26 Topic by Alex Knight

(15 replies, posted in Starmada Nova)

So going off of my old BFG conversion I tested a single vessel with the conversion rules... okay, pre 1.0 conversion. Looks like a few things might have been altered. So I was going to see if a straight link would work to the printout.
(Nope, it won't.)

So a C&P
Imperial DOMINATOR-class Cruiser  (194)
ARMOR: 0
HULL: 12
THRUST: 4
SHIELDS: 3
Weapon Battery 30cm  [PP2][SS2] RANGE 6|27     19     14     10     7     5     3     2     2     1     1     1
Nova Cannon (Bls/Dx2/Prc/Prx)     [FR]     RANGE 18|5     3     2     2     1     1     1
Turrets (Acr) [TT] RANGE 3|1     1     1
Teleport Attack (Crn/Prc)     [TT] RANGE 3|1     1     1

(Need a better way to print this without having to save it as an image and uploading. :-\)

Go to forum: Starmada Nova

27 Reply by Alex Knight

(21 replies, posted in Starmada)

Exactly. I know that sometimes conversions from SAE to SNE, following the book, will come out at too many SU. Most of the Archades airship designs ended up being anywhere from 80 - 150 SU over.

Go to forum: Starmada

28 Reply by Alex Knight

(30 replies, posted in Starmada)

Nomad wrote:

Though friendly escorts block your LOS too, so you're still going to have to stick your nose out where it can be hit if you want to shoot at anybody tongue

True, but chances are your opponent didn't take high ECM shield escorts. Though, conceptually, I'm finding the idea of shield-ships in this style fascinating. Perhaps not in the same abusive sense that those were designed in. But the idea that shields as we envision them require so much energy that you cannot have weapons on the same vessel as they could not function along side the shields. The positive side to this is that shields are a 'bubble'. So you have defenseless weapons carrier and a shield-ship or two.

Go to forum: Starmada

29 Reply by Alex Knight

(30 replies, posted in Starmada)

Marauder wrote:

Isn't that a problem?  You can make your ships immune to enemy fighters with a combine score of 7 and that is also a serious problem for ships attacking.  If I look at most of the ships in the rulebook, unless they are a race that uses ECM, they will basically not be able to attack someone with a 7 shift.

If you want stealth and ECM to stack perhaps stealth should do something mechanically different - like add x hexs to the range between you?

-Tim

Check out the Alex Knight directory of the Drydock. The Cheap empire Glasc Cannon Gun-Ship escorted by the Degenerate class Shield ship. If I followed how the rules on "Escort" works correctly.

Go to forum: Starmada

30 Reply by Alex Knight

(55 replies, posted in Starmada)

On page 52, the conversion arcs for ABD is given as FH, where I suspect it should be FS. ABC is FP as expected.

Go to forum: Starmada

31 Reply by Alex Knight

(54 replies, posted in News)

Nomad wrote:

Resolving mine / asteroid damage would be tricky, though.

Not really. Asteroids (particularly the cinematic asteroids) would likely void the cloak anyways. "Sir, sensors are picking up large energy spikes in the Hydapes belt, the signature matches that of deflection shields." "Weapons officer, target the location of those spikes and fire all weapons!"

Mines, same situation - depending on the trigger. There is still mass in that location.

And if the counter *isn't* your actual location, then perhaps the sensor 'ghost' obviously doesn't mesh with the incoming scans and can be discounted. "Sir, the sensors report a vessel in the Hydapes belt, but is not picking any energy spikes from deflection shields." "Ensign, ignore that signal and focus on the other two..." I.E. You remove the counter.

Go to forum: News

32 Reply by Alex Knight

(20 replies, posted in Starmada)

jwpacker wrote:

Alex, with 6 being the pivot point, where do you top out for hull sizes? Like Nomad, with 14ish being the highest? Or do you go all the way to 20, 24 or higher?

I find myself inclined to stay in the sub-16 range as well, for some reason, and I delight in cramming impossible things into size 1 hulls, at least at this point my in my Starmada obsession.

I tend to cap out at 14, though super-carriers, super-dreadnoughts and stations might go a bit higher. I don't think I'd go past 20.

Go to forum: Starmada

33 Reply by Alex Knight

(20 replies, posted in Starmada)

I usually consider hull-size to determine type. I tend to consider anything less than 6 hull as "Escort" sized vessels. Destroyers, Frigates, Corvettes, Ferrarris. What classification it gets depends on role. Anything bigger than 6 I consider to be "Captial" ships or ships-of-the-line. Cruisers, Battlecruisers, Battleships, etc.

6 hull I treat as a swing size. Depending on armament and speed is whether it's captial or escort.

The reason for the distinction between Escort and Capital is based on how I run heavy weapons, with escorts typically carrying lighter versions.

Go to forum: Starmada

34 Reply by Alex Knight

(35 replies, posted in Game Design)

Blacklancer99 wrote:

I always personally liked the idea that you had to have ships to keep other ships in supply, and ships to protect those ships were necessary if you want your supplies to reach their customers. I put something like this in the campaign system I hacked together because I like forcing myself and others to have to spend their campaign currency on "non-combat assets", just to make the decision making process more interesting. If I remember correctly VBAM had a rule that you needed to have Supply rated vessels placed on either end of a supply route and it was assumed that they were continuously moving back and forth to the supply depots as part of the supply chain.
Cheers,
Erik

Well, if you want to force people to spend curency on "non-combat assets" why not just levy a supply charge on fleets based on distance from the supply point and size of the fleet. Sure it's abstracted, but can represent fleets of supply ships. And an opponent can still run a supply raid to deny your fleet necessary resources... so you could spent more on supply assets to account for loss or for increased supply line defenses.

Go to forum: Game Design

35 Reply by Alex Knight

(10 replies, posted in The Admiralty Edition)

The dangerously awesome thing about that is that, theoretically, it could be used to run a real-time game of standard Starmada as well...

Go to forum: The Admiralty Edition

36 Reply by Alex Knight

(6 replies, posted in Starmada)

What would be the point aside from cheeseballing the price of the weapon system?

Go to forum: Starmada

37 Reply by Alex Knight

(3 replies, posted in Starmada)

Given that most everything you can do in Starmada is self-designed, I had a nice long post showcasing a basic weapon system with an alteration on that weapon system based on different racial concepts. However, sadly it took too long to write and I timed out and thus had my post eaten.  :evil:  So ultimate summary: No racial modifiers to change the ships as that would be done in ship design. And as far as I know, Sovereign Stars does not yet have unique racial abilities. Though I suspect you could easily make your own racial campaign abilities. As for unique racial ships. Design from the ground up. :-D Maybe if I feel froggy later I can rewrite my post on racial weapon systems.

Go to forum: Starmada

38 Reply by Alex Knight

(4 replies, posted in Starmada)

I'd have to agree with the rules being fine at d6s. I think switching to d10s really wouldn't improve things *that* dramatically. Plus try rolling a fistful of d10's, I find it's not as easy and doesn't have the same 'feel' as d6s.

As for FC material. I'm glad to see more of it. The more SFU material we get, the more traits that can be moved to Starmada proper. Add in regular distribution thanks to ADB and the game gets out to more players. More players = more income. More income = more Starmada, right? (Especially Fleet Ops. More ships!? Sign me up!)

Go to forum: Starmada

39 Reply by Alex Knight

(24 replies, posted in Starmada)

Starship Exclusive answer: Independent Fighters. (My B-Wings can't be hit by a majority of the armament on the Star Destroyer? Sweet.)

Go to forum: Starmada

40 Reply by Alex Knight

(3 replies, posted in Game Design)

Step 1: Use naval movement.
Step 2: Rename Shields as Defense.
Step 3: Rename Engines as Sails (or Motive Power or what have you.)
Step 4: Replace the word Starship with Ship or Vessel.
Step 5: Weapons are designed with a flavor for fantasy or medieval. Instead of Fusion Beam, you have Ballista or "Wizard casting Fireballs"

I wrote up a few ships with Final Fantasy XII style airships in mind and threw those into the Bourbaki Basin along with all the optional rules that are used for the feel I was going for.

Go to forum: Game Design

41 Reply by Alex Knight

(6 replies, posted in Starmada)

Perhaps rather than use a base tonnage, use a base ship and use the same Hull size between them. For Star Trek, it's the Constitution (Or Galaxy, or Sovereign depending on era.) For BSG it's the Galactica. Using that as a reference, you can then work out the rest of the ships in that universe. For Star Wars it's... ummm... Star Destroyer? ::shrugs:: Of course, that doesn't necessarily work for universes that don't really have a base ship. What do you use for B5? Hyperion? White Star? The station itself?

Go to forum: Starmada

42 Reply by Alex Knight

(59 replies, posted in Starmada)

PSYCO829 wrote:

40 hull and a combat rating of 775.
*dies*

I think ya' missed a 2 in front of that 775. ;-)

Yeah, that's freaking huge. I think the highest I've gone was about a 20 - 24 on a Super Dreadnought/ Flagship type vessel in a home universe. I'd hate to see an SSD or Death Star...

Go to forum: Starmada

43 Reply by Alex Knight

(10 replies, posted in Defiance)

cosworth wrote:

I take it from your comments that Defiance hasn't really caught on. I've read your review and think it sounds great, but is there some fatal flaw in Defiance that drives people away?

1.) They don't have their own miniature line.
2.) They don't have thousands upon thousands of dollars of advertising budget.
3.) They don't have a crack team of lawyers to protect their IP.
4.) They don't have distribution to get them into the FLGS.

Wait, looking at it none of those are any flaws with the rules. Huh. Funny that.

Really, the issue is that it just doesn't have that much market penetration. Which is a shame, it looks like a great system.

Go to forum: Defiance

44 Reply by Alex Knight

(75 replies, posted in Miniatures)

tnjrp wrote:

Sure they seem nice enough scuplts and are affordable, but I'm not personally too fond of the aesthetic. Done to death and all that. Plus they aren't aliens* :mrgreen:

*) Yoda says: OP you should read, not just the thread title.

Close enough. The series they are from (starting) *is* *Alien* Suns... :mrgreen: I suspect we'll see more *aliens* coming out of that company. I mean, heck, from what it sounds like I might get my Latex Babes of Estros (bonus points to anyone who catches that reference...) err... Amazons in Space... Besides, he wouldn't have been the first to point out human lines.

That said, anyone looking at Reaper's Chronoscope line? Some limited poses but they do have an entire line of martian figures. All I can say is ... "ACK ACK. ACK... ACK ACK ACK..."

Go to forum: Miniatures

45 Reply by Alex Knight

(10 replies, posted in News)

Looks like everything is back to normal. (Normal of course defined in the sense of the website being up is the norm.)

Go to forum: News

46 Reply by Alex Knight

(7 replies, posted in ARES)

Dixon Five wrote:

The only issue I see is that in both cases (attacker/defender) the figure loses something, and you need to mark that somehow.  Not to mention that the roman is then unarmed and pretty useless, and I can't see why you would do that.

Because the Roman also had his gladius for after his pilum is used up?

However, I think utterly destroying the opponent's shield is a bit much. The pilum didn't render it 100% useless, it just made it heavier and more unwieldly, iirc. Not having tried Ares out, is there a trait that would weaken the bonus from having a shield?

Go to forum: ARES

47 Topic by Alex Knight

(0 replies, posted in The Admiralty Edition)

Rule Options Used:
B.7 Shipboard Combat
B.15 Faceted Shielding
C.2 Expanded Firing Arcs
D.4 Evasive Action
D.9 Three-Dimensional Movement (All ships start at altitude 3.)
D.12 Etheric Movement (With extra momentum movement points capped at engine rating (So at most you can have twice your engine rating in MP).)
E.3 Explosions
F.4 Launch and Recovery

The ship designs here are an attempt to carry the ships conceptually from the original game Final Fantasy XII, since no information is actually given on armament I took a guess. These are actually revisions from ships I had posted earlier. The other design sentiment was shorter ranged weapon, higher speed movement and weak rear shields in order to focus more on maneuver. So far I have only generated ships for the Archadean Empire as there is very little information on any other ships in the game.

All ships use faceted shielding, which are magically generated fields called pallings. The Magicite engines weaken the flow of the mist near them, thus the pallings are weaker towards the rear of the ships. This disruption is also why there are no weapons that are capable of firing into the rear arcs.

Ifrit Cruiser Airship
Primarily a cruiser sized airship, it can be found in almost all Archadian fleets. The main armament is the forward-mounted Hellfire cannons. While extremely short-ranged, they are designed to overload the enemy's palling (Shields in AE terms.) through huge gouts of Magicite-induced flames. Most of the damage inflicted by the Hellfire cannons tends to be from sections that continue to burn after they've been hit. Secondary armaments are standard Magicite Cannons. In addition, most Ifrits carry a squadron of the standard Remora-class fighter-type airships or a smaller number of the Valfarre-class advanced fighter-type airships.

(232) Ifrit-class Archades Cruiser Airship
Hull: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 6 6 5 4 3 3 2 1
Faceted: 15 14 12 10 8 6 4 2
Facets: (3,3,3,2,2,2)
Weapons:
1:XY 2:XY 3:Y 4:Y 5:Y 6:Y

X: Hellfire: -/2/-, 1/3+/5/1
Carronade; Minimum Range; Area Effect; Continuing Damage
[G][G]

Y: Magicite Cannons: 4/8/12, 2/4+/1/1
[AB][AB][AC][AC][BD][BD][C][D]

Special: Armor Plating; Cargo (50); Carrier (50); Marines (10)

Shiva Light Cruiser Airship
The Shiva trades off armor and firepower for more speed and maneuverability. That isn't to say that it is without bite. Aside from the same Magicite Cannons found on the Ifrit, it also carries it's own Diamond Dust cannon. The Diamond Dust fires out a cloud of Magicite empowered ice shards, capable of flaying the armor off of enemy vessels. As with the Ifrit, it carries a squadron of Remora-class fighter-type airships.

(134) Shiva-class Archades Light Cruiser Airship
Hull: 6 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 9 8 6 5 3 2
Faceted: 9 8 6 5 3 2
Facets: (2,2,2,1,1,1)
Weapons:
1:X 2:Y 3:Y 4:Y 5: 6:

X: Diamond Dust: 3/6/9, 4/5+/1/1
Extra Hull Damage
[AB]

Y: Magicite Cannons: 4/8/12, 2/4+/1/1
[AB][C][D]

Special: Carrier (50); Cargo (40); Marines (2)

Catoblepas Destroyer Airship
A lighter escort ship, the Catoblepas is intended to protect some of the less maneuverable ships from being outflanked and from the depridations of enemy fighters. Aside from the standard Magicite Cannons found on all Archadian vessels, the Catoblepas carries two additional weapon systems. One is a lighter grade of Magicite Cannon intended for dealing with fighters and boarding ships. The other is a feared weapon amongst crews of enemy airships. The Demon Eye is a Magicite weapon specifically designed for petrifying the crew of enemy ships. This fear is not without merit as the beam bypasses the pallings that normally protect the ship from damage.

(64) Catoblepas-class Archades Destroyer Airship
Hull: 4 3 2 1
Engines: 9 7 5 3
Faceted: 9 7 5 3
Facets: (2,2,2,1,1,1)
Weapons:
1:XY 2:XZ 3:YZ 4:YZ 5:Y 6:Y

X: Demon Eye: 3/6/9, 1/5+/1/3
Ignores Shields; No Hull Damage; Crew-Killer
[G]

Y: Magicite Cannons: 4/8/12, 2/4+/1/1
[AB][AC][BD]

Z: Anti-Fighter Cannons: 2/4/6, 1/5+/1/1
Anti-Fighter; Fighter Exclusive
[ABC][ABD]

Special: Cargo (30); Marines (2)

Madeen Bombardment Airship
The Madeen Class Bombardment Airship is a recent development in the Archadian arsenal. The Terra Homing cannons are primarily meant to breach fortifications in order to allow Archadian troops to enter and occupy them, though they are also capable of decimating Resistance airships. In order to provide the magicite power needed for the Terra Homing cannons, the ship's engines have little to no extra power for speed or maneuverability. To make up for this, extra armor plating has been added. However, the airship will still require support from Ifrit, Shiva and Catoblepas Class airships. Aside from the standard Remora-class fighters, the Madeen also carries two flights of Atomos-class transports, capable of boarding enemy ships. (Notes: The concept of this design is derived from the Final Fantasy 9 Summons, Madeen, and is not an airship from Final Fantasy 12, thus mostly unique.)

(364) Madeen-class Archades Bombardment Airship
Hull: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 4 4 4 3 3 2 2 2 1 1
Faceted: 18 17 15 13 11 9 8 6 4 2
Facets: (4,3,3,3,3,2)
Weapons:
1:XY 2:XY 3:Y 4:Y 5:Y 6:Y

X: Terra Homing, 3/6/9, 5/3+/2/1
No Range Mods; Minimum Range
[AB][AB]

Y: Magicite Cannons, 4/8/12, 2/4+/1/1
[AB][AB][AB][AC][AC][BD][BD][C][D]

Special: Armor Plating; Carrier - Fighter (50); Carrier - Boarding Pods (32); Marines (12); Cargo (60)

Go to forum: The Admiralty Edition

48 Reply by Alex Knight

(5 replies, posted in The Admiralty Edition)

I think I might take a second gander at your ships in consideration of a demo day I want to do. Demo BFG, SFB, Fed Com, Starmada and then at the end run either an Imperials versus Empire game with BFG Imperial ships versus Klingons or call it Federation and Imperium...?!? with Feds versus Imperials. The more direct conversion that Nomad and I looked at before might be bit too weird of a match-up.

Go to forum: The Admiralty Edition

49 Reply by Alex Knight

(44 replies, posted in Starmada)

Shugyosha wrote:

Now I don't know the source material but isn't it possible to calculate all costs in advance. So vessel A has a base CR and a table in the book that states the stats for possible weapons it can use and their value (for each given ship). So Weapon A will cost 20 CR for vessel A and 25 CR for vessel B and so on based on each vessel's DRAT. The sheer amount of customization will very likely be toned down a bit, but it is very easy for the players to just take a ship and some weapon options and simply add the CR together.

Given the average engine ratings I've seen, I'd almost say that it's one cost depending on the number of arcs.
So you could say a Phaser - 1 is 3 CR per arc. So if I have two OPT mounts, one with ACE and one with BDF arcs and take PH-1s in each, then it's 18 CR + cost of ship. It really didn't seem to change dramatically based on the Engine ratings. (Then again, I checked with ER 4, 5, and 6. I didn't check anything really off...)
Is it 100% accurate? No. Is it within 1-2% of accurate? If my calcs are correct, yes.

Go to forum: Starmada

50 Reply by Alex Knight

(5 replies, posted in The Admiralty Edition)

I like. My only sentiment? Drop the Hyperdrive off of them. Ships only disengage from leaving the board edge. Hyperdrive gives them an option they don't normally have. Otherwise I find them to be very interesting.

Go to forum: The Admiralty Edition