Most of my Starmada ships are designed as 'World War II warships in space', similar to the Star Blazers conversion of the Yamato.  Except for a few ships, my ships  all have their weapons in ABCD arcs or in CDEF arcs.  This means that all weapons can only fire in C or D arc.  All of these ships have Overthrusters which guarantees that they will be able to fire a broadside. 
(Most of my heaviest battleships are now mass 16).   
:!:
The USS Texas and USS Arkansas designs have some heavy weapons in CD arcs to represent the unusual design of these ships, which I have made mass 15 ships. 

When I play, I usually form my ships into a battle line and blast away at the enemy.  Using maneuver and the overthrusters, I keep the enemy in C or D arc.  All of the heavy guns hit on 3+ and fire out to 18.  My battleships have speed 6.   

I only have the heavy guns of the ships represented on my Starmada ships, all in "a" battery. 
The secondary weapons that WW2 ships were armed with are all represented by the Point Defense system that all my ships carry.  This works well.  My ships are similar to the FRAX in Star Fleet Battles.

We played a 4 player game of Starmada today in St Augustine.   Each player got 3,500 points of ships; 7000 points per side.  I had ablative armor on my battleships pointed the same as if it were hull.  The battle went smoothly, taking about two and a half hours.  Having ablative armor cost the same as an equal number of hull points seemed to be the correct cost and is very user-friendly.  My friends are even now busy adding it to their ships.  Daniel, your idea of   Ablative armor cost = hull cost   is excellent!   

It makes it easy to use the ship generator programs too.
The way we do it is to design the ship, then decide how much armor you want to add, then increase the ship hull size by that number, and note the new CR.  Then reduce back to the original size, print the SSD and pencil in the armor and the new cost.

For an example, your 15 hull ship costs 1100.  You want to add 10 armor, so  print out the 15 hull ship.   Then on the ship designer, temporarily increase the hull size to 25 and note this costs 200 more.  So on the SSD you just printed, pencil in 10 armor boxes, cross out the 1100 and replace it with 1300, the new CR of the 15 hull ship with 10 Ablative armor added.  Probably the best place to pencil the 10 armor circles is under the shields.  There usually is plenty of room there.  This is how my friends & I up here in N. Fla. have been doing this. 
(I hope we are not in error)   :shock:

Actually, my experience with the one or two hull small ships is that only limited firepower is directed at them.  They are only in range when my big ships are in range.  So if my opponent fires too many weapons at them, he is not firing less at my BBs.  So often just a little firepower is directed at them.  With 2 or 3 ablative armor, these small ships would survive this shot, and require a second shot to be destroyed, further reducing hostile fire at the big ships.  My small ships now have PDS and level 2 screens, forward firing weapons and spinal mounts.  They strengthen the front shield and usually can only be penetrated on a roll of "6".  Sometimes they are harder to damage than the bigger ships.

I have a plan  to deal with the slower ships referred to in another posting, with only AB arcs.  Keep your fleet the same, but have a small "DDG" = 40 drone carrying ship with one launch bay.  It can launch all 40 drones in 2 turns.  Slow ships are very vulnerable to these.  If possible, have the drones hit the big slow ship not in the front shield, but in a side or rear one.  The turn that these drones are going to hit, get your fleet in range.  The drones will probably reduce his shields and make him vulnerable to that turns firing.  Clobber the big ship with your entire fleet!!!  This works for me every time...

This is an excellent idea!  I think that the cost for this should not be different than the cost for regular shielding, much the same as an arc that is "AB"  costs the same as one that is "EF".  This new type of shielding will make maneuvering even more important, as ships try to get behind to the weaker back shields of hostile ships.  It will also make overthrusters more important and challenging to use.   You will have to consider changing facing to either bring more weapons to bear or to bring a stronger shield to face a close hostile ship; can't always do both!

In yesterday's battle here in Jacksonville, a USS California design of mine got behind a friend's ship during the battle.   All of the screens of the target ship were facing forward and it only had PDS for defense to the rear.  My ship has weapons that "re-roll penetration" so  c 3/4 of the hits penetrated.  His ship vanished in a size 3 explosion... :shock:   

If players use this creative shielding, this can happen if someone moves behind you... Maneuver will become more important.   I hope that we are not overwhelming the game designers with too many new ideas.  I love this game, and plan to play it again, and again... 

Hey, I only live a little over three thousand miles away and ...  I was not invited either! 
(Perhaps the prospect of facing the USS California class was too frightening for their fleets to have comtemplate.<LOL>)   :shock:

In all seriousness, I hope everyone involved had a good time.

USS California   CR = 1317

This ship is the previous "refitted ship"  with armor plating deleted, and  20 Ablative Armor added.    
It is another refit of the most common capital ship in my fleet and I think of it as being size 12 hull with {reinforced hull+extra crew} as the 'Compendium ships can have. These warships would be escorted by drone carrying destroyers, and small one hull PT boats. There are only a few cruisers in my fleet and still no 'carriers.

Hull: 24 23 22 21 20 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: 3 2 1
Ablative Armor: 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Weapons: [a] Heavy Guns {6/12/18, 3+, 2/1/1, Rerolls penetration dice}
ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD
CDEF CDEF CDEF CDEF CDEF CDEF

Special Equipment:
Hyperdrive [0], Long Range Sensors [0], Point Defense [0], Overthrusters [0],
Sunbursts[000],
Security Team [00000], Battle Satellites [0000000000], Launch Bay [000], 
Science Lab, Marine Squad [0]

Damage rolls = Ha/E/H/S/H/Q

Twenty Ablative-Armor may sound excessive; but hey, if ur gonna protect ur ships, Protect them well :!:
Ironically, there is a parallel in what we are doing and the game Full Thrust, which my friends and I played 'til we discovered Starmada. 
With most Full Thrust weapons, any hits a ship takes go first to armor.  As a result, my ships in that game had lotsa armor; almost as much as they had hull.  Just like the Ablative-armor editions of the refitted Mississippi class BBs
Then the Kre'Vak came in with Kinetic Penetration Weapons.  These did only one armor per hit, then the rest of the damage was all hull damage.   As a result, I changed all of my Full Thrust ships to have adequate armor, and lotsa hull. 
A weapon that one of my friends used yesterday, down in St Augustine, is similar to these "K-guns.  His weapon is: {range=18, 3+ to hit, 3/1/3, with "double hull hits" taken twice}.  We presumed that this weapon ability from the ship designer that works with Open 0ffice means 'extra hull damage'.  So each hit that gets thru does six hull hits +  3 damage-roll hits.  He also had 2 TD&R on this ship; Very brutal.  If these become more popular, it will be better to have Armor plating back, even if it means deleting the Ablative armor. 
I am not sure if a ship can have both... :?

I am curious, how do those Starmada players who use Full Thrust vector movement, etc. handle overthrusters :?:

Before discovering Starmada, my friends in south Florida and I played Full Thrust.  We used the cinematic movement that Marcus accurately describes and analyses.  My ships tended to be a little slower, but had many long ranged weapons.  The designs were similar to the Starmada designs I use now.  Some friends had very fast ships that would zip in and out of battle going from far out of range to sometimes pointblank range.  It made fro some interesting games!  If Starmada gamers decide to use this method, make sure you have Overthrusters.  These allow you to compensate for the unpredictable maneuvers of your opponents.  (They are unpredictable to you, as well as to them!)

I personally prefer the simple manuvering system that the Starmada games has.  If players wanted to make smaller ships more nimble, a chart similar to what the Starfire game has would not be to hard to put together.  This chart has biger ships unable to turn as quickly as smaller ones.  The bigger the ship, the more strait movement between turns; that is a bigger turn mode.

Since discovering Starmada, we have not played a single game of Full Thrust.

During today's Starmada Compendium game in St Augustine with my gaming friends there, We all agreed that its a good game, but the time has come to move to the Starmada X version. 

My friends all have the rules for Starmada Compendium.  They r gonna down load the revisions. And I lent them one of the copies of Starmada X that I have.

We are playing on Sunday, July15th @ 2pm here in Jacksonville at Wardogs on Beach Blvd.  All are welcome.  We will choose sides and I will introduce them to Starmada X.

Hello everyone,

:arrow: I am playing a game of Starmada Compendium with friends down in St Augustine.     
I noticed that Daniel wrote
"Frankly, I would rank the introduction of PDS right below banked weapons on my list of things that should never have been tried".
Hmm...  My fleet that I am using is similar to the one I use in Starmada X, except that these ships have simple ER Laser cannon = {3+; 1-6, 7-12, 13-24, in triple banks(!)} :oops:
Whoops! All of my 'Compendium ships have banked weapons, and PDS w/level 3 shields. :shock:   
[Embarrassed Admiral Beowulf hides in command chair<LOL>] :wink:
Some of my St Aug. friends there use banked weapons, some don't.  I am patiently trying to convert them to StarmadaX...
Will let everyone know how it goes  :!: