Got the Art Fairy whipping up 3-D models of invaders for a print on demand type thing, or planning on going with sculpted masters and a full production run? Are you confined to the original arcade Invaders or can you model those as seen in say, the Atari version? Will this interfere with the production schedule on the Yar's Revenge RPG or the Centipede CCG?
Keep up the good work Cricket, and go easy on the rum-cake 
Erik

I WISH I had a FLGS 
Thank goodness for the internet though! 
Erik

I've been torn about how to best represent high drive missiles from this setting. In some respects they are standard weapons, with arcs and a limited number of launchers. On the other hand, they are Seeker-ish as they take (relatively) a long time to reach their target at max range and they can be shot at with plasma cannons, which can vaporize enough material from them to alter their course and make them miss. Now that I think about it, a compromise might be to use a variation  plasma torp rules from Romulan Armada which only allows them to fire in torpedo mode and uses ammo each shot. Just a thought.
Erik

Gee, sorry to be the wet blanket    I just remembered all the stories of times  Lucas has used litigation to crush anyone that came close to his money making machine. I'm sure a counter on a forum couldn't hurt...could it? Although, from what I remember reading, I'm a bit surprised Lucas hasn't tried to get a royalty for every child named Luke born since at least 1978!
Erik

And it has been established that a kamikaze A-wing will cripple a Super Star Destroyer- gee, these Imperial Super weapons hardly seem worth the investment! 
Erik

Ok, instead of doing the work I was supposed to be doing I used excel as a die roller and tested the random nodal map idea with some simple graphics. All in all I think the system works, but I was wondering what others thought. I generated 1 route at a time alternating blue and red empires until they came in "contact". As you can see, it didn't take long, and did not require and fudging. This jives with some of the trials I have done with pen and paper, all though I must admit a couple of those have gone several systems longer before contact, but not that many and not too often.
I think the ideal way would be for a 3rd party to generate the map and then let other players "explore" it, and that way it could be tweaked a bit to taste.
Cheers,
Erik

Just wanted to note that I had edited a few more things after doing some test runs creating nodal maps. I'm not totally happy with the somewhat dubious wording which I think is a bit confusing, but I am happier with generated results. I did a two Empire map by hand on hex paper and it took about 5 systems generated each for them to come in contact. I don't think I will ever find the "perfect" solution for anything, but I am willing to keep trying 
Erik

Thanks. I don't think there will be any additions to the system as it stands as it has already grown too large for my taste, though that is mostly do to the additions of the various options.

I actually removed VPs from the "economic" considerations of a campaign, and as you point out can only end a scenario when the vp criteria are met. Personally, I have no problem playing until the bitter end, and have played a number of enjoyable games like that. Often I have found that doing so leads to the "winner" being much more badly mauled than if the game had ended at the VP point. I left VP victory determination in the game mostly because that is the default for Starmada, and it will generally leave more ships available for both players following the scenario which is useful in terms of the campaign. I can see were having an open ended scenario would lead to more decisions about when to run away from a fight though, so I don't see any reason why it couldn't be played that way. Does anyone else have an opinion?

Thanks for the comments.
Erik

Mostly because the Tractor beam is a multi-purpose system while this has just one effect, so to my mind it shouldn't be as "beefy".

Well, the area effect, and in fact all of the statistics were only there for my attempt at pointing  as the GS would be handled as a piece of equipment, not a weapon anyway.

Erik

I'm just a bit at a loss for SUs for this. Maybe for purposes of adding it you could create it as a weapon with RNG 6 ACC 5+ ROF 1 IMP 1 DMG 1 No Hull Damage and Area Effect (I know it only effects 1 target, but that's added to give it more girth, and hey, it technically does affect an area!  ).I also wonder if it would be better to "abstract" it into a 360 degree system, instead of having arcs, sort of like tractor beams are treated.  Still not sure that would be proper points anyway.
By the way, I would probably just use the same exact thing for the Minbari gravity net, even though it is a bit different.
Cheers,
Erik

Group the weapons into batteries if you can and then scale the # and damage and so forth. I think that whether a ship is pounded by 8 batteries of turbolasers in a volley or by 800 it doesn't matter as long as the "game effect" is playable. Oh, and I wouldn't want to roll dice for 800 weapons at a shot.

They are designed to look pretty on the big screen, and in Star Wars in particular, awe you with their sheer size. Coherent design and fleet doctrine was probably not given much thought 
Erik