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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by diddimus
You won't need icons in Nova will you? When you come to damage the systems you roll separately. There's nothing where the numbers represent individual systems.
Which is a shame because my dice won't be of any use :cry:
Pivots are a fundamental movement option in a space game thought no? Moving in one direction and facing another?
As you have already introduced counters for current speed could you not use a "heading" counter?
Pivots:
- Spend thrust to pivot one or more hex sides (this can be reduced by the agile trait)
- Place counter to determine facing or heading
- Perhaps reduce to half thrust while pivoted to represent different thrusters need to be used.
I'm sure someone who knows more about physics can determine what the cost should be related to hull size or speed, but my suggestion seems a basic start.
I would not miss pivots at all.
I would!
I'm concerned about a few things that seem to be missing from Nova that made ships more special. I hope Nova isn't too bland and "hard scifi" only.
Pivots and armour plating have gone it seems. I struggled with the last version a little to represent special ships in B5 such as the White star and Vree ships but I got there in the end. Now it seems ships all just have variations on the same few options.
I hope I'm mistaken because I've been sooo looking forward to this new version.
madpax wrote:I voted for option 1, although i feel strongly that firing should be subdivided in threee phases this way:
- flak first: fighters have to enter anti-fighter defense before firing
- fighter fire
- ships fire other weaponsAll fire take effect immediately
Marc
That sounds pretty good to me if it isn't judged to be too fiddly.
Me too.
I have an issue with the other options because they don't fit into the SAE type of ship movement, which I believe (hope) will still be an option. If fighters need orders it'll be slow and they will often be out of range, but how do you move them at the same time as ships if not?
Moving at the same time only works in the initiative style movement which I hate.
Firing at the same time as ships isn't an issue for me, but then what's the point of fighters.
I would like
to know why you chose 20 as the required divisor for the Turn Cost and Turn Delay? I am simply trying to understand the reasoning behind the formula.
Short answer: Random.
Long answer: I wanted both turn delay and turn cost to make a difference to speed rather than just using engine and acc/dec. However I wanted it to be a small increase. I started with just the basic formula but that added too much in comparison to the base speed. I wanted a smaller overall effect of these two factors, so I started with divide by 10 and kept increasing this until I thought it represented the ships as I wanted them.
All my formulas were created on a few sample ships that I thought represented B5. I kept working on them until these ships felt right. Then every other ship was converted using the same rules.
I simply took "Free Thrust" - 4
EA Starfury 8
EA Thunderbolt 9
Minbari Nial 10
Centauri Sentri 8
Shadows Medium 11
Centauri Razik 10
Vorlon Heavy 10
Narn Frazi 6
This better be available in January as advertised or...erm...oh who am I kidding I'll still buy it :oops:
It still says on the home page that it's coming in Jan so I'm hopeful.
I think this depends on setting. In our B5 games we take smaller craft because they are normally faster and more manoeuvrable. With bigger ships you can end up out of position and arc, particularly when there's a lot of terrain. So you can use the smaller ships to cover certain "blind spots".
We've also used them quite effectivley as strike ships to "charge" up the board to attack long range ships that are causing issues. Ships with energy mines etc.
For comaparison a large ship for us is 500+, we have ships that cost 150 ish that are great for the jobs described above.
Here's my list, it might save you some time...
Race Name Engine
Centauri Altarian 5
Centauri Amar 8
Centauri Balvarin 4
Centauri Centurion 6
Centauri Covran 6
Centauri Darkner 8
Centauri Demos 8
Centauri Octurion 4
Centauri Primus 5
EA Artimis 5
EA Avenger 3
EA Hermes 7
EA Hyperion 3
EA Olympus Gunship 5
EA Omega 4
EA Orestes 2
EA Poseidon 4
EA Sagittarius 4
ISA Blue Star 10
ISA Victory 4
Minbari Ashinta 5
Minbari Morshin 5
Minbari Sharlin 3
Minbari Tigara 4
Minbari Tinashi 5
Minbari Torotha 4
Minbari/ISA White Star 9
Narn Bin'Tak 4
Narn Dag'Kar 5
Narn G'Quan 6
Narn Ka'Toc 5
Narn Sho'Kov 9
Narn T'Loth 4
Narn T'Rann 4
Scout Oracle 5
Shadows Carrier 8
Shadows Cruiser 8
Shadows Destroyer 8
Shadows Scout 8
Vorlon Battle Destroyer 6
Vorlon Dreadnought 5
Vorlon Heavy Destroyer 5
Vorlon Light Cruiser 6
Vorlon Scout 6
Here's my formula for engine conversions from B5 Wars. Note that the turn cost and turn delay numbers are like fractions in B5W so you need the decimal version to put into the formula below.
[Engine Power] / ["Acc/Dec" Cost]
+
([Engine Power] / [Turn Cost]) / 20
+
(10 / [Turn Delay]) / 20
=
Round to nearest whole number
=
TOTAL ENGINE RATING
So a White Star is:
12 / 2 = 6
+
(12 / 0.333) / 20 = 1.8
+
(10 / 0.333) / 20 = 1.5
=
TOTAL = 9.3 = 9 Engines
This is something I've been trying to do with SAE but I think it's possible with the new version.
Also for those who want to use written orders (like me) you can have that on the reverse of the card.
got a point. Will the new movement rules allow pillbugs to wheel?
What are pillbug and wheeling, is this SFO?
Well I've spent months converting B5W and when I'm almost finished you go and release another version! 
I'm actually both excited and worried. Although I realise I don't have to buy the new version I probably will. I would love to have 3 different defences for B5. Shields work but with a bit of fudging.
However changing movement is where I'm worried. Any chance of a tiny bit more detail on what you said below, does it still involve writing orders? Because I love this part of the game. It's why I chose Starmada when I stopped playing ACTA over serious issues with their movement. I realise in SAE you can change movement so I hope a version of what we have now is still an option at least.
I'll PM you with a few questions about play testing as I've never done it before but would love to be involved in some way if possible.
Half points makes the system better because in my first example you only have to kill 1 ship and cripple the other. That's a 25% reduction in the amount of damage side A needs to win.
Could you explain the "striker carriers" issue you had? I'd like to find out any issues with this system.
Cheers.
Does anyone use any house rules for Victory points? The reason I ask is that I think the current system is too simple and is open to a few (minor) issues such as:
A standard 1000 point scenario: Side A takes a mix of ships of various values, Side B takes 2 x 499 point ships (an extreme example). Side A has to destory both ships to win as they need 500 points to win. Side B has a greater chance of success.
Am I missing something?
I'd recommend gaining 1/2 VP for a ship that's taken to 1/2 hull. That at least balances this a little. Any thoughts or more ideas?
I'm wanting to work out a few new ship traits and I need help with working out points for them. I don't really understand how the points were worked out so that's where I need the help.
These are all for the B5 universe and I'm mainly converting from B5W.
1) Jump Drive
- Standard Hyperdrive rules are too slow for B5. Also our games generally last around 2-5 turns, the current hyperdrive rules are too slow for this, by the time you decide to jump out, it's too late. I'd like to increase this somehow and more reflect B5W where you open a jump point on your turn and it's open ready for next turn. Keeping the jump point open longer than this means you can't fire and your engine rating is halved.
Any ideas for a cost? Now this is a least twice as good as the existing jump drive but how would you set the points for this? I think the existing hyperdrive is DRAT x1.2 so would it be right to say x1.4?
2) Advanced jump drive
- This is a more advanced version of the above. There are 2 advantages. 1) You gain a bonus to jumping in to battles, to help prevent scatter and you can escape a Vortex disruptor but it's pretty much the same. I'd say DRAT x1.5 or something.
3) Shadow Phasing Drive
- This is more similar to the current Hyperdrive rules. You simply dissappear on the turn after activating. My initial thoughts were to roll 2d6 all the time without a chance of failure but I think it's too slow. I'd prefer same rules as the Jump Drive above but no placing of a jump point.
This has the disadvantage of not allowing other ships through so I'd say points are same as the jump drive.
4) Vortex Disruptor
- I've already created this by using a normal weapon with some traits to make it cheap, such as piercing -3 and no hull damage. This makes it virtually worthless though (about 3 points on a 1000 point ship). Any comments whether this is good enough? I mean the weapon can't even fire at ships, but if it hits a jump point it can destroy ships entering. Not sure how to point this?
I know this is a lot at once, but it's all related, so any help would be great!
When a fighter flight is caught in an area effect weapon which has ROF 1, does that only ever kill 1 fighter?
As I read it, that's how it works, but obviously in reality the weapon would have a chance to hit all fighters.
Ooh, now I think I like that. 8-) As a direct conversion the obvious thing is to use No Range Mods, but as you said without a way to shoot down missiles this isn't quite the same. Your version seems to account for this.
Thanks for the idea. I'm going to have a think about it.
Btw, I'm not using Ammo because the ships hold more ammo than is ever going to be fired, and it makes the points weird if you do that.
So I guess if you have a ship with more ammo than you can realistically fire in a game then don't give it ammo?
Ok, makes sense, kind of :?
Ok so I'm working on a new ammo based weapon and I'm confused again!
Why does the ship cost increase when I add ammo? Surely it's worse with ammo than without? Here's the weapon:
Battery V: Class-S Missile Rack (Basic), 5/10/15, 1/4+/1/2, No Range Mods
[ABCDEF] [ABCDEF]
If I add ammo 20 to this, the ship cost increases. Can anyone explain?
Cheers.
I've done a bit more digging and I'm going off seekers. One reason is you can't destroy the weapons unless you use the critial rules.
I think I'm going to work them out using normal weapons and the ammo rules I think.
Any ideas for doing different types of missiles? My first thought is to use dual-mode weapons so that you get a choice, not sure how else to do it.
I'm trying to figure out how to represent missiles in Starmada for my B5 conversion. I've searched the forums and found reference to Seekers. So I've read seekers in the rules and I get the general concept, but I'm new to any of the optional fighter rules as I'm only using the basics. How good is this rule for missiles, can someone give me an overview of how they use/would use this rule for missiles? Also is there another way?
For perspective, some of the B5 ships have well over 100 missiles and various missle weapons to fire them.
Here's my Vorlon Light Cruiser. I added Fire control after a game last night. The Div 2 in the weapon titles is to allow me to double the number of weapons instead.
Name:
Type: LIGHT CRUISER-class VORLON (1203)
HULL: 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ENGINES [TL0] 6 6 5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1
SHIELDS: [TL0] 5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 2 2 1 1
WEAPONS: [TL0] 1:[V] 2:[W] 3:[] 4:[] 5:[] 6:[]
Battery V: Lightning Cannon (Mega Div2) , 5/10/15, 1/3+/5/2, Double Damage; Piercing +2; Slow-Firing
Lightning Cannon (Hvy Div2), 4/8/12, 1/3+/5/1, Double Damage; Piercing +1
[AB] [AB]
Battery W: Lightning Cannon (Med Div2), 3/6/9, 1/3+/3/1, Double Damage
Lightning Cannon (Lt), 2/4/6, 2/3+/1/1, Anti-Fighter
[ABC] [ABD]
Special: [TL0] Hyperdrive; Armor Plating; Regeneration; Fire Control
Fighters: [TL0]
The game last night went ok. My opponent got lucky in the first couple of turns and took out one of the main weapons and both secondaries. I also had some smaller ships that also struggled, but mainly because of all the fighters the enemy had. But after that the game went better. In the end though I was flying around trying to repair the weapons but never did. I also had really bad luck and 2 turns of missing with everything I had left!!
It wasn't a great test but in the end we decided that Ancients needed fire control as they need to make the shots when they get them. Also thematically it makes sense so they can mitigate countermeasures and stealth etc.
What are armoured gun batteries? Not seen them in either AE or the Annex.
I think I'm going to rule that Damage Control for weapons works slightly different. You keep re-rolling until you get a result with battery in it, ignoring the empty results. You still might not have a damaged weapon there though on larger ships.
I'm thinking of it as the repair crews are where the weapons are, but they might not be at the right weapon system at the right time etc. I don't see why a large ship with one small weapon should be worse off when trying to repair it than a smaller ship.
Arrgh!
Not sure if damage control will solve the situation. To repair a weapon you must first roll a 5,6 then roll the weapon mount on the chart! This means that ships with less on the damage chart can't repair as easy. On average the Vorlon cruiser will have to wait 6 turns to repair the weapon they want!
mj12games.com/forum → Posts by diddimus
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