Bugs!  Millions of 'em!

(I have to see how much I spent on my wife's Christmas presents first, then decide if I want color.  The color rulebook is very nice.)

By the way, what expectations do you have for publishing supplements?  I love the SAE rulebook for being beautiful and clean.  I'm coming from a system I like (FT), but which has become spread over several books, and is in need of a cleanup (IMO).  I don't know that I'm interested in the pregenerated ships, and I'm not particularly interested in the history (sorry).  But I am interested in some of the new options.  (I don't want 3D, and I don't know what combat interception means, but I would like to see anti-fighter batteries.)  I don't mind buying a second book.

But how often would you expect to publish books with rule options in them?  I don't want a library of Starmada rulebooks, with lots of fluff for a universe I don't use.  My friend bought some spaceships and started asking me about the Full Thrust rules, and I talked him into trying Starmada, largely with simplicity and brevity in mind.

I imagine there is a post about this somewhere, so I'll go look for that.  The announcement for ISS says this is the second half of publishing SAE, so I guess there aren't any new supplements just over the horizon?

thanks,
andy

I'm looking at the new Appendix A, in A.4.

"Ant-Fighter (Weapon)"

Should this be "Anti-Fighter(Weapon)"?

andy

When I play FT, I like the cinematic system.  That's because I like spaceship combat to "feel" right, without actually being accurate.  I wouldn't expect a Star Destroyer to pivot about, firing and thrusting one way while moving another.

But I don't like ships moving like tanks, either, so the new SAE movement system feels more right to me than the old one, and works better for me for space fleets than a vector system would.

For a nice fighter-based vector hex system, I recommend Turn or Burn:

http://interformic.com/torb.html

Nice little game design!

andy

There are other sorts of defense, too.  I think Dan has been careful to get a good value for each defense, so I'd feel free to experiment.

So you could have an unshielded fleet with armor plating and/or countermeasures and/or increasing the hull size by 1 to give another hull point?

I'm finding that I'm not giving high shield values to my ships, just because they start taking up so much space past 3.

Of course, another way to look at it is that Shields represents shields on one fleet, and armor plates on the other.  It is just whatever goes up against the Impact value.  But it is nice to have fleets that you want to be different actually have different mechanics, so I think you've got some good things to try out.

andy

I was thinking of the comments that I should have two hull sizes per "class" (where I'm thinking of "class" by size, even if I'm using role names) to give more room for variation.  It doesn't seem necessary to me, since I don't have to fill the whole thing.

For combat rating, I think it seemed to only add to the defensive rating, and thus to combat rating.  That seems OK, since you do get another hull point, and maybe another level for shields or engines.

Yeah, I was thinking about that, too.  I think I'm more likely to try going the other way with this fleet--adding a hull point without needing to fill the size.

Do you think that costs more than its worth in defense?

thanks,

andy

I wanted to answer one of my own questions.

I wondered whether you could provide some variation on size within the hull size integers by leaving some space units open.  After experimenting a bit, looks like you can, if you are using the combat rating.  If you're using the S.U. for a campaign or something, it might be inefficient, but it looks like it only changes the defensive rating to take into account the extra hull point.  (Am I right?)

In that case, I could use it for another defensive option.  Design the ship for size n, then at the end crank it to size n+1 and don't use the space up.

That might make sense for me.  I'm getting my version of GZG's NSL (slow-ish, armored, mostly basic guns) into shape, and the ratio of damage dealt to damage taken seems (no actual experience yet) higher with Starmada.  I don't feel a need to reproduce Full Thrust (or the ship classes--I just would prefer to reflect relative ship sizes), but having their ship style as a guide helps to keep a theme going.

Am I missing something about being able to use leftover S.U. space as a fractional part for hull sizes?

andy

I was going to ask why non-piercing had that fighter rule, too.  I know it wouldn't be a penalty vs fighters, but it is still a penalty (because there are a lot of things out there that aren't fighters).

It would have been a nice rule to use for anti-fighter guns.  I know those may appear in the future, but the fighter penalty didn't seem necessary for this trait (and the other similar one, which I forget at the moment), at least to me.

andy

This is sorta what I was looking for.  How has Starmada usually been played?  Tested?  What are the norms, and what are the limits of things that aren't that unusual?

I don't really related to Dan's other rants.  I just know that GZG makes beautiful ships in many size gradations, and I'd like to be able to come close to respecting relative sizes.  I'd rather have 12 different levels than 10, and the ships at that extreme do have rather large models.

Dan, what do you usually see?  Do the Starmada X: Brigade ships reflect the range you expect to see in ships, and in gun sizes?

Anybody else?  I've seen other people designing ships up to size 20, and other people agreeing with them.  What's common practice?

In the meantime, I'm going to start designing with 1-12 hull sizes.

thanks,
andy

That list wasn't meant to be exhaustive, so other ships fit in at appropriate size.

I'll try some more with the ship builder, but it seemed hard to fill the space up to 20.  I got the impression that there could be way too many guns on my superdreadnought.

I'd still like to get a sampling of what people actually do.

thanks for comments,
andy

I'm interested in an approximating the "cinematic" vector-ish approach that Full Thrust uses.  Ships move like in the movies, more like boats than spaceships.  I just don't see these things spinning around on a dime, and it seems so different than the other possible moves.

andy