Posted by DarkTau 11 years ago Report

Kzinti... Wing Commander?

Posted by Tuskarr 11 years ago Report

Kzinti is from Larry Niven's Ringworld / Known Space books - Kilrathi is from Wing Commander

Posted by Leshana 11 years ago Report

That is true! They are also crossover'd into Start Fleet Battles games

Posted by DarkTau 11 years ago Report

That's where I know that name from! Never played SFB, but I've read about it because my first Star Trek game was Starfleet Command, which is based on SFB.

Posted by Liz 11 years ago Report

In space no one can hear you gurgle XD

Posted by Ethereal 11 years ago Report

You tagged it SFB, so some criticism (constructive). In Star Fleet Battles, Kzinti are definitely feline looking humanoids. They do not have tails or bat wing ears, and don't look dog like in any way as you have drawn it.

That being said, Star Fleet Battles Vore? Now I've seen everything!

Posted by Strega 5 years ago Report

Kzinti in the Known Space series have ratlike tails and ears variously described as "pink chinese parasols" and bat ears, so this is pretty much on model if the tail is out of view. It's easy to make a cat look like a dog and it has a cat nose, so close enough for government purposes.

Here they are in their Star Trek the Animated Series appearance, as approved by Niven. https://i.postimg.cc/5tbQB1x5/TAS-The-Slaver-Weapon.jpg

Posted by Ethereal 5 years ago Report

So long since I commented. Anywho TAS had the known space Kzintis but the comment about Kzintis in the SFB universe is still accurate. Still, I see you tagged it as both 'Known Space' and 'SFB' so your bases are covered, which I did not note in my original post.

Posted by Strega 5 years ago Report

I happen to have a few of my old Nexus magazines around, and #9 has a story about a Kzinti Q-ship fighting a Klingon frigate. There's a picture of the kzinti captain and though we only see him from the waist up, his ears are almost exactly like in the pic above. There is some art on the cover of Captain's Log 15 on the other hand that shows a generic tigerman as a kzinti, but I would maintain that this sort of thing is an art error. It is extremely common for artists to not use the proper references for cover art, especially when on a deadline.

Posted by Ethereal 5 years ago Report

Nod, but the powers that be for the SFB universe state they don't have the bat wing ears. A pity.

Posted by Strega 5 years ago Report

Really? I haven't run into anyone familiar with SFB for years. When did they say that?

Posted by Ethereal 5 years ago Report

On the official forums... somewhere. Or a Captain's Log, or I dunno where. I remember it 'cuz I was annoyed that the SFB Kzintis looked different than the Niven ones.

There is a lot of talk about SFB over the years on the official forums and a lot of random tidbits of info in the various products (especially Captain's Logs - those are up to #53 now), finding things is hard.

Posted by Strega 5 years ago Report

I had forgotten they keep making Captain's Logs. I'll have to poke through the archive. 83

Posted by Ethereal 5 years ago Report

Amazingly they still make products for the universe, despite being around 40+ years. Lately its mostly 3D models of ships sold on Shapeways. The number of different ships available as miniatures is mind boggling.

Posted by Strega 5 years ago Report

The problem I had with SFB was the incomprehensibly convoluted rules. It was often almost impossible to find a reference you needed as subsections of rules could appear in half a dozen different products. I'm sure they eventually came out with an Ultimate Edition to fix all this but many battles were won or lost depending on who remembered the most obscure rules. I lost one battle because my opponent knew about tractor rotation, which in years of play was never used before or after. Starfire was a lot simpler, at least for ship versus ship combat.

Posted by Ethereal 5 years ago Report

Starfire combat was too simple. The last edition of SFB was in the 90s and did much to address rules problems, but they are still very complex. That said, if you played *many* games I am doubtful that anything close to a majority were decided on who remembered the most obscure rule.

I ran a playing group back in the day (we topped out at 30 people!) and things were not like that. Our largest games were 14 player free-for-alls where you picked a force and fought on a fixed map against the other 13 people.

Typing that in, I can hardly believe I once did such a thing. o_O.

Posted by Strega 5 years ago Report

Starfire was designed for fleet combat. One person could run a dozen ships without much trouble. SFB on the other hand had nightmarishly complex combat, energy allocation and other time wasters. They were two very different games with different goals, one built for fleet combat and one based on one player running one ship.

Posted by Ethereal 5 years ago Report

Yeah, but Starfire never really had much of a following. YMMV.

Posted by Strega 5 years ago Report

That's true, but the Rigellian Diary (a log of a long campaign run by Steve Walmsley) is such good reading I'm on about my tenth reading. And it's 800,000 words long. I read it about once a year.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=731.0
I can send you the Updated Master Map if you get into it. The one pretty much requires the other.

Posted by Strega 8 years ago Report

That quote made it into the later editions of SFB, but sadly the Admiral Kang canonically made it back to Klingon space. No BBQ for the kzinti. 83