OT - favorite science fiction-another touchy feelie

[BeeDee10]

quote:

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Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
For slowing ships down- perhaps the "random movement" ability?

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I'm not sure how that one works. Would it affect bases and satellites? If so, that would make for a rather interesting system but I don't think it fits the Zones very well

quote:

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perhaps the maintance decrease ability? Can you apply that to a system? So as you get deeper, that ability starts to get weaker, making your ships more expensive.

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I believe it would work as a system ability, since the Crystalline Restructuring Facility reduces maintenance system-wide already. But I think that would give an unfair advantage to races originating in the Beyond (that's the name for the high-tech area, for those that aren't familiar with AFUtD) because they could build up a larger fleet to send into the Slow Zone (that's the low-tech area) than the Slow Zone people could build to send into the Beyond.

I guess I could remove the unfairness by having all races start in the Slow Zone. Then I could use every trick in the book to make the Slow Zone into the armpit of the quadrant, with combat penalties and resource penalties and research penalties. Everyone will race to colonize the Beyond and all the big wars will be fought up there, just like in the book.

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Using combat sensor abilities would probably be a bad idea. It would affect all ships evenly, so the low tech ships would be at a disdvantage no matter where they were.

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No, a low-tech ship that left the Slow Zone would regain normal combat sensor abilities as it entered the Beyond systems that didn't have the combat sensor penalty. By giving all ships in the slow zone a to-hit penalty, people in the Slow Zone would favour using missiles, fighters, larger ship hulls, shorter-range direct fire weapons (to reduce range accuracy penalties), and maybe torpedoes. The Beyonders who come charging in with their high-tech shielded WMG cruisers would be at a disadvantage against native Slow-Zone ships loaded with missiles and piles of armor.

Or so I would imagine, anyway. I need to test this out some. My main goal is to make certain types of ships and technology preferable in one half of the quadrant while a different type of technology is preferable in the other half. I don't want to just use shield dampening for this, either, since then organic races would kick Slow-Zoner butt.
Has anyone ever tried giving a system level five sensor ability to eliminate cloaking devices?

Here are the c-d authors.
Grant Callin - Saturn Alia
John W. Campbell - The Ultimate Weapon
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game
Jayce Carr - Leviathon's Deep
Terry Carr - Fellowship of the Stars
Lin Carter - Time War
Jeffrey Carver - The Infinity Link
Jack Chalker - Twilight At The Well Of Souls
A. Bertram Chandler - Star Loot
C.J. Cherryh - Hunter of Worlds, Serpent's Reach, Book of Morgaine,Cuckoo's Egg, heck ALL of them except the short stories
John Christopher - Tripods trilogy
Arthur C. Clark - Rendevous With Rama
Jo Clayton - Drinker of Souls
Hal Clement - Through the Eye of a Needle
William Cochrane - Class Six Climb
Allan Cole & Chris Bunch - Sten series
Michael Coney - The Jaws That Bite, The Claws That Catch
Gerard Conway - Mindship
Glen Cook - The Black Company
Paul Cook - Halo
Edmund Cooper - A Far Sunset
Lee Correy - A Matter of Metalaw
Juanita Coulson - The Singing Stones
Robert Coulson - Gates of the Universe
Richard Cowper - Time Out of Mind
Joan Cox - Star Web
Ray Cummings - The Exile of Time
Damiel Da Cruz - The Ayes of Texas
Brian Daley - Jinx On a Terran Inheritance
John Dalmas - The Reality Matrix
Arsen Darnay - The Splendid Freedom
Avram Davidson - Clash of Star Kings
L. Sprague DeCamp - Lest Darkness Fall
Michael DeLarrabeiti - The Borribles
Lester DelRay - Police Your Planet
Ansen Dibell - Pursuit of the Screamer
Phillip Dick - Galactic Pot-Healer
Gordon Dickson - all of them
David Drake - all of them

Here are the e-g authors.
G.C. Edmondson - The Man Who Corrupted Earth
George Effinger - What Entropy Means To Me
Gordon Eklund - All Times Possible
Suzette Hayden Elgin - everything
Phillip Jose Farmer - Time's Last Gift
Mick Farren - Protectorate
Howard Fast - A Touch of Infinity
Jonathan Fast - Mortal Gods
John Faucette - Who Claims This Galaxy
Arnold Federbush - The Man Who Lived In Inner Space
Cynthia Felice - Godsfire
Kenneth Flint - Champions of the Sidhe
D.C. Fontana - The Questor Tapes
William Forstchen - Into the Sea of Stars
Robert Forward - Dragon's Egg
Alan Dean Foster - The Man Who Used The Universe
M.A. Foster - The Gameplayers of Zan
Gardner Fox - The Hunter Out Of Time
Leo Frankowski - all of them
Egon Freidell - The Return of the Time Machine
Gregory Frost - Tain
Esther Friesner - Mustapha and His Wise Dog
Daniel Galouye - Lords of the Psychon
Raymond Gallun - The Planet Strappers
Dav Garnett - The Starseekers
Randall Garrett - Too Many Magicians
Richard Garvin - The Fortec Conspiracy
Jean Gawron - Algorithm
David Gerrold - everything
Mark Geston - Lords of the Starship
Alexis Gilliland - eveything
John Glasby - Project Jove
Donald Glut - Spawn
Tom Godwin - Beyond Another Sun
Stephen Goldin - The Eternity Brigade
Rex Gordon - First Through Time
Stuart Gordon - Fire In The Abyss
Phyllis Gotlieb - A Judgement of Dragons
Ron Goulart - A Talent For The Invisible
Robert Graham - War of Nerves
Charles Grant - Legion
Richard Grant - Saraband of Lost Time
Geary Gravel - The Pathfinders
Joseph Green - Conscience Interplanetary
Roland Green - Peace Company
Sharon Green - To Battle the Gods
Irving Greenfield - The Stars Will Judge
William Greenleaf - Time Jumper
Russell Griffin - The Time Servers
David Grinnell - Across Time
James Gunn - Breaking Point
Lindsay Gutteridge - Cold War In A Country Garden

Here are the h-i authors.
Steven Hahn - Mindwipe!
Isidore Haiblum - The Identity Plunderers
Jack Haldeman II - Vector Analysis
Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
Edmond Hamilton - Starwolf
Karl Hansen - War Games
Charles Harness - Firebird
Harry Harrison - all of them
Kenneth Hassler - Intergalac Agent
Simon Hawke - all of them
Ward Hawkins - Red Flame Burning
H.F. Heard - Doppelgangers
Robert Heinlein - all of them
Zenna Henderson - The People No Different Flesh
Frank Herbert - The Santaroga Barrier, Hellstrom's Hive
Phillip High - The Time Mercenaries
P.C. Hodgell - God Stalk
James Hogan - all of them
Joan Hunter Holly - The Time Twisters
H.M. Hoover - Return To Earth
Robert Hoskins - To Control The Stars
Robert E. Howard - Wolfshead
Fred Hoyle - October The First Is Too Late
Hoyle & Hoyle - The Incandescent Ones
Trevor Hoyle - Through the Eye Of Time
L. Ron Hubbard - Slaves Of Sleep
Edward Hughes - The Long Mynd
Zach Hughes - all of them
Dean Ing - all of them

[capnq]

I don't remember when I started reading SF regularly. I remember borrowing Jules Verne's _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ from the elementary school library and not being able to finish it; that would have been somewhere around '69-71. The earliest SF book I can remember finishing is Madeleine L'Engle's _A Wrinkle in Time_. In the mid-70's my favorite was Isaac Asimov's _Foundation_ trilogy, which I read all three books of in as many days. In my freshman year of college in '77, I got a Work-Study job as an operator for the Carnegie-Mellon University Computer Science Department, where I discovered several years' worth of back issues of _Analog_ shelved under one of the machine room desks. The most recent SF I recall reading was probably Timothy Zahn's _Conqueror's_ trilogy.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

[Deathstalker]

(Geeze, not a Deathstalker book among them )....

My fav's: Simon R. Green (All, Deathstalker series esp, and Shadows Fall),
Chris Clairmont (First Flight series),
Stephen R. Donaldson (Covenant series),
Battletech/StarWars,
Michael Stackpole (any)
Matt. W. Stover (Heroes Die, Blade of Tyshalle, any)
Charles Sheffield (Aftermath, Starfire)
David Feintuch (Seafort series)
Orson Scott Card (ENDER!!!!)
J. McKinney (Robotech),
H. Turtledove (Worlds War series),
J.R. Dunn (Days of Cain,<time travel to try to kill Hitler, hero has to decide to stop it or not, good stuff> )
Ben Bova (Exiles)
A.D. Foster (Aliens)
McCaffrey's Pern of course,
S.M. Stirling (Islands in the Sea of Time, etc)
T. Dicks (Dr.Who)
LOTS of Fantasy, (Michelle West, Mellanie Rawn, Tolkien<imagine if he had done SF!!>, too many to list> ).

'Nuff said for now......

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"And what the hell would you know about sanity?" demanded Beatrice. "There are depressed lemmings on the edge of cliffs who've got a better grasp on reality than you have. And more common sense."--Simon R. Green 'Deathstalker Rebellion'.

"We are all...the sum of our scars"....(paraphrased) Matt. R. Stover-'Blade of Tyshalle'.

[LazarusLong42]

If you want to go to Speculon after 15 September, you'll find my story "A Mind of Her Own" out for all to read. (Woo! A paid publication!)

I can't help plugging.