It’s not easy to roll 58-60 with d66.
Like many other, too
Guess he was in the mood to write a lot of rows without thinking of the D66 range.
Including the first it´s a devilish D666 by the way.
- Some effects won´t do much, to be honest. 1 rad damage, many does nothing and heals extremly fast.
- Is it really possible to pull someone out of FTL?
- same with space battles. In FTL you shouldn´t notice them. btw. is htting anything while traveling in space nearly impossible.
And: A slow ship to a faraway system could need 60 days = 9 weeks/rolls
So nearly every travel would result in one or two major events and interruptions... is this realistic?
Nevertheless a funny idea.
I definitely borked the numbers, as I was renumbering several times when editing the list and forgot to take that into account -- whoops! As I said before, it'd need reordering and rebalancing anyway, which maybe I'll do at some point.
For the radiation damage specifically, I actually meant to include a range, which is why it just says "radiation damage" and not an actual value. I have no idea what would be a good amount, but ideally, it's enough to range from "minor damage that complicates things on arrival at their destination" to "major issue that is a mini-adventure in its own they need to resolve" (akin to the opening of Alien Covenant). Perhaps instead of a range, there's simply two distinct options, one for minor and one for major. Regardless, your sentiment is on point, and as noted in previous posts, it's not the easiest to balance "something that actually registers as meaningful" with "rocks fall, everyone dies" when the main premise of space travel in the Alien universe involves hypersleep and androids who can do things for the sleepers.
As for if it's really possible to pull a ship out of FTL, I'm not aware of any precedent set in the Alien universe, but it also seems odd to me that there wouldn't be /something/ that could do that, and from a narrative standpoint, while I don't care for the overuse of "bandit ambush!" I do think it seems fitting for it to happen
sometimes in a game like this. What the flavor text would be to make that possible, I don't know. Maybe it's not a physical trap but something like tricking computers into thinking the ship will run into a planet with some sort of bouy-system. I suppose if such a thing really doesn't fit in the Alien universe though it could be nixed from the table.
I'm also aware that, in reality, the likelihood of hitting something in space is literally astronomically zero because space is so dang big, but again, for narrative purposes, I included such options. In the case of a space battle, maybe instead of literally encountering a space battle for sure, the text reads something like "the PC's ship computer receives update of border changes since you started travels, and you find yourself in disputed territory" -- that way, if the PCs snooze through it, they might fly in between the crosshairs, or maybe traps are laid by a rival government, or your destination is simply made more difficult because of it. /shrug/ Again, if too unbelievable for the setting, it could be nixed.
The initial intent of my rough table roll was that, for a long trip, a ship would have at least one encounter, yes. Otherwise, it's a pretty pointless table if even the longest trips don't have a chance of an encounter. My formula could almost certainly use tweaking through since, while unlikely, that 9 week travel COULD theoretically result in 9 different encounters.