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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by Blacklancer99
CRICKET WAKE UP!
THEEEEEEYYYY"RE BAAAAAACK! 
Some of the subject lines are truly amusing though!
Cheers
Erik
SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM...
Hey Dan..
Yeah, I think you already know what I'm pointing at :roll:
Although for just 1 split second when I logged on I was excited that there were so many new posts!
Cheers,
Erik
Yes if you could post your old Starmada X cross overs from 2300AD that would be great! Thanx. I think I'm leaning toward linking a ships total Hull size as the basic detection value, and adjusting for shields, ECM, Stealth, weapons fire, etc....
I have a 16 page Word document with the text versions of the ships, I don't think anyone wants me to post them all! 
But below are a couple of the "hero" ships from 2300.
Kennedy-A Class Fast Missile Cruiser of the United States Space Force (265)
TL E:0 W:1 S:0 Q:0
Hull: 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Shields: 0
[α] Improved Class 1 Laser [1/2/3, 3+, 1/1/1]
AB , AB , AC, AC, CE, CE, BD, BD, EF, EF
Hyperdrive [O], Passive Sensor [O], Active Sensor III [O], Drone [OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO], Long Range Sensors [O], Electronic Countermeasures [O], Electronic Warfare System [O], Decoy [O], Security Team [O]
1[HEα], 2[EQα], 3[HQα], 4[EQα], 5[HQ], 6[EQ]
At 265 points the Kennedy seems pretty wimpy, especially when compared to CapShips, but two can take on a Kafer Alpha with a possibility of winning (cough...Admiral Parker...cough) so long as they can keep range open and pound away with drones. I've done Admiralty Edition versions that point out about a hundred points higher, but that's because of the customized strikers (SIM-14s) being bad ass (and the AE versions rely on Stealth trait as well).
Richelieu-A Class Battleship of the Imperial French Space Navy (1,048)
TL E:1 W:0 S:0 Q:0
Hull: 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 6 5 4 3 2 1
Shields: 4 3 2 1
[α] Double Class 1 Laser [1/2/3, 4+, 2/1/1]
ABCD, ABCD, ABCD, ABCD, ABCD, ABCD, ACE, ACE, ACE, ACE
[β] Double Class 1 Laser [1/2/3, 4+, 2/1/1]
ACE, ACE, BDF, BDF, BDF, BDF, BDF, BDF, AB, AB
[γ ] Double Class 1 Laser [1/2/3, 4+, 2/1/1]
AC , AC , BD , BD , CE, CE, DF, DF, EF, EF
Hyperdrive [O], Active Sensor III [O], Passive Sensor [O], Electronic Countermeasures [O], Electronic Warfare System [O], Long Range Sensors [O], Tender [OOOOOO], Troops (250) x5, Decoy [OO], Drone [OOOOOOOOOOOO], Marine Squad [OOOOOOOOO]
1[HQγ], 2[Eα], 3[Hα], 4[Sβ], 5[Hβ], 6[Qγ]
The epitome of the "Big Ship!"
The Tender Special is for carrying fighters. I did 2300 fighters as 1 hull attack boats without Hyper capability. 6 Martels can lay more hurt than almost any other single ships in the game in 1 turn (and they are tough enough to possibly survive unlike those sissy Mistrals!)
Alpha Class Battleship of the Kafer Associative (787)
TL E:0 W:2 S:1 Q:0
Hull: 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Engines: 4 3 2 1
Shields: 5 4 3 2 1
[α] Advanced Class C Particle Beam [2/4/6, 4+, 1/1/3]
ACE, ACE, BDF, BDF
[β] Improved Class 1 Laser [1/2/3, 3+, 1/1/1]
ABC, ABC, ABC, ACE, ACE, ACE, ABD, ABD, ABD
[γ ] Improved Class 1 Laser [1/2/3, 3+, 1/1/1]
BDF, BDF, BDF, CEF, DEF
Hyperdrive [O], Armor Plating, Active Sensor III [O], Passive Sensor [O], Electronic Warfare System [O], Troops (250), Tender [OOOO], Drone [OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO]
1[HQ], 2[EQ], 3[Hα], 4[Sβ], 5[Hβ], 6[Qγ]
TOUGH BUGS! All the Kafer ships are tough nuts to crack, and you never EVER want to get into knife fighting range with them! The Starmada X versions of the Alpha tended to be tougher still as they could punch more drones out every turn than the 2300 version, although this was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the standard SX drone doesn't hurt as much as an XRay did. Loaded up with 4 Golf-class fighters they are some bad mommas. You should see the Delta :twisted:
I have well over 300 notecards with Admiralty edition versions but they require more tweaking and I haven't done anything with them in a while. The ability to customize Strikers radically alters the balance of some of the ships.
As for scanning rules, the basic use of Bogeys/scanning is on page 42 of the Starmada X rulebook and the rules for Active and Passive Sensors are in the Victory By Any Means: Starmada Edition book. I haven't tried them in the Admiralty Edition yet, but it seems to me that they should both fit just fine. I based the relative sensors available to the various ships on their Active and Passive 2300 sensors, and since Starmada is much more "scaled-back" than a game like Starcruiser anyway I never tried to make a distinction for the profiles of ships. The hide and seek "phase" of the game was shorter in Starmada than in Starcruiser, but it was certainly interesting!
Hope this helps.
If you want, I will send you the word file with the 2300AD to Starmada X crossovers I did with the warning that there are sure to be some mistakes and I can't say I have tried even a tenth of the ones that I did so the designs could be way off.
Cheers,
Erik
Finally saw it. Didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. The previews made it look like a two-hour Mountain Dew commercial, but it was actually well done. One of the best Star Trek films.
Thought it was ... interesting ... that they set it up as an "alternate reality" -- essentially short-circuiting any fanboys (like me) who would otherwise nit-pick every little inconsistency with the original series.
Couple things, tho:
1) Leonard Nimoy doing the "Space, the final frontier" thing at the end. Could've (should've?) been given to Shatner -- smoothed over that whole "why did Len get a cameo but not me?" thing...
2) This is the second time (first with the Picard-clone from "Nemesis") that they've touted a villain as the "best since Khan". The thing they don't seem to get about Khan is that he was such a compelling character because he was ... COMPLICATED ... this "Nero" guy from the movie was just angry, through and through. No depth at all. I'm not saying he wasn't a good villain -- just that he could have been even better.
3) I don't care what he did -- would a last-year cadet EVER be promoted straight to captain and given his own ship?
But those are very minor things -- overall, highly entertaining.
(And a heckuva lot better than Terminator: Salvation...)
I saw it a few hours ago myself and found it much tougher to swallow. I LIKED the alternate reality created and thought it created several interesting arcs but I found the contrivances used to "bring the gang together" were just a bit too much to swallow. I thought the allusions to trek lore and characters (especially the reference to Admiral Archer's beagle) was fun as was the sprinkling of "catchphrases" any fanboy would have to expect. BUT...
...(MAJOR Spoiler alert)
Not only was Nero fairly one dimensional, but they totally ripped of the slug in brain thing from Wrath of Khan, giving it a different name...without and of Ricardo's over-the-top menacing monolog-ing. Yet he leaves Spock alive and unsupervised to watch his planet die. What is he, a Bond Villan???
When did the Romulans officially become space orks to the Vulcan space elves?
Why does the engineering section look like a desalinization plant, but everything else looks like t was lifted from 2001 (the movie not the actual year)?
I thought Simon Pegg was funny, but in no way was he channeling Scotty, when everyone else seemed to be doing their level best to imitate the originals (I did think Karl Urban was particularly good)
Worst contrivance of the movie: Kirk jettisoned at random, lands within walking distance of Spock, who was also marooned apparently at random, and both are walking distance (on a hostile glacial planet no less) from Scotty. Nope, can't swallow that even with salt and pepper.
For the love of Pete how big does a super nova have to be to threaten the galaxy? But it can be sucked up by a black hole? (raises hand) Um, how big was that black hole supposed to be and what's to stop the freakin black hole from threatening the galaxy?
I am a total geek, love explosions (even if they are my own ships) and swordfights, but for me the best part of the movie was the GI Joe trailer, not because it looks good, but because I have always had a thing for the Baroness 
I think I will have to stop going to movies that aren't made by Pixar or Dreamworks animation...they really seem to be the only ones worth the money lately.
Overall, I didn't mind the non-stop action, and the space sequences were mighty perdy but I just couldn't get past the long long list of things that just didn't make sense. My suspension of disbelief gland must be weakening with old age. But then again, I happen to think the only good Trek movie is Wrath of Khan, and most of them were far more unwatchable than the most recent effort.
Cheers,
Erik
New Starmada player has a question.............Any ideas for 2300AD-type sensors? With ship size related to sensor detection ability? Anyone have a Home-rule they use now? I'd like to add more Hide&Seek into my game. Thanx.
Hide and seek with bazookas! (old time Starcruiser 2300 player here)
Starmada X had some sensor rules from one of the settings that used bogeys much like 2300 that had to be scanned. The current shipyard posted here has passive and Active sensors 1-3 that can be used for the purpose. I played around with them a bit (specifically with 2300AD crossover ships!) in X but haven't tried them in Admiralty Edition. It gives more of a feel of hide and seek without tying things to ranged sensors like Starcruiser did. There is really no mechanic for profiles and reflected/radiated though.
Hope this helps.
Erik
PS If nobody else pipes up I'll dig out the sensor scanning rules from my hard drive, but I'm sure somebody knows them off the top of their head
Blacklancer99 wrote:does this mean if I roll for the "XY" on a damage chart, I get back 1 X and 1 Y battery weapon? That seems to be what it means, but I want to be sure.
Yes.
Thanks Dan, that will help in my current game, although Idid have a "blonde" damage control crew try to fix some undamaged shields :roll:
Cheers,
Erik
In the rules for damage control regarding weapons its says to "re-roll the die and compare to the starship's weapon damage chart; regain the use of one weapon in the indicated battery (or batteries)" based on the parenthetical addition, does this mean if I roll for the "XY" on a damage chart, I get back 1 X and 1 Y battery weapon? That seems to be what it means, but I want to be sure.
Thanks,
Erik
What if one of the things you bought when you buy a starmada supplement was a set of ship counters for use with the VASSAL mod?
That would be cool. Dan already has counters posted on the MJ12 in the "stuff" zips website right? So in essence he is giving them away to anybody and everybody that happens bye and wants to download them, whether they have the game or not. All that would be needed would be to provide top down counters instead of the tent-type ones and "vassalize" them...wait, that sounds a little dirty :oops:
You still need the rules to play the game, so if MJ12 owns the artwork I for one don't see the harm in providing them, especially if the Vassal module gets the official seal of approval from Cricket. Maybe I'm being naive about something, but I hope they can be included in the final version of the module.
Cheers,
Erik
Had an idea for the external threat that brought down the Empire... one word:
Bugs!
Tiny cockroach like creatures from a distant fringe world that just so happen to like the taste of the insulation surrounding FTL drive assemblies. They eat slowly but reproduce rapidly, spreading from ship to ship, eating, breeding and spreading until drives begin to fail, seemingly at random. Then, thousands of ships are lost...interstellar commerce breaks down...anarchy reigns, all because nobody ever thought ot spray the Hyperdrive down with raid!!!!
Or I suppose you could do blindingly fast, super strong, chitinous, pointy, nasty bugs that kill Kill KILL!!!!!
How about nanotech listening devices that were designed to independently move around for better reception become mysteriously self aware, and once they link into a single consciousness galaxy wide they know damn near everything! Muahahahahahahaha :twisted:
I'm sure whatever you have in mind will be fine too.
Cheers,
Erik
I'm thinking of getting into Starmada and I'm curious how well it works via PBEM? I've played other Vassal modules PBEM so I'm familiar but not familiar enough with Starmada to know how much back and forth between turns there would be.
Cheers,
morgan
Well, since I've just started my second game PbEM I can say that it works pretty well, so far. With the Vassal engine's option for issuing "delayed orders" both players can log their move and fire orders to be revealed after both sets are in. There are a few things like a range-finder and the ability to toggle firing hexes on and off that actually make it easier to line up your shots than on the table top IMO. So far the only drag I can see is if you play a game with lots of fighters/flights, where movement can take several emails. If you're an email junkie and play someone like you and can send off a few messages every day, the game generally moves along pretty crisply. Basically each side can break its game turns down to one email each; movement orders, fire orders, end-turn orders and actions, etc...As you play you can probably find ways to streamline the process a bit by combining things like making your moves and issuing fire orders, and so forth. All in all, I am really pleased with how the game plays via PbEM. I'm also excited as it allows me to play when time permits instead of some pre-arranged event so I should be able to play more often! Hope this helps, and encourages 
Cheers,
Erik
I want more reasons for conflict between the Earth powers!
Seriously, I like the setting and the distinctive fleet approaches. If you advance the timeline, you could take the idea from the Starfire series of novels and have each faction upgrading its tech and ships to reflect the results of battles among the groups. So the DaiKen would have new ship designs meant to deal with Grumm technology. Of course, the Grumm, as written, seem unwilling to change the way they do business, so maybe this would hurt the Grumm more than others. But you could always introduce new, as-yet-not-encountered Grumm designs.
There is the possibility of the Grumm incorporating Terran tech into their designs. Maybe a large scale push from the Grumm could see the balance of power seriously shifted as the Dai-Ken absorb major casualties. I for one wouldn't like to see wholesale upgrades a la Starfire...I always thought the ever increasing tech level was a weakness as tech shifts (on all sides) tended to influence battles more than tactics, which as players of a game I want to be the deciding factor. Obviously some upgrades are possible and likely, but refinement of designs (more special ships?) and doctrine would be more interesting to me. Just my 2 cents worth.
Cheers,
Erik
Hey. What are you guys talking about over here?
Uuuh, nuthin'. Hey look what I've got, it's a shiny new nickel. Ooooh ...SHINE-EEEE!
This is actually the clarification made in the (as-yet-unreleased) Revision 2; while cloaked, ships are immune to all weapons, including those with area effect
If I can't have it yet, does that mean I can ignore it :?
Just kidding, thanks for the clarifications, even if I don't like one of them :cry:
So much for my launch depth charges idea...
Cheers,
Erik
MadSeason, look over there!
Now that he's not looking here...
Ok, one question I came up with relates to the Commonwealth Pippestrelle seekers. Since they have the Area Effect trait are they targeted at a ship like other seekers or at a hex like fixed weapons with Area Effect? My gut feeling is that it's the former not the latter, but either would make sense to me. Also with Area Effect, do you roll to attack cloaked ships in the Area Effect-ed area even if you don't know they are there? I would think so, just hoping for clarification.
Thanks,
Erik
CURSE YOU MICRONIA....errr....wrong battle...sorry.
At least it was an honest to goodness WEAPON that did the damage...
It could have been a horrifying JapPop attack from which there can be no survivors!
Erik
I have to admit that I bought an Umi-class specifically for its big gun (and I had tried so hard to resist... :cry: )
I had no idea that it would prove to be this destructive - I actually feel kinda guilty about destroying a ship in a single hit, and then chain-reacting another one!
Oh well, no doubt the Grumm will reap a grim harvest in retribution...
Don't feel guilty it's Japanimation Big Gun destruction at it's finest :!:
The commanding officer of Thunder no doubt has a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes "hurrumphing" while his young and excitable bridge crew cheers wildly at the destruction they have caused. Meanwhile, the Grumm commander will launch into a high-pitched diatribe at the utter gall of these humans who think they can resist the might of the Grumm...and he might just possibly shoot a subordinate. :geek:
Or something like that,
Erik
Here's the best review I've seen so far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSJF6UiGfa0
Cheers,
Erik
Oh, and a point about the ship costing. I'm using the Commonwealth ships and when I ran the ships I picked through the most recent version of the Shipyard (v36 or 37?) I only came up with 1 difference in points and that was by 1 (lower) than the official #. Instead of going crazy trying to figure it out I just went with the official value.
Erik
MadSeason wrote:Thank you x 3!
And now, you have to give us the AAR...
Patience Grasshopp..er...Cricket
Soon, soon the sneaky Boers will be cornered and forced to fight. As soon as I can find them that is.
Cheers,
Erik
Well, at the moment, I'm seeing how much interest there would be... which will then determine what is possible.
I don't think we'll ever do a monthly hard-copy thing, but a quarterly PDF might be doable.
I would like to see a quarterly periodical. If people get excited enough to contribute enough material, then maybe doing it more often could be warranted. I contributed to the Great Machine that was more or less a Babylon 5 Wars vessel, and it motored along well enough until some of the principles got caught up with more profitable endeavors. Since MJ12 has a true stable of games to draw interest to and material from I think it would be well supported. If you're looking for a vote I say "Aye". If you're looking for contributors as well, maybe
Stick with a PDF, it's a whole lot easier for people to come by anyway. Stick it up someplace like RPGNow and maybe it attracts interest from people who haven't tried your games yet.
Ahh... just saw that you DID have specific questions.
thedugan wrote:- who has FTL? What's the basic technique? Jump? Warp? Gates?
I'm not sure -- but I do know FTL travel is "instantaneous" for those in transit, even though weeks (or months) may pass for those on the "outside".
Aaaaahhhhhhhh nooooooooo! Not time debt!!!!!!!!
Just kidding, I actually like it and think it makes things more "interesting" when campaigning (ships out of contact while in transit, etc). This is especially interesting if there is no FTL comm tech, and it makes interstellar empires more interesting in some ways (semi-autonomous regional Governors for example) by adding an "Age of Sail" kind of feel when doing anything over significant distances.
Cheers,
Erik
[attachment=1]Turn 6 after imperial fire.jpg[/attachment]
The dying Umikaze concentrates its firing on the closer Adamant and causes moderate damage before dying in a blaze of glory. (She deserved it, having dished out the most damage for the Arcturans... and Erik just really wanted to see one of his ships explode. )
SPLOSION! NOW THAT"S WHAT I'M TALKIN' BOUT! WHOOO HOOO!
Hey, when you lose you take joy in the little things.
Erik
"There has been a lot of programming but I am largely happy with how it stands now. And the Dugan has done an AWESOME job with the art. I just hate that I had to shrink all the ships down to a smaller size. 
And if anyone has a problem with the art... I'll meet them at the bike racks at 3:30. "
I guess the only question regarding art would be for Dan (or maybe Admiral Art Fairy); is there a possibility of putting the counters for the "official" ships from the suppliment into the mod? Other than obviously being used to represent ships from the suppliments they would expend the number of options for representing other ships. I love the art that has been included so far, but hey, it doesn't hurt to have more...does it?
Cheers,
Erik
Blacklancer99 wrote:That's ADMIRAL ART FAIRY
Oh dear... we're not going down this road again, are we?
This from the guy with ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET emlbazoned below his avatar 
You could order me to stop...but that would require an acknowledgement of rank! :twisted:
Ok, I guess it doesn't require greater rank to moderate me into oblivion, so I'll be good.
Erik
PS we return this thread to its previously scheduled discussion.
Nice breakdown Art Fairy, thanks for the feedback on my post
That's ADMIRAL ART FAIRY We must maintain proper respect for rank after all!
Erik
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