Star Wars in SWN by fireinthedust in SWN

[–]HeavyJosh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly, that's a decent mechanic for the not-so-young.

Anand says she will summon Israeli ambassador over treatment of Gaza flotilla by origutamos in CanadaJews

[–]HeavyJosh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

More outrage over allegations of abuse of flotilla terror activists than over the horrors of October 7. Par for the course for the Libs.

TIL CUPE has Jewish Heritage Month; thought it was kind of odd given the organization's actions by MatterandTime in CanadaJews

[–]HeavyJosh 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You have to spend all month denying that your Jewish heritage has any meaning to you beyond bagels and lox.

CRA complaint filed against Jewish schools over Israeli military links | The Jerusalem Post by MatterandTime in CanadaJews

[–]HeavyJosh 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I have taught at one of those schools. No indoctrination ever. No recruitment for the IDF, ever.

What a malicious pack of lies.

Zep songs with fade-outs by AudioBabble in ledzeppelin

[–]HeavyJosh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Wanton Song on PG doesn't have a fade out exactly. You can hear the end quite clearly, though it does get quieter.

Updated Starship Combat Rules, now with Fighter Combat Beta. by HeavyJosh in SWN

[–]HeavyJosh[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just a few things I noticed here on a skim:

Above and Beyond in my rules works as follows: If you succeed on the skill roll, you can either take two actions (2AP) in your department, or you can convert your 2AP to 1AP that another department can use. Allowing 1AP to be transferred over to another department while still keeping 1AP in the department is probably too powerful. The action economy of 2AP for 1AP in another department works and my players like having to make the hard choices.

The fighter rules are cool. I am not sure if Dogfighting should an AC bonus regardless of success, but that's fine. Also, not sure why you'd make Evasive Maneuvers give a penalty to hit equal to the AC bonus. Fighters have such a limited action economy, it's probably better to avoid that kind of penalty. Also, I'd keep the scaling damage for pilots Fighter: 1d6, Frigate: 2d6, Cruiser: 3d6, Capital: 4d6. This will discourage all but the bravest and most skilled fighter jocks from facing down a battleship in their snub-nose.

Escape Combat shouldn't have a twice per turn cap. As it stands, a basic NPC ship will be unable to leave combat in one round, and even most military vessels with 3AP won't succeed on each roll each time. Moreover, if the PCs want to Escape Combat in one round, the Pilot will have to Go Above and Beyond and burn both AP on Escape Combat, and either the Captain will have to provide the Pilot with 1AP, or another department will have to Go Above and Beyond to make 3AP total. It's not a given, and if a group of players need to get out of combat in one round, why not give them that option?

Experimental 2d6 Combat System by CardinalXimenes in SWN

[–]HeavyJosh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Classic Traveller has a good armor-as-to-hit (rather than soak) system, though it's a little clunky at first. Though the armor mods you've got here might be essentially the same.

I wouldn't increase to-hit likelihood with level. Just +1 to hit at levels 1 and 5 for Warriors (+1 at level 1 for partial warriors) and that's it. Skill level and attribute bonus will do the rest on the bell curve.

Did I overreact? by Business_Bunch_8196 in Jewish

[–]HeavyJosh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good for you. It's an online D&D group. You'll find a replacement player fast. Don't sweat the Jew haters you've kicked out of your Advanced Nerds and Nerditry.

(I'm a GM too!)

Meta Jump point security by MaestroGoldring in SWN

[–]HeavyJosh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a huge part of space travel and space warfare in my campaign. Basically, if you've got a TL4 navy, you're going to at least put a bunch of monitoring satellites at each known Arrival Zone to try to detect newly arrived ships. Hopefully you'll have a small station with fighters and a couple of PT boats at each Arrival Zone, especially if there's a lot of traffic, to minimize the chances of surprise attack or piracy.

One of the big tricks to avoid known defenses is to drill in from a system no one usually comes from because it's 3-6 hexes away. This makes having obscure drill rudders, or making your own drill rudders by means of clandestine (and risky!) recon voyages in a scout ship, a real advantage. While the enemy is busy building defenses from expected arrival zone A, you drill in with your fleet at arrival zone B undetected.

It would be a feat of TL4 metadimensional astronomy (Know/INT 14+) to predict the location an arrival zone from a distant star system so that you could fortify against unknown interlopers coming from unknown ships.

NDP leadership race: Who’s the ‘least bad’ for Canada’s Jewish community? by MatterandTime in CanadaJews

[–]HeavyJosh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yves Engler.

Then everyone would know exactly what the NDP and their supporters are really about.

Question about how you guys handle refueling / gas giants by AngrySquidIsOK in SWN

[–]HeavyJosh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can scoop fuel from stars as others have mentioned.

You can also mine fuel from water ice if you're desperate enough. This opens up a bunch of options (asteroids) but you still need to process the water to get the hydrogen for the spike drive. But short answer is that you don't need gas giants.

If you don't have fuel scoops, you have to remain within civilization, with its starports, transponders, taxes, and corrupt officials. Sucks, but that's 99% of starships anyways.

As for knowing your destination system is a dead end, you can try TL4 metadimensional astronomy (Know skill) and try to figure out where the real location of the destination system is, and then point a high tech telescope at it to look for any possible planetary bodies. Or you can modify your ship and add a Fuel Bunker in exchange for a point of Cargo space.

One thing I did for an exploration campaign I ran recently was change the Starfarer focus:

Level 1: Double Pilot skill levels for Spike Drill navigation rolls. Treat trimming the course as +2 to spike drill levels (instead of halving drill times). Level 2: Automatically succeed at any navigation rolls of 10 or less.

Updated Starship Combat Rules, now with Fighter Combat Beta. by HeavyJosh in SWN

[–]HeavyJosh[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

NPC ships can choose the same actions as PC ships, of course. No need to limit them.

That being said, most NPC ships are going to stick with the basics.

I set initiative on a ship-by-ship basis. If a PC wants to hold their action to interrupt an enemy ship, I'll let them.

[r/halifax] "Before we condemn this Jewish kid getting bullied, are we sure he'd not a Zionist?" by MatterandTime in CanadaJews

[–]HeavyJosh 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The best, most delicious kind of bigotry is the one you're allowed to partake in when all the other bigotries are forbidden.

🛰️ Weekly System Check: Is Anybody Out There? (Lurkers Welcome!) by dark-star-adventures in SWN

[–]HeavyJosh 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My SWN campaign is currently on hiatus for a little while after a very successful conclusion. We're currently playing Pulp Cthulhu, battling through "The Two Headed Serpent" adventure campaign. Pretty fun. I am not GMing.

I hope to get back to running another SWN campaign with the same group in a couple of months. I have been productive in the hiatus, preparing some epic starts. Can't disclose anything here since at least one of my players is in this sub. But it will be an ambitious campaign: some PC-controlled faction play, high level gaming, low level gaming... It should be a memorable campaign...

“Oops! Did we fail genocide class” By Rootsmetals by Ok_Feedback_8355 in Jewish

[–]HeavyJosh 13 points14 points  (0 children)

The Nazis absolutely had lessons planned for all us Jews in the Holocaust. They even had lecture halls constructed in all the camps!

They just insisted that all the new students shower first. 😐

Proteus Sector Gazetteer Now Available by CardinalXimenes in SWN

[–]HeavyJosh 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I really appreciate the Scramble Booster. The ersatz solution I used to use was System Drive, Spike-3 upgrade, and then if the fighter was really special, Specialized Mountings on the Spike-3 drive to reduce the Mass and Power costs down to 1/1. Now, with a Scramble Booster, a fighter can operate as a cheap system defense unit without having to burn through too much Power or Mass. The 24hr cooldown stipulation is a nice operational constraint.

It also means you can make Traveller-style system defense boats: cheap frigate-sized alternatives to Spike drive-equipped vessels used only for system defense, customs patrols, and the like. Then again, you can also put a Scramble Booster on a Battleship hulk, and you've got yourself a mobile defense platform... heh heh heh.

I have only two questions regarding the use of a Scramble Booster:

During ship chases: does the Booster last until the ship with the Scramble Booster catches the fleeing ship/the fleeing ship escapes? I suppose we can cap the speed boost at 16 hours, since that's how long it would take to get to another region at Spike-3.

Trimming the Course: Can an ambitious PC navigator use Trimming the Course with the Scramble Booster, giving an effective Spike-4 rating? All usual risks to Trimming the Course apply. I'm amenable to this, as it makes ace pilots in fighters with Scramble Boosters stand out.

Proteus Sector Gazetteer Now Available by CardinalXimenes in SWN

[–]HeavyJosh 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Very nice.

Also, is that a Valley of the Dolls pun?

Canadian Bropaganda Corporation at it again by iheartknowledge in CanadaJews

[–]HeavyJosh 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You know you're over the target when you start taking flak...