Seven Worlds Setting - Feedback and Issues

[Arsilon]

Doing some more testing on this. Am I crazy? I don't think 4C is even needed for vehicle assigned effects to work for crew.

Here's the effects I'm currently testing to add to the default effects list. These all seem to work without 4C:

[Wounds Threshold = 5] ; For the Voyager and other non-Capital Ships (6.5 meter radius = 40 feet 'tall' which makes it Huge); I don't use size definition outright to avoid having to adjust further for size related to-hit modifiers

[Wounds Threshold = 6] ; For Capital Ships (these surely are Gargantuan)

Space Combat [Shooting +2] ; This is already defined as a global effect but I will pre-assign it to vehicles (certainly the Voyager to start, but then other ships too over time)

Fast Ship [Piloting +1] ; While Handling is already automated, the fastest ship bonus is not

Double Fast Ship [Piloting +2] ; While Handling is already automated, the fastest ship bonus is not; To minimize CT clutter pick whichever is correct between this and Fast Ship

Push the Engines [Piloting +2] (1 turn)
Evasive Maneuvers [Piloting -6] (1 turn)

Heat Fatigue 1 [Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]
Heat Fatigue 2 [Shooting -2, Ship Ops -2, Electronics -2]
Heat Fatigue 3 [Shooting -3, Ship Ops -3, Electronics -3]
; To minimize CT clutter pick one vs. add each one incrementally

Ship Wound 1 [Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]
Ship Wound 2 [Shooting -2, Ship Ops -2, Electronics -2]
Ship Wound 3 [Shooting -3, Ship Ops -3, Electronics -3]
; To minimize CT clutter pick one vs. add each one incrementally

Mine Cloud Defense Single [Piloting +4] (1 turn)
Mine Cloud Defense Multiple [Piloting +2] (1 turn)

Maximum Shielding [Armor +2] (3 turns)
Maximum Shielding with Raise [Toughness +4] (3 turns)

Move Shield Center [@Attack -2] (3 turns) ; Evasion effect still needs to be done manually for piloting rolls since it only applies situationally
Move Shield Center with Raise [@Attack -4] (3 turns) ; Evasion effect still needs to be done manually for piloting rolls since it only applies situationally
Move Shield Center Evasion [Piloting +2]
Move Shield Center Evasion with Raise [Piloting +4]

For Vehicles I'm testing further enhancements as follows:
1) Adding Bennies to each ship per their Shield Effects attribute.

2) Per above, adding the Space Combat effect by default to each ship. The others can be added by GM vs being there by default to minimize CT clutter. If a GM wants them there they can add them before hand in their setup. An argument might be made that the Voyager should have Fast Ship by default as well since its usually the fastest ship if you're running the default campaign.

3) Add extra "weapons" for Engineering based rolls per below:

Shield Effect: Linked to Ship Ops with no modifiers (you could do wound and fatigue modifiers here but is unnecessary if you use the above vehicle effects)

Radiate Heat; Linked to Ship Ops with Trait Info modifier = the ship's Heat Radiation attribute and Heat Pool defaulted to 0 (GM can modify this as heat points are added...alternately a custom weapon effect could be added on the fly Heat Pool [>Ship Ops -X])

I would ideally want to add modifiers for Piloting rolls but you can't do that on a vehicle. For now, the optional piloting rolls are available as effects per GM discretion

4) Adding the loadout overview to the note on the Voyager; also adding each launcher projectile type as additional dummy weapons with a count, eg Missile, Nuclear (2)


Let me know if you have opinions on this and/or if you think I missed any?

[Mike Serfass]

Wounds are calculated by size, starting at base 3 and adding 1 for each size category about medium. So you don't need the Wounds Threshold effect if the ship Size is set. (Which it should be to calculate size modifiers.)
The SWADE ruleset update releasing tomorrow has size modifiers for gargantuan +1 to +3 (from the SFC) so you won't need this effect for humungous ships.

Some of those other effects could be created as vehicle modifications and put on the starships. This would make it readily available to anyone adding ships. They can be toggled on/off if needed.

You can shorten

[Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]

to

[Shooting|Ship Ops|Electronics -1]

[Arsilon]

Wounds are calculated by size, starting at base 3 and adding 1 for each size category about medium. So you don't need the Wounds Threshold effect if the ship Size is set. (Which it should be to calculate size modifiers.)
The SWADE ruleset update releasing tomorrow has size modifiers for gargantuan +1 to +3 (from the SFC) so you won't need this effect for humungous ships.

Some of those other effects could be created as vehicle modifications and put on the starships. This would make it readily available to anyone adding ships. They can be toggled on/off if needed.

You can shorten

[Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]

to

[Shooting|Ship Ops|Electronics -1]

I had originally used the size attribute, but in Seven Worlds I did not want to all the to hit modifiers if a smaller ship is hitting a larger ship and vice versa. And none of the ship sizes are actually defined. This may also have been when I wasn't using crew properly but crew to hit was also being adjusted when targeting the enemy vehicles.

So I thought it would be easier to just leave the size attribute blank and hard code the wounds limit instead of having to override the modifiers.

I’ll have to go back and reread the rule set. I don’t think there was anything explicit in there about size definitions.

[Arsilon]

Additional note: I even tried to back calculate potential size using Armor and Toughness. But for The Voyager 12(9) Heavy Armor and Patrol Ships 16(10) Heavy Armor it came out as negative number for both for size assuming I was using the right formula.

I'll have to ask Luis what his thoughts are on this or if he arbitrarily assigned values.

[CPJ]

Wounds are calculated by size, starting at base 3 and adding 1 for each size category about medium. So you don't need the Wounds Threshold effect if the ship Size is set. (Which it should be to calculate size modifiers.)
The SWADE ruleset update releasing tomorrow has size modifiers for gargantuan +1 to +3 (from the SFC) so you won't need this effect for humungous ships.

Some of those other effects could be created as vehicle modifications and put on the starships. This would make it readily available to anyone adding ships. They can be toggled on/off if needed.

You can shorten

[Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]

to

[Shooting|Ship Ops|Electronics -1]

There is some odd behaviour with using the "|" combiner;

The following will apply both effects;
Ship Wounds 1 [Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]
Ship Wounds 2 [Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]

The following will only apply Ship Wounds 2 effect;
Ship Wounds 1 [Shooting|Ship Ops|Electronics -1]
Ship Wounds 2 [Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]

The following sometimes works, sometimes doesn't;
Ship Wounds 1 [Shooting|Ship Ops|Electronics -1]

The following always works;
Ship Wounds 1 [Shooting|Electronics -1]

Perhaps it doesn't like the space between Ship and Ops?

[CPJ]

Doing some more testing on this. Am I crazy? I don't think 4C is even needed for vehicle assigned effects to work for crew.

Here's the effects I'm currently testing to add to the default effects list. These all seem to work without 4C:

[Wounds Threshold = 5] ; For the Voyager and other non-Capital Ships (6.5 meter radius = 40 feet 'tall' which makes it Huge); I don't use size definition outright to avoid having to adjust further for size related to-hit modifiers

[Wounds Threshold = 6] ; For Capital Ships (these surely are Gargantuan)

Space Combat [Shooting +2] ; This is already defined as a global effect but I will pre-assign it to vehicles (certainly the Voyager to start, but then other ships too over time)

Fast Ship [Piloting +1] ; While Handling is already automated, the fastest ship bonus is not

Double Fast Ship [Piloting +2] ; While Handling is already automated, the fastest ship bonus is not; To minimize CT clutter pick whichever is correct between this and Fast Ship

Push the Engines [Piloting +2] (1 turn)
Evasive Maneuvers [Piloting -6] (1 turn)

Heat Fatigue 1 [Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]
Heat Fatigue 2 [Shooting -2, Ship Ops -2, Electronics -2]
Heat Fatigue 3 [Shooting -3, Ship Ops -3, Electronics -3]
; To minimize CT clutter pick one vs. add each one incrementally

Ship Wound 1 [Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]
Ship Wound 2 [Shooting -2, Ship Ops -2, Electronics -2]
Ship Wound 3 [Shooting -3, Ship Ops -3, Electronics -3]
; To minimize CT clutter pick one vs. add each one incrementally

Mine Cloud Defense Single [Piloting +4] (1 turn)
Mine Cloud Defense Multiple [Piloting +2] (1 turn)

Maximum Shielding [Armor +2] (3 turns)
Maximum Shielding with Raise [Toughness +4] (3 turns)

Move Shield Center [@Attack -2] (3 turns) ; Evasion effect still needs to be done manually for piloting rolls since it only applies situationally
Move Shield Center with Raise [@Attack -4] (3 turns) ; Evasion effect still needs to be done manually for piloting rolls since it only applies situationally
Move Shield Center Evasion [Piloting +2]
Move Shield Center Evasion with Raise [Piloting +4]

For Vehicles I'm testing further enhancements as follows:
1) Adding Bennies to each ship per their Shield Effects attribute.

2) Per above, adding the Space Combat effect by default to each ship. The others can be added by GM vs being there by default to minimize CT clutter. If a GM wants them there they can add them before hand in their setup. An argument might be made that the Voyager should have Fast Ship by default as well since its usually the fastest ship if you're running the default campaign.

3) Add extra "weapons" for Engineering based rolls per below:

Shield Effect: Linked to Ship Ops with no modifiers (you could do wound and fatigue modifiers here but is unnecessary if you use the above vehicle effects)

Radiate Heat; Linked to Ship Ops with Trait Info modifier = the ship's Heat Radiation attribute and Heat Pool defaulted to 0 (GM can modify this as heat points are added...alternately a custom weapon effect could be added on the fly Heat Pool [>Ship Ops -X])

I would ideally want to add modifiers for Piloting rolls but you can't do that on a vehicle. For now, the optional piloting rolls are available as effects per GM discretion

4) Adding the loadout overview to the note on the Voyager; also adding each launcher projectile type as additional dummy weapons with a count, eg Missile, Nuclear (2)


Let me know if you have opinions on this and/or if you think I missed any?

Wow, that's a lot of effects... a lot more than we use...
Where do you plan on putting them all? If they end up in the general effects window I'd think about prefixing them all with something like "7W" so they can be easily found with the search tool.

You're not going crazy... but I might be... You're correct, effects dropped on the ship are applied to crew and range penalties are calculated correctly without 4C. I'm sure this is different behaviour to what I've seen historically? You do lose the "Passenger" function without 4C but I don't think that's a huge problem as long as PCs are assigned as crew and any skills used outside of spaceship combat can use the modifier box.

Push the Engines should be [Piloting -2] (1 Turn)
Space Combat [Shooting +2] works great as a Ship Modification (now I've worked out how to do it) as declutters the CT.
Ship Wound and Heat Fatigue penalties can either be incremental or as above. We tried both and found adding them one at a time worked better for us, but does clutter the CT.
Evasive Manoeuvres I assume you mean Evading Missiles.
The only other things we use is PDLB as a sub-weapon of the Laser Cannon with a -6 modifier, and Sensor "weapon" as previously discussed.

Apologies Arsilon, I feel like I've created a lot of work for you over the last few days... I'm a bit surprised none of this has been commented on previously in the forum...

Have a great new year!

[Arsilon]

Its no work at all. Most of these are things I've been tinkering with for well over a year now (even before I packaged this up formally for use beyond my own personal table). I'm just happy to have someone to bounce ideas off of. I've tried to restrain myself on overdoing a lot of this since I didn't want to force my GM style on others. Outside input gives me perspective on where that line should be drawn.

Regarding above questions/comments:

[CPJ] Where do you plan on putting them all? If they end up in the general effects window I'd think about prefixing them all with something like "7W" so they can be easily found with the search tool.

Just like I did for the Planetary Effects effects, yes, I will likely put some sort of prefix on them (see next)

[Mike Serfass] Some of those other effects could be created as vehicle modifications and put on the starships. This would make it readily available to anyone adding ships. They can be toggled on/off if needed.

Excellent idea! This is a much more elegant solution than having to wade through the effects list to find them and at the same time keeping CT clutter to a minimum. If modifications serve their intended purpose, I will probably move the more cosmetic modifications like Healing Pod, Ships Locker, and V-World pods, which in and of themselves don't actually modify anything, to a separate notes field instead. (thus reducing ship modification clutter as well).

[Mike Serfass] Wounds are calculated by size, starting at base 3 and adding 1 for each size category about medium. So you don't need the Wounds Threshold effect if the ship Size is set. (Which it should be to calculate size modifiers.)

I have a note into the author about what his intent on Ship Size was as it effects automation for both Wound Cap as well as Size/Scale combat modifiers. Just to see what he meant for it to be since it matters how we have to code it to align with whatever the design intent was (of course any GM can override that, but I'd like to try and have it match the original intent and the ruleset is silent on the specifics).

I had originally assumed that since he didn't define them, he didn't intend for the modifiers to be applied...but that isn't necessarily a good assumption so figured it was worth asking him outright.


As an aside, I'm finding some wonkiness in M3L in getting the 'dummy' weapons to add properly. I'll need to break this down to specific incremental items vs. trying to accommodate all of these changes at once to see what exactly it doesn't like. After more testing, I may have to create another chaos storm in discord by trying to do something the code was never meant to allow vs. just doing it manually in the UI (which works, but just isn't as elegant for ongoing maintenance). I suspect it doesn't like me trying to create a new custom 'weapon' tied to a non-combat trait and add modifers all while not having a default npc crew defined.

[Arsilon]

Wounds are calculated by size, starting at base 3 and adding 1 for each size category about medium. So you don't need the Wounds Threshold effect if the ship Size is set. (Which it should be to calculate size modifiers.)
The SWADE ruleset update releasing tomorrow has size modifiers for gargantuan +1 to +3 (from the SFC) so you won't need this effect for humungous ships.

Some of those other effects could be created as vehicle modifications and put on the starships. This would make it readily available to anyone adding ships. They can be toggled on/off if needed.

You can shorten

[Shooting -1, Ship Ops -1, Electronics -1]

to

[Shooting|Ship Ops|Electronics -1]

I agree with CPJ that it doesn't seem to recognize it in that format. More testing it seems that it may not be the pipe '|' but instead that it just doesn't like a skill named 'Ship Ops' for whatever reason.

Its not that it is a custom skill because I created a new one called Electronics and that worked.
Its not that it has a space since I created a new one called ShipOpsTest and that didn't work.
I updated it so that it was just [Shooting|Electronics -1] and that worked for both Shooting and Electronics based weapons rolls.
I updated the default Electronics skill and renamed it to NotElectronics and it stopped working (had to readd the vehicle CT to reset it).

Not sure what I may be doing wrong but it doesn't seem like I'm the only one that is seeing odd behavior.

Also run into an issue with using Modifcations for Mine Cloud Defenses. Not sure you can't add another set of Wound modifiers and have a weapon tied to Piloting work. Default Fatigue and Heat works for direct piloting but not for skills tied to piloting. So you'll get double penalty if you create a universal modifier when doing the actual manuever roll vs. just the weapon (tied to Piloting) roll. It will have to be a single roll effect instead. Its either that or whatever it doesn't like about a linked skill called Ship Ops, it also doesn't like for a linked skill called Pilot.

Lots of permutations to test still but so far something isn't right.

[Arsilon]

FYI, I asked Luis (the author) what his original intent was given the notable absence of any mention of size/scale for vehicles.

His comments:

Honestly, I decided to skip size/scale when I wrote the battle rules. The ship toughness and damage indicators, plus wound caps, already do a good job of representing relative difficulty. More importantly (and I freely admit this is an idiosyncrasy of mine) I would argue that in a space battle, where distances are measured in tens of thousands of kilometers, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of KMs, every ship is basically the same size. How different are the Voyager and a Battleship, really, when they’re 100,000KM away from each other? From the point of view of aiming/hitting, they’re both tiny, pixel-size pinpricks in each other’s bridge wall screen. Thus the size/scale mechanic sounds off for a ‘realistic’ space battle.

Although my reasoning wasn't quite as detailed as his, my net impression on realism on a future tech world I tended to agree.


He did also add, however...

And many years ago Dave Blewer (the creator of the Sundered Skies setting for Savage Worlds) gave me a piece of wisdom I still carry now: The ‘right’ rule is the one the GM that’s going to run the game likes the most.

He also left the door open should I decide its appropriate to alter the rules to accommodate this VTT implementation. We've debated several details since I took on this project and what you see, especially in the SWADE version, is a result of that discussion and at times compromise on his part.

As such, I will update vehicle definitions and in particular the Space Ship and Capital Ship modifications to include [Wounds Threshold +2] and [Wounds Threshold +1] respectively (Capital Ships get both modifications so it would be a net +3 or total of 6 wounds which aligns to an 'equivalent' size/scale.)

[CPJ]

Latest update looks great...

My only comment is; did you intend to give the +4 Coulborne shield heat radiation bonus to the Ship Ops: Activate Shield Effect "weapon" on the Voyager Combat Tab?

All the effects starting with "Ship," look good!