It's been an awfully quiet 24 hours around here. Must have something to do with S:IS being out there for everyone to digest. Well, everyone except for OldnGrey who was talking with his mouth full of pages 1 through 8 last night      and continues to do so today!
Thanks Dan, once again, for putting out quality stuff. Now (at the risk of attracting the ire of Admiral Dugan), back to work! No time to rest on your laurels! 
Cheers!
Erik

It seems to me, based on screen evidence, the Galactica's main railgun batteries would be a perfect example of a dual mode weapon system. Reduced range, reduced damage area effect for the defensive flak mode best seen in the pilot (and a few times after), and a longer range, higher damage anti ship mode.
Erik

Another thought...How about a way to differentiate between, Normal and Weak hulled ships? I was thinking of something that would be along the lines of a modifier to construction that wouldn't affect gameplay in any way. A weak hulled merchant designed with 10 hulls of SUs to accomodate cargo space would apply the "Weak" modifier so that the final Hull that shows on the Ship Display would be, say 8 (to pick a simple number...I KNOW Dan would have to use the square root of something). I'm thinking of campaign games here mostly, and it makes something like a Q-ship converted freighter something other than a warship in sheeps clothing. By the same respect, a battleship with 10 Hull spaces worth of equipement stay 10 Hull hits, representing additional internal bracing, bulkheads, compartmentalization, redundant systems, etc...to make it ton for ton, more durable than the merchant.
I know you could do Strong Hulls too, but it adds a greater degree of complexity, and doesn't seem necessary to the flavor of the game if you just consider warships as the "norm".
Just thinking again.
Cheers,
Erik

True Dat. There have been a few really spectacular scenes...and a lot of "Are we sure they have a plan?" I've stuck with it throughout in the hope that the slow painful bits will be worth it in the end.
It's either BSG or watch Babylon 5 on DVD 
Cheers,
Erik

Nope, I didn't miss those posts. My point is that without others interested in what you are doing, it dies, and nobody knows or cares. The  Starmada gang is lucky that people like what they do. I Never implied anyone was sitting with their feet up on the desk as I' not a naive teenager and know how things really work. Frankly, I was trying to be lighthearted, but you seem to have taken it personally. For that I apologize. The yahoo group I pointed you to has a project that I did with a fellow gamer (from Ireland) for free as an expansion to B5wars. He did most of the artwork and we worked on conceptual stuff together, but I wrote the text. I worked on it in my free time for over a year. Did I mention it was for free? We all do stuff like that. I have a full time job, a house, family and a cat.

Hope I'm not too insubordinate  Admiral, Sir.

Sadly, nothing but technical documents, SOPs (need to pay those pesky bills) with the occasional term paper assistance lately. But if you would like a sample of geekspeak writing check here http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/freeworlds/
:geek:

Erik

The enlisted ranks belong to the career Lurkers, and those that own the game without joining the forum. They're there, supporting the game, namelessly and selflessly. They will never have the accolades ascribed to the blow-hards, er, officers, but without them, there would be no game!
Well, there would probably be the one game.
But without them Dan wouldn't sell enough to make another!
Though they may be Red Shirts and nameless faceless extras, they are no less important!

Whoa.
I think it's time to re-evaluate my sugar intake.
Cheers,
Erik

Paul, I think you kind of missed the meat of the Tender idea above. I was specifically thinking of rules that would account for ships on a a per su basis and not set at 150 for SHF and Attack Boats. I know that has been around a while. I was talking about someting like large size motherships carrying parasite warships of varying hull sizes (including a couple big ones if you want!) for a Base SU cost. Again, I'm not talking about cutters/attack boats/gunboats, etc...I'm talking about cruiser sized ships (or larger) carried by a potentially HUGEMUNGOUS jumpship. If you want an example take for instance the Mothership & City Killers from Independence Day. I'm pretty sure no one would accuse the CKs of being 1 Hull, and I don't really like the idea of using 150 SU for every 1 Hull either, any more than I would say 50 SU for every fighter flight 
I know it is simple enough to just take 150 SU per Hull, but I would prefer a BSU %. To me it adds more variation/variety without being a complex. But then again, I have a lot of ships with odd numbered cargo and carrier and so forth...I don't like to round to the nearest 10  When I converted over the 2300 AD fighters into Starmada X, I originally used the Tender ability to model carriers (as the fighters we designed as Hull 1 ships), but it just didn't make sense that 6 Martels would use the same space as 6 of the much lighter Mistral fighters, and the it didn't jive with the fluff either, with the swap being something like 6 Martels=9 Mistrals. That to me pointed to using a % based system, and It's one of the the things I "mod" into the shipyard sheet using one of the spaces for the Aux abilities rather than the Carrier space. I use it to model the multiple-sized drop ships in the Full Thrust designs as well. First Design the Parasite to get the hull size, then add the % and you get the SU required to carry. I have designed a race of antagonists for a homemade campaign that uses jump capable scouts and motherships, but uses parasite warships of all different sizes as warships.
Anyway, I'm rambling.
To Sum Up: I would prefer a % of the Parasite's hull size to determine the Tender SUs required, rather than a fixed amount.
Cheers,
Erik
Erik

I preface my comment by saying that I like the Admiralty Edition...That said I really miss the flavor of losing special equipment through damage from earlier versions of the game. It is a constant and re-occuring theme in every sci-fi space battle-oriented series. "sir, we've lost the warp/hyper/slip/jump drive", "Sir, sensors are down, we can't get a lock on the enemy", "Sir, that last hit knocked out our cloaking device, we'll never be able to escape", etcetera ad nauseum    This kind of thing is really just a "flavor" thing then a gameplay thing, but it can make things interesting, especially in campaigns.

If speaking in general terms about a universal starship combat game rather than Starmada as it is currently constituted, I would have to say that I can't think of anything that can't be approximated within the current rules. About the only thing I can think of are Super-Shields which don't ever allow damage to pass through until the shields are weakened or totally disrupted (Langston Fields?) Not sure the game needs them though.
Cheers,
Erik

Fighters/Strikers/Seekers SHOULD be difficult targets to hit. Historically the idea has been to lay a huge barrage in front of an attack from the air and hope some of it connects. Modern escorts/defenses hope to first shoot down at long range with missiles and in failing that destroy disable the attacker in the terminal attack phase. One gun has a chance of hitting, but the Exocet will probably win more often than not. I like the idea of AFBs as it adds an element from the WWII in space type view, but it needs to have a chance. I played around with giving each AFB 1 die VS each attacking flight of fighters (during the fighter attack), and each 6 rolled (by the defender) killed one fighter before the fighters rolled to attack. It seemed to work ok, and it made the defending player feel like he was defending rather than just getting a beating. We actually started doing this with Starmada X AFBS because it just seemed to be better than on a 1, a fighter dies (and made AFBs an active Drone defense). Don't know if that would change the pointing of the AFB or not but it seemed ok to us.
Cheers,
Erik

Yeah, sure, and the side with the prettiest uniforms always reigns supreme on the field of battle!
Erik