Hello everyone,
Seeing the Dreadfleet system, I am stricken of thoughs of how some of the Dreadfleet ideas are directly from the BFG-style system. In particular, I've noticed that many of the things that are lacking in BFG (ideas about which have come up at various times) are built into the Dreadfleet system: (more) interesting characters that have direct effects on the game, epic duels between said characters, a robust boarding system, and a damage system that realistically simulates damage effects from combat. Although not all of these things are neccessary for BFG, it might serve as some inspiration for putting these things into BFG. Characters, especially, I think could do with some more interesting stuff like this. The damage system I quite like, also; it has in-built crew, hull and speed regimes of damage, and I think this could be applied to BFG with good results (crew ~ hitpoints; hull ~ current critical damage (e.g. bridge, engines, weapons), since ships rarely actually lose all structural integrity, just mostly crew; speed ~ power output, could have interesting other effects, see below).
I also had an interesting idea about power/engine output powering the systems of a ship (originally from Star Fleet Battles, and many other computer games
). Essentially, each ship has a generator that provides a certain amount of energy points. Energy points are used to regenerate shields, perform special actions and move, repair damage etc.. Could provide some interesting mechanics for critical damage, and would simulate pushing power relays over standard range very well (could represent Imperial ships having poorer relays then they used to, so they can only provide a certain amount of energy to weapons). Food for thought, anyway (maybe food for BFG:Advanced).
Thinking Stone