(Displacement x 0.7) / 100 =

-- approximately --

Displacement / 142

So... I figure a rough estimate of

Displacement / 140

would work just fine.

Where is it being housed these days?

two things:

1. I believe Dan is planning to post an updated Appendix A that will include things like the weapon mod multipliers. This will be, in the end, the "definitive repository" of the correct values. That should be helpful.

2. It is good to see that my experiment in the "shipyard" sheet concept is going strong.

Since seeing this post, I have been pouring over the rules to see if I can gleen anything from them. Nothing definitive. So... based on this, I would rule the following:

[*]The Seekers will first continue to move toward the "last known" location of the cloaked ship.
[*]Once the seekers reach the "last known" location, they will continue to move in a straight line until they either {a} leave the map, {b} enter a hex containing other enemy targets, or {c} the cloaked ship uncloaks.
[*]If the cloaked ship uncloaks (either before or after the seekers reach the "last known" location), the seekers will automatically regain their lock on the cloaked ship and will continue in their mission to attack that target.
[*]If a seeker, having lost its target because it cloaked, finds itself having moved a fixed number of hexes from the "last known" location without having found an enemy to attack (ie: 15 hexes or the board-edge would be conservative; 30 hexes would be liberal; 45 or more hexes would be downright generous), then the seeker self-destructs or otherwise becomes inert.
[*]I would apply the same rules as above to seekers that lost their target because the target was destroyed before they could reach it.

Those are my thoughts. Anyone else want to weigh in?

As far as using Seekers to attack Fighters/Strikers -- sure. You could even, if you wanted, use Seekers to attack other Seekers. That would, actually, be kinda cool...

I would love to be involved in that one... let me know if you start doing that, Dan.

A couple of thoughts on range:

1. The solution that Dan instituted for range 24 and range 30 is elegant enough. Below these ranges, the impacts of range are "almost, but not quite" linear, in reality. But it is close enough to truth for the game.

If you wanted to slap the honest-to-goodness impact of range into the equation, one could argue that you would need to use the ratios of the total number of hexes that are "in arc" when you select a given range.

For example, at range 3, in one arc, you have 9 hexes that you can fire into. At range 6, in that same arc, yuo now have 27 hexes that you can fire into. This is x2 range and x3 total effect! But is this difference really worth delving into once you have square-rooted the effect at the end of the design process? Maybe. Maybe not.

After all...

2. The effect of the expanded arcs causes ships to have to pay too much for overlapping arcs as well.

For example, when you have a weapon in the AB arc, you get the full impact of 2.0 arcs... no so for overlapping arcs which can pay for 2.0 arcs while getting the effect of 1.5 arcs. So there is some fudge factors going on here. Is it worth messing with? Maybe. Maybe not.

And still...

3. Dan is a guy that likes math, and so we have a chart that is fairly complex when dealing with Black Holes. When I initially wrote the rules for Black Holes they were much, much simpler and did not take into account the square-of-distance effects of gravity that I thought were too fidly for a game like this. Was this a good thing? Maybe. Maybe not.

In the end... the three things above all blend together in an odd way. This much is (I think) undeniable. But none of them are broken. None of them make the game less fun. And all of them work.

I would say leave it as it is. The premium at the upper two ranges that were added is about right to account for the growing number of additional hexes available. The weapon arc formula is much easier to calculate as it is, even if it is off by a bit in the end. And the Black hole rules are interesting, and make you think (which you should be doing if you are insane enough to be having a battle near a black hole).

All in all. About perfect.

If you have Hull 20 ships running about... please define the hull size of a "frigate" in such a game.

Again: I have no trouble with the idea of "Turn Cost = Velocity" if you allow for slightly larger engines in Starmada by changing that "3" int eh formula to "2" -- do that, and the idea of "Turn Cost = Velocity" is about right for me.

No. Accel/Decel in this system is a question of "how many hexes as I moving, total, this round? Not "how fast am I moving as I pass through this hex?"

Nope.

I have not made a ruling yet on allowing for reverse movement just yet. I, personally think it is alright... but I get nightmares on Kaufman Retrograde games of Star Fleet Battles...

We have experimented with ships that had weapon ranges as large as 33 hexes (I have a large gaming table). It worked just fine.