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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by mj12games
After all, time seems to work differently for Dan
The rules do not state there is not a shield save vs. marines, so yes, there is.
I would like to hear some playtest reports on marines before allowing them to "ignore" armor.
P.8, fighters are not mentionned in the movement phase of the sequence of play. Are they activated the way ships are, but after all ships have moved?
p.16, first paragraph under "FIGHTER MOVEMENT".
Paul
The way the rules are written, yes.
I feel the rules need clarifications about fighters being ships or not being ships. Can be confusing, btw, if they are ships in some ways, and not in others.
Especially about the initiative, do you count fighters with ships or not, etc.
Please refer to the changes made on p.16.
Download file updated to version 1.1.
I've been asked by Steve Cole at ADB to provide some tournament guidelines for Starmada. Here's my first attempt... let me know what you think.
Starmada Tournament Rules
This document provides the rules for conducting a Starmada tournament. All page references correspond to the Nova Rulebook—Version 1.1 (April 2011).
What You'll Need
To conduct a tournament, the organizers will need to have the following on hand:
Ship Selection
Unless playing a genre-specific tournament (such as in the Star Fleet Universe) players should be encouraged to bring their own ship designs, using the rules on pp.44-49. If there is any question about space unit requirements or combat rating computations, designs should be confirmed using the online Starmada Drydock: http://www.mj12games.com/starmada/drydock.
Each fleet should consist of no more than 2000 points' worth of ships. No ship should have a combat rating greater than 1000.
Opening Rounds
A series of three opening rounds should be conducted to determine the seeding for the knock-out round. To start each opening round, the tournament organizer should randomly determine pairings. If there are an odd number of participants, one player will need to sit out in each round.
Once pairings have been determined, each player selects up to 1000 points' worth of the ships in his/her fleet with which to fight in the round. Players are not required to use the same ships from round to round. Tournament games are considered “medium”-sized battles (p.8).
The following advanced rules are in effect for tournament games:
Any advanced rules not listed above should not be used in tournament play.
Games should be given a three-hour time limit. Once this limit is reached, the player with more victory points (VPs) at the conclusion of the current game turn is considered the winner.
Scoring
A player's tournament score is simply a running total of the victory points (VPs) he/she has scored in each opening round. A player who sits out a round is awarded 500 points.
After each game, all ships are restored to their starting capabilities: i.e. all damage is repaired, expendable weapons and munitions are restocked, etc.
The Knock-Out Round
After three opening rounds have been conducted, the four players with the highest aggregate totals are sent to the “knock-out” round. Two semi-final games are conducted: the top scorer plays the fourth-highest scorer, while the second- and third-highest scorers play each other.
The winners of these two semi-final games play each other; the winner of this game wins the tournament. The losers of the semi-finals play each other for third place.
If there are at least 16 participants in the tournament, a quarter-final stage can be added to the knock-out round. The top eight scorers are sent to the quarter-finals, and seeded as follows:
Quarterfinal A: #1 vs. #8
Quarterfinal B: #2 vs. #7
Quarterfinal C: #3 vs. #6
Quarterfinal D: #4 vs. #5
The semi-finals are then seeded as follows:
Winner A vs. Winner D
Winner B vs. Winner C
Maybe scatter should provide a lesser bonus than normal, but still some benefit?
I could see allowing scatter to counteract the -1 penalty vs. fighters/mines/seekers.
Does this replace/eliminate the rule about penalties applied to weapons with various traits when firing on seekers? ("Attacks against seeker markers incur...")
No -- those penalties apply based on traits possessed by the seekers themselves, not the weapons firing at the seekers.
And shouldn't scatter provide some benefit against seekers?
My concern is, since attacks vs. seekers will usually happen at short range, you can use "scatter" to artificially inflate the effectiveness of anti-seeker weapons (3x the dice for less than 2x the cost).
I'm finalizing the file for printing, and figured I'd make all the latest updates before shipping it off. Here are the changes I'm anticipating for version 1.1:
* p.16 -- Remove the following from last paragraph before FIGHTER MOVEMENT: "Each flight is treated as a separate ship. All rules that reference "ships" should be read to also include fighter flights."
Insert the following between the first and second sentence, first paragraph under FIGHTER COMBAT: "All flights in the same hex attack at the same time. When determining the activation sequence (p.9) count the number of hexes containing fighters, not the number of individual flights."
Rewrite second sentence, second paragraph after the Attack Modifier table to read, "Weapons with the catastrophic, diffuse, double damage, scatter, and triple damage traits (p.23) lose these abilities when attacking fighters."
* p.21 -- Add the following to the last paragraph before OVERTHRUSTERS: "Weapons with the catastrophic, double damage, and triple damage traits (p.23) lose these abilities when attacking minefields."
* p.25 -- Add the following to the third-to-last paragraph: "Weapons with the catastrophic, diffuse,
double damage, scatter, and triple damage traits lose these abilities when attacking seeker markers."
* p.65 -- Rewrite example in last paragraph before FIRING ARCS to read: "Thus, our example weapon would have the double damage trait and a BAS of 4.86 (1 (ROF) x 2.25 (IMP) x 0.60 x 1.5 (ACC 4+) x 1.20 (DMG 3) x 1.07 (SAE Double Damage) x 1.87 (second application of double damage)).
I suppose expendable batteries are the exception?
Yes. Although, technically, one can apply the "splitting fire" rule to expendable weapons as well.
It is not explicitly stated anywhere in the rules, although you are correct that this was the intent.
If, however, one player groups all 12 weapons into a single banks, while another splits them into four 3-weapon banks, I don't believe it will "break" the game. It just clutters the ship displays unnecessarily.
If armor is marginally effective, make it much cheaper in terms of SU cost.
Armor is just as effective as the other two types of defense, and its SU/point costs are balanced accordingly. The "problem" is not that armor is "useless", but that it is, in the minds of some, "boring".
Or, leave the hull-based damage checks as they are, but front load all the armor first.
Two reasons why I disagree with this approach:
1) Even if armor is conceptualized as steel plates bolted to the exterior of the hull, it makes little sense to think that all of it needs to be blown away before any damage seeps through to the inner hull/systems.
2) This is a nightmare from a point-costing perspective. It also leads to situations where ships are fully operational, fully operational, fully operational, DEAD. This is no fun from a game play perspective.
Seriously, of all the changes/additions to the game, I really thought that armor would be the least controversial...
Will there be an offline version at some point?
No. It's written in PHP, which is a server-side application.
Shields 4+ gets reduced by piercing.
ECM can be reduced by scout or EPM.
Armour cannot be affected.
Which is why the equivalent amount of armor costs more.
Also, why not just buy 2x Hull?
For reasons previously mentioned.
While the expectation for number of hits survived with shields and ECM is identical to that of the same volume / DRAT of armor, they function in a different manner from hull.
What you (and others) are identifying as a "bug", I see as a "feature". 
* If you want a ship that has a 50/50 chance of deflecting each point of damage as it comes in, take shields 4+.
* If you want a ship that reduces all incoming firepower by 50%, take ECM 2.
* If you want a ship that has twice the survivability, add armor points equal to your hull size.
Hope I'm not to late, but I couldn't locate the calculations for directional defenses in the book, nor are they currently in the dry dock. Not that I mind them being free, but I doubt something that gives a minus 1 shift should be free, since I have to pay for ECM and stealth.
p.47 (first sentence after the Armor Score Table): "Directional defenses (p.17) have no effect on ship construction."
This is because you "pay" for the directional defenses with a +1 "penalty" in all directions except forward (or P/S).
Ok, the way I look at it Armor is strengthened and reinforced Hull so if you add extra hull the result should be the same in gameplay terms. However, by calling it armor, it is a way to conceptualize the vessel better than if I simply add hull. Let me explain. If I have a 12 hull heavy destroyer with 2 boxes of armor in each section, it's an armored 12 hull ship. If I simply add six hull to the ship, it becomes, to me, an 18 hull ship with no armor, and therefore a totally different kind if ship.
^ This.
Trying to fit everything you want into a certain size hull/cost (CR) has some reflection of real naval design. But now in NOVA Armor is simply 'fluff' which I think is a pity.
Okay -- maybe I'm just dense, but doesn't this statement contradict itself? Adding survivability to a certain hull size is what armor is all about... :?:
Conclusion armor is pretty pointless in the game.
No more "pointless" than shields or ECM. Every argument being made about armor can be made about the other two defenses, as well.
Take the Indomitable BB, remove its shields, and increase its hull size by x2.4 (the equivalent multiplier for a shield rating of 3+). Your combat rating drops by 1 (from 361 to 360) and you have 3200 more SUs to fill.
But, now you have a 43-hull ship with no defenses, as opposed to an 18-hull ship with strong shields. <shrug>
Okay, I'm going to be a bit more direct: please remove the QRS. I also would like to review it prior to it being posted again.
I like to think I've been very supportive of player-designed aids over the years, but I need to rein them in from time to time... and this is one of those times.
While this is a good point, the same could have been said of "Doubled Range Mods" in Admiralty vs. fighter flights. In essence, you had the same effect as "Anti-Fighter" for no cost.
Rather than change the cost of the trait, I would deal with this legislatively: Diffuse weapons have an additional -1 vs. seekers and fighters.
Yes, it should be up to date.
There's no reason you can't use the different tech level categories in Nova -- as long as the combat rating is computed properly, the game won't break.
my guess is that the example has no armour and 6 boxes in first group, 5 in next and 5 in next....
You are correct.
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