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Starfire: Difference between revisions
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* ''Extremis'' (by Steve White and Charles E. Gannon)
<br />Not to be confused with the [[DC Comics]] character. (For that, see the ''[[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]''.) Also bears no relation to the 1980 coin-op [[Arcade Game]] ''[http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9758 Star Fire]'', or to the rocket-armed [
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=== The wargame provides examples of: ===
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* [[No Bulk Discounts]]: In 1st Edition, if your empire manufactured 2 or more identical starships, you got a 10% cost discount on all identical ships after the first. This encouraged players to create "classes" of ships, like real navies do. However, this rule was removed in 2nd Edition.
* [[Nuke'Em]]: Standard anti-starship missiles are all fitted with nuclear warheads. The only reason a starship can withstand so many hits from these missiles is that their engines' Drive Field prevents physical objects from coming into contact with the ship's hull -- so the missiles have to be programmed to detonate an instant ''before'' they reach the target's Drive Field.
* [[Old School Dogfighting]]: Fighters, like starships, take time (and distance) to change heading, and must always be pointed in the same direction they're moving. Since a fighter's weapons only fire in a [[Fixed Forward
* [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]]: Any hit on a fighter destroys it. (''Getting'' that hit is significantly harder than hitting a starship, however.)
* [[Our Wormholes Are Different]]: Naturally-occurring warp points link the star systems to each other. They can only be traversed by a ship with a Drive Field, and have a chance of destroying ships if 2 or more of them try to make transit at the same time.
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* [[Proud Warrior Race]]: The Khanate of Orion, a thinly-veiled copy of the [[Known Space|Kzinti]]. The Rigellians, by contrast, are simply out to exterminate the competition.
* [[Reactionless Drive]]: Little description is given as to how the standard Ion Drive engine works, let alone as to whether there's any exhaust coming out its tailpipe, but starships can cruise (and make any number of course changes) at 5-10% of the speed of light for weeks without refuelling.
* [[Shout
** The Arachnids are closely modelled on the Bugs in the ''[[Starship Troopers]]'' novel.
** The introduction of the [[Space Fighter]] and fighter carrier in ''Starfire II'' was inspired by the original 1970s ''[[Battlestar Galactica Classic
** The Khanate of Orion bear a striking resemblance, both in physical appearance and mannerism, to the Kzinti from [[Larry Niven]]'s [[Known Space]] universe.
* [[Space Base]]: Space stations are sprawling space complexes which, due to the lack of a Drive Field, are especially vulnerable to missile fire. Base Stations, on the other hand, have the full protection of a starship's Drive Field, even though they don't go anywhere.
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* [[Space Is an Ocean]]: The Ion Drive Field of a starship can instantly bring a vessel from a dead stop to 1/10 of the speed of light. However, a ship must always follow its nose, it can't fly sideways or backwards. It takes time and distance to change heading once a ship has started moving.
* [[Space Navy]]: The ship weight classes are named after their wet-navy equivalents -- Escorts, Corvettes, Destroyers, Light Cruisers, Heavy Cruisers, Battlecruisers, Battleships, Superdreadnoughts, and Monitors, not to mention Cutters and Pinnaces. The Terrans' main military space force is even called the Terran Federation Navy.
* [[Standard Sci
* [[Standard Starship Scuffle]]: Distances are realistic -- a single hex represents a region of space 150 ''thousand'' kilometers across (reduced to 75 thousand in 3rd Edition Revised) -- but the tactics and feel are still of old naval ships banging away at each other with broadsides.
* [[Subsystem Damage]]: The entire combat system is practically ''defined'' as this. A starship's control sheet is basically a string of system codes, where each code represents a shield, a layer of armor, or an "internal system", like so: SSSSAAAZLIRIII. (Each S is a shield, each A is a layer of armor, and the other letters are various internal systems like lasers and ion engines.) With most weapons, one damage point destroys the first undamaged system on the control sheet -- so, after taking 9 points of damage, the same ship's control sheet would look like this: xxxxxxxxxIRIII. In order to destroy a starship, ''all'' of its internal systems must be destroyed. Thus, while a ship is being pounded on, more and more of its systems will go down and the ship can do less and less.
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