Update
Tuesday 17 August 2010 Filed in: News
A quick update on the status of things:
- I’ve completed the book that I was doing the test layout on and it has gone in and out of print subsequently, and is now being published by d101 Games. It’s called Wordplay; if the idea of a narrative engined, fast playing game (think the lovechild of HeroQuest and Burning Wheel plus some others) then have a look at it here. The layout here is actually by someone else, as I did the initial edition that was used to put a foot in the water.
- I now have converted Quark files from Andy Lilly, which should mean I can extract the styles and frames used into InDesign.
- Next Power Projection related thing is to get the PDF of the Escort ships completed and on here as a download.
- I’ve also done a quick and dirty table for cross referencing the loss of massed systems to a threshold check. This came about having played some games with Capital ships at the weekend with some of my friends who are less enamoured with large numbers of dice rolls and more than happy with statistical resolution. So next time you need to carry out a threshold check on up to 100 systems you can just cross reference it on this table rather than rolling.
- I’ve completed the book that I was doing the test layout on and it has gone in and out of print subsequently, and is now being published by d101 Games. It’s called Wordplay; if the idea of a narrative engined, fast playing game (think the lovechild of HeroQuest and Burning Wheel plus some others) then have a look at it here. The layout here is actually by someone else, as I did the initial edition that was used to put a foot in the water.
- I now have converted Quark files from Andy Lilly, which should mean I can extract the styles and frames used into InDesign.
- Next Power Projection related thing is to get the PDF of the Escort ships completed and on here as a download.
- I’ve also done a quick and dirty table for cross referencing the loss of massed systems to a threshold check. This came about having played some games with Capital ships at the weekend with some of my friends who are less enamoured with large numbers of dice rolls and more than happy with statistical resolution. So next time you need to carry out a threshold check on up to 100 systems you can just cross reference it on this table rather than rolling.
The Sword Worlds fleet...
Thursday 23 August 2007 Filed in: Products
OK, the picture is very, very small, but here is a first sneak picture of the GZG models we are planning to use for the Sword Worlds fleet. Nick Bradbeer has started to assemble some of them here. There are a couple of ships missing (a battle cruiser and two smaller jump tenders) but this is the line up we are looking at. Not sure how many will make it to Power Projection: Reinforcements, but hopefully quite a few. The ships are all NSL or UNSC.
BITS Newsletter Power Projection Goodies
Sunday 05 August 2007 Filed in: News
Just a quick note to say that the latest issue of the BITS newsletter is now available for members and includes a page of material on Power Projection by Nick Bradbeer. This includes some of the optional rules like low power batteries and ship fragility that we propose to include in Power Projection: Reinforcements.
A Short, Glorious, Death?
Wednesday 11 April 2007 Filed in: Products
We're in some very early alpha tests of the designs that were submitted for Power Projection: Reinforcements, and have come across some 'interesting' aspects of the TL12 Vargr and Sword Worlds designs. The challenge was aptly described by Nick Bradbeer, who is acting as head design munchkin on Reinforcements. I'll paraphrase one of Nick's comments in email here:
The TL-12 to TL-15 gap is *really* severe. The extra RCP (computer power), combined with having the power to get Agility -1 means the TL-15 Imperials are shooting from three rows higher than the (TL-12) Vargr or Swordies when using secondary weapons. Crucially, if the Imps aren't tied down by the need to protect something slow, they can retrograde and just blow the hell out of the other guys with long range spinal and missile fire.
Now, the canonista in me knows that this is an accurate representation of what happens when a High Guard derived TL-15 force engages a TL-12 fleet. However, the game designer in me sees this as a bad thing because it would really suck to play the Sword Worlds forces.
We thought the quick and dirty way to address this would be to move to use the Trillion Credit Squadron credit exchange rates (PP:F Table 26 on page 48), but these only give a 15% advantage to the TL-12 forces, while initial numerical calculations suggest that the TL-15 advantage may be 50 to 100% in cost terms.
Anyway, we're going to be asking for some volunteers to play with some of the designs (we'll provide a scenario and SSDs), probably under a non-disclosure agreement to see what you feel about the new ships. I'll post details here and on the Yahoo! Group when we're ready to move forward.
Dom
The TL-12 to TL-15 gap is *really* severe. The extra RCP (computer power), combined with having the power to get Agility -1 means the TL-15 Imperials are shooting from three rows higher than the (TL-12) Vargr or Swordies when using secondary weapons. Crucially, if the Imps aren't tied down by the need to protect something slow, they can retrograde and just blow the hell out of the other guys with long range spinal and missile fire.
Now, the canonista in me knows that this is an accurate representation of what happens when a High Guard derived TL-15 force engages a TL-12 fleet. However, the game designer in me sees this as a bad thing because it would really suck to play the Sword Worlds forces.
We thought the quick and dirty way to address this would be to move to use the Trillion Credit Squadron credit exchange rates (PP:F Table 26 on page 48), but these only give a 15% advantage to the TL-12 forces, while initial numerical calculations suggest that the TL-15 advantage may be 50 to 100% in cost terms.
Anyway, we're going to be asking for some volunteers to play with some of the designs (we'll provide a scenario and SSDs), probably under a non-disclosure agreement to see what you feel about the new ships. I'll post details here and on the Yahoo! Group when we're ready to move forward.
Dom
Power Projection to be printed in the USA
Monday 22 January 2007 Filed in: News
BITS are proud to announce closer ties with yet another game publisher. Following on from our collaboration with Jon Tuffley at Ground Zero Games to produce our much-applauded Traveller starship combat system Power Projection, we are now beginning printing of the Power Projection: Fleet rules through Ken Burnside at Ad Astra Games in the USA.
We continue to have stock of the original UK printings of both Power Projection: Escort and Fleet, but this agreement allows us to produce and distribute the updated version of Fleet more easily in the USA. We will continue to stock and distribute the original UK printing to distributors, mail order customers and at conventions, but will replace these with the US-printed version over time.
We will only be printing Fleet at Ad Astra; though Escort is a useful, and fun, lead-in to Power Projection, the economics of printing meant it wasn't worth producing Escort in the USA: for our first out-source to Ad Astra we wanted to focus on the complete rules set in Fleet and see how it went.
We intend to collaborate further with Ken and his team at Ad Astra on future projects, just as we continue to work very closely with Jon at Ground Zero Games with our upcoming Power Projection: Reinforcements book.
Andy Lilly
http://www.bitsuk.net/
http://www.powerprojection.net/
We continue to have stock of the original UK printings of both Power Projection: Escort and Fleet, but this agreement allows us to produce and distribute the updated version of Fleet more easily in the USA. We will continue to stock and distribute the original UK printing to distributors, mail order customers and at conventions, but will replace these with the US-printed version over time.
We will only be printing Fleet at Ad Astra; though Escort is a useful, and fun, lead-in to Power Projection, the economics of printing meant it wasn't worth producing Escort in the USA: for our first out-source to Ad Astra we wanted to focus on the complete rules set in Fleet and see how it went.
We intend to collaborate further with Ken and his team at Ad Astra on future projects, just as we continue to work very closely with Jon at Ground Zero Games with our upcoming Power Projection: Reinforcements book.
Andy Lilly
http://www.bitsuk.net/
http://www.powerprojection.net/
Welcome to the New Look!
Friday 22 December 2006 Filed in: News
It's taken longer than planned, but the site is now relocated onto the main BITS server, and I've taken the opportunity to completely rebuild it. Hopefully, this will allow more regular updates and maintenance. We may even give some better updates on the progress towards completing Power Projection: Reinforcements! However, updates may be a little slow at first, as I am expecting to become a Dad at Christmas.
For the more technically minded amongst you, the site is now built with Realmac Software's RapidWeaver 3.5 rather than Adobe GoLive 6, but is still designed using Mac OS X. I'd love to claim responsibility for the CSS and XHTML the site has, but that is down to the excellent software combined with the theme's designers, Blueball Design. All mistakes are my own.
Dom (Power Projection Author and this site's Webmaster)
Picture ©2006 Tom Zunder (taken at Continuum 2006). Thanks!