I would love to see a race whose hulls are all some form of flying saucer (the Tribe actually comes pretty close, but there’s still a lot of human sensibility added to the basic saucer shape). Fighters are oblong, frigates are mostly basic saucers, cruisers are compound shapes of multiple saucers. And the race description would be a lot of fun to read. The race-specific modules might be … interesting (how does one factor a skill at cattle mutilation into an epic space battle?)
I saw a mention of crystalline hulls - that would make for a most excellent opportunity - perhaps a form of armor that is super-resistant to beam weapons? Plus the ships would all be sparkly!
Exactly what I had in mind for the flying saucer guys. They could have a frigate hull called the Weather Balloon … no, that would probably have a tendency to crash in New Mexico. Never mind.
I know I keep saying this, but with the addition of new (official) races, I’d dearly like to see the “restrict” definition for modules take multiple arguments.
So that at the very least the existing races can have many of the modules limited to only them (many would be unrestricted, like most armor, some basic weapon types, crew modules, etc).
Then any new races might be far more constrained doctrinally by what modules they are given—a new race might have lesser crew requirements, another might be a hive race that requires many more crew, etc.
The point being to maximize the differences between races.
A few threads have mentioned SFB. I played that from the zip-lock bag editions back in the early 80s. What I hated about all the new SFB stuff was that to me, it became homogenized. All races had each class of ship, all had fighters, the weapons started looking the same to me. Yeah, the lyrans had their ESG, and the kzinti drones, etc, but it was never “right” to me for whatever reason. I played (even with new boxed editions) in very much a 1960s TV show era with photons vs disruptors vs plasmas almost to exclusion. That goes to another point I have made about novel scenario goals (attacking planets, etc) to make the slug fests occur within some framework that might require a little more thought.
tater
PS—the “probe” module would be more intimidating if it was the “anal probe” module.
But an awful lot less family-friendly. We’re not trying to warp the children’s delicate little minds here, with our game of gratuitous and explosive violence. We do have standards.
