Since the group has been fairly slow lately, I thought I'd take a tangent
off the military thread (a very sharp tangent :). How about
a discussion of layout concepts for non-human races?
Looking at the designs in Vilani&Vargr, the layout is fairly coventional.
What about some differences? Here are some ideas...
For Hiver ships, since they tend towards 'hives', the access panels
and passages would obviously be more like tunnels. Perhaps the
ship would even lack an organized bridge, being either a conglomeration
of the bridge officer staterooms (controls integrated into the stateroom
computers), say organized in a ring around the main computer core.
The name 'spinal weapon' suggests that the ship is basically mounted
on the weapon. What about having a cylinderical power plant organized
in the center of the ship, with the spinal weapon (if any) built
directly into the power (aka Star Trek (first movie) 'we can't fire
the phasers in the worm hole because they channel directly through
the warp engines').
If the crew members can run their stations from their staterooms,
the bridge is entirely psychological. So who needs a bridge?
On the control side, since there are multiple backup computers on board,
what if a race decided to have instead each computer control a section
of the ship (either logical (engineering), or physical (foreward bulkhead).
Imagine the troubles hijackers might have.
Or better yet, having ships that are naturally modular in design
(intended to fragment due to battle damage to facilitate escape/combat).
Of course, this could exploit the turret limitations rules, unless
someone wants to try explaining the intent...
Of course, my favorite attempt to add novelty involved jump drive
technology. Try explaining this to your players: Each of
the 6 jump dimensions is a stable universe. The reason no natives
of these universes have been encountered could be
1) The location we enter at is located between galaxies
2) The average distance between stars is far greater (even in
a galaxy).
Anyway, none of these suggestions (except one) could really be used
to disrupt game balance, and might enhance flavor (atleast in all the
campaigns I've run, the major action happens around star ships
and tends to involve aliens). Anyone else have some suggestions/ideas
which might help me get my GM's block rolling again?
- --Brad