Well, I guess it's as good time as any for a report on
Fate of the Ur-Quan.
Our heroes, already having built the Precursor Tugboat/Flagship thing, with the help of a friendly precursor AI, set course to Earth, which they found encased in a red shield.
Anyone who has already played Star Control 2, most of the story went without many deviations. Combats were stupidly easy, like, the entire flagship (with one attack per player plus one for the nigh-useless crew) versus a single damaged Ilwrath, a single Slylandro probe. I suppose it's ok for a tutorial fight. Next time it's going to be the players vs 5 ships or something.
They found the decoys on the moon, tracked the signal to Pluto, were they had to go on foot because something was jamming sensors from the surface.
As they approached a crater, they found a huge Spathi ship, which killed ensign Kowalski with its defense turrets before they could manage to get inside it (they tried to dissolve the lock with nanites, but the Spathi captain agreed to open the door if they cut it out. He also apologized for the accident with the "automated" turrets).
Inside the ship, they walked thru one of the crew compartments, which was filled with cheap plastic Spathi mannequins, modified to send lifesigns to biosensors. Eventually they go to the bridge. One of the PCs snuck under the floor and to the captain's balcony/thingy that was isolated, while another PC climbed on the class to get to the captain, which he desperately tried to discourage with the windshield wipers and washer fluid.
Eventually, they captured him, tied him up, found out his name was Fwiffo, and was the only one left "guarding" Earth, but he got too scared of the sneaky hunams and hid in Pluto. After volunteering all the information about his homeworld, secret password, etc, they managed to recruit him ("huge ship protecting me? where do I sign up...").
In the end they set course for Spathiwa (encountering the lone probe along the way), and that was the end of the session (couple sessions actually).
So, in the meantime before our next session, been trying to think up a way to set up battles in space, using some sort of board. I came up with this thing:
Made up a bunch of rules for the planet, but basically you move one space normally, and roll if you want to move more than one, which is just typical Fate. Then the center zone has some special rules. A ship can only move once regardless of how many characters are controlling it.
(oh yeah, and the outer ring spaces are connected to the one on the opposite side)
I've been working on the ships-as-gadgets from the Atomic Robo ruleset, so I think I may have something going on there. Also made a bunch of decals from all the ship sprites, now I can make tokens
Anyway, back to the regular programming.