Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 070 – March 10th.

We take another day of RRR to get the Antelope patched up.

Why is it so important to have undamaged ships? If you attempt to enter hyperspace with a damaged ship, you have a 1 in six of being destroyed, per hit. More than 5 hits and you are automatically destroyed on jumping.

There is also another form of risk, being to close to a planet. Jumping from the surface has a 5 in 6 chance of destroying the ship. From low orbit, an asteroid or a space station, it drops to 4 in six. Each level of out reduces this number by one. Four levels of "out" is a zero chance.

Why take any of those chances?

Today, I realized that I didn't update the record sheets for the Alicorn and Antelope and now they are a complete hash. I will have to go over my inventory and fix them both.

Rather than plug another product, would you mind taking some time to answer a poll for an upcoming product?

Here is the poll link.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 Military U-suits (e044),
7 Side Arms TL-1,
10 repair units,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.

Cargo:
1 TL-2 Boat guns,
10 repair units,
5 Military U-suits (e044)
10 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

I have 50,096 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 069 – March 9th

We take a day of RRR to get the ships patched up. It takes one day per hit, per engineer, per ship. Alicorn is ready at the end of today, while the Antelope needs another day of RRR.

It’s midterms, so I won’t bore you with more ads. I will simply offer the game design books, I mentioned before. They are very interesting, packed full of good ideas I wish I was reading, but am not because of midterms.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 Military U-suits (e044),
7 Side Arms TL-1,
10 repair units,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.

Cargo:
1 TL-2 Boat guns,
10 repair units,
5 Military U-suits (e044)
10 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

I have 50,096 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 062 – March 2nd

Ok, I have to do some book keeping. We are taking a day of RRR. I have two engineers, so I have them get to work on the new ship. They install some guns and stasis units. Lucy, Duke and Emily are healing up.

We decide to name the second ship the Alicorn.

I am dividing the areas protected by stasis units among the ships. There are 4 CU of protected space in each ship’s crew quarters. I move the 2 CU stasis unit from engineering to the other ship’s pilotage. The turret of the Antelope has 1 CU of protected space. There is a 4 CU stasis unit in the cargo hold of the Antelope. I have created a pair of sheets to mark all of this down.

We also redistribute cargo and the crew.

Four crew members are on the Antelope: Duke (pilot/gunner), Bones (medic), Ratchet (engineer) and Lefty (gunner). Five are on the Alicorn: Emily (pilot/gunner), Deadeye (gunner), Doc (medic), Lucy (engineer) and David (gunner). We lose the capacity to fly the hoppers and the ships at the same time. We have 9 crew and need another pair of pilots and one gunner.

In order to protect all of these people, I need to buy some more status units. In doing this, I will refit the crew quarters with 4 3 CU stasis units. This will allow me to protect up to 12 crew per ship in groups of 3. I can move the single CU units to various parts of the ship to protect workstations. I’m almost OSHA compliant. :)

Since I am being so nice to the crew, I am going to cut their salaries and simply give them a 1% cut off of all profits. This is 1% each, not total. Cheating, yes, but this will make record keeping easier. Payouts will be much higher than a measly 15 secs. a week.

As an additional cheat, I will no longer be tracking personal items owned by the crew as cargo. That removes side arms, PS bots and USuits from the cargo hold and presumably into the crew quarters. I am simply going to assume the weekly cost of the bots as a loss, per week.

You'll note on these sheets that I am only coloring very large items like big guns and multiples of repair units, fuel and life support units. The Alicorn has no boat, so the fuel and guns are simply sitting in the boat bay. Since I am actually working on paper, I merely have a sheet with penciled in notations. I may share that later.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
1 TL-1 military U-suit,
5 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
7 Side Arms TL-1,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.

Cargo:
1 TL-2 Boat guns,
10 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

I have 54,171 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 053 – Feb 22nd

We need to repair the ship, so we spend the day in RRR. We could jump with a damaged ship, but there there is a risk mechanic involved. “We may experience slight turbulence and explode”. Not on my watch. The mechanics are so simple, a modifier of one per hit of damage is so crystal clear, you don't want to try this.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe 117,000 secs. in principle.
1 TL-1 Ship’s Guns.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.
3 Boat guns, TL-2.
2 CU Status unit in Cockpit and Engineering, 8 1 CU Status units in Crew Quarters and 1 1 CU unit in Gunnery.
10 Fuel Units in the Ship’s Boat.
8 Repair units,
5 Life Support Units in the Ship’s boat.
7 PS-bots, 1 per character,
10 TL-1 military U-suits
6 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons for sale, 4 for characters use,
7 Side Arms TL-1, 1 Side Arm TL-3, and one TL-4.
7500 Side Arms TL-2.
10 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects
5 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket.
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

I have 6,271 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 048 – Feb 17th

Today is spent in RRR. The Antelope is repaired, finally but the day is over.

We have the following resources:

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe 117,000 secs. in principle.
1 TL-1 Ship’s Guns.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.
2 CU Status unit in Cockpit and Engineering, 8 1 CU Status units in Crew Quarters and 1 1 CU unit in Gunnery.
10 Fuel Units in the Ship’s Boat.
9 Repair units,
5 Life Support Units in the Ship’s boat.
7 PS-bots, 1 per character,
6 Heavy Hand Weapons for sale, 4 for characters use,
7 Side Arms TL-1, 1 Side Arm TL-3, and one TL-4.
13 U-suits, 7 for the crew, 5 for sale.
5 Doses of pheromones (e009) in secret compartment.
and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges.

What does that leave for me, space wise?

All of the space suits and PS bots have to be in the hold, as there isn’t enough room in the crew quarters. I can pick up one more crewman before this becomes a problem. The heavy hand weapons also take up hold space. That is 60 minus 10+13+7, so I have 30 left. There are 10 RU in the hold plus the extra ship’s guns, which reduces my cargo space to 14. There is not much I can do with that space, so I need to get rid of stuff. On my next stop, I will try to get sell the extra guns and the heavy hand weapons. That will free up 10 spaces.

I also have 10 free spaces in the Hopper, or ship’s boat. I could shuffle stuff into there.

15 empty CU in the ship’s hold, plus the Hopper. I pay the crew today, which costs 80 secs.

I have 23,251 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.

Instead of giving you a new ad, check out the items to the right of this post. Find a good book, blog or podcast. My personal favorites this week are Safco Cast and Revolutions.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 045 – Feb 14th

Since we are in orbit, we are going to take a day of RRR to heal Duke. In orbit, there are no forced contact rolls. I need to do this twice.

Strangely, medics can’t heal you faster, so Duke will need today's RRR to recuperate from our last combat. Sorry about the seemingly double post. 

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 044 – Feb 13th

Since we are in orbit, we are going to take a day of RRR to heal Duke. In orbit, there are no forced contact rolls.

Strangely, medics can’t heal you faster, so Duke will need two days of RRR to recuperate from our last combat. Sorry about that.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 021

Sorry gang, Day 21 is boring. One of those skimmers is down for repair and I need it fixed before we sell it. So we need a day of RRR.

We roll for contacts today, which would really be unwanted. Nothing comes of it, so we proceed to RRR. The Ship's Engineer rule has a quirk, which I don't see anyway of fixing. On a RRR day, we can regain health and he can fix equipment. But does he regain health while fixing equipment? Maybe? I have to check the rules again.

Anyway, we must have that skimmer fixed plus back on day 014, everyone took a hit of damage. RRR will heal that.

Our assets are:

1 Antelope starship, which I owe 119,300 secs. in principle.
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,

15 Fuel Units,

23 Repair units,

10 Life Support Units

1 U-bot,

2 PS-bots,

7 Skimmers,

7 U-suit,

and the ship is fueled with 4 hypercharges, having used 2 to get here.  

I have 275 secs. in my pocket. 

I promised ads on every day of RRR, so here it is.

I saw a few people post on some charity bundles over at DriveThruRPG for the fires down under. 100% of your purchase goes to the following organizations:

Disaster Relief and Recovery - Australia Red Cross
Bushfire Emergency - World Wildlife Fund of Australia

DriveThruRPG and it's publishers have really stepped up, here. There are 5 bundles for every type of interest. I didn't bother to count the number of great titles included with each. All of them appear to have more than a dozen books each.

EDIT January 22nd, 2020: The folks at DrivethruRPG have added 3 more at $9.99 price point for an even better value. Here is a link to the whole category. I'd also like to thank Jeremy over at Thought Eater Blog, host of The Frothcast podcast and all of the others who reshared this post. What a great community we have.

Fantasy Core & Settings $19.95
Starships & Posthumanity $29.95
Modern & Urban Horror $19.95
Fantasy Supplements $29.95
Capes, Grit, and Gunsmoke $19.95

Personally, I'm going for the Fantasy and Core Settings bundle. What a great way to celebrate gaming, a birthday or whatever while helping out those in the awesome but beleaguered OZ.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 009

Dear Diary,

We went back into the ruins again. We found a pair of skimmers. One was intact, while the other was cannibalized for a single repair unit.

Skimmers probably don't have wheels.

Here are today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
24 Repair units.
3 Skimmer,
1 U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

I'd like to circle back and talk about the various "units" in the game. There are repair units, life-support units and fuel units. Life-support or LU, provides air, food and water to all people in a vehicle for a day in a bad air or vacuum environment. On this planet, the air is good and we don't need them.

Fuel units power the hoppers and the skimmers. For a hopper, they provide one movement point, say from the ruins to the spaceport or from the spaceport to orbit. There is a multiplier for gravity.

Skimmers also use fuel units, but one per day. Only a few characters can drive the skimmers. The engineer has that skill, as do skimmer drivers. Skimmer drivers are a quirk, the will not leave the system they were from, so you always need an engineer. Were I to change a rule, it would be this one. I would allow bodyguards and medics to drive, but not starship pilots or navigators.

Obviously, the hopper is faster but the skimmers are more efficient.

Strictly (Duke) Spinger - Day 008 (RRR) Human Error

Ah, human error is a great thing. I rolled poorly and we had a contact, e88. This is an abandon room where Duke found 30 secs. The error in this was nothing needed to be repaired, so I wasted a day on a contact I didn't mean or need to attempt. I happened to get lucky and scored some secs. 

Dear Diary,

We engage in RRR, again. Some parts are literally watching paint dry.

Here is today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
23 Repair units (one used to repair the boat).
2 Skimmer,
1 U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

Crew:
Emily, weekly pay 15 secs. She has a sidearm and 35 secs.
Ratchet, weekly pay 15 secs. He has 30 secs.
Doc, weekly pay 10. He has the 10 secs that I paid him on day one.

Designated Heir: Emily.

I still owe 120,000 secs. in principal on the ship. I have 380 secs.

Now to the promised content.

Yesterday, I mentioned Dwarfstar, which is a part of Reaper Minis now. I also happened to be listening to back catalog of The History of English. Episode 118 is about the history of trade names. While this podcast isn't on science fiction, it explains many of ideas and terms we still use today. I thought it was apt.

Strictly (Duke) Spinger - Day 007 (RRR)

This is another RRR day, third in a row. Time for an ad, but not a real ad. Reaper miniatures, in conjuncture with Dwarfstar have made many of their old games available. What is great about this is, if you follow the link above and scroll down, you can find tips and methods to use the digital files to reproduce the whole game with great looking counters.

Back to Duke.

Here is today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
23 Repair units (one used to repair the boat).
2 Skimmer,
1 U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

Crew:
Emily, weekly pay 15 secs. She has a sidearm and 35 secs.
Ratchet, weekly pay 15 secs. He has 30 secs.
Doc, weekly pay 10. He has the 10 secs that I paid him on day one.

Designated Heir: Emily.

I still owe 120,000 secs. in principal on the ship. I still have 350 secs in my pocket.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 006 (RRR)

Dilemma time. Having reviewed the game Star Smuggler, I'm playing it and posting the results here one day at a time. If you aren't familiar with the game, you can read the review here or download the whole game there.

I have reached the point where the characters are doing Rest, Repair and Recuperation and not a whole hell of lot happens.

Mechanically, when you engaging in RRR, you roll a die to see if you have a forced contact at the start of the day. Roll a 6, there is a chance of an encounter. There are 7 varieties of encounters for each area and some areas by virtue of what they are preclude some of those 7. The ruins are one of those.

Going forward on RRR days, I'll share stats then I will tell you about things related to science fiction, outside of the Star Smuggler game which will probably contain an ad for something for you to purchase. 

Dear Diary,

Day six is less exciting than day five. We engage in RRR, again. Some parts are literally watching paint dry.

Here is today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
24 Repair units (one used to repair the boat).
2 Skimmer,
1 Damaged U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

Crew:
Emily, weekly pay 15 secs. She has a sidearm and 35 secs.
Ratchet, weekly pay 15 secs. He has 30 secs.
Doc, weekly pay 10. He has the 10 secs that I paid him on day one.

Designated Heir: Emily.

I still owe 120,000 secs. in principal on the ship. I still have 350 secs in my pocket.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 005 (RRR)

Having reviewed the game Star Smuggler, I wanted relive my past and play it. If you aren't familiar with the game, you can read the review here or download the whole game there.

This series will be a day-by-day play through of the classic game Star Smuggler from the point of view of the fictional hero, "Duke".

Dear Diary,

Day five is less exciting than day four. We engage in RRR, I watched the engineer repair the ship's boat. He did it, he doesn't even need a die roll. Ugh.

Engineers are interesting, sometimes they can fight, they can always do repairs under direction and oddly can drive a skimmer. Every item repaired burns one Repair Unit (RU) per point of damage, no matter how big or small it is. 

At the end of the 10 hour day, I'm thinking of money. Here is today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
1 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Hopper, no fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
25 Repair units (one used to repair the boat).
1 Skimmer,
1 Damaged Skimmer,
1 Damaged U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

Crew:
Emily, weekly pay 15 secs. She has a sidearm and 35 secs.
Ratchet, weekly pay 15 secs. He has 30 secs.
Doc, weekly pay 10. He has the 10 secs that I paid him on day one.

Designated Heir: Emily.

I still owe 120,000 secs. in principal on the ship. I still have 350 secs in my pocket, but the gear will sell will help, a lot.