Masada said:
One other thing to those considering publishing a new starship combat system. If possible make it compatible with mecha combat.
The problem is scale. Even a Colossal mech is a relative speck of dust on an Ultraheavy starship.
Phil- looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Remember that
Mecha Power Cores is available for you to draw OGC from.
I'm actually bastardizing the d20 Future Mecha rules for
Rednecks & Mechs. Only two mech sizes will be featured (Large and Huge). Slots will be slightly tweaked to account for the ground-up incorporation of power cores. There will be a shift away from Wealth checks and a shift towards Craft checks when it comes to acquiring mech components;
Rednecks & Mechs assumes a more PL 5-ish setting, and mech components aren't exactly available on eBay. I'm hoping players will be attracted to a greater focus on "DIY mechs," where characters can say "Yup, I built me that thar mecha with mah own two hands. Oh, and with the junker Chevy that was rustin' on tha lawn." Other items to fix will be the wonky hit points / Hardness / Defense bonus system for Mecha (bye bye equipment bonuses, hello HP based on what material the mech is made out of). The character-style Mecha Combat system will remain mostly intact, but will be expanded upon to allow for Mecha Wrasslin'.
Hot damn, I got a lot of work to do.
But, back on topic... making a mecha and a starship system interchangeable might suffer because of scale difference. One of the benefits of the Star Wars d20 starship combat system is the fact that it has it's own scale, separate from character combat. d20 Future's starship system also has it's own scale, in a way (though it uses the same size categories as the rest of the systems).
Did that make any sense? I'm heading onto my 30th hour of no sleep, so I have no idea how comprehensible I am at the moment.