So I was reading an old issue of Dragon magazine and came upon an article about starships for the Alternity RPG, a game that is no longer in print. One of the ships caught my eye: "Hey, that looks just like a decimator!" Right there, on page 98 of #255. Could be a coincidence though, until I googled a bit and found that the cg version of the Decimator was designed by Andrew Collins, and one of the authors of said article was Andy Collins. However, Andrew Collins says in an interview that the basic design was given to him...so that doesn't quite fit.

And the name of the original vessel? The Skykomish. Its old design is pretty cool, but the new name is certainly an improvement, assuming we're playing with a variation on an older design!

I enjoy reading through old PC and gaming articles, shows us where we are from. Sometimes gives nostalgia. May have to read the PDF. 1999. Not a bad year.

Issue 255 was not part of the Dragon archive, I'm not sure if there is a PDF at all...

Maybe not officially...

I Need to get the late 80's early 90s white dwarfs too.

I loved my decimator in SWG. I just wish I could have decorated it like you could houses... with all my mounted animal trophies and guns.

Can you post a picture?

I loved my decimator in SWG. I just wish I could have decorated it like you could houses... with all my mounted animal trophies and guns.

I'm almost certain you could decorate them, couldn't you? I could have sworn I had all kinds of cool displays and stuff in mine. . .

Maybe there was a limitation on things you could put in there? It's been so long now. . .

It's been so long but if I remember correctly you could decorate the yacht but not the decimator or nova courier. Maybe a later update allowed it in all passenger ships though (decorated mining ship would have been fun). I quit after they removed creature handlers from the game.

The problem I have with the Decimator is the name. You're not going to win anything if all you do is decimate your opponents.Assuming you were actually doing damage to your opponent and not yourself.

Now if it guaranteed that I would decimate my opponents list once per round that would work, but you would still have to bring something else to finish them off.

The problem I have with the Decimator is the name. You're not going to win anything if all you do is decimate your opponents.Assuming you were actually doing damage to your opponent and not yourself.

Now if it guaranteed that I would decimate my opponents list once per round that would work, but you would still have to bring something else to finish them off.

No just decimate them for ten rounds and your done!

The problem I have with the Decimator is the name. You're not going to win anything if all you do is decimate your opponents.Assuming you were actually doing damage to your opponent and not yourself.

Now if it guaranteed that I would decimate my opponents list once per round that would work, but you would still have to bring something else to finish them off.

Because no ship is less that 10 points, decimating based on point value would functionally equate to destroying one ship a turn starting with the cheapest if you are trying to hit as close to 10% as possible.

The problem I have with the Decimator is the name. You're not going to win anything if all you do is decimate your opponents.Assuming you were actually doing damage to your opponent and not yourself.

Now if it guaranteed that I would decimate my opponents list once per round that would work, but you would still have to bring something else to finish them off.

You are literally my least favorite person right now.

The problem I have with the Decimator is the name. You're not going to win anything if all you do is decimate your opponents.Assuming you were actually doing damage to your opponent and not yourself.

Now if it guaranteed that I would decimate my opponents list once per round that would work, but you would still have to bring something else to finish them off.

No just decimate them for ten rounds and your done!

That would leave them with 35 points still on the table.

The problem I have with the Decimator is the name. You're not going to win anything if all you do is decimate your opponents.Assuming you were actually doing damage to your opponent and not yourself.

Now if it guaranteed that I would decimate my opponents list once per round that would work, but you would still have to bring something else to finish them off.

Because no ship is less that 10 points, decimating based on point value would functionally equate to destroying one ship a turn starting with the cheapest if you are trying to hit as close to 10% as possible.

We'd have to change the rules somehow, maybe start ripping upgrades off of stuff, add damage based on hit points or something. I don't know.

I loved my decimator in SWG. I just wish I could have decorated it like you could houses... with all my mounted animal trophies and guns.

I'm almost certain you could decorate them, couldn't you? I could have sworn I had all kinds of cool displays and stuff in mine. . .

Maybe there was a limitation on things you could put in there? It's been so long now. . .

You could.

The limits for POB's were quite tight though, and meant you couldn't loot as much.

If memory serves there was a fixed 80 item limit, which was shared with both the POB's decorations or items on board and the ships onboard lootbox.

The problem I have with the Decimator is the name. You're not going to win anything if all you do is decimate your opponents.Assuming you were actually doing damage to your opponent and not yourself.

Now if it guaranteed that I would decimate my opponents list once per round that would work, but you would still have to bring something else to finish them off.

No just decimate them for ten rounds and your done!

That would leave them with 35 points still on the table.

Not if you Decimate from the original list value each time. Otherwise you would never completely destroy them.

I loved my decimator in SWG. I just wish I could have decorated it like you could houses... with all my mounted animal trophies and guns.

I'm almost certain you could decorate them, couldn't you? I could have sworn I had all kinds of cool displays and stuff in mine. . .

Maybe there was a limitation on things you could put in there? It's been so long now. . .

You could.

The limits for POB's were quite tight though, and meant you couldn't loot as much.

If memory serves there was a fixed 80 item limit, which was shared with both the POB's decorations or items on board and the ships onboard lootbox.

That sounds about right.

Man, SWG was the greatest, most unique MMO out there, and then SOE got scared and WoW'd it to death. SO sad

I still played it right up until NGE, because bounty hunting was actually a lot of fun and largely improved during the Combat Upgrade era. I don't do "dungeons" or "raids" in ANY MMOs. If that is what their content revolves around, then I don't even bother, which is why I loved SWG. Straight up PvP, space battles, and player generated content that didn't suck balls.

Aww crap... someone said SWG... now I am missing my Beastmaster... *sigh*

Memory Lane... Leave me the hell alone!

There's some people out there who are running a private server of SWG. Google it, you should find it. IIRC, it's before that big update that made half the game population mad.

Was SWG the one with combat engineer? I had the best time just roaming around planet to planet collecting from my hoppers and making custom poison and health packs. I remember making some script where you could go AFK all night and your guy would sample 1000's of components over and over

There's some people out there who are running a private server of SWG. Google it, you should find it. IIRC, it's before that big update that made half the game population mad.

Last I checked it didn't have space yet

Hmmmmm...

Private server... ha! ... talk about playing solo... which I do often enough, but it was still fun to do a cantina run when there were actual people that wanted to be there and show off... and I don't mean just the dancers. I just always assumed the dancers were guys looking at what they could do with costumes and watched the lightshows the guys in the band brought... and the occasional rare jedi that ran in and started getting shot up.

It was the combination of the possibilities of what you could do, and the vast community and the stupid places you would have to go to get one item you had to have.

Private server... ha! ... talk about playing solo... which I do often enough, but it was still fun to do a cantina run when there were actual people that wanted to be there and show off... and I don't mean just the dancers. I just always assumed the dancers were guys looking at what they could do with costumes and watched the lightshows the guys in the band brought... and the occasional rare jedi that ran in and started getting shot up.

It was the combination of the possibilities of what you could do, and the vast community and the stupid places you would have to go to get one item you had to have.

Not like private for you but private because they can only hold so many players. It's not a solo server.

Hmmmmm...

That is so purely 90s.

Hey, I found a PDF! http://identicalsoftware.com/rpg/alternity/ActionCheckStarships.pdf

There's some people out there who are running a private server of SWG. Google it, you should find it. IIRC, it's before that big update that made half the game population mad.

Last I checked it didn't have space yet

That, and as I said before, I enjoyed the game the most after the Combat Upgrade. Before then only melee classes were viable, which made, like, zero sense at all when you're talking about non-jedi.