God, I MISS the old Fasa system

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

Wasn't that one based on Phoenix Command, which the Living Steel RPG was based on as well? I managed to get some high paced gaming out of those as well. Just needed a few pre-calculations. :) But I guess it would fit better in a computer based tactical game...

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In the FLGS I used to frequent back in the day, we had a demo of Living Steel by one of the designer's who, unlike most gamers, was a tank of man and his name was Clay. I was into Twilight 2000 at the time and had picked up Phoenix Command as a supplement for my T2K Campaign. I read through the rules and rejected them out of hand as they were very detailed, but brutally complicated. I did hold onto the rules though as they were a very useful source of information on a huge array of weapons. Any way, I hadn't heard about the demo in advance and showed up at the FLGS with my T2K stuff and Clay noticed I had the Phoenix Command box with me and asked me what I thought of the rules. Well...Ole Alligator Mouth me said "Don't like them, they are too complicated." Clay did not appreciate the honesty. Fortunately, despite being a tank, he didn't go Terminator on me, but I did learn a lesson about tact that day.

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

Wasn't that one based on Phoenix Command, which the Living Steel RPG was based on as well? I managed to get some high paced gaming out of those as well. Just needed a few pre-calculations. :) But I guess it would fit better in a computer based tactical game...

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Exactly! I was trying to think of the name of the game Aliens' system was based off of! Well done, Cap'n. :)

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Originally Posted by Cpt. Lundgren

Never got around to actually play FASA. But a group I used to game with 20 years ago was planned to play it, and we did get through char gen.

I probably still have the character sheet for the science officer I was to play. If I recall correctly, there is a "luck" attribute, and it was somewhere in the vicinity of 95. A party animal that had manage to get by on luck instead of skill :p

To bad we never got around to actually play it.

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Once you got used to creating characters, you could probably get one done in about 20 minutes.

I remember the first character I created took me about 2 hours to work up. Sheesh.

Until I learned the character creation system better, I used to just use the NPC creation table.

We never played the RPG aspect of the game though....only the Starship Combat game.

Oh, I adore the RPG part of FASA's Star Trek - and it is so easy to guestimte alien species stats, and such when using the game for 24th century, or Enterprise era role play.

I'm in the process of converting our FASA characters to CODA... but it is taking a while. CODA sheets have a lot more info.

In the meantime we're still carrying on our campaign via FASA.

And a renegade, AWOL Starfleet Engineer just stole a Klingon Bird of Prey !

I've actually never played the Starship Combat Game, but it's not from lack of wanting too. I just haven't ever been able to get my hands on a copy. I tried to get one on e-bay back in the summer, but some dude wanted $300 for it.

I'd love to give it a try. The Starship Construction Manual is wonderful... but I had to have one of my players who is way better at writing House Rules than me work up a sort of "quickie" Starship system since we couldn't find the FASA Starship game...

Love the construction manual. My friends and I made many ships with it....and after a while, had to streamline the way we constructed ships because at one point, the battles we were having were being resolved in seconds or minutes, not hours. So we had to put restrictions on the quantity of the types of armaments our ships could have.

We were basically making torpedo cruisers. The efficiency of power to damage was high. Imagine having a ship with nothing but torpedo launchers, and having to spend only one point of power per launcher, instead of charging them up 15 points to do 15 points (plus modifiers) of beam weapon damage.

The rule we ultimately decided on was, our ships could have no more than forty percent of their total armament comprised of missile weapons.


At one point, with the CODA games, I had fashioned (as best I could) a construction manual for starships in that system. For the most part, it worked, but I never got to playtest them, or the system itself for RPG'ing.

I never really liked the FASA starship combat rules.I usually used the quickie rules in the main books.The stories were always more importaint that the mechanics.Really liked the CODA ship rules a lot better.Now a days I use a mix of FASA,ICON & CODA ship rules/combat.I use the main mechanics of FASA,a touch of ICON's shield rules & CODA's abstract combat rules.My "final straw" for FASA combat was when I was playing one nite & my surrounded Connie(Movie-refit era) beat an L-24(with 3 photon shots),a D-7 & 3 B'Rels.They should have chewed up my Connie & spit it out.

Yikes!!!

I lucked out on my frist shot on the L-24;2 photons into the foreward shield(the 1st knocked down the shields & the 2nd scored a bridge hit.).2 of the the B'rel's fired,one from port & the 2nd from starboard & missed(the gm said he rolled it but a 3 hexes they should have hit even on a 10) the Sol & hit each other;destroying one & crippling the port warp engine.We were beat up in the 1st place due to the D-7 & the 3rd B'Rel.(were took out the drive section of the D-7 & did minor damage to the B'Rel) The 3rd B'Rel got a hit on our rear shield & damaged the shield generator.I threw every thing into movement & foreward & aft Photons.Popped off 2 torps into the unshielded L-24(getting superstructre hits w/both ) & launched rear photons into the B'Rel & ran as fast as we could.The L-24 took 40 pts to superstructre on the 2nd attack & exploded. The Klingons decided to not give chase;thank goodness(we only had 9 superstructre left,half power in port warp engine,less that quarter in starboard engine,no impulse,& no shields to rear.The Sol was in dock for a long time.We lost both the Captain & 1st Officer,& about 50% of the crew.I was the 2nd Officer & Chief Navigator.The crew went to other ship's;I got command of a Baker Class Destroyer the USS Lydia & brought over a few of the remaining officers.

Well done, young warrior! :)

We borrowed a little bit from Star Trek The Motion Picture to make up a rule about warping off the board during a battle.

Borrowing from this quote: "Sir, the Enterprise redesign increases phaser power by channeling it through the main engines. When they went into anti-matter imbalance, the phasers were automatically cut off."

Now, the only reason we didn't let imbalanced engines affect phasers was because of a passage in the novel of TMP where Kirk ordered Decker to take the phasers off of main engine power, and find an alternate way to ramp them up.

So, we're back to the "warping off the board". If the power points in both warp engines were unbalanced (say you had 20 pts in the port engine, 18 in the starboard), there was a good chance you'd create a wormhole effect....and an offchance that you could end up destroyed in that passage.

Ja, we were geeks like that. :)

Thank you General.
I never felt the Ship Combat rules reflected the shows very well;but when I frist started using them I loved them so much(I'd played Star Fleet Battles & hated the rules in it.),but after a while I started using the quick play rules in the back of the RP books.Then I stared tinkering here & there trying to get the shields to work the way I felt they worked in the shows.Then when I saw Steve Long's Spacedock book I tryed adapting their shield threshold rules to the FASA shields.After I got the CODA rules I loved the way the combat rules were more oreinted toward RPing than War Gamming.
I've tinkered w/the character generation system a bit to reflect the abilities of the characters from the shows.(I have all the training split between Operations & Sciences When they start MOS schools.).Keep thinking I almost got it the way I want it & then I notice something & have to change it again.I'll probably never get it the way I think it should be.:rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by WarriorKnight

Thank you General.
I never felt the Ship Combat rules reflected the shows very well;but when I frist started using them I loved them so much(I'd played Star Fleet Battles & hated the rules in it.),but after a while I started using the quick play rules in the back of the RP books.Then I stared tinkering here & there trying to get the shields to work the way I felt they worked in the shows.Then when I saw Steve Long's Spacedock book I tryed adapting their shield threshold rules to the FASA shields.After I got the CODA rules I loved the way the combat rules were more oreinted toward RPing than War Gamming.
I've tinkered w/the character generation system a bit to reflect the abilities of the characters from the shows.(I have all the training split between Operations & Sciences When they start MOS schools.).Keep thinking I almost got it the way I want it & then I notice something & have to change it again.I'll probably never get it the way I think it should be.:rolleyes:

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The way we used to do the shields in FASA was since the shields were in a grid of 20 x 3, if a ship was rated at 20 shield points, we'd fill up all the blocks (essentially, instead of 20 points, you had 60). That meant it took more than just a single FP-4 to blast down a shield side. That felt a little closer to the way they should behave in the shows/movies.

What I did after looking over the Spacedock shields was make the threshold for the shields be the total from the FASA rules but the shields were actually higher (example: FASA shield rating of 20 is Thershold 20 w/a total damage the shield absorbe is 200,anything over the 20 gets in,But the total drops unless the engineer allocates more power to bring the shields power back to full.No more Klingon shields that stop 15pts dropping after a 20pt photon hits & the 2nd photon hitting for full damage.Now the 1st photon hits & 5pts gets through & the 2nd photon hits & does 5 pts also.)
I also put in the rule that if a location(like bridge or engineering) takes 20pts in one volley it is destroyed.(I give pc's 1 turn to evac the bridge before it becomes uninhabitable.)After 1 turn anyone left on the bridge is dead.I also make players make luck rolls to avoid injuries.Failure indicates how much damage the player takes.(by 5% lt wound 25pts;by 20% medium wound 50pts;by 40% serious wound 75pts;& Critical Failure death character need to gotten immeadite medical attention in 2 turns.) So far I haven't had to use this rule.:rolleyes:

Some interesting details there. :)

FASAGrrl: somewhere around here I have a beat-up copy of the Star Trek II Starship Combat Simulator game; has the map, counters, rulebooks, combat tables, master control sheet. Does not have the individual bridge station panels, but I can throw in copies of those from my other copy of the game. (Mine came with the Deluxe set). It's not the version in the blue box but it would work for running combats with. And it wouldn't cost you anywhere near $300; postage is all I would ask for. e-mail me at allenshock1@yahoo.com if you want it.

Allen

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Originally Posted by RaconteurX

I used FASA's rules for several Star Trek campaigns, both miniatures and roleplaying, but ultimately preferred the treatment which both ICON and CODA gave the franchise. It does bring back memories, though... I still remember seeing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on opening night, twenty-five years ago.

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Indeed. Watching the Reliant closing in on Enterprise - knowing that Khan was in control, preparing to 'Pearl Harbour' Kirk's butt - had me on the edge of my seat.;)