cheap, good poo poo. then again we are playing as the crocs so the space radiation might cause some mutations You run the risk of running into the Disco Alliance ship if you go that way as well, but it might be worth it. Nation posted:I guess its best we don't lose on the third page or something - but don't stop us from dying horribly/hilariously/incompetently It's a mean-spirited, nasty, cheap little game written by a crank who actively hated his customers at the end of his writing career. We're probably going to die quite a bit, starting today. SquadronROE posted:Actually I think it was "You'll never have the same experience or your time back." But yeah, I loved TWo Fisted Adventures as a kid. I was a little too cheap to buy the real ones, but I'd stay up really late playing this. Quite a few people say that Void Racers inspired them in some indie project or another, but I seriously doubt most of them have actually read it. At the time it was unpopular even by Two-Fisted Fantasy standards (the afficianados prefer the fantasy setting). Interesting if true though. Update Here's the missing entry from yesterday:  Applewhite posted:None of the above. Execute the items on the Pre Jump Checklist appendix sheet that came with the book so you can identify and correct the reactor instability that would have destroyed us after three jumps regardless of whatever else we did. Yeah I was going to skip this because the "checklist" is really just an instruction buried somewhere towards the end of the introduction after a few random effects tables, which was skipped over by most players. It's a bunch of fluff with the instruction to add 10 to the starting page number before doing anything else. It's unfair even by 1987 standards because missing it meant you'd die in a bullshit way but only after a few jumps. Since you brought it up though I might as well scan the relevant entry in:  The ship fixes itself and we don't have to die pointlessly. We'll have plenty of other opportunities to do that though, for instance right now. Al Borland posted:But I suspect that Hadlus or whatever is a trap by the president cause he doesnt want us around gently caress him lets go off and PARTAYYY. Let's call the President's bluff and head back.  Game over! Ok, so we've established there's some truth to the whole "destroyed homeworld" story, we've elected to go on to Haldus. Fellbat posted:
This is true - but going to the closest planets minimises the chance of running into the other species as well. We can jump from this sector altogether even from the closest planets, as we'll find out soon.  Here is the jump to Haldus - with an unusually lengthy explanation of how the navigation officer works. The bit in the middle about adjusting works like this: You can spend the ship's energy up to the navigator's expertise multiplied by 10 on any jump. Every 10 energy reduces the jump time by a whole day, down to a minimum of 1 day (it takes time to spin up the engines and actually move through the jump itself). Our navigator is expertise 9 so can spend up to 90 energy to reduce a journey by 9 days. I've taken the liberty of spending the 40 energy on this jump to make it a one day trip, but in future we'll need to decide if we want to do spend the energy to do this. I added the combined CRAPULENCE of our bridge crew to the sheet - 7. It's manageable but watch those guys with 2 crapulence, it can get out of hand. More on this when it becomes a problem. Finally I rolled to see if Peachfuzz will actually be doing his job and he will, for now. We must now decide what the next move is - although some dedicated nerds might know what happens next I suggest we go for the most fun option, not the most likely winning path. Up-to-date map and ship manifest:  
Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Sep 20, 2015 |
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Sep 19, 2015 03:17
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Blizzy_Cow posted:Are we limited just to having nasty relations with other caimen or cam we add other races to our debauchery? After we fleece them out of money or some equipment we should start building a harem. Al Borland posted:Don't be hasty they could double as backup food. Captive aliens usually are represented as equipment cards and, rarely, as crew members, so yes you can add them to your harem or food supply depending on what it says on the card. Arkanomen posted:Boring option is SCAN THE AREA and keeps you from dying most of the time, but there is a secret option like in Bastard Elf with the 10-foot Pole. You can SHOUT NONSENSE ON ALL FREQUENCIES And add 38 to your current page number. Sometimes it causes someone to think its a distress call, other times it makes twitchy space pirates cracked out on moon-meth (a really good expansion pack for this game) drop from their ambush early so you can blast them. I remember there's a good one with the robots where it comes out like the space-gators mating call and there's a really awkward scene. The nonsense is different each time, so do that. This is a thing, but only with certain comms officers. We can cheat and do that if the thread wants because it's usually funny but it costs 5 ENERGY and the results are unpredictable. Options so far are:
*shout depraved nonsense on all frequencies (cheating slightly by using a crew ability we don't have) *just threaten them and take what you want *the "pretend to be gods" scam *warn them about the approaching doom as a prelude to stealing everything (and everyone) you can get your claws on *be friendly and chill I'll come back and check in a few hours then scan in the right pages. 
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Sep 19, 2015 11:05
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huskarl_marx posted:Lords and Gentlecrocs of the Caimania, I come to you with an urgent message. I am hereby calling a Council of Tyrants to Impeach Tyrant Applewhite and level against him charges of Sedition, Treason, Usurpation of Just Power, Acts of Sabotage and most execrable: Skinkwork. I have here a Report of Evidence detailing how he sabotaged those coils, created false rumors of failings within the mighty Caiman fleet to justify his own dastardly Skinkwork for the purpose of Usurping the Just Power of the Captain's own Valet. I urge you, let not this Usurper's Skinkstink take from you your Just and Rightful Position, let us try him, let us pillory him. Let us haul him across our keel and put to bed any hint of future treachery. Esto Perpetua seconded. applewhite delenda est
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Sep 19, 2015 18:33
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I'm scanning in the choices for the God Grift and using the Valet's ability to take over for the comms officer. The first two systems are kind of like a tutorial for what to expect in this game, so don't feel too bad about what happens. Once we're out past the 10-day line on the starmap the game will stop holding our hands.
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Sep 19, 2015 21:14
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Update We went with "use the valet to pull off the god grift", which is standard operating procedure for crocs when they meet new people. It's a two-part move though so I had to upload a few pages, hope you don't mind. Yesterday's completed page:  We're going with hail them (284) to open up the list of dialogues. Of course, this being one of *those* gamebooks, theres a hitch:  We chose to use the valet to do this, so with a skill of 12 we automatically pass the test and get through to someone or other. The comms officer still rolls for CRAPULENCE because even getting him to ask the valet to do something is a chore. We want to roll higher than his current CRAPULENCE level of 2 on 1d6: we get 3. Had we got 2 he would have added his initial CRAPULENCE score to his current total, making it much more likely he'd fail the next text and so on. Usually checks like this don't use up the ship's energy because it's just a personal task, but the book will tell you if it does. If we had chosen to use the captain for this test we would have used his energy up instead. After the Valet's task is done he can't be used again until the next jump. Also with Valets - if you use them you roll 1d6. On a 1 they "disappear" somewhere between completing their task and getting back to the servants' quarters. We got a 3 so he lives to help out another day. We turn to 491:  And finally onto the point of all this:   Well... it doesn't always work out I guess. I ran the combat on the nuclear weapons. This is a simple tutorial fight which explains how combat works without really being a threat. Usually each side commits energy to sensors and whoever gets the highest score goes first, but here we go first automatically.
Since we go first I check to see if our shot hits. Unless something special is going on, you need 2+ to hit on 1D6. I rolled 5. I roll for FISTS on the weapon. The weapons officer has 1 FIST so it's just 1d6: I roll 6 and add this to the weapons score, for 14. There's no need to roll for shields on the missiles - they're 0, which means they're unshielded (if they had even 1 shield it would get a FISTS roll). Since the difference between our weapons and their shields is 14, they take all of it as damage. With only 12 hull, all the missiles are destroyed with one sweep of the beam before they could even potentially hit us. So, they gave it their best shot but it wasn't good enough. What's our next move? Adventure sheet: 
Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Sep 20, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 03:29
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Applewhite posted:Does doing a jump cost more or less energy than trying to shoot the missiles out of the sky? You'd be better off getting hit by those nukes than trying a blind jump. There's a table for it and it's usually presented as an option if the book thinks you might lose a fight, but we're meant to win that one pretty easily.
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Sep 20, 2015 03:45
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Applewhite posted:Well there's at least got to be a clever way of solving the nuke problem without taking the direct approach. I resolved the nuke combat already, the planet is defenceless. It was just a tutorial battle.
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Sep 20, 2015 04:13
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Bum the Sad posted:I'm confused everyone kept talking about some Drinky bird guy yet I see no scan of him. Just a shut in guy. Where is the Drinky bird guy damnit. Here's the guy, one of the worst crew members in the game: So far it looks like we're going for the smash & grab : beam down, swipe somethings(s) or someone(s) and haul tail. We'll need an away team for this mission - have a think about who we're sending down there while I scan in the pages. The game usually lets you send four crew and they either have to be serving bridge officers or redshirts, who have default (lovely) stats. If you think the Caiman officers are worthless, wait until you see the B-team.
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Sep 20, 2015 14:09
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Update Found the options for the last page:  One thing I forgot is that after every battle you roll for the "command issue" for every bridge member. That's Crapulence for crocs. For each crew member you roll 1d6, and if it comes up equal to or lower than their current CRAPULENCE you add their initial CRAPULENCE to their current CRAPULENCE (I enjoy writing this word). This can only go up once per crew member per sector unless the text specifies, but you often have to test for it several times a sector. Initial scores of 2 or above are pretty dangerous if you want to keep the crew member around for long - the consequences of a higher CRAPULENCE score than the captain can handle are pretty awful. I checked for all crew and our Engineer (with 2 crapulence) failed. He's now Crapulence 4. Once he gets to 6 he will automatically increase by 2 each sector, making crisis inevitable (more on this later). Our total CRAPULENCE is now 9, which is still safe, but watch that engineer. Anyway we decided to issue a few threats and get down to the planet to claim our prizes. This involves turning to 81:  That's a result. Turning to 180:   It takes a day to prep and launch an away team. Most significant actions in this game take a day for one reason or another. It's now 2047.256 - two days in. We still have 8 days to clear beyond the first white line and only one more system on the way there. Once the hangovers clear and we get planetside it immediately turns into a disgusting mess, of course. This is a tutorial fight - it shows you what's going to happen on the same page you pick your away team and the enemies are pretty weak. Don't get used to this kind of treatment. Anyway we need to make three decisions to get past this page: 1. Who's going on the away mission?Any crew you take down will need to take another crapulence test, aside from the captain who will lose personal energy (and the engineer, who's as crapulent as he gets for now). We have to bring at least 1 bridge member, which can include the Cap'n. 2. What two items are we going to take if (when) we win that fight? 3. What's the next move once we're back aboard? I remember the book giving up the option to blast the planet or walk away, but there might be another option I've forgotten. Starship Manifest:  ------ Applewhite posted:I propose we send: Redshirts are random lesser Caimans that are lurking around the ship. They benefit from crew weapons but have worse stats overall. Caiman crew members usually have a combat expertise of 5, redshirts have 4. They're supposed to be expendable and you bring them along to avoid exposing your decent crew members to instant death on strange worlds. After this battle we will have covered all the main mechanics of the game so it won't get a pile more complicated from here on out. Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Sep 21, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 21:12
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Applewhite posted:Do we just pick any item from the deck as loot? As usual there's a list but that dickhead Two-Fisted Steve ripped off that bit of the page. Still looking for it, sorry. E: just go from memory or pick whatever might be fun from the deck if you can't recall what's on offer Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Sep 20, 2015 |
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Sep 20, 2015 22:04
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I figure the away team to be Ghengis Rex (the useless engineer), Chubbs McKenzie (the worthless gunner) and two redshirts. In this situation the fight is unlikely to kill anyone. Since the book resolves the whole situation on one page we know that no one's skills will be needed down there, so it doesn't matter much who we send (if you want to be rid of Ghengis we might get lucky though). The complete page:  I think all the items you've mentioned here are listed in there, although under a different name (alien literature is TP, for instance). This is a scrub planet so you won't find much of any real use here .Things like the infinnial artifact and the scorpion staff are likely to be found in the next few systems. As for options - we can blast the planet or leave. We can taunt them a bit but it won't make a lot of difference in game terms. Asterios posted:I vote we bring the Cap'n, two redshirts and that Crapulent Engineer. Even the crocs aren't that treacherous. There are two ways of getting rid of troublesome team members - put them in dangerous situations and hope they get killed, or you can dismiss them while you're jumping between systems. Every race has a different way of doing that, the crocs can sacrifice a valet to try to get rid of a particularly crapulent lad. Anyway, does this away team line up look ok or should we send the cap'n down as well? As for loot I think slaves are marginally in the lead but there's no clear choice on the second item. For the final choice, it looks like we're in favour of just letting these poor bastards be, but we can still decide to blast the planet and harvest its energy and mineral resources if you want.
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Sep 21, 2015 13:07
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WorldsStrongestNerd posted:How much energy goes into blasting a planet, and what does harvesting a planet give us in terms of resources? I think that minerals from a planet can be used to repair the ship, but of course we have no damage so far. Ten energy in most cases and it usually gives you a chance to refill all your energy and take on minerals that you can use for hull repairs later on. You also need to spend time to harvest whatever's floating around. The book sometimes checks to see if you've blown up this planet or that, but it won't check for Haldus because it's not on any other race's flight path. You could also destroy a planet just because you can. Re: slowing down the evil aliens - nothing will slow them down. Sometimes you can slow down or weaken another species by destroying resources if you get to them first, but never the aliens. They always get to the line on the starmap when the map says they will. Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Sep 21, 2015 |
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Sep 21, 2015 15:59
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Dogstoyevsky posted:Only one item? Coffee press, then blast the planet, gently caress these guys. We get two because of the "misunderstanding" with the nukes.
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Sep 21, 2015 19:16
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Asterios posted:Hey, I'm all for blowing up their planet, but can we somehow use their planet as a booby trap to slow the approaching enemy fleet? You absolutely can hang around and try to blast the fleet - this is one of the options given once we go to leave the system - but using the planet this way won't work because of the way weapons and ship battles work in this game. Ships can detect each other and attack at ranges of an AU or more (though usually they engage each other within light seconds) and will cheerfully fire through moons and planets if they have to. RC Cola posted:Wait did we check the underwater base? I could have sworn this planet had an artifact stashed away in some submerged cave. These guys might have something like an AUTEC or Yulin naval base but they're too primitive for a serious underwater setup. You might be thinking of one of the water worlds closer in to the Void nebula.
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Sep 21, 2015 20:26
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I Greyhound posted:All you goons who have already read and played this a million times are sucking a fair amount of fun out of this. Don't worry about it, most of the people who played this as kids could only win using the Cattes, and they play a lot differently. These guys don't really know what they're doing imo (and that's a good thing). Slaves and coffee win, and we're going to blast that worthless planet at last. Stand by, scans should be up in an hour.
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Sep 22, 2015 00:03
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Update: Here's where we left off last time, beaming down to the planet: We're taking down the captain (our player character), these two idiots: and a redshirt. They all get the benefit of the bayounets we took at the start (+1 expertise) but they don't have the ship's systems backing them up in this fight, meaning they don't get the +3 to their stats they enjoy on the ship. The rules on fighting (read only if interested): The rules posted:Fights work like this (and I will scan in the rules for this later when I get time): Our crew are crocs so have combat expertise of 5 (6 with the bayounets). The redshirt only has expertise 4 (5 with the bayonet). The captain has expertise 6 (7). Our engineer has 2 FISTS, the captain 3. The redshirt and Chubbs have the usual 1 FIST. Each away team member has a single guard to fight, with stats 4 Expertise and 1 FIST. Shouldn't be too hard... Unfortunately it's not so straight forward. Chubbs and the captain take down their opponents but Rex rolled equal to his opponent and both of them go down. The redshirt is killed by his opponent. This leaves two against one in our favour. Rather than risk the captain I put Chubbs up against the last guard, and the guard clowns him as well. The captain makes an unopposed attack and handily puts the guard down at last. The captain is left to gather the loot and we're all beamed up. Not only is combat brutal in this game but the crocs are really bad at it - a useful lesson. We took two items - Haldian slaves and the coffee press.   The press doesn't look like much but that boost can come after we've failed a roll - 5 ship's energy isn't too much to pay to turned a missed shot into a hit, for instance. The slaves are also pretty handy early game. We've got two wounded so I roll on the wounds table for each. 1 for Rex and 5 for Chubbs. Rex irritatingly leaps to his feet unwounded (he was playing dead, apparently), but our weapons officer will never be quite the same again. He will need 5 days of medical attention, which means he's not going to be at his post until at least 5 stellar days have passed. His duties will be carried out by a random ensign who has an expertise 2 lower than the person he's filling in for. After 5 days he can return to his post but will still be wounded (-1 to all expertise rolls in addition to the critical effects of the wound, for a total of -2). We can expend 10 ship's ENERGY while we're in the jump to heal ONE crewman from a wounded state, but only after the healing period has ended. If we leave the jump before a total of five days has passed it'll have to wait until next time. We also have to take a Crapulence test now for the survivors of the mission - Rex has already failed his this turn so we don't worry about him, but we look at Chubbs. He has 1 current CRAPULENCE. Rolling 1D6 of course I get a 1, meaning his CRAPULENCE ticks up - since his initial CRAPULENCE is now 2 he reaches 3 CRAPULENCE, bringing the total to a slightly threatening 11. We may have to do something about this while we're in the jump. Anyway setting this minor military setback to one side, let's get revenge for poor old Chubbs and blast the planet. Turning to 550:  Our choices here are pretty simple - do we take the several days to refuel and/or build a hull repair kit, or do we just plot out our next jump/ambush? Starship manifest: 
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Sep 22, 2015 02:16
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Nation posted:Take everything but spend the downtime bribing the crew If you're particularly worried about crapulence you can "bribe" caimans not to cause trouble by spending 10* their crapulence level of the cap'ns energy. It's an all or nothing thing - to stop Ghengis acting up you spend 40 energy and he doesn't contribute his crapulence score to the check that happens in the jump. Obviously you can't do this constantly because the captain isn't all that energetic and if you get to 0 energy you die, but you can always eat a valet to restore the energy if needed (and then you risk running out of valets - we start with five in the deck I think). The captain is currently on 60 energy after his away mission. BadgerSeat posted:Refuel, make kit, pre jump procedure, jump to the next area. Basically the captain and the valet hatch a Jeeves and Wooster style scheme to embarrass the crew member you want to get rid of. The valet does all the work naturally. The croc is automatically kicked out of the post (you remove him from play) and replace but you roll 1D6. If it's equal to or below the croc's current crapulence level the valet is eaten in the process, just like in Jeeves and Wooster. So you run a risk of losing a valet and you can only do this once per jump. After the first jump the pre-jump checks are automatically assumed to take place. Elukka posted:Skinks aren't allowed to take officer positions on Caiman ships but I think there was some way to do the trench coat thing with skinks and fool the caimans into thinking it's one of them? This is true but the captain is as much of an rear end in a top hat about this as anyone else on board. He'd probably face a mutiny if he didn't respect the Caiman class system (but yeah there are a few non-Caimans in the deck and an expansion pack added a few more, happy to scan those crew into the mix as well if you want to use them). Al Borland posted:We just have him pay a visit to the shut in guy. Who I am convinced is dead and being puppeted around by skinks. We can do that at any time by summoning him to the bridge - there's a little episode that plays out if we turn to 132: Update: We're sitting in the now uninhabited Haldus system, minding our own business. We've refueled and constructed spare hull plating and our gunner is recovering in sick bay - he will soon be available for duty. The star date is 2047-259, 5 star days after the destruction of the Caiman homeworld. Hull plating:  Time to move on (443):  While this tells us where we can go, the short descriptions about each location are at the bottom of the page. This has been helpfully torn off by Two-Fisted Steve once again. Anyway, have a think about it. I know that if you want to go to Castula you need to go via Thuban and to get to Arich you need to go via Becrux. We're currently on the right course for Aludra. Which place do we want to go to, and how much ship's energy do we give to the navigator? Reminder that we can spend up to 10* the navigator's expertise (9 in this case), and each 10 energy spent reduces the journey by 1 day. Here's the adventure sheet:  E: We're in the red system:
Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Sep 22, 2015 |
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Sep 22, 2015 15:03
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WorldsStrongestNerd posted:Yeah it looks like in this play thru with the caimans we should avoid fighting unless we greatly outclass the enemy. Don't plan on using much energy for fighting, spend it all on getting from place to place as quickly as possible. The ship is pretty good and your guys can put up a decent fight on board the ship, but outside the ship against a decent opponent they're not good. The average human has 7 or 8 weapon skill for instance. In other words we're this guy  not this guy  E:vvvv this book came out in '87 so possibly if it's something from the first series. The author supposedly didn't own a TV or have any actual interest in sci fi though so it's hard to tell for sure. Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Sep 22, 2015 |
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Sep 22, 2015 15:53
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minor update: Here are our choices:  So far I count 3 for Becrux (in the Disco Alliance's path) 2 for Thuban (in the humans' path) 1 for Aludra in the next sector. I'll count again later on. Claven666 posted:oh, that could gently caress with us pretty hard too. it just fucks with the Alliance way worse Yeah it's something like that but it's on 3D6, because these games are all about probability curves. I'll scan it in if we get exposed to the radiation. It's very bad for the crocs but only if you care about your crew, which seems unlikely. WorldsStrongestNerd posted:When this is over I would genuinely enjoy playing as another race and seeing how it shakes out. Your cyoas have been amazing. Applewhite posted:
Thanks, that means a lot to me. This time round I'm going to build it out to a finished game with what we're playing through here as the rough. When it's done all four races plus at least one "secret" race should be playable from beginning to end. It's why I've focused on the rules so much on this playthrough.
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Sep 22, 2015 20:32
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Looks as though we're heading to Becrux, and I'm going to guess we want to do as fast as possible. Since we're entering the warp we have a Crapulence check to perform. You get to attempt "adjustments" to the crew before this check so let's look at our situation and options. I don't think I explained what Crapulence does - it's a check against leadership. You roll leadership + FISTS - if your roll is above the CRAPULENCE level you pass, if equal to or less than you fail. If you fail you are directed to turn to a certain page where something fairly horrible happens. We've had bad luck and had a couple of big increases so we can conceivably start failing these checks soon. We've got two problem officers - Chubbs McKenzie, the critically wounded weapons officer, and Ghengis Rex, the crappy and crapulent engineer. Either is a good candidate for spacing. We have two real options that will prevent us from dying at this early stage. Option 1: Use 70 energy to get to Becrux in one day. Send your valet to get rid of Chubbs, with a 50% chance of that Valet being eaten. Either way we'll get a new weapons officer. Since this is a LP and not the actual game we can pick the officer and not just draw him randomly from the deck like the rules say we should. Option 2: Use 60 energy to get to Becrux in two days, allowing your weapons officer to recover. Spend 10 energy on the medbay treatment he needs to get to as close to full health as possible. Send the valet to get rid of Ghengis Rex (he has a 1 in 3 chance of being eaten). We will wind up with a better engineer this way. You might be able to think of something else. Getting rid of either of these two means the Crapulence check will auto pass, which it should at this stage in the game. If you think we can do better we can summon the security officer (shields guy), as suspected there's something fishy about him. - although we could wait until later to do that if you guys want since he's not that bad. There's going to be a short delay before I can scan in the pages for Becrux - it'll probably be roughly this time tomorrow. In the meantime let's resolve matters on the ship. I hope you guys like angry robots and radiation because that's the Forge for you! fancy sauces posted:Does this mean I could one day finally give you money for these insane creations, you mad brilliant bastard?! I intend for the pdf and probably the vidja game versions of this to be free/donationware when completed. If I can get it together to kickstart the box set it'll cost money which you can spend for this thing if you are so inclined. Dr Cheeto posted:Every single croc on this ship is just slowing SuGABA down. This is true and SuGaBA is keenly aware of it.
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Sep 22, 2015 23:34
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Update We're in space somewhere between Haldus and Becrux. This two day trip gives enough time for your weapons officer to (mostly) recover. After a stint in the medbay Chubbs and his dippy bird are ready to return to his console, even if the near-death experience has scarred him badly. We used 60 energy for the jump and 10 energy to put Chubbs back on his feet. The corruption and greed of the crew has already gotten out of hand and we decide to make an example. You hatch a clever scam with Bugglesworth, your trusty valet, and he scampers off to discredit Ghengis Rex and ruin the legitimacy of his title. I roll 1D6 and get a 1 - Ghengis loses his bridge crew position but Bugglesworth can't get away in time and loses more than his tail. Their graves need no flowers: the tapes have recorded their names.  Died 2047.259 of a broken heart Died 247.259 eaten in the line of dutyPlenty more where they came from - four more skinks at least. Here's the adventure sheet - we're missing two crew. The good news is we pass the crapulence test with flying colours (crapulence is now below our captain's leadership so it's an auto-pass).  Before we arrive in Becrux we have another loose end to tie up: comedyblissoption posted:Summon Ironjaw. I Greyhound posted:Also, Page 132, please. Tell Ironjaw to get his rear end up here.  Two decisions needed here : first, what do we do with this Ironjaw situation? second, who do you want for crew? I can pick randomly as the rules state but if you have any preferences let me know. We need a new engineer, a new valet, and (probably very shortly) a new shields/security officer.
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Sep 23, 2015 14:18
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Elric posted:Can I have a link to the last thread? http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3727561
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Sep 23, 2015 14:43
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Dr Cheeto posted:If I recall correctly, Valets all have pretty high expertise by Croc standards but make up for it by having abysmal fighting stats and at least one crew position they absolutely, positively cannot perform correctly, right? Spot on. The last guy was particularly bad at navigation (if he had tried it he would have splattered himself and damaged the ship). All the others have at least one job they can't do.
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Sep 23, 2015 15:19
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djwetmouse posted:Man I wish I found this thread sooner. Guess I'll wait till it makes the front page to read through it all, looks great so far. You've only missed the tutorial system. The story so far is that we're a bunch of useless space crocodiles in a ship that's too good for us. We're running from some aliens that blew up our homeworld. So far while running away we've tried to scam a civilisation by pretending to be its gods, got nuclear missiles fired at us, beamed down to the surface, sort of won a fight and swiped an espresso machine and some slaves, then blew up the planet before buggering off into jump space. I don't think that misses too much out.
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Sep 23, 2015 16:13
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Two randoms, two Benedicts and one Bob for Engineer. I'll wait for the tie to be broken on this important issue. Donald Plover deserves a shot at Valet having missed out last time round. Re: the shields officer - go in yourself or get SuGaBA to check are the suggestions I've seen and they're tied. Any other suggestions or anyone want to back either of these courses of action? I'm scanning in a bunch of Becrux stuff now. If we don't get killed there at least once I'll be surprised.
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Sep 23, 2015 18:20
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I've already scanned in the other page, you monsters! If it's any consolation, SuGaBA would just tell you there's nothing to worry about and you'd learn nothing about the guy. At least this way we get to confront "Ironjaw".
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Sep 24, 2015 00:48
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Update When I started scanning there was a small majority in favour of getting the captain to deal with Ironjaw, which has since switched around to letting SuGaBA handle it. Sorry about that, I guess that happens sometimes. If it helps any letting SuGaBA handle things just leads to the status quo, as opposed to the beating we're about to receive. Completed page 132:  We go for 87:   Probably wish it was just a bunch of skinks, I guess. This is actually a really tough fight even with the jaw and the ship defences. Close combat works a little differently than ranged combat and much more like normal combat in Sword of the Bastard Elf. You decide how much energy you're going to spend on an attack, then roll your FIST dice and try to beat the opponent's score (plus the highest of their FIST dice, if applicable). Whoever gets the highest score hits and causes a wound (take one health off whoever lost). If the scores are tied then no one is injured and you move onto the next round. The fight continues until one side runs out of health, the captain runs out of energy or some condition given in the text is met (ie a number of rounds). In this case it's a simple fight to the death against a very tough opponent. It takes five rounds. I use 10 energy each round (out of 11 possible) because I'm worried about the captain's energy levels. He started the fight with only 60 energy. We win round 1, lose rounds 2 and 3 and win rounds 4 and 5. The croc, with 3 health, survives three hits. In the end we lose 50 energy (!) and two health. Since we're the captain we don't roll on the wound table for him or take any negative modifiers, he's considered tough enough to shrug off almost any injury. Still, better try to take it easy on the guy in this sector since if he dies it's game over. Anyway Ironjaw is no more and we need a new security officer. We were heading to Becrux on page 93 but before we get there let's meet the new crew members: The new Engineer, Benedict:  The Valet, Donald Plover:  and the Security (shields) officer, Bob:  May their reigns be as long and glorious as their predecessors'. We arrive in Becrux (93)  We've jumped into the middle of a radiation storm which has hit us for 10 ENERGY and will do it again every day we're here. Hopefully we're not sticking around long anyway since we've only got 3 days to get clear of this part of the galaxy. This is the first date check we've had, it commonly happens if you move into systems where another species is likely to be passing through. The date is 2047.261, so we turn to 363:  I have to apologise for the botched scan job, I got the contrast settings wrong in my hurry to get it out to you guys. I'll get it rescanned as soon as possible. Anyway we're now half an astronomical unit away from the Disco Alliance Ganymed, the starship of another species that is roughly as powerful as our own. What do we do? Starship manifest:  Current location (Becrux): 
Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Sep 24, 2015 |
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Sep 24, 2015 03:26
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Applewhite posted:Do we have any Rysian Infospheres? Nah, we have to make do with what we've got on the manifest, plus the talents of our wonderful and useful crew.
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Sep 24, 2015 04:06
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5 for hailing and 4 for letting them have it. If we do go into the fight there are a few ways to handle it:you let me run it entirely and put up with the consequences (like last time), agree a general strategy ITT and let me handle it, or I can run through the battle on an IRC channel on SynIRC if whoever's around wants to nerd it out. Let me know which of the options you prefer and I'll do that from now on. There will probably be at least two or three more starship fights in this game so I'll stick with whichever option we pick now.
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Sep 24, 2015 12:59
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WorldsStrongestNerd posted:If we have a strong first move advantage then kill them. Otherwise hail them and inform them about the evil aliens. All the main species' ships are roughly equal (as far as combat ability, anyway). We don't have a strong advantage or disadvantage here. WorldsStrongestNerd posted:Can SuGaBa embed a virus in our hail? How does our super computer stack up against a race of sentient machines? Probably could but not immediately. The Caiman ship is far and away the most advanced in the game, the Disco Alliance ship is the oldest and crummiest. The robots are malfunctioning to the point where they behave more like humans than anything else. Saint Isaias Boner fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Sep 24, 2015 |
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Sep 24, 2015 14:03
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