[Diaspora] Designing a Mine Field for Spaceship Combat

Sam Friedman safriedman at gmail.com
Tue Feb 9 11:38:09 MST 2010


I have this story in my head of a paranoid system, or what's left of it,
leaving behind a vast swath of a mine field.  Think looking up from Earth
and seeing the faint band of the Milky Way... that's the mine field.

How could I go about representing that in spaceship combat?  If I want a
scene whose purpose is to illustrate the rough time the characters have
navigating their ship through this minefield to get to whatever their goal
happens to be, how do I represent this stationary mine field without letting
the V-Shift of the characters' spaceship allow an easy escape?  Also, how
might I represent the mines detonating on impact (or proximity)?

Here's what I thought.  I'd love suggestions.  I haven't had a chance to
playtest this, so it could be over/under-balanced.

*Standard Explodey Minefield*
[We represent the minefield as a T2 spaceship.  17 Build Points]

V-Shift: 2 (2 bp) - trying to represent the fact that the mine field is
labyrinthine, and difficult to work through.  It doesn't move, necessarily,
but it's not easy to just plow through.
Beam: 0
Torpedo: 4 (6 bp) - trying to represent the self-detonating nature of the
minefield.  Also ties to the sink-stunt "Self Detonate"
EW: 0
Trade: 0

*Stress Tracks:*
Hull: 7 (4 bp) (there's so much to shoot at, it hardly makes a difference)
Data: 3
Heat: 3

*Stunts:*
Automaton (sink stunt): these are machines, not people. (1 bp)
High Capacity Magazine (1 bp)
Automated Defenses (no beam or missile defense to represent that shooting a
mine is an impact and it'll go "boom")
- Firewall (1 bp)
Self Detonate (sink stunt): they explode on impact, or when in close
proximity (2 bp)

*Aspects:*
Huge
"This thing goes on forever!"
"Don't get too close!"
A relic from a bygone war
"We could just plow right through"

All this got me thinking about other sorts of mine fields a crew might
encounter.

*Special Laser-Shooting Minefield*
V-Shift: 2 (2 bp)
Beam: 4 (6 bp)
Torpedo: 0
EW: 0
Trade: 0

*Stress Tracks*:
Hull: 6 (3 bp)
Data: 3
Heat: 6 (3 bp)

*Stunts:*
Automaton (sink stunt) (1 bp)
Automated Defenses
- Vector Randomizer (1 bp)
- Firewall (1 bp)
- Point Defense (1 bp)

*Aspects*:
Huge
"A thousand floating turrets"
A relic from a bygone war
"There's so much to shoot at!"
"This thing goes on forever!"
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://box547.bluehost.com/pipermail/diaspora_phreeow.net/attachments/20100209/b83c92c5/attachment.html>


More information about the Diaspora mailing list