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murtalianconfederacy wrote:And...bought. Like quite a few things in it, so far, but the ship design part is horrifying--I'm not entirely sure where the log function on my older calculator is, so it might have to be relegated to SAE-only designs. A few other things aren't that great either, but I think I understand now why its defaulted to an initiative-first system rather than simultaneous movement/combat.
But Directed Defences (FF) looks really interesting--my Quolari might be re-designed for this. Shuttles, tractors, armour, oh my...:P
Agreed - Directed Defenses look good, the new Overthrusters are Grumm Pivots, which are also great, and I'm excited for Flares. Alas, poor Cloaking, though...
And yeah, I feel like a refresher on the Change of Base Formula for logarithms would've been pretty helpful, since most calculators don't support arbitrary-base logs... Excel / OpenOffice does, though 
. Spreadsheet's in the works.
murtalianconfederacy wrote:I must be thick, or unable to work my calculator properly. I tried working out the formula for the armour's defence score in the construction section, and got a totally different result (.24 as opposed to 1.40). Not looking good...:(
I agree that something is broken in defenses, but in a different way.... Given a hull 12 with 12 points of armor (armor score 2, which it generates correctly), it generates a DRAT of 40.08. Per the errata thread, I believe this should be 12 * 2^1 = 24...
I'm going to throw the spreadsheet I've been working on up into the Files section as soon as I get non-integer BAS working, I think. Should provide an additional data point for comparison.
Page 34, Vector Movement - "When using the vector movement system, ships do receive have speed markers"
Also, the DRAT calculation seems... odd?
DRAT = Hull × 2(Defense Score / 2)
Doesn't this equal Hull x Defense score? I have suspicion that this should be Hull * 2^(Defense Score / 2), because of the way defenses work.
That is a pretty fancy builder... Hmm... not going to stop me from rolling my own, I think, but a good link for my compadres.
Hey, found a small bug:
On page 46, the asterisk note states "For weapons with two “range‐based” traits, consult the following table instead of applying the SU Factors listed above. A weapon cannot possess more than one range‐based trait. " I believe the first half implies that the second part should say two rather than one...
cricket wrote:Nomad wrote:And cricket, really? How is that done?
Uh... how is WHAT done?
Sorry; checkout sans paypal account. Also disregard; turns out I failed to read entire page previously.
murtalianconfederacy wrote:Will have to wait until tomorrow. Did my taunting get you into gear?
Nah, I think he heard you were working on another supplement, and under Cat's Principle of Maximum Inconvenience, decided that this would be a good time to release .
And cricket, really? How is that done?
cricket wrote:Nomad wrote:Hooray! Any idea when the pdf will hit rpgnow and other distributors?
Soon. 
EDIT: I do not expect to provide the file to other distributors until after the hard copies have shipped, but you can get the "pre-release" PDF from the MJ12 web site: http://www.mj12games.com/starmada/mjg0130.html
OK; I was at first discouraged by the fact that you only take PayPal, but then discovered that I had $13 in paypal from a mysterious source, so it's a moot point now... expect to get another sale once I'm done with this assignment .
Hooray! Any idea when the pdf will hit rpgnow and other distributors?
Option 3 sounds entertaining to me... then again, I quite like minefields
Marauder wrote:Here's my "agile" pitch:
Agile is a ship trait that is used only when executing a "Come about" or "Reverse Course" maneuver.
Agile has a rating (1, 2, 3, etc).
Each point of agile adds to your thrust rating both for determining if you are eligible to make a "Come about" or "Reverse Course" manuever (based on last turns speed) and the maximum speed you can be at when exectuing those two manuevers.
So essentially its like "thrust lite". It doesn't help you on the accelerate or decelerate if you are just going straight, but when you are turning.
-Tim
I like this very much. Any thoughts on how it might work in non-newtonian / basic-style movement, though? Just free turns up to the Agile score?
Eesh... 3k+ fleets are tough. I think I once tried playing a 3-4k game and we gave up after a couple hours. On the other hand, it would be a lot of fun to try something like this for Starmada as a way to handle massive sides.
cricket wrote:Marauder wrote:All you need to do now is to come up with a negative ship trait where they have a penalty to the damage threshold rolls
Did I forget to mention the "fragile systems" ship trait? My bad... 
Hooray! It's almost like Dan knew people wanted to play Eldar, or somebody ran them during the internal playtesting... hmmm...
Fortifications / stations / fixed defenses are something I'd like to see more of in Starmada, but they're often hard to make sense of in a space setting. Airships make them make sense, and the designs are good. Thanks!
Marauder wrote:I have to say Nova Edition is turning into a dream for Eldar players - ECM as a main defense - stealth with a rating - solar movement! All you need to do now is to come up with a negative ship trait where they have a penalty to the damage threshold rolls (i.e. to simulate how they were critically hit more easily in gothic).
Nomad - I think you'd have to be careful as to what movement modes you allowed - I don't think any two just work together - but solar seems to be fairly balanced with the basic movement.
I've seen some other systems that allow you to purchase different drive types that simulate different physics models. In those systems the ones that are clearly superior cost more/take more space or whatever.
Etheric seems a bit balanced, because while it doesn't allow you to reach the same breakneck speeds of the basic movement - it gives you some free breaking so keep things under control a bit better.
-Tim
I agree with everything said here. Using small hulls might be enough, just via increased frequency of crit checks, but then again maybe not. Still, looking much better than AE for Eldar. I'll probably still keep cloaking on mine, though... it's just too much fun. Guess I'll call 'em Dark Eldar.
I was just contesting Cricket's statement on the previous page of posts that using different movements shouldn't unbalance things with a counterexample; not saying that any particular combinations of the new movement rules appears immediately unbalanced. If I had seen that, I'd've said so instead .
Enpeze wrote:so if we now can emulate the Eldar solar sails, maybe there will be rules for Eldar holoshields too? (just joking )
ECM looks pretty promising; it's basically just a negative shift on the 'gunnery table' for each weapon... You're not going to get the same effect against lances and fighters that you do in BFG, but against most battery weapons, a couple points of ECM is a non-terrible simulation.
Also, Cricket, I'd argue that sometimes different movement rules for different fleets would provide an advantage. In AE, at least, Naval Movement is strictly better than Basic Movement, for example, since it allows more turns without any loss of function (unless maybe you're not allowed to move in reverse? I forget... it's been a while). Solar vs Normal looks pretty entertaining, though.
cricket wrote:PSYCO829 wrote:Its possible that I also overdid it, the weapon in question was a 1/3+/3/3 that shot to 30 with Piercing +2, Continuing Damage, and Starship Exclusive. <.<
Considering this, I think it would be premature to blame it all on Continuing Damage... 
Having said that, the fact that the Continuing Damage weapon always does a hull hit would suggest its multiplier should be at least x2. I should have kept my notes as to why we settled on x1.7...
I apologize for the thread necromancy, but I have a theory about this. I stumbled across it the other day while revisiting Continuing with a fresh mindset. I saw that it was x1.7 rather than x2, and interpreted it as follows:
You do the initial damage roll for Continuing. Odds do hull hits and terminate. Evens don't do hull hits, and keep rolling until you get an odd... which terminates without a hull hit.
This version generates 2 expected systems hits per die and .5 expected hull hits, which means it might reasonably be priced somewhere between 1 and 2, but not at 2 itself. This does cast into doubt the earlier ruling here about continuing + EHD, however. The way my group, and everyone on these forums, has been playing Continuing should put it at exactly a x2 multiplier, as it generates on expectation 2 systems hits and 1 hull hit per die of damage.
Marauder wrote:@Nomad
I guess we'll have to see exactly when fighters move. I had assumed based on the outcome of that poll that they would have their own movement phase... but even then I can see some instances where you can force your opponents to move an interceptor type fighter first - which is suboptimal at best!
-Tim
You have more faith in democracy than I, sir
I suppose also it depends on whether or not Combat Air Patrol still exists. If it does, then there's really no trouble in being forced to activate a fighter flight early during a separate fighter movement phase. On the other hand, it does seem like an inelegant hack onto this particular movement system.
Marauder wrote:All around awesome!
I like the initiative system. I also like how if your opponent vastly outnumbers you, that you get to select one of their ships each phase to get moved. That will definitely mitigate the strategy of taking one or two big ships and the rest small ones to ensure that you could move last and shoot first with the big ships.
Love the fire arcs. Love the movement (thank you for no backwards movement). Glad that sideslips are in the mix too. Damage resolution looks pretty fast - faster than before and faster than Full Thrust.
Our group will definitely be into the partial VPs too. It will actually come in handy for a multi-force game where you don't want to just give the ship that scored the killing blow ALL the VPs.
Having thought about the new shooting system (with the table) and reading it again its quite brilliant. You don't have to worry about the probabilities getting out of whack when your to hit modifiers force you to "the end of the die". I can see where this was a necessary step when ratings (beyond 1) were added to ECM.
-Tim
Ooh, good catch with the initiative system! I missed that bit, and it is a good notion. Movement order is going to become a much more interesting affair than most alternating games (ex: BattleTech). Looks like this might mean fighters are still going to move reactively, though - if an opponent forces you to activate a fighter squadron early, you really can't put it in a position where it can be guaranteed shooting opportunities. It's a significantly worse penalty than having to move a ship early.
Also, good point to NetWilk about using Partial VP to differentiate scenarios. I guess AE did that already with Hit and Run, but I think the "binary fraction per third of hull" system is significantly better than "full points for half hull". More broadly applicable.
Hooray! Looks good. The clock-numbering on the arcs is more intuitive than their definitions in the previous draft rules. Also digging the partial VP rules on the last page; there's a good reason to keep on a heavily-damage ship, but also some benefit for inflicting non-destroying damage.
'course this happens just as some folks here were getting withdrawal symptoms too, and planning to start a Simplest campaign...
mikeaxe wrote:In My Humble Opinion (How humble can a guy planning on ruling the galaxy be? :twisted: ) we overuse the word 'campaign'. In military terms a campaign is a series of operations which result in achieving (hopefully) a strategic goal. The goals and forces available to the commanders are often outside their direct control. It is normally only part of any war and often of relevantly short time scale, at least in terms of the overall war. 'True' campaign games would normally have no tech development as they are normally over too quickly and have limited forces and goals.
Wargame 'campaigns' however often include the Strategic/Political elements in which politicians and economists play the major rolls. If you want to play strategic games with a strong tactical battle system (and I do) you play the likes of VBAM or Starfire (both require a significant investment of time) with starmada as an addition. But if you want to generate battles with some relationship use other systems such as Sovereign Stars. It depends on whether your focus is strategic or tactical.
The important point however about all the systems above is they are really sets of tool kits to build the game you want. For example, VBAM is at its heart a quite simple system 
, but of course faced with the possibility of worrying about Joe Bloggs the Governor of that planet third from the left we all do and end up using all those optional rules! My personnel weakness is multi-planet solar systems .
This weakness for using all the rules is a problem with Starmada. Its meant, by picking rules and traits, to allow us to play any sci-fi background but judging by the threads on this forum normally we just allow all options and complain about imbalance in the system. Dan and the other game designers/authors are giving us the tools to design our own games and we bear some responsibility for the choices or non-choices we make.
In short I want VBAM, Starfire and all the other systems available so I can pick and choose each time I start a new game what and how I want to play. Greedy I know .
Different strokes for different folks and times.
You, sir, just hit several nails on their respective heads. Your clarification of the definition of campaign is a good point (and something that we do often forget); arguably the best campaign system I have seen for that definition of Battlefleet Gothic's, where you as the commander really don't have much control over what you get, and where your scope of operations is limited to a small component of a much greater war. Simplest also does a relatively good job in an abstracted manner. VBAM and Starfire really belong to the Grand Strategy genre.
I agree that the core of VBAM is rather simple, but it is presented less than optimally for new readers (with the heroes / leaders rules being my weakness, I think). Also agree that option bloat generates imbalance across many, many systems; this is to some extent why I quit playing D&D. When you add more options, you get an exponential explosion of option combinations, and odds are very very good that some of those combinations were not considered by the publisher.
OldnGrey wrote:Enpeze wrote:tytalan wrote:Dan,
I know that you worked with VBAM for the empire level to add to Starmada but have you ever thought or using Starfire for the Empire level? I do think the it is a better choice as it is both more comprehensive and more fully developed that what I have see with VBAM. It is also more complex also.
More complexity than VBAM (which is already insanely complex and unplayable for most people with family and normal working time) is not really a positive sign.
I'll second that.
VBAM put has put people off campaigns although I cannot judge the version being worked on now. A less complex campaign system that gives reasons for space battles (without having to know that Joe Bloggs is upset that he did not become first minister of third planet on the left), that anyone can pick up and use is needed.
We need a KISS campaign book along the line of This is your empire, This is your spending money, You can buy these forces and lastly a set of objective cards (More space needed, capture/find a new planet : Pirate attack, go sort it out).
That way we can have fun without the lengthy headache.
Paul
Agreed... the rest of my group was unable / unwilling to actually read the VBAM rules.
Ken_Burnside wrote:Dan did not say which year it was.
Not actually true:
cricket wrote:Majestic Twelve Games is pleased to announce that after months of planning, a brand-new edition of Starmada: The Universal Game of Starship Combat is slated for release in January 2012.
But that's hardly the point... It seems that we fans are ravenous enough for a Blizzard Release Schedule ("We'll release SC2 when it's ready") to work here
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