RE: Brilliant Lances - Oh dear...
In reply to #6053 Re: Brilliant Lances - Oh dear... by Dan's Traveller Mailing List Mail
When I saw this message, I think I have to give some answers. I cut lot of the stuff out, because I don't like resending other messages. Ralph Ferenyhough [email removed] wrote: > The game itself, I think, is definitely overpriced. It is $30, which was > selling at 20 UK pounds here, for what? That is a fact which I have to admit. In Germany BL cost 75.00 DM, if I remember the DM to $ realtion right, that's about $50. And I must admit I was disapointed by the contents of the box, when I first saw it. I fear that the Rules Book will look like a piece of scrap soon. And I need an Index too...perhaps I will do one soon. > breaking in their design; two player aid cards; and three dice which > 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 The dices, oh yes. Exspecially this dull gray D20 without readable numbers on it. > On to the game - well I haven't play tested it, mainly because I don't > want to - the game does not exactly ooze with welcoming desire to play > it. Well that's simple ignorance. I have play tested it, and - aside from the question about crew conditions - I find the rules complete and usefull. Much more than the combat rules of MEGATRAVELLER. The combat rules give a good, reliable system. Unfortunatly the design rules seem to be more than incomplete. I especially dislike the MFD concept where I have to include an active EMS on myself. I think some more tables to do this were easy to implement (some more pages would not do any harm to the book). >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.... Well that's the way back to old times. I think armor in "High Guard" (reference correct ? It's in the german 2nd rulebook, the system using this very long ship description code) has the same effect, though the price there was much higher. A ship using 20cm of hull armor would be really cheap compared to Megatraveller. All in all I like the BL rules of combat, but not the design rules. And when I read the BL rules, I understand, why thrusters are not any more part of the TNE world. BL is only balanced, if you have limited amounts of fuel. If you haven't the ship using the largest thruster would win the battle. Juergen - -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Juergen Kirsch Institut fuer Informatik, Universitaet Bonn Germany [email removed]