The sheeple in the title applies to me specifically. I am okay at adapting other people innovations like The Cepheus Engine but would never come up with the idea and courage to do something like it. And it does take courage to say, I can rewrite an iconic game and release it online where there are a lot of not so nice people. This came to mind for me going through Book Two of The Cepheus Engine (CE). There are things I am ambivalent about and am most likely going to change. Normally I would not do that with a rule set and would never think to put it out in public. However for whatever bizarre reason I am okay doing it with a set of someone else's version of GDW's rules. I guess I am a sheeple but I am also grateful to Samardan Press for letting my own hangups get around themselves.
On to Book Two then. The high level overview is there are more changes to this section from the LBBs of yore and I am not sure if it is a good or bad thing. I mean it is good in the sense of getting the rules in one place and providing a consistent usage for skills but I am somewhat thrown by some of the choices made. Interplanetary travel is the first topic and is fine the way it is. Next up is interstellar travel introducing the CE standard jump theory of a hull grid and the effect of gravity wells on jump drives. It also mentions jump plots either created by the ship's navigator or a purchased tape and how they are negatively effected by time passing. Then a more in depth version of the jump procedure is presented. I like giving the Ship's Engineer a part in the course of a jump and a higher skill in Navigation having an effect and longer jumps being harder. What I am unsure of is an jump roll under 8 causing a critical hit to the ship. It seems quite harsh to me that even when you don't misjump and only come out further from your destination than intended your ship takes a significant amount of damage. Well maybe significant as I can't find critical hit defined in the section on Starship Combat. The thing is most starship components are extremely expensive and unless the Trade and Commerce rules allow the rapid accumulation of wealth any damage can strand the PCs with no way to fix it. All because your Navigator got a 7 rather than an 8 on his jump roll. I don't know if I am keeping this or not as until I go through the rules and tweak them the first time I can't really tell how often this would happen.
The next section covers standard operations of a starship including what the various levels of passage are. Here I have some trouble as I like the number of passengers a steward can attend to increases with their steward skill and I dislike formalized double occupancy for High and Middle passage. I have never been on a cruise but I would like to think if I am paying for a cabin the ship can't stick a random person in the same cabin as me. True it seems to imply if you pay the full rather than discounted rate you are in the cabin yourself but if you are paying for the whole cabin and two people can occupy it why does allowing someone else in your cabin suddenly cost 6,000 more instead of the 2,000 more for the cost of life support, Next expenses are discussed most of which I am okay with. My biggest quibble isn't in the expense section so much as in ship construction and that is the common availability of fuel processors. I think a government would try to restrict this to government ships. If you can get fuel for free most anywhere in system it is less likely you will go to the main world. The size of a star system precludes any kind of comprehensive sensor net so if you are going to be doing something naughty you'll do it in the remote part of the system. I can see governments doing whatever they can to get civilian starships to only go where they are supposed to be to reduce crime and search and rescue costs. Requiring flight plans also means a ship will draw attention to missing blocks of time or excessive fuel use. On the other hand I have to actually use the Trade and Commerce rules to see if a starship is viable without fuel processors. Routine maintenance seems to be a monthly expense rather than a once a year two week event. Revenue is the next section and the next thing I find odd. There is a random number of passengers and freight based on the the starport. That is actually something I always found odd in the old system even after the revisions of Book 7 however there is no effect based on technology or population of the source or destination. Assuming the math works the same the average starport is a C so on average there are 2 High, 7 Middle and 10 Low passengers and 20 tons of freight for the average world or 87 Kcr (life support deducted) on an average run or 174 Kcr a month assuming 2 such voyages. The basic Trader (not Frontier) has a mortgage that runs 160 Kcr a month and it can't even haul all the awake passengers where most of the money comes from and that doesn't include any other ship expenses. I am dubious of a table with no modifiers as it reduces player involvement but I am also aware the highly simplified rules for starship finances make it really easy to make a major mistake and turn ships into gold factories. Next up are miscellaneous topics such as airlocks; docking ships together; boarding and landing on a world. None are really necessary but like a lot of things in CE it is nice to have the topic covered. Ship security is the next section and covers both physical and cyber security which are topics it never occurred to me to think about in the past so are a welcome addition. Character actions on other worlds are briefly discussed in the final section including causing trouble, leading to arrests and finally sentencing.
Chapter seven deals with Trade and Commerce. I guess I am okay with this section equivocating in a cowardly fashion. Figuring out the purchase and sale price of speculative goods is different than it used to be but not terribly so and it is easy enough to understand I just don't know how well it works until I make some characters and play with it some. One oddity I see is the seller's broker skill gives the buyer a crappier deal. I sort of understand this on a buying a car level but on the level of interstellar trade it seems to me everyone would look for inexperienced sellers reducing the demand for skilled ones. I said before I am not an economist and really don't want to be one but this seems simple enough to cause a problem. Unlike the LBBs you are not committed to a purchase or sale prior to rolling the dice which I am also ambivalent toward. The old system could be a narrative tool to say you get a great price on used ATV bikes but when you sell them the taxes and fees mean you break even at best aka Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones". Meh I will reserve judgement until I actually play with the system some. It is an easier system as only the best modifier from the world trade code is applied from both the Purchase and Sale price.
Chapter eight covers starship construction and I am okay with it on the whole. There are more options for stuff to put in or on a ship and that is always a good thing. I am iffy on the inclusion of bay weapons and screens but as I said elsewhere that is my personal desire to keep ships less important than characters which I don't see military weapons helping. I will do chapter nine in this paragraph as well which covers the standard designs. None of them offend me and none make my kokoro go doki doki (if you don't know what that means and don't mind offensive language I recommend the Urban dictionary example of usage). My above usage of a standard design in my take on standard freight and passenger service means I am dubious of some of the design choices but that happens no matter who is making the ship.
Chapter ten covers space combat and I was pleasantly surprised by it. First off I understand it and would mind running one unlike the LBB version. Also an attempt is made to include rolls for everyone not just the pilot and gunner so you can hopefully keep the whole table engaged in the combat which was a problem before. The damage system seems much more workable to me although not chipping away at drive letters seems wrong to my traditionalist self. My only real problem is no discussion of repairing things damaged in combat. I say damaged not outright destroyed because it does seem like a way to involve the players and avoid the whole any damage bankrupts and derails the campaign problem.
As always I welcome opinions.
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