Unification War Batrep

May 2, 2511

Alliance forces, led by General Richard Wilkins, start making their push through the Serenity Valley with the ultimate objective of taking out Independent air defenses. The Independents are operating with defense in depth... as the Alliance begins its assault, looking to push by Independent positions to meet up with a deep flanking group, the Browncoats are merely causing casualties to slow the enemy down and then falling back.

Browncoats hiding in the rocks before the Alliance attack.

The reserves and command team for this Browncoat position,  hiding behind a fold in the ground.

Overview of the defensive position. Surrounded by cliffs on both sides, the Alliance is forced to come through the woods to the North or the scrub to the Northwest. Neither is much of a match for the Independent trench and rocky cover-- a strong defensive line.

Alliance Purplebellies start their approach into the valley.

A squad moves up through the woods.

They advance to the tree line while the other Alliance soldiers move in from the Northwest.

Some context: The Alliance along the tree line and the Purplebellies coming in from the Northwest.

A fire team from the Command Squad moves up through the scrub to provide a crossfire with the squad in the woods. The Browncoats spot this group and make them duck back, while the group in the forest takes some casualties... they manage to knock out two of the Browncoats in the trench. One falls back with a casualty, the other (with an Assault Rifle/Grenade Launcher) holds the line, pinning down the Purplebellies in the forest as well.

Some of the reserves move up to the trenches under the cover of the grenade launcher.

The fire team hiding in the rocks moves up to the Eastern flank of the woods and assaults the pinned Alliance troops.

They manage to take out the entire squad... a big dent in the attacker's forces. Soon the Browncoats will fall back... can't take too many casualties themselves!

The Purplebellies in the scrub try to get a fix on the hidden Browncoats in the trench... they do, this time. Though they are pushed back under cover by the soldiers in the trench, they manage to get a fix on their position, allowing the Lieutenant to throw a seeker grenade at the trench.

Half of the fire team in the woods tries to bomb the Alliance troops, but they fail to kill any. Meanwhile, an Alliance squad falls back to retake the woods from the North.

That squad is ambushed by the two remaining Browncoats, who OOF one Purplebelly. 

The Browncoats are hit by the Seeker, which takes out another 3 soldiers. The Browncoats in the forest fall back to the original defensive line.

The Alliance advances through the scrub, taking casualties but pushing back the Browncoats.

The last few Browncoats to have not escaped off the table (none were left behind in this fight!)  at their fall back position. They were able to escape with no further casualties. 

A good defense for the Browncoats... the Alliance took more casualties and were severely slowed down.

Project Myrmidon: Part 1

(The following batrep/playtest uses the Standard Vector Movement rules, a simplified form of the Flight Simulator Vector Movement rules. As can be seen, they allow larger skirmishes to be played with greater ease.)

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Two weeks ago Project Myrmidon had its first live fire trial. The opfor was played by Task Force Ada, a small Star Navy fleet tasked with patrolling and policing the Second Ring. This force was not aware of Project Myrmidon, and every precaution was taken to ensure that no crewmen could reveal anything with regards to Project Myrmidon's nature or existence after the fact.

This report gives a brief summary of the trial, as revealed through transcripts of Task Force Ada's communications and

*Task Force Ada, this is Star Navy Command, Ring 2. The secrecy of this mission is of the upmost importance. A fleet of modified Star Navy ships have been harassing colonies in the area with electronic warfare. Eliminate the fleet at all costs-- we don't know what it is, but for all we know this is the vector for the next big computer virus.*

Project Myrmidon Prototype RIEApC-2 ("Reaper" as the programming experts have started to call it).

Reaper chose to stay in a slow moving, tight formation in order for its defense platforms to be able to protect the entire fleet from enemy missiles.

*Action in the Second Ring? Never thought  we'd have to use maneuvers of this scale her-* *-Cut the chatter, Outlaw. Launching all Interceptors.* *All pilots, make sure to not veer too far off formation at this point. It is important that you stay within the Interceptor protected zone.*

*Keep accelerating, Task Force.* *Kingmaker this is Deadwood, I'm picking up a dense mass of  IR signatures.* *Can you designate, Deadwood?* *Negative, Kingmaker. Don't seem to have life support but it could just be relatively stealthy engineer.*

*Deadwood, this is Outlaw. Look at how those ships are flying!* *Yeah! Perfectly synced. Almost as if...* *Its one animal.* *Whoa, just noticed a battleship's signature in that clump.* *Forget that, Kingmaker, those fighters just launched too many missiles for our targeting computers to track* *STATIC* *Kingmaker?*

 Reaper managed to see a hole in the interceptors... blocked only by the lone Star Navy battleship. Reaper managed to hack into the battleship and turn off all the PDS, allowing a salvo of missiles, fired from attack platforms, to severely damage the battleship and destroy a frigate.

*Disable those PDS frigates, Deadly. We'll hit them with our missiles once their defenses are down.* *Aye aye!*

This was possibly Reaper's first tactical mistake, though the resourcefulness and skill of the Electronic Warfare specialists of Task Force Ada are also to blame. Losing two thirds of the PDS platforms before making contact with the Interceptors left much of Reaper's fleet useless against the high number of small targets and the heavily armored large targets. That said, Reaper had no way of knowing that Task Force Ada had so few torpedoes and such a high number of PDS, guided cannon, and laser weapons. Making Reaper more adaptable and able to predict such details will be a big step towards taking Reaper out of the prototype phase and into regular use. The programming specialists are right now looking at updating Reaper to not only think tactically but to be able to predict the sort of weapons needed on a given mission and even design systems to produce them autonomously.

*Outlaw, we're going in for our assault.*

*Watch out, Deadly, they're coming out to meet you!* *Those missile buses are going to ram us if we don't stop 'em!*

*Savage, watch out for that PD-- STATIC* *This is Deadly, we just evaded one drone but three others are closing in fast... we can't escape! They've got us! Shi--STATIC* *Alright, we're hightailing.* *Same here. Good luck Ada, Interceptors are outta here.* *This is Outlaw, watch out Interceptors. One PDS Frigate left. Engaging with all weapons.* *You got him! Thanks for the assist!*

 Those Interceptors had their comms cut soon after and were marked as potentially dangerous meteorites. All were incinerated when they reached their fall back planet.

*Whoa, Kingmaker just incinerated!* *Outlaw, this is Overseer. Do not engage that battleship, we just took control of it.* *Then why did it just explode?!?* *Must be a fail-safe against computer take over.* *Thats it! Everyone focus on hacking that carrier. Its the only ship in the position to command these two cruisers, if they're drones.* *Why else would they kamikaze?* *Aye.*

Sure enough, the cruisers hacked into the carrier, the back up after the main Reaper platform self destructed. The rest of the fleet was self destructed, while the remnants of Task Force Ada were given falsified starcharts and redirected into the nearest star. 

Overall, this was a success for Project Myrmidon. Though Task Force Ada ultimately prevailed, it was largely through unexpected resourcefulness and luck. Another view would be that Project Myrmidon lost only one intelligent life on this day, while Ada lost hundreds. With some adjustments to the Reaper program to allow Reaper to think more strategically and learn from mistakes, I think that some of the design mistakes that we humans made will no longer be issues during the next live fire trial.

Beowulf and her crew drift from New Texas towards Ceres, New Oregon.

At the same time, a pirate corvette, the Celestial Eagle, is headed towards Dallas, New Texas, coming at nearly 90˚ to Beowulf's path. Coming in the opposite direction of Beowulf is a military frigate, Overlord. 

Beowulf is on the right edge of the picture. The pirates area in the bottom left, and Overlord is in the upper right corner.

At first the ships just continue on their courses.

As the pirates' ships are marked in Overlord's database as enemies,  Overlord starts firing on the fighters from long range, but does no damage. The fighters fire their thrusters to engage Overlord.

Overlord kills one of the fighter's pilots and the other is destroyed by a shot from the laser. The fighters turn to fire on Overlord but cannot penetrate Overlord's armor.

While the fighters and Overlord are engaging each other, the Celestial Eagle hails Beowulf and demands that they come to relative stop. To reinforce the message, they fire on Beowulf but cause no significant damage.

Beowulf is unarmed, so gives in as cannon fire causes Heavy Damage, cuts off parts of Beowulf's fuel supply, and reduces Beowulf's armor. 

At the same time, the fighters make a pass by Overlord, dogfighting with the slower frigate. Despite some skilled piloting, Overlord loses some Armor as a result of the fight. Its own laser manages to heavily damage one of the fighters, reducing fuel and speed significantly. The fighters are effectively out of the fight, using their last fuel to move on a vector that will make them easy to pick up/refuel after the battle.

To escape the fighters, Overlord accelerates with its main engine towards the Celestial Eagle and Beowulf. Celestial Eagle has just begun boarding Beowulf... while at the same time, the pilot of the Celestial Eagle is killed by fire from Overlord which lightly damages the ship.

As I have details on the crew and this is a campaign I'm following more closely than a quick battle, I decide to play out the boarding action with 5150. 

The crew prepares for boarding... Dempson and Sarah hide in the engine room with their weapons drawn, while Yosi and Sam prepare to stop any attempts at taking the cockpit. Poor Doctor Sera is stuck alone far away from anyone else as Beowulf is boarded; he's in the medbay downstairs!

The pirates' captain and his two best soldiers come in through the airlock first. Closely behind them are 4 of the regular crewmen... the engineer and the pilot (who is killed as this is all going on) stayed back on the Celestial Eagle.

Two of the pirates capture Doctor Sera while the Captain and his first mate head upstairs and wait for back up before proceeding. Meanwhile, Yosi and Sam have a minor disagreement over whether to try to ambush the pirates and retake their (now damaged) ship or to wait and see how things play out. Sam easily wins the argument, as he doesn't want to lose Sera and they are heavily outgunned. He accepts that they are probably going to be captured, but hopes for a better opportunity to show up soon.

The pirates regroup on the main deck in the crew area (kitchen,  lounge area, crew cabins).

Then I roll doubles for activation and go back to the space combat. Overlord turns to continue firing (like a mobile turret) on Celestial Eagle as it flies by. Celestial Eagle is now severely damaged.

The Engineer comes over onto Beowulf to escape the fire. Meanwhile, the pirate captain and his first mate come into the bridge area. There is a standoff between the crew of the Beowulf and the crew of the Celestial Eagle in the engine room and the cockpit. 

(The following is the result of an Argument Roll).

"Stand down, cowboy, I don't think you know how to use that gun." The Pirate Captain says to Sam.
"Lets skip to business," Sam responds, "We know that you have one of our crew captive downstairs."
"Captive for now. If my pilot isn't flying this ship in ten sec--" His first mate whispers in his ear-- "Well if you're not flying this ship the way I want it in ten seconds, your crewman's dead and this situation will get a bit more interesting."
"Look," Yosi says as he lowers his weapon, "We don't need to point guns at you, the authorities are already shooting theirs'. Now I don't think the authorities like me too much either. So I see this going one of two ways. Either you stand down and we all get out of this, settle our differences later, or we fight now but we all get killed-- by that frigate or by each other."
"Why don't we just kill you and get out of here ourselves?"
"Because," says Sam, "As soon as your finger goes for that trigger, I'll press shit button," he raises a small communicator "And we hail that ship. As soon as they hear that we're boarded and under attack, they'll come straight for you.
"Besides, without a pilot, I doubt you'll be able to outrace them with this beat up freighter."
There is a tense moment of silence.
"Alright," says the pirate captain as he lowers his weapon. "Just get us out of here."

So the combined crews (minus the fighter pilots and the pilot of the Celestial Eagle) pull away from the exploding Celestial Eagle.

The Overlord finishes off the Celestial Eagle, assuming that Beowulf was merely escaping its pursuers. By the time Overlord realizes that Beowulf has pirates on board-- it picks up the two fighters peacefully-- Overlord is too far away to positively ID Beowulf, as its high velocity from escaping the fighters took a little while to beat, and Beowulf hit the antimatter drives to get away. Figuring that they weren't sure that Beowulf was criminal, the Overlord merely posts a note to look out for all ships of that class and continues on its original path.

Slice of Life

So, remember back in December when I first started working on a somewhat Traveller-like character generation system for 5150?

That was working pretty well, but since then I've been working on Fringe Space a bit more (especially the campaign elements) and recently finished my work on gaming Personalities and Relationships.

Simply, characters are defined by two elements of personality:

                 Pragmatic            Neutral              Idealistic   Y
Altruistic
Social
Normal
Tribal
Selfish
X

And their relationships are defined in a similar way:
                  Antagonistic   Neutral       Cooperative         Y
Love
Friendship
Acquaintance (not a very accurate name, but whatever)
Rivalry
Enemies
X

Note that these represent fundamentals... A character can be People: 5, Altrusitic (Pragmatic) and that can be interpreted in a million ways. Thats up to the player.

He could be a character who generally wants to help everyone even at risk of hurting himself (Altruistic) but accepts that sometimes you have to take the greater of two evils (Pragmatic), and as a result is likable and convincing as he is not overly idealistic while still always looking out for others (People 5).

He could be a lovable jerk (People 5) who's sense of humor wins people over, always wants the best for the entire world (Altruistic) but recognizes that his own life is the most important to preserve in most situations, as if he dies, then he cannot continue to help others (Pragmatic).

He could be a very good liar (People 5) who lies and manipulates to win people over (Pragmatic) to his side, which just so happens to generally be for the greater good above all else (Altruistic). He could even be a highly charismatic EVIL character, whose idea of the greater good is the idea that all people who sin must die to pave the way for a future utopia (like The Operative in Serenity).

Very different interpretations (Note that evil characters will have this fundamental difference be represented more by their affiliation and place in the game, not by their personality... as a result a character who is evil but has some good intentions might be easier to reason with than a character who is just evil for selfish or illogical reasons). But within the system of social interaction (to be presented below) they all actually behave in rather similar ways most of the time.

Same with Relationships.

Two characters love each other? They could just be very close friends or they could be spouses.
Antagonistic? They could just really enjoy fighting each other or they could assume that because the other is usually wrong they will tend to fight against them.
Note that antagonistic does not mean little bickering here and there, or even that they will get in the occasional big fight (as most couples in love tend to do-- usually for good reasons). It represents a general tendency to side against that character for whatever reason. A Love/Antagonistic relationship is not a great situation and could, for example, represent brothers who do love each other and want to protect each other but at the same time never agree on what is right.

So, how do these characters interact?

They can have Conversations and Arguments.

Arguments are somewhat like people opposed challenges in 5150 NB. They are modified, however, and come up when characters disagree about course of action (for example, if I tell one of my crew to kill a captured enemy when they are morally opposed to killing outside of combat) or when characters confront each other to cause change (If that character didn't fight that individual decision but confronted mine to try to change his personality-- probably to be less Pragmatic or more Altruistic). Arguments also vary by Heat Level-- how heated the argument is. If its a minor thing then its usually going to result in one giving in easily, while if the heat level is high the argument can become violent-- though often if you succeed in convincing a character in a high Heat argument, you'll fundamentally change them as well (hopefully this is for the better!) Heat is determined by the relationship of two characters, what the argument is over, and some other factors (arguments can also escalate to higher heat levels).

Conversations are a bit different. Instead of taking one character's Pep and pitting it against another's, the Pep scores are combined, modified (based upon how much the characters have in common WRT personality type), and then rolled for successes... with different amounts of successes causing different things.

Most of the time Conversation results in minor changes to relationship type (usually for the better) or nothing, but they can turn into Arguments as well. In some circumstances they can also give you information instead of relationship changes... play nice and people will do you favors. These can usually also be gained by arguing, but its a different process (the difference between wearing down someone withholding information from you by fighting them and just gaining their trust until they tell you).

In theory you could also have a situation where one is trying to make friends with another but the other doesn't want to contribute their pep score to the Conversation... I'm not sure why this would happen, however.

Lying works the same way as arguing but what is being "argued" over is really more like trying to convince another of something being true-- failure means they detect the lie (and may be angry about it), success means they believe you and may trust you more in the future.

On to an example.

After the last mission, in which Samuel Fresco was injured and then saved by Sarah Resnik, Yosi Parr (co-owner of the ship, Beowulf, along with Sam) took control of the crew and led a woman and her brother to their deaths at the hand of a vengeful old mercenary.

Samuel Fresco (Normal Pragmatic) was okay with the woman's death-- he's a mercenary soldier, and she was the target, and the vengeful old merc, Ha-Dam, seemed to have a good reason. But her brother was not guilty of anything, and was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Allowing Ha-Dam to kill him just to increase his revenge on the woman seemed immoral to Sam.

Yosi (Selfish Pragmatic), on the other hand, didn't mind at all. Given that Sam was reluctant to take such a violent mission in the first place (he envisioned his crew as private security contractors who helped keep colonies safe from pirates and similar, not as a ruthless assassin's club), and Yosi was the one who convinced the crew to take it, Sam was not happy with Yosi.

As the crew was brand new, Sam and Yosi were Neutral Acquaintances.

But  before Sam confronted Yosi, he wanted to thank Sarah (Tribal Pragmatic, a -1 in Conversations due to personality differences) for helping him get out of the combat alive.
Though Sam and Sarah are on the same ship, they do not know each other well (again, crew is a group of strangers who came together as coworkers and nothing more) so are also Neutral Acquaintances (+1).

So Sam goes to Sarah's room on Beowulf. (Sam and Sarah have a Conversation).
Sam is a pretty friendly fellow (Pep 4). Sarah is a bit on the shy side, but what she lacks in conversational skills she makes up for with a pretty smile (Pep 3 + Attractive).
"Hey Sarah."
"Sam."
"I heard about what happened in that gunfight. You saved my life. I wanted to thank you." (Circumstance: +1 die, as they have a reason to be friendly)
Now, what actually happened (The first time I rolled the dice) was that they had a very good conversation and became instant friends (specifically, Cooperative Friends).
They had similar views, they had some good laughs, found each other appealing, and so on. Details are up to the player.
Here were some other ways it could have turned out:
They could have just become Cooperative Acquaintances, realizing their common goals meant they generally agree with each other... though not having any particular personal attachment as a result of this conversation.
They could have become Neutral Friends, where they have some amount of personal attachment but don't find themselves to have that much in common when it comes to decision making and the like.
They could have just had a bit of chit chat.
Other results are possible but because they had a fairly high combined dice pile it is very unlikely for things to go bad.

It should be noted that conversations like these-- which result in changes to relationship type-- are actually not that frequent. They represent time spent together on the ship and such.

The type of conversation where the results are more like "Find out about so and so" or "get so and so mission" are much more common.

Arguments are somewhat similar, as many arguments "in the field" never actually get started... they CAN start, but its a random chance and usually not a high one. Confrontations with the goal of, essentially, preventing such arguments from happening at all (by changing personality types) are a bit more common but like Conversations take some time.

Anyway, after befriending Sarah, Sam goes off to confront Yosi.
Both characters are Pep 4, but in arguments you can make use of more than just Pep. Yosi brings in his 3 Notoriety... but Sam counters with 5 Fame. The Heat is 3-- this is a life or death argument between Acquaintances over whether or not Yosi should be Tribal instead of Selfish (and possibly, whether Sam should be Tribal instead of Normal if Yosi counter attacks).
What actually happens is a bit dramatic. They get in a fist fight. Yosi won't back down-- this is his ship as well, and they're going to do the missions the way that pays best, not the way that helps Sam's conscience.
Sam similarly won't back down-- if Yosi is going to be a mad dog, he needs to be put down.
Yosi swings at Sam, and they get into a bit of a brawl.
As a result of the fight, the two characters are now Antagonistic Rivals. They don't like each other so much and are more likely to argue in the future. The fight is also left unresolved-- unlike a more decisive victory, a fist fight means Sam can try to convince Yosi again and vice versa on the same subject (without further cause), but now with a higher Heat (as a result of being rivals).

Things aren't looking great for the unity of the crew of Beowulf!

Some other stuff could have happened:
If the dice had fallen differently, I got a result where Yosi became Tribal, convinced by Sam, and another time where not only did Yosi become Tribal but the butting of heads actually resulted in Sam and Yosi becoming Cooperative Friends!

Might do another encounter with Beowulf tomorrow... this time, their unarmed ship encounters Pirates, but luckily there is a police ship in the area.

Trading in Space: First Test

Decided to post a quick little test of the current economics system for Fringe Space.

Note that Fringe Space is for playing a few ships in a Campaign.... you're not the grand admiral of Earth's fleet. The economics system reflects this... often times a planet is no good to trade with because the big merchants and government aid, which is obviously beneficial to them in some way, make it so that the market isn't good for a small trader.

So worlds are defined (economically) by three factors:

Type: A vague description of the world's place in the economy.
Barren: These worlds don't produce anything valuable enough to trade in space (at least not in bulk).
Farm: These worlds produce an excess supply of food and similar necessities, while being relatively weak in other areas.
Mining: Produce useful materials and even low level manufacturing, but are net importers of food and more complicated machinery.
Generator: Similar to Mining worlds, but the specific material that they produce in abundance is an important source of energy.... a good place to refuel your ship! (note that this is often "artificial" energy... its not that there happens to be rocket fuel sitting around, its that this planet has a lot of infrastructure built for, say, mass producing antimatter).
Developed: Like Earth. Combines the food of a Farm planet with the resources/manufacturing ability of a Mining planet, while also having the infrastructure to produce complex machinery (like space ship parts). Also an important source of Luxury goods, as these planets tend to have a longer history and larger culture. Doesn't generally import, with the exception of luxury goods.
Trade: Kinda like the opposite of a Developed planet. While a Developed planet is essentially independent, a Trade planet is useful more for astrographic reasons than its natural resources or infrastructure. For whatever reason, this world is a common stopping place for merchants and so has very fluctuating market... it rarely wants (as there is a constant stream of goods from larger corporate trade) but also frequently doesn't offer great prices for a buyer (as a lot of stuff is imported).  On occasion great profits can be had buying OR selling from these worlds, though, and these worlds are also a center for intrigue and adventure. Fuel tends to be an important import.


Equally important to World Type is Population and Law Level, which both range from 1-6. Population has to do with raw population as well as density, and essentially shows purchasing power as well. Law Level basically increases buy price and decreases sell price because you need to get around tariffs or bribe officials to sell goods. This can be negated by smuggling, but this can be risky.

The Goods are:
Material (Usually from Mining Worlds)
Machinery (Developed Worlds)
Food (Farms)
Fuel (for your ship OR to be traded, though this is rarely profitable)
Luxury (which come from all worlds).
There are also special trade items but those are specific to adventures. (for example, a rare alien artifact, or supplying weapons to a rebellion).

The buy and sell price for these is modified by planet type, population, law level, and sometimes even distance from port of origin (luxury items are more valuable from farther away... what self respecting 3rd world dictator gives his guests French wine when he can get the Martian crop of 2128? For this reason Luxury goods are marked in the cargo hold not as "luxury" but as "Mars-Luxury")

All goods are available on all planets, but in some cases there is no way to get a profit. Keep in mind that all listed profits in the following exercises do not include travel expenses, like fuel. Under the current system it looks like you need to be careful with planning your trade routes, especially if you are mobile. There are some cases where you can literally fly around one world and act as a cargo airplane of sorts, but these tend to be the sort of worlds you don't want to stay on too long... or you can only buy and sell a little bit in any given week as the population is low.

When selling OR buying you are always limited by the world's population... you can never sell more units than the world has population in one week (technically a quarter month, the campaign turn), and you can never buy more than twice the population.

First I set up my little system:

Sol
-
Earth (Grav 3, Developed, Population 6, Law 5) - Luna (Generator, Grav 0, Population 2, Law 2) - Orbital Stations (Grav 0, Barren, Population 5, Law 3)
-
Mars (Grav 1, Trade, Population 3, Law 3) - Mars Orbital Stations (Grav 0, Farm, Population 1, Law 3)
-
Asteroid Belt (Grav 0, Mining, Population 2, Law 3)

Some of this was randomly generated, but a lot of it wasn't. Doesn't matter too much which you do.

Here's how prices are determined (In "Items" from New Beginnings):
All prices are modified in the following way
1) roll a d6
2) if you're on a trade world, then on a roll of 1-2 subtract 2 or 4 (1 and 2 respectively) from the buy price and increase the sell price by the same amount. If you roll a 5-6 do the opposite.
3) If you're not on a trade world, then a roll of 1 will decrease buy price by 1 and increase sell price by 1, and 6 will do the opposite.

Note that it never costs money to sell something and you never make money by buying something. All negatives become 0 instead (so cheap its basically free). If, for whatever reason, you can sit around on one planet and buy and sell the same good and make money (for example, on a mining world with a population of 1 and a law of 1, then material costs 1 but sells for 3) then you can do this, however, you must wait a turn to sell after buying... you'll need to pay all expenses for this time. This represents you moving goods around on the planet itself and making a small profit. You'll still need to pay for the fuel of flying around the world, as well. (this is usually only possible with high population planets, so resource disparities makes sense. Also, low Law... so you're also in increased danger on the planet of being pirated).
P= Population
L= Law
D= Distance (1= same orbit, 2= one orbit away, 3= two orbits away, and so on...)

In the formulas you'll note that sometimes a variable is marked in the following way:
(P:x). This means that the number there is the difference between the given world's P value and a P value of x. For example, if (P:3) is seen in a formula, then if the world's P=5, then the number used is 2. If P=1, then the number used would be 2 as well.

Always round up fractions.

Buy---------------- Food------Material------Machinery------Fuel-------Luxury
Barren                 7+L         7+L               7+L                3+L          -P+6
Farm                  (P:3)+L  4+(P:4)+L   5+(P:4)+L        3+L           -P+6
Generator            4+L+.5P 4+L+.5P     3+L+.5P             L             -P+6
Mining                4+L+.5P   (P:3)+L   4+(P:4)+L         3+L           -P+6
Trade                 .5P+L+3    .5P+L+2      (P:3)+L+1        4+L           -P+5
Developed        .5P+L+2     .5P+L+1    (P:4)+L-2          3+L           -P+4
Sell-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Barren                8+P-L      8+P-L         8+P-L               6-L          3*D-L+.5P

Farm                   .5P-L       8+P-L          10+P-L           6-L           3*D-L+.5P

Generator           8+P-L      8+P-L          10+P-L           0               3*D-L+.5P

Mining               8+P-L      .5P-L            10+P-L           6-L           3*D-L+.5P

Trade                P-L+1      P-L+1           (P:3)-L+5        8-L           3*D-L+P

Developed        (P-L)        (P-L)             (P-L)               6-L           3*D-L+P

Alright, enough of the scary looking formulas (they're actually quite simple, of course).

Here's my analysis:

The best places to buy (not taking into account gravity and position, though because I based the planet type in part on gravity thats in many ways accounted for already):

Food from Mars Orbit (honorable mention to Moon)

Material from the Belt (honorable mention to Moon)

Machinery from Mars (honorable mention to Moon, Earth)

Fuel from the Moon

Luxuries from Earth (though because luxuries depend so much on where you're going for their value, and the fact that they're all relatively cheap on the home world but expensive over at the next orbit, they're all pretty good).

The best places to sell (not counting luxuries because I'm too lazy to do an analysis from each planet to planet.... generally its best to sell at Mars or Earth and be selling from as far away as possible. Earth--Belt and vice versa is one of the most lucrative trades in the setting, but its costly in fuel and time).

Food in Earth Orbit (honorable mention to Moon, Belt.... note that the moon has multiple cases where you can do intralunar trade and make a nice profit.... its just that the moon is low population AND law, so its a bit dangerous and you can't trade much at any one time, and you generally don't make as much).

Material in Earth Orbit (honorable mention to Mars Orbit, the Moon)

Machinery in Earth Orbit or the Moon (honorable mention to Mars Orbit and the Belt)

Fuel on Mars (everywhere else you are at a net loss, at least when you account for the fact that you need to get where you are going, too). 

So there you have it.

I think it sets up some interesting situations, and once you get going its not overly complicated.

Of course the problem is that if someone is generating more than just one system (note that I'm ignoring unsettled planets which normally you don't, though for trade purposes you do, and that I'm also doing just half a star system.... the outer planets are very active in most settings with all the little moons) it can take awhile to work out the trade routes... but then again, one can generally tell a good trade just by world type. Its just that the hard core merchants who really want to get into it can also take into account gravity, travel time, etc, and figure out the best route....

So its a good enough system that a mercenary can do a little trading on the side with ease, but also that more detail oriented players can really make good use of, IMO.

Once More With Characters

A few days ago I painted some "character" models... I think altogether these are my best paint jobs in 15mm yet. A combination of new brushes, new paints, and increasing skill has resulted in these fine models:

Took some photos with flash and some without, as the Black Widow gets 'whited out' with flash while the commandoes can be seen in better detail... but they also look good 'desaturated' so...

The Flash even made one of the Black Widow's black arms look white on one side (the side being flashed), so don't look too closely =D

Obviously the Black Widow (Rebel Minis) on the far left is based on Miranda from Mass Effect. I actually really liked this model painted up-- I was a bit worried that they were too skinny and stick-like, but with some good washes and careful brush work she fits right in with all the less heroically proportioned models in my collection. I do wish the face was a bit better cast, but the hair pretty much makes it that you can only see the nose and mouth anyway, so no big.

The other guys are pretty generic special forces. I was going for DPM with the camo, and I think I got the gist of it... the goggles look nice outlined, brown helmets I was a little unsure of at first but now I like it, and I think the dark green shirt/jacket under the body armor and kit contrasts just enough with the camo to make the models look good without ruining the camo.

A friend pointed out that I was probably unconsciously influenced by the SAS characters in Call of Duty:

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100924234407/callofduty/images/5/58/1_SAS_soldier.png

Who seem to wear a rather similar outfit (if much more desaturated due to the nature of "real is brown" philosophy in video game design).

Some Paintin'

Painted some stuff recently... just thought I'd offer a sampler to show where I'm going with things.

First, some near future US troops (RAFM Traveller midtechers)

I thought that the mix of the old and the new/futuristic made them look appropriately near future (We're talking mid 21st century, though they could probably pass as modern US troops with a little squinting and I'm planning on using them as fairly generic non-hostile environment troops up until about 2170). I think thats the "Firefly Principle"-- by mixing old fashioned with futuristic you end up with a realistic future without it feeling too much like today. I think I was definitely inspired a bit by Ghost Recon for the look of these guys.... I tried to get a multi-cam-ish look for these guys (there are 6 colors in that camo pattern...) and I think it looks okay, it certainly doesn't look like the UCP or Woodland, or like my tiger stripe Navy Seals (I should really post some pics of those at some point). Doesn't really matter if its not perfect, of course, because camo patterns get adjusted all the time, I'm certain they'd change a bit in the next 50 years. These boys have already seen combat as regular infantry to be rescued by a joint Canadian-US commando team in a near future WW3 scenario (they were pinned down by Neo-Soviet revolutionaries in a US-allied Russia).

The one other thing I find a bit strange about these fellows is their weapons. I've pretty much arbitrarily decided that the gas-masked fellow is the SAW (his weapon looks kinda like a Sten but I could imagine that the magazine is actually a box magazine with caseless ammo, which I assume all the weapons use due to their relatively small magazines), the guy to the left of the squad leader is a grenadier, and the others have assault rifles of some futuristic design.

Also, I applied my second layer to Serenity (fixing up the engines, mostly.... I still feel like the color of the actual ship is a bit too bluish and not quite greenish enough, or is it brownish.... its a hard color to get), painted up two other similarly sized ships. I imagined the bluish one to either be a patrol ship for the Alliance or a similarly powerful organization while the red and white one feels more like a pirate to me. I tried to paint certain elements of both ships to look somewhat like a heat radiator... I kinda like the blue ship with the bright panels, but I'm not sure its worth painting all my ships in this way.... there are ways to cover them or make them less visible in theory, so even for my hard SF setting its not really needed.

With ships this size I'm thinking that I should cut all the ranges in 5150 Fringe Space in half.... ships moved a bit too quickly across the map, anyway.