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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by themattcurtis
I just don't see the point of ramming. Colliding with another ship on purpose was a valid tactic when you couldn't consistently damage your opponet from afar. But I don't see a lot of the IS ether/ aval powers that sanctioning the idea of ramming.
I offered the idea of kamikazes once -- allowing FACs to ram opposing ships if their parent vessel is KIA (since the craft will have no where to dock when the battle is over and are doomed anyway). But even that met a bit of resistance.
Hey --
MJ12 games is gettin' little medals now for offering popular picks at RPGnow.com
Silver to Starmada X and Grand Fleets
Copper to Iron Stars, Merchant War, Defiance......
I'm surely missing something. But that has to make folks feel purdy good. 
I like that suggestion. Might try it out.
My opponent in my last game had a suggestion, and I shot it down because I thought it screwed up the mechanics, but now I'm wondering if there's a way to do it:
His idea was to allow ships to switch between AP (which would be what's depicted in their given profiles) and HE loads. His idea being that going to HE would drop the gun down a dice size, but increases its damage by 1. Trying to mirror the real life tactic of employing different munitions against heavier OR lighter opponents.
Using his idea, a D12 X2 would transform into a D10 X3 when using HE. But I pointed out that this doesn't balance out. Against a smaller target, you're getting better accuracy AND more damage.
IE -- Against a medium opponent with 2 Armor at 6", a D12 Gun would have to roll an 11 (6+2 for armor+1 for range+2 for size). A D10 would only have to roll a 9 (5+2 for armor+1 for range + 1 for size). So you go from a 16.667% chance of hitting to a 20% chance AND you're causing more damage. It doesn't balance out.
So I'm wondering if you can apply a to-hit penalty. Switch loads from AP to HE (optional rule of course). Your damage goes up a notch, but you suffer a -1 to hit, representing the pause in gunnery/lost shooting time AND the fact that HE rounds have a harder time penetrating armor. But you cause more damage. A X2 shell becomes a X3.
IE -- using my approach, a D12 (X2) Gun is trying to shoot that medium ship. Now it needs a 12. So its chances of penetrating go down. But if it hits, it does more damage. The D10 gun goes up to a 10 to hit.
It's not for everyone. I don't know if I would use it. You're halving your chances to hit for a little bit more damage. But I was thinking it might be an optional rule to try out.
Do you use?
The core rulebook had gunnery mods based off target size -- the smaller the vessel, the harder time D12 and D10 guns would have in hitting it.
Some folks didn't like this, so TMW offers the option of basing the same kind of mods off momentum. D12 guns are really hurting when trying to target vessels with a momentum of 5 or higher (+2 to hit).
I think it was right the first time myself. Reading up on naval battles, it seems speed didn't make a difference in "riding the splashes" so much as a ship's turning radius and ability to weave -- IE, it's ability to maneuver.
I like the original idea myself, and since I got to actually playtest a scenario yesterday night, tried it out once more. My opponent concurred -- but I don't know how folks here feel.
Yeah, but the next jump in timeline only covers 3 years I think. At least, the stuff we've discussed only advances it a few more years. Still plenty of room to cover the minor conflicts/political growing pains that are coming with Man's mastery of the ether.
Sorry for the absence....
Layoffs slated here at work (eeeekkkkkk) and assorted family issues have kept me out of the loop.
I would LOVE to help here. Just let me know how I could contribute. Fed my ego a little to see The Merchant Wars is still alive at some of the online shops, and got a new favorable blurb at rpgnow
Matt
me....it was me. But it put me on as "guest."
huh.
In re: to the Grand Fleets campaign....hypothetical WWI scenarios set in the Med. Wins or losses caused you to branch in different directions.
That idea had merit, I think. I'll have to look to see where my notes are buried. The big stumbling block was balancing the scenarios (I don't think Kevin and his playtesters were really satisfied with the first drafts of the battles -- and they had good reason) and getting buy off on my "dry dock" idea.
In terms of Starmada X, has anyone ever looked at C&C rules for your fleet? I'd like to see a fleet enjoy certain advantages in terms of manueverability or coordinating its firepower as long as its flagship is kept intact.
Just bought my copy (ebook version).
23 megs, too......meaty book apparently.
Now I gotta buy some minis.
Hell -- it's my birthday tomorrow.
I just saw this. And I'm gonna get beat over the head for saying anything. But....
Secondary guns are fine the way they're depicted in the rules. Light guns, though, represent weaponry that's a good bit less lethal than the 6 to 8" mounts mentioned above. Light Guns represent stuff less than 4", correct?
And from articles I read, such weaponry was primarily meant to engage torpedo boats at distances up to a few thousand yards. They were never meant to tackle legitimate warships.
I talked to Kevin about this a ways back (backed by observations from a full-blown navy fanatic) and while the guy really liked Grand Fleets as a set of rules, he had one suggestion --- which was simply to reduce the reach of light guns from 1/2/3 to 0/1/2.
His suggestion was based off the observation that light guns seemed to throw Russo-Japanese seenarios a little out of whack. With WW1 (or later) hulls, primaries and secondaries can SO outshoot the light pieces in terms of range that really they're effect on a game is nil. But in 1905, we see a lot primaries with a 2/4/6 reach in terms of range. And when you combine the fact that they can't shoot a ton further than light guns, and their RoF is way lower, it just seems like something may be amiss.
We played with his suggestion, and it helped. Seemed like a real minor tweak.
Hey, I friggin love the game. I'm just sayin....
Gotta dig up my notes. Email is spotty this weekend, but I'll shoot you a note on Monday.
It's not like ya were pining away....but I'm back
Those in the know understand the past couple of months have blown goat. But I wanted to check in and see what's bein discussed regarding IS, and as Dan has posted in here about the "next supplement," I'm a hopin some of our brainstorming might see print 
No, not a lot of features to take and defend. Not a lot of space to cover, either, as everything Earth's spacefaring powers are interested in is within 10 days of "sailing" time.
I'm thinking that to keep it on a tactical/operational level, you'd start it with each player being able to choose XXXXX many points in ships. Some of those points would have to go to historical vessels that are part of the established timeline.
You'd play battle #1, with maybe each force fielding a single historical vessel (for example, in TMW we have at least one battle where we know the Orpington has to be there). Other than that, either player is left free to field say, 300 points in ships printed in the rulebooks or, if they want, hulls they've created using the construction rules.
If player A wins the first battle, then he gains so many more "repair" points to patch up any damaged hulls. The losing player receives few, if any. Then the storyline branches off and drives the players to Battle #2 or 3#. So I'm lookin at a plot driven campaign. Crew quality may improve over the course of multiple engagements, it may not.
Originally wanted to try something like this for GF, but I ain't skilled enough to get around the fact that that game -- rightly -- doesn't have a way to value ships. EVERYTHING is based off victory conditions, so it's harder to come up with balanced fleets.
Saw a comment where someone was looking for IS scenarios to come in a campaign format. Problem I have with that I'm not sure what would be a viable list of features for a campaign in this setting.
Real-life wet navies in the early 20th century would see ships spent months, if not longer, undergoing repair if they were badly damaged (requiring stays in dry dock). As most conflicts in the IS universe up until WWI really aren't going to last more than several months, would repair rules really be viable?
I also don't see drawing up rules for reinforcements, resource gathering or facility construction as it doesn't mesh well with the setting, IMO. This isn't a game universe where potential battle sites are light years apart. This is all happening within several days of Earth. So if you need extra firepower for the next fight, there's little doubt in my mind that command would have all the time it needs to transfer a healthy ship your way.
There's also not enough time to say "I've researched this or I've built that," as again -- conflicts span mere months, and ether ship construction, in my mind, probably takes at least one calendar year (more likely a few years) to get a hull built and commissioned.
I guess you could have crew experience. But really, other than in WW2, where you had the same ship crews duking it out in the Pacific over a long period of time, has there been a 20th century fleet that's seen enough fighting that its crew could become "hardened?" I don't think such a thing happened in WWI, the main Brit and German fleets only fought two real actions (Jutland and Dogger Bank).
Just wondering
So how would you model a campaign with these limits?
It wouldn't have to be that far off if you move the focus away from Earth for a while. Further develop Mars and the Metal Men for a book or two looking at events which have been unfolding around the Red Planet for the last decade. If you want to further develop the Wells universe, this might offer a window.
Besides, Jim, for one, feels the current pace is a little fast. If you shift yer focus from our dirty little wars and say something like "at the same time...." you could stretch the timeline a little.
The Metal Men are not xenophobes. As they can no longer reproduce, their only method of increasing their numbers is by converting other species into similar cyborgs. They might not look at Mars or Earth as enemies to be defeated, but as potential converts. Suppose they began to seduce individual Martians and Humans with the possibility of becoming immortal, nigh-indestructible cyborgs? (okay, maybe a few too many shades of The Borg/Cybermen here, but it's true to the source material).
I think the Metal Men would wage a campaign of misdirection and subterfuge. They would use their battlegroups to attack small or isolated enemy forces, with the intent of capturing enemy vessels. They would use these captured ships to stage raids on opposed factions, trying to destabilize the Terran nations internally. When foiled in these plans, they would retreat (if possible) in a misleading direction, such as Venus (just to throw it out there). And always, they will be trying to plant spies amongst their enemies and forge secret lines of communication with the sort of ambitious, unscrupulous people to whom immortality is a fair price for treason.
I like that, myself. I don't think it's Borg-esque to have them recruit agents. The cube boyz just MADE you one of them. These metal men are dangling the carrot of immortality in front of a few morally bankrupt individuals.
But jeesh, if we're looking at including them after WWI, then it's a ways off, innit? I don't know the scale of the proposed WWI supplement/series of supplements, but it was my impression that it's going to be a lot of material. And we haven't touched what happens from 1910-13 yet.
Some folks here in town were playing the Mongoose B5 game, then left. When I told the guy who runs the store about Jerry's B5 conversion, he got interested in trying it out (he's got a hex map/cloth/whatever you want to call it) for one of his tables. And I've been typing the Starmada X stats into ship display sheets. But we didn't have any counters.
Well now, voila.
Just posting this for anyone who might need 'em
http://www.richbax.com/
He's got some nice 1/2" and full inch stuff there.
Matt
I'm biased.
But honestly, I wouldn't worry about it until a number of people start expressing the opinion that the game suffers from holes. So far, it's one guy.
I think the book that inspired the game leaves it open to your interpretation that the major powers could recover. And honestly, I think an alternative history approach -- exploring how real-world nation stations would use this kind of equipment -- is more interesting. It's what got me involved in the game in the first place.
Same reviewer was looking for campaign mechanics in the TMW expansion (says he assumes the book was a campaign, although I don't think the description claims anything of the kind). I'd be more prone to looking into something like that.
Gotta see if I can borrow a digital from the in-laws.
And now they're based
Had trouble at first. They're not slotted, and I'm not that handy at coming up with fixes to stuff like that. But I stopped by Wal-Mart, found some 2 and 3" arts and crafts squares (wooden), and simply glued the ships upright to those. Now the bases are painted black (along with some other touches), and the first two fully finished pieces -- my Haemonculus class CAs -- look pretty nice
For my color scheme, I based the ships in black, then painted the hulls with Reaper blue (ocean, sea? gotta look). Picked out the windows with yellow using a detail brush. The solar sail struts/supports/whatever were painted steel plate, with the fabric between them painted silver. Look nice, metallic and shiny. The cover of the IS rulebook has those rounded protusions sticking from the British hulls as grey in color, and I copied that. Finally, just cause I wanted to, I picked out the barrels of the lightning projectors in Brass.
Myself, I think the picture reveals too much and kills the mystery that used to surround him when all we saw was this cowled figure on a holoprojector telling everyone his "apprentice" was coming to settle things.
I'll never forgive him for what he did to Annakin. Or for allowing Jar Jar to survive. :evil:
Bantam, two Haemonculus and three Tychos.
Overall, really happy with them. I put the first Haemonculus together, and my only concern now is how I'm going to mount it. I'm not much of a modeler (I can paint, though, once it's together). And I need to work around the lack of a slot for the base stem. No Big. The ship itself is pretty nice looking
The only headache was the Bantam. The resin hull got dinged up in the mail. Lost two casement guns and what I assume is a torp tube (an extension that sticks at a slight angle out from the ship). I was able to find one gun barrel and glue it back. I clipped some metal from an Old Glory tank barrel and the torp tube has been passably repaired. And another teeny bit of metal has gone in place of the last missing casement gun barrel. Once it's painted, I think it will look OK
Over course, by the time I did the patchjob, my 2-yr-old came over and knocked the frigging teeny light guns onto the carpeted floor, and I can't find the fourth. Even with a flashlight. So they're not mounted. You don't know by looking at the ship that something should be there, though, so I don't really care about that. Got them based and ready to paint today.
OK --
Someone's bound to shoot this one down. But....
Use its momentum and weapons payload.
Say an FAC that's carrying nothing more than a Light Gun and/or MGs has a base damage value of X1.
Carrying torps? Take the damage value of one of those things under its fuselage and use that as the base damage value (ie X2, X3 or X4).
Either way, momentum should add to it. If my FAC has a momentum of 14" when it collides with your ship, and it's carrying a X3 torpedo, then it should inflict at least 3 damage rolls on a successful hit. Probably more.
The to-hit roll could be a D2 + half the target's armor value. That way, you're less likely to hurt a BB than a light cruiser.
mj12games.com/forum → Posts by themattcurtis
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