Trillion Credits of Space Opera

Back in the day, Traveller supported wargame style play. One supplement in this line was Trillion Credit Squadron. Players designed their own fleets, using the High Guard big ship rules. Then they lined them up, got out the ship combat rules. Then slugged it out. It was the only way to find out who was the best designer and fleet commander.

The results were very interesting. Douglas Lenat ran hundreds of simulations using an AI Program .The fleet he created won the national contest two years running. Look it up.

Space Opera’s shipbuilding rules never included the ‘secret’ military design rules. In their absence, we can use published examples. (And indulge in the time-honored Gamer Pastime: Make Shit Up)
Eight sample fleet lines were published in Seldon’s guides 2 and 3. The compendiums had Stats for Destroyers, Cruisers, and other space warships. In the fiction, Battleships designed according to each fleet’s capabilities and cultural preferences. Four more or less human cultures, four more or less alien cultures.

Every Starnation’s culture was reflected in their ship designs. The UFP built the best ships they could; the expense was no object. In comparison, the Mercantile League kept a close eye on the bottom line. Both had to protect hundreds of allies and colonies scattered over hundreds of lightyears. The oppressive Azurich Imperium built big nasty attack ships manned by their relatively few chosen crews. Azzie ships were not designed to defend broad areas of space, but for destruction.
The Galactic People’s republic had more manpower. They built many cheaper ships to utilize this advantage.

Each ship classification came in several varieties t different levels of technological sophistication. Each ship had a price, fixed to the ‘hard’ credit of the Federation and League banks. Prices ranged from a few megacredits for cheap starfighters, to hundreds of Billions for ttop of the line Battlestars.
Zoe the cat and I spent a productive Sunday afternoon perusing the Starships of War for Space Opera. I started a spreadsheet of ship statistics, intending to do some "Trillion Credit Squadron" fun. My spreadsheet model lists out the classes and their prices. I can pick and choose and compare. Like fantasy yacht wishlist shopping on-line, only with nova guns.

Start with the most expensive ships in the books, Federation Concordant Battlestars. Over a kilometer long, a crew of thousands. Carries thousands of marines, hundreds of fighters. Cargo capacity of tens of thousands of standard twenty-foot shipping containers. Big bad mama-jammers.

Each Battlestar mounts over two dozen of the most powerful ship to ship weapons, with armor and shields to match. A Battlestar can wreck a destroyer in less than five minutes. UFP Battlestars are not super-fast, but they can cross between stars faster than GPR or Imperial battleships.

With a trillion credits we can afford three Battlestars. And we get change. Nearly a hundred billion left over to buy full fighter groups, ten destroyers, and thirty scout/couriers. That’ll make some pirate lord or galactic tyrant soil their pants.

Or what the heck, let's stock up on destroyers. For a trillion, we can get 200 destroyers, ten destroyer leaders, and full fighter load outs – nearly 1,700 fighters. They’re lifting over 38,000 Space Marines.
A trillion credits of Fleet corvettes and Scouts yields 2,400 ships. None of their guns will even scratch the Battlestars’ paint. But they can launch ten times as many missiles as the Battlestar’s fighter groups. And they can be spread across thousands of systems.

Like Stringbean, I keep it close to my heart

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Seldon's Starcraft 2 and the Space Opera Trillion Credit Squadron

Zoe the cat and I spent a productive Sunday afternoon perusing the Starships of War for Space Opera. I started a spreadsheet of ship statistics, intending to do some "Trillion Credit Squadron" fun.

Trillion Credit Squadron

Back in the day, Traveller supported wargame style play. One supplement in this line was Trillion Credit Squadron. Players designed their own fleets, using the High Guard big ship rules. Then they lined them up, using the ship combat rules and slugged it out to find out who was the best designer and fleet commander. The results were very interesting; Douglas Lenat ran hundreds of simulations using his AI Program while designing his fleets and won the national contest two years running. 

Space Opera’s shipbuilding rules never included the ‘secret’ military design rules. In their absense, we can use published examples. Eight sample fleet lines were published in Seldon’s guides 2 and 3. 

The compendiums sad Stats for Destroyers, Cruisers, and other space warships. In the fiction, Battleships designed according to each fleet’s capabilities and cultural preferences. Four more or less human cultures, four more or less alien cultures. 

Every Starnation’s culture was reflected in their ship designs. The UFP built the best ships they could; the expense was no object. In comparison, the Mercantile League kept a close eye on the bottom line. Both had to protect hundred of allies and colonies scattered over hundreds of lightyears. The oppressive Azurich Imperium built big nasty attack ships for their relatively few chosen crews. Their ships were not designed to defend broad areas of space, but merely for destruction. The Galactic People’s republic had more manpower. They built many cheaper ships to utilize this advantage.  

Each ship classification came in several varieties t different levels of technological sophistication. Each ship had a price, fixed to the ‘hard’ credit of the Federation and League banks. Prices ranged from a few megacredits for cheap starfighters, to hundreds of Billions for the top of the line Battlestars. 

I built a spreadsheet model for buying warships. List out the classes and their prices, pick and choose and compare.

For example, take the most expensive ships in the books, Federation Concordant Battlestars. One point two five million tons, crews of thousands. Carries thousands of marines, hundreds of fighters, and tens of thousands of tons cargo. Each mounts over two dozen of the most powerful ship to ship weapons, with armor and shields to match. With crack gun crews, a Battlestar can wreck a destroyer in less than five minutes. UFP Battlestars are not super-fast, but they can cross between stars faster than GPR or Imperial battleships. Big bad mama-jammers. 

With a trillion credits we can afford three Battlestars. And we get change. Nearly a hundred billion left over to buy full fighter groups, ten destroyers, and thirty scout/couriers. That’ll make some pirate lord or galactic tyrant soil their pants

Or what the heck, let's stock up on destroyers. For a trillion, we can get 200 destroyers, ten destroyer leaders, and full fighter load outs – nearly 1,700 fighters. They’re lifting over 38,000 Space Marines.

A trillion credits of Fleet corvettes and Scouts yeilds 2,400 ships. None of their guns will even scratch the Battlestars’ paint. But they can launch ten times as many missiles as the Battlestar’s fighter groups.

More to follow!

How much is a ton of Starship?

In FGU’s Space Opera RPG (1980) Spaceships are sized in Tons. Section 9.9 in Book 2 on Page 54 tells us a ton of ship equals a volume of 3 cubic meters. 

(Or you are a true blue patriotic American fanatic, 100 cubic feet. Not equal, but close enough for D&D.)

Ships in Book 1 and Seldon’s Compendium of Space Craft Vol 1 (1981) are constant with this volume to weight ratio.

But in Seldon’s Volume 2 (1984) there’s a stealth rule change. A ton of ship is now 30 cubic meters. This ratio is repeated in Seldon’s Volume 3 (1988). We can be reasonably sure it’s not a typo.

The Nike Scout and Nemesis Corvette class ships are in both Seldon’s Volume 1 and Volume 2. In Vol1, there are volumes listed for these ships. This is consistently 3 cubic meters per ton. Volume totals are not in the stats in Seldon’s Volume 2 and 3.

I don’t believe any of FGU’s published Space Opera deck plans included a scale. They work just as well scaling 1 square meter up to 100 square feet. Triple the width and length add a few centimetres headspace and deck thickness.  A drawing scaled for  3 cubic meters equals one ton easily translates to 30 cubic meters equals one ton.

Handwave, Handwave, close enough for D&D. 

Actual weight/mass of these ships doesn’t matter. In the Space Opera game, ships use ultra-science inertia-less antigravity faster-than-light space drives. They don’t violate the laws of physics as we know them.  Space Opera sends rampaging hordes of bugs to devour the laws of physics. Space Opera tech is "Sufficiently Advanced"!

Why the change? I speculate the Nemesis corvette inspired the change. That boat carries a company of space marines. Somebody familiar with shipping requirements of a military unit may have seen the deck plans. And had a fit of the giggles. It was the 1980s, the news was full of stories about military transportation during the Gulf War.

Same for anybody who tried to fit in Fighter bays. Same for anybody who tried to figure out how some of these ships made money trading. Any ship that can’t carry standard shipping containers does not have a cargo bay. It has a broom closet.

This sort of thing was not unique to the Space Opera game. I remember it affecting the more popular Traveller Game. I was surprised while reading Traveller High Guard. A Traveller ton is 13.5 to 14 cubic meters. The volume of a ton of liquid hydrogen. Why? A ton of water is a single cubic meter. Real world ships have 3 to 5 cubic meters of interior space per displacement ton. Early deck plans published by Judge’s Guild were tiny, compared to later plans for the same ships. 


So a ton of Space Opera ship takes the volume of two tons of Traveller ship. A Nike class scout is 7.5 times the volume of a classic Traveller scout. It has a bigger crew, more and bigger guns, better defenses, and ridiculously higher performance. 

Generating Personal Characteric numbers with a spreadsheet

Ok, I'm building a prototype of the Personal Characteristics module in my application in Excel.

I stuck a couple three cells to roll dice for me, thus

d100 Roll Select& Press F9	43
d20 Roll Select & Press F9	10
d6 Roll Select & Press F9	6

Label Cells                               Formula Cells
"d100 Roll by pressing" F9   =RANDBETWEEN(1,100)
"d20 Roll by pressing"   F9  =RANDBETWEEN(1,20)
"d6 Roll by pressing"     F9 =RANDBETWEEN(1,6)

Then I built a table, with the rows being the 14 Prime Characteristics.

Columns are Characteristic Name, Die Roll, Modifier to the Die Roll, and Modified Die roll. The fourth column, of course, equals the sum of the second and third.

I calculate a total cost for the Modifiers, with a conditional formatting if the total goes over 35, changing the cell to yellow. The total cost = the sum of all the modifers except psionics, which only costs half the modifier. The player has to keep track of what Personal Characteristic rolls can be modified for the selected profession.

The next two columns allow the user to look up the personal characterisitc values for the die roll and modified die roll. A last column allows the user to put in the final characteristic value after all the various adjustments for Home gravity and Profession. This last column's values will be transcribed to the character sheet.


Below is a calculated table showing the calculated preservice  skill point totals for each profession, including the alternate calculation for Med techs. These are based on the unmodified, modified, and final adjusted values columns for Personal characteristics. I included the unmodified and modified calculations to help the user mini-max a bit while modifing die rolls.

Next there are spaces for recording Planetary Gravity, Athmosphere, and climate rolls, and for noting the effects. The rules assume these will be generated randomly, rather than being based on a world already created for the campaign. Sounds like a place for the players to do some colabrative world building, by fleshing out their characters' homeworlds.

Next there's a table where the user can record if the charcter being created, base on attributes and home planet, qulifies to be an alien.

(Humans, Humanoids, and for some dang reason, Avians, are automatic qualifications. Other "races" will have minimum and maximum values for certain characteristics, as well as restrictions on their homeworlds.)

Next is a place to record height and weight of the charcter, and calculated fields for their secondary characteristics such as Wound Factor and Carrying capacity.

Developing the characters prior service and allocating Skill points will be addressed by future tools.

Some recent posts on RPG.NET reminded me I never can get my head around the Space Opera RPG.

That's why I started this blog a couple years ago, but got distracted.

There are other things in my world besides RPGs. One of them is computer programming, and I've been casting around for some projects to learn new languages. So I got this idea I should write some utility programs to automate some Space Opera (SO) rules. If I can't automate the SO rules, then I should not try to play with them.

 Poking trough the SO rule book (third printing, the one with both books in one perfect bound volume) I see several possibilities.

First off, a character generator. There would be several components, like a 1d1oo characteristic roller that looks up the actual 1 to 19 attribute values. This can be enhanced by providing a tool to handle the various character professions. To summarize the procedure for generating attributes, the player generates a series of d100 rolls, one for each attribute. Look up what 1-19 attribute corresponds to that roll for that attribute. (For some silly ass reason, the same d100 roll for intelligence won't generate the same strength attribute, you've got to cross reference on a table for each roll and characteristic to see what the final value is.) (The whole dang thing could be converted to roll best 3 of 4 d6 without too much trouble.) But that's not all! SO has character classes. Sort of. SO character Professions have next to no effect in play, but they guide character creation. Professions interact with Characteristic attributes in at least two ways. First, each profession has a budget of points to adjust some of the d100 rolls used to generate characteristics. Second, each profession has a different formula, based on adding up the values of different characteristics for each profession, for generating the bulk of the character's Skill Points (SP).

 Digression: A Player Character has a number of Skill points, used to buy skills in character creation. Each character has 6d6 SP that can be used to buy skills from a list of general skills. Each character has a set of SP derived from their Characteristic values, which differs based on character class. And each character has 5 more SP for each year of "prior service", there being a crude knock off of the Traveller life path, to determine such prior service. Different skills have different costs in SP, usually 1-5 per level, but some skills don't seem to have levels, and it's a flat cost. 

So to generate these attributes, I need some player decision making interaction with the application. The player must allocate these Dice Roll Modifier (DRM) points. To facilitate this, the application should first, allow the user to try a variety of scenarios. The app can also project the effects of allocating points, by showing the SP total for the modified Characteristics and chosen profession.

 OK, there's two tools I plan to develop this application in. Parallel development using two different will give me greater insight into each one.

One is Microsoft Visual Studio Express. There's a tutorial for creating a math game that I can use as a starting point.

Second there's python. There's a couple of cloud based python IDEs such as: Python Fiddle I can use to build my app. For my learning purposes it will be best to try it using both tools.

C is for character class

Space opera is a class and skill level system, with nothing like a experiance level governing the characters abilities. The closest thing to an experience point or lrvel is a small allocation of skillpoints per year of acive service pior to the start of acive play.
The classes are:
Armsman. Combat soldiers, martial artists, and other gunbunnies.

• Astronauts space pilots, navigators, and captains.
• Engineers designers and hackers of hightech gear.
• Physicians treaters of injuries and disease.
• Research scientists in the physical, bilogical, and social sciences. 
• Techs fixers and mantainers of gear.

The biggest difference between character classes is the types of skills that must be bought. An Armsman, for example, must spend
her experitise skillpoint skills and half her attribute bases pool on class relate skills like guns, driving and piloting anfixing military equipment.
Each character class has a different set of prime attributes. The prime attribute generat a significant portion of a characters skill points. When generating attributes each claa also has a small pool of points for improving attributes.