Re: Brilliant Lances - Oh dear...

in bundle 498 message 6046 on Sep 15 20:33:14 "Ralph Ferneyhough" [email removed]          said:
>
> must be the worst dice I have ever received in a game - sheesh, even the
> six sided dice have SPOTS on!!!!! Oh, the sheet of errata, and a survey

Complaining about spots on dice? That is surely just inflammatory...

> sheet which they really do not want me to fill in - not that I will,
> because they can't even be bothered to make that pre-paid.

Which wouldn't have worked pre-paid, as all companies assume that
their only purchasers are in the U.S., as all of those surveys which
are pre-paid are only effective in the U.S.

> combat rules when I play tend to be heavily altered - I will rarely, if
> ever, bother with plotting the positions of ships etc, and work with an
> abstract system - much as MegaTraveller did. This of course makes most
> of the box set redundant to me, but however, I had to purchase it

Which is precisely my problem with the old system. The combat is still
2-D, but that is a harder one to resolve....

> because GDW saw fit not to bother putting the ship design rules in the
> main rulebook.

Which is good, if they weren't ready at that time.

> In fact, the only bit which seems to have survived intact from MegaTrav
> is the torturous sensor designs - which were the only bit I disliked in
> the first place! I *hate* trying to add up measly .003 cubic meters when
> everything else is in multiples of cubic meters!

I agree! Sensor packages should have been included for std. ship types
(e.g. military, civilain, scout)

>
> We have such anomalies as no indication of maximum number of turrets (I
> presume you could theoretically build a ship with as many turrets as you
> could get on the surface area), plus the use of multiple spinal mounts.
> Not to mention the changes to drives etc, most of which I don't like.

Exactly, maximum turrets was a hold over from the first edition, the
current surface calculation is far better IMHO. These "problems" are some
of the best fixes to the rules...

>
> And the armour! That's a good one. As far as I can make out, with
> minimal extra cost, all you have to do is stick 20 cm of armour on a
> ship (x28 toughness = armour value of 560!) and you have a ship which
> cannot be penetrated by anything apart from meson guns! So you may lose
> some antennae, but hey! who cares....

Who cares about the surface as you sit floating though space with no
outside contact (communication, navigation or maneuver) until you are
rescued or plow into some planet or star. Or maybe just starve to death
as the only thing that can save you is your heat signature....

> In either case, there is a lot of work needed just to get rid of all the
> errata. I for one won't be bothering - it's off to the shop to get my
> money back, as I am not paying 20 pounds for 80 pages of rules.

All of the errata? I haven't seen much errata yet, nothing compared to
the 20+ pages from MegaTraveller...


Dan Corrin, Network Manager, Mechanical Engineering, UWO, London, Ontario
InterNet: [email removed].                                [phone removed]
TML/CZ/FrameUsers/Consim FTP site: ftp.engrg.uwo.ca (129.100.100.12)