"Spaceship racing in Full Thrust?" Topic

Has anyone ever done a set of rules for spaceship racing in Full Thrust?

Asking as working on some for my own use and wanted to see what other folks may have come up with. Have seen one person on FT Facebook group did do a scenario using vector,but plan on doing cinematic myself.

Any suggestions/help is appreciated.

I vaguely remember running something to get folks used to the movement system before actual battles, but don't have any particulars to convert to suggestions.

I THINK I started with simple pairs of flags to pass between, and graduated to denser and denser asteroid fields.

Sorry.

Now that I think on it, running as a rally would keep folk out of each other's way. Wish I'd tried that.

Doug

PS Of course, if you DO want to include guns, I'd like to hear more. The few WH40K-based circuit races were always hoots.

I would think that the ships with higher thrust would win, unless you put some curves and a few stops in the track.

Maybe a race through an asteroid field, where the asteroids move. bwaahahaha!

Not a race per se, but a scenario to explain how vector movement works. Essentially a rally course with the aim to shoot a set of markers. link
You could adapt it to cinematic movement easily.
However, as noted above, a speed based race will just go to the ship with the greater thrust. Ships with similar manoeuvrability will perform the same. So you need to consider what is being tested in the race and how you balance luck versus player decisions. Formula D does a great job of this for motor racing, but not sure how you would mimic that for space ships.

How about a "dogfight" where the goal is to maneuver to a trailing position at a certain a certain range behind your opponent.

Alternatively, you could have a preprogrammed drone and the first one to get into the tailing position wins.

I thought full thrust didn't use vector movement. It was a highly simplified variant.

Hi Dynaman8789. FT has two movement modes referred to as 'cinematic' and 'vector'. The latter models the ship inertia (speed and direction) and applies manoeuvring thrust to alter course. The resulting displacement is then used to calculate a new velocity vector. It is simplified in comparison to some other rules, but more 'realistic' than yet other rules. For me, it is a happy medium of playability and 'feel'.

I only had the original printed Full Thrust which only had the cinematic option that I'm aware of. Full Thrust has a near infinite number of variants out there.

@Dynaman Vector was presented as an option in Fleet Book 1 which also gave us 6 firing arcs instead of 4 and a much improved ship design system that got rid of much of the single path optimization problem of the original.
I definitely recommend picking up Fleet Book 1 if your a fan of FT it really does improve the game (and it's now free).

Robert

Not a race per se, but a scenario to explain how vector movement works.

Then setup a few stationary asteroids. Your task is to approach and enter orbit around each one, to perform a radar scan looking for minerals.

I think there are orbit rules in one of the fleet books, or you just fudge it: A ship must approach within 3 inches with a velocity of 3 or less to orbit an asteroid. On it's next turn it can leave at any point in it's orbit with a velocity of 3. Or measure 3x 1 inch movements around the asteroid to keep it in orbit.

Fleet Book one was well past my time… But I ought to give it another look. As you say, it is free now.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Do have some weapons in my version such as needle beams and EMP mines, and do have racecourse set up thru a small asteroid field so will test these out first and see if need to allow more weapons in races.

Mechworld.de does have a space racing booklet of their own, in German. I contacted them to see if they have it available in English as would save me a lot of development work.

mechworld.de/space-race-3