I finally got a chance to actually look these games through with more detail. (I am super sick... was exposed to mold spores and now have a chest thing going on, so in bed coughing up my lungs resting up so I can survive the next work week) Now these games are very different from SF, they are strategic empire building games, with some very complex ideas/mechanics in SE. However there are some things I noted besides Tetrarchs being in the Background History (aka timeline) and races that could easily be the seed ideas for Dralasites & Vrusks. <div><br /></div><div>First the ships do jump, takes forever to calculate a jump (1 month). You can not jump through certain space hazards like clouds as you need a visual fix on destination & like 5 other fixed points. I need to study the ships more but the ships at least in SP are huge colonization/exploration, 2000 crew type huge. One big difference is distance a ship can jump... SF has it's safety cap, but SE has different tech that sets the max safe distance... one thing to keep in mind is these are early non streamlined games, and by the time we get SF or KH a lot of other games had been designed, so other ideas had been developed for R&D to draw from.</div><div><br /></div><div>In SE research has allowed for the discovery of different Hyper-Space dimensions: All of which opens up new tech options. The game is designed to reflect huge civilization building, maintenance, development and destruction... however this creates a need for specific resources, planetary & system classification based on species needs, government systems and more.</div><div><br /></div><div>In fact a lot of SE could be reworked as quick aides for refs in creating worlds and scenarios more randomly. </div><div><br /></div><div>Now based on TSRs naming scheme I am sure they went with SF over AW because they had planned to release a third Star game for RPGing individual PCs but had never got around to it, I doubt the few proto attempts in Blackmoor looked anything like SF though as different game designers where involved in those games than the creator of SF. </div><div><br /></div><div>I really like the layered Star Map the two games have and would like to convert that idea to SF. I am not sure how to convert that though: In SE you count number of hexes (squares) to the system and then add the number by the star, but you half which ever number is less. So lets say it is 3 LY to Star X and Star X is -5 then it is 1 1/2 + 5 = 6 1/2 LY. What do you guys think? Save or Junk it or Tweak the LY calculation?</div><div><br /></div>
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