It's the nature of gaming to min-max one's forces. If you intend to destroy the enemy from far away, then you build long-range weapons designed to kill most efficiently at long range and you face them all in one direction (all frontal, or all on one side, if you intend to keep your distance).

I love Starmada's many options and so I would never suggest curtailing them simply on principle. I do think the combination of some of the weapon traits makes this sort of thing inevitable, though. In iterated games    of course, the arms race syndrome mentioned will occur, which is kinda fun, and which is the counter to min-maxing in various ways.* It does trouble me, though, that certain methods seem to work best -- namely, all long range killers facing forward -- and that players who design ships that way talk about tweaking their ships, not about having to alter their strategy because there is an effective counter-strategy.

One way to mix things up would be to take a page from some miniatures games -- add terrain. Roll some dice before a game (2d6?) and place that number of asteroids in the middle section of the battlefield, each player taking turns placing one. They block LOS and prevent firing through them. It might change how you and your regular opponents play and design ships. Just a thought.

* Arms races are the basis of many of the Starfire novels. One side comes up with a new weapon and starts to win but then the enemy counters it with something new.

Expanded arcs? Yep, those, too.

(Notice the range thread has been drawn between these two ships to show how you can use it to definitively state whether your target is within your arc  -- and what the range is.)

I added another fleet today (the Dugan's mighty Empire fleet) and you can see a preview of one ship in the shot below. I think it's my favorite fleet to date.  8-)

I have also been adding markers for optional rules. Evasive action, combat intercept, etc. Below is a shot of the Altitude marker I added today. The Empire ship on left is at altitude 2, the Confederation ship is at 4. (The rules suggest 1-6, for now I have limited it to that. It did occur to me we could do -3 to +3 and assume all battles start at 0.)

Edit: I should add that the elevation pips are attached to the ship counter.

Suggestions and comments, as always, are solicited.

Why do the graphics guys get to do the graphics? They know what they are doing. I found a much easier way to do something in Photoshop and I was able to redo the markers and make them look better. How nice... too bad I had already done them crappily.  :x

Another look at current markers in the game.

I put a turn counter on the Cloak counter. It also allows one to enter the name of the ship which is in cloak.

The first playtest game is now drawing to a close. We don't yet have a spacehulk/explosion counter to represent the dead ships, so you see three ships with Hit overlays and the work SUNK on top. Those ships are, well, dead in the wa... space.

The Confederates, represented by the Fate, a Victory-Class CA, have just fired. Both the Lion and the Hood only have 2 hull left, so the damage done this turn has finished them off. You'll note, however, the Fate only has 2 hull left. Between them the Lion and Hood have only one weapon left. Odds are good for the Fate, huh? Here is the weapon remaining, firing at 2 hexes (and I only have 1 Shield remaining!):

Heavy missile battery (B) TL0,  4/8/12, 2/4+/2/3

Uh-oh... I better hope those hit rolls are very low!  :shock:

(p.s. Note that we adopted a convention of marking hits in the Property sheet by placing an x on either side of a damaged item. Therefore, on the Fate, it only has 2 engines remaining. Under pulse cannons, you see: [AB] x[AC]x x[AC]x [BD] x[BD]x which means that there are two remaining, the AB and the first BD, all others having been damaged.)

Now that we are playtesting the mod, Laurence and I keep coming up with ideas to improve it. Here's one I was thinking about from the beginning and just implemented: Firing Arcs!

Notice the firing arcs rotate when the counter rotates (of course). Also, when you draw the range thread as depicted, it gives you, I hope, a very accurate idea as to which arc a target lies within.

Noice! I love 'em, Mike.

And yes, talk to Dan, I bet you could easily put these into a mount-your-own Counter PDF to be sold by MJ12.

The Dugan continues to churn out beautiful images. Here is the rest of the Republic Fleet -- the Fleet Carrier, Escort/Light Carrier, and the Fighter, Bomber (reduced to 4) and Interceptor Flights.

In other news -- the very first playtest game has begun. I will endeavor to post some in-progress pics of it as we go. I have two Victory Class CAs and a Anval Class FF against my fierce opponent (Lsutehall) and his two Wraak Class BCs and Anval FF. We are both using the Republic Fleet counters for the moment as it is the only complete faction.

Kevin

I'm not a French speaker but I play one on TV.

Translation: Great news! Could you post one or two pictures of the warships of the French Republic? Thank you muchly.

Would you prefer German?
Grossartige Nachrichten! Koennten Sie bitte eins oder zwei Bilder der Schlachtschiffe der Franzoesischen Republik posten? Vielen Dank!