Ladies and Gentlemen, start you engines for the Babylon 500!!!

Well, my gaming group has gotten tired of the plain-ole shoot and destroy battles, so we decided to
have some real fun, for a change. We decided to run races, instead of battles, one day, and the Babylon
500 was created. Clint brought his Babylon 5 station for the first time, so we used it as our grandstand,
hence the name of the race. We setup a simple track with a middle wall of asteroids for a barrier.

These rules are courtesy of Tom Beliech.

The Babylon 500 is a racing game using the Full Thrust rules. It is something of a cross between a Nascar
race and a ship battle, and has something of the feel of the old Car Wars racing duels.

RULES FOR PLAYING THE BABYLON 500

VERSION:

The B500 is played using the latest Full Thrust rules, including and especially the design rules from Fleet
Books 1 and 2. We use the Cinematic movement rules, as they give a more exciting sense of racing and
are easier to use for the restricted movement that the "racetrack" demands.

Human, Kra'Vak and Phalon ship designs may all participate in the race; however, we strongly
recommend that Sa'Vasku ships are NOT used in the race, as we found in playtesting that their design
philosophy makes them too well suited for this sort of scenario. No mixed technology ships are
permitted, unless everyone in the group agrees to using them. The one exception is for Advanced Drives
as listed in Fleet Book 2 - since the ships in the game are assumed to be specialized racing designs, all
players may use the Advanced Drive rules in their ship designs. This exception is balanced by the use of
points, rather than mass, to determine legal racer designs.
Besides the actual race rules (see below) all normal rules from Full Thrust and the Fleet Books apply,
except for the addition of our house rule, the Sideslip (see below).

Not only are weapons permitted for racing designs, they are encouraged - shooting is very much a part
of the race after the first lap! However, we have found that any ship with a thrust rating less than 10
gets left behind quickly, so don't skimp on the drives.

BOARD SETUP:

B500 is best played on a 4" by 8" table, to provide ample room for maneuvers and acceleration but not
so much room that players are spending all day going down straight-aways.

Important note: We use CENTIMETERS as our base Movement Unit (MU) and we strongly suggest that
all B500 games do the same. Anything smaller seems to prolong the game unnecessarily, and anything
bigger makes high-speed maneuvering next to impossible and reduces the excitement of speeding ships,
which is the point of the game!

A centerline is placed on the board, parallel with the long table edges (2" away from each long table
edge). We use asteroids and a model of the Babylon 5 space station to mark the centerline in our game,
as it gives the idea a nasty collision being possible, and that fans inside the station are watching the race.
The center line goes all the way across the board, except that a 56 cm clearance is left on either end for
ships to make turns. We find that the 56cm between the center barrier and the table edge gives
sufficient room to make turns, but still presents a challenge for ships moving at velocities above 70 (our
group's speed record so far is velocity 110). The centerline should be thin to allow for maneuvering even
on the straight-aways - no thicker than 4 centimeters.

Two markers are used to mark the starting/finish line. One is placed along one of the long table edges, 4
feet inwards, and the other is places parallel to it on the centerline.

We do not place any other terrain in our games, but players wanting more of that "white-knuckles"
feeling may feel inclined to place asteroids or other obstacles on the track. We do recommend not going
overboard with obstacles, though - remember that the racing ships will very likely be armed,
which gives quite a bit of excitement as it is.

RACING RULES

Each player has 250 points maximum (again - points, NOT mass) to build a racing ship - note that FTL
drives are not required on racers, so feel free to leave out the FTL drive on your designs.. We have found
that this point value allows for a lot of possibilities, and makes for ships that can take a hit or two, but
are still small enough to make speed cost effective.

Ships are places with their centerpoints on the starting line, with course heading 3 - the race is run
counterclockwise. Starting velocity is zero.
The objective of the race is to be the first ship to complete three laps around the track, or to be the last
ship left intact. Orders are written normally, and all game phases are played as normal. The only
exception, and an important one, is that no ship may fire or deploy weapons until it has completed at
least one lap around the track. On the turn after a ship has completed its first lap, it may fire any and all
weapons as per normal FT rules. If a ship carries fighters (yes, this is legal), it may launch the fighters
before completing the first lap, but the fighters may not attack, or even defend themselves from attack,
until the ship that launched them has completed its first lap.

A ship is out of the race if:

1) It goes off the board.
2) Hits the centerline or an obstacle. Obstacles and the centerline cannot be damaged.
3) Is destroyed by weapons fire.

Sideslipping: Per our house rule, A player may choose to allocate some of his thrust to both Port AND
starboard turns in one movement, to simulate a "lane change" or sideslip. This must be done as evenly
as possible, and is noted as per the following examples:

1pt turn: no sideslip possible

2pt turn: may turn P1 then S1, or S1 then P1
3pt turn: may turn P1 then S2, or S1 then P2
4pt turn: may turn P2 then S2, or S2 then P2
5pt turn: may turn P2 then S3, or S2 then P3
6pt turn: may turn P3 then S3, or S3 then P3

And so on. Again, this is strictly our house rule, although we find it a very useful one, and we
recommend it for the racing scenario.

PLAYTESTERS NOTES AND TIPS:

Speed kills - but speed saves, too. If your ship is fast enough, and you maneuver well, you'll never have
to fire a shot. Most of our racers had thrust ratings of 11 or higher, and the winners tended to be those
who could maintain a good lead without overtaking the others.

At first, we thought that Advanced Drives would be unbalancing, but we found that the extra points
required of them evened things out. Also, since racers aren't likely to be making 180 degree course
changes every single turn (the race is more or less a big circle, anyway), these drives aren't even
necessary. A normal drive with Thrust 12 - which many of our racers had - gives lots of acceleration, and
still allows for a 6-point turn to get around the turns when necessary.

The rule preventing shooting until the 2nd lap is designed to allow "speeder" and "gunboat" designs an
even chance to win. It also gives players plenty of time to build speed so that when weapons fire does
begin, the faster designs have a chance to get away from the gunships.

Admittedly, in our races, designs based on speed tended to do a bit better than designs based on lots of
weapons - which is how it should be, in a race.

We tend to roll initiative AFTER movement in our racing games - weapons fire is not as common as in a
normal FT game, so this change kept the game moving faster, especially on the first lap, when initiative
isn't required.

For those unused to playing with centimeters as MU, there are a number of things to keep in mind.
Fighters are much more difficult to use, as ships tend to be faster and less predictable when they have
more movement options. The same goes for placed weapons, like mines, salvo missiles, and Phalon
Plasma Bolts - although these can be particularly deadly when you KNOW your opponent has to come
your way, a 6 centimeter detection radius makes evading these weapons much easier than a 6 inch
radius. Keep in mind that the track is going to be between 50 and 60 centimeters wide, even on the
straight-aways, and that most ships will be moving in excess of velocity 50, so that hitting someone with
placed weapons can be much harder than it looks. However, using centimeters allows a ship with 12
thrust or Advanced Drives to safely do a 6-point turn around the curves even when at a velocity of 80 or
more!

When designing racers, the ideal mass (especially for human ships) seems to be somewhere between 60
and 115 as a starting point.

Here is a sample ship design used in our races:

Corellia Special: 250 points (Human tech)

80 Mass
Weak Hull: 16 boxes
Thrust 11
No FTL

Systems: 1 Firecon, 8 submunition packs, 11 points armor

(option: may replace 2 submunition packs with one 3-arc class 2 battery at no extra cost or mass)