Found a link to this battle report on another site:

http://ooh-shiny-complex.blogspot.com.ar/2014/11/grand-admiral-castles-of-steel-ww1.html

I've just printed off my counters - gotta get them together to play!

You've shown previews of several ships. These were on very attractive color cards. Is this the format you will be sticking with for ship stats?

I just ask because I noticed the similarity with the ship cards for Starmada Nova.  On the Nova cards there are the same 3 groups of hull boxes.  However in Nova "Weapons" only have 5 boxes total - in the case of these ships there are more than five boxes.  Also noticed that the GF3 QRS seems to imply the same threshold damage tests as Nova - with there being damage to both "Speed" and "Weapons".  So I was expecting to see 5 boxes for both weapons and speed.

Anyway, still looking forward to this game.  I will be most interested to use it for both WWI and WWII battles, plus crank out ship data cards to my heart's content.

-Tim

I just picked up CoS this weekend.  I am in love with the activation system.  There are so many games that could use this system.  Can't wait to try it out!

cricket posted the following in this thread:

http://www.mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2346&p=38432#p38432

Yes. GF3 includes rules for both aircraft and submarines. Both are paid for out of your initial fleet allowance: for example, if playing a WW2 scenario, you can use up to 25% of your points to purchase aircraft.

Aircraft are split into "fighters" and "bombers". They do not move on the game board; instead, during each command phase, one side declares the use of bombers and the other declares whether or not to use fighters to intercept, then vice versa. Surviving bombers are placed on the board next to their targets. Ships may use AA guns to defend in the combat phase, at the end of which the remaining bombers attack. In the initial release, all aircraft have the same capabilities: this may change if there is enough demand for a separate air operations supplement.

Submarine counters are placed during the initiative phase, allowing ships to maneuver to avoid them during the movement phase. Their attacks are then resolved at the same time as other ships. Again, for now, all subs are the same.

Also from this thread:

http://www.mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11890

cricket indicated that they are aiming for a pre-Christmas 2014 release!  Nice.

I'm quite excited that there will be air and subs. 

Anymore ship card previews?

-Tim

I've been looking through my various naval games lately and stumbled upon GF2.  Definitely wish there were aircraft rules, and some sort of sub rules (even if just to use in "attack the convoy" type missions). 

I realize with the work on GF3, you probably won't go back and do anything for GF2.  So two questions for you:

1) Are there going to be aircraft or sub rules in GF3?
2) If I wanted to do up aircraft&sub rules for GF2 any advice?  Do you have any design notes/ramblings to help me get started. 

Thanks!
-Tim

Glad to see this!

Looks quite nice actually!

My SFB SSD's show the Romulan Snipe and Orion Light Raider as nimble.  Not sure if this designation made it into FC or not.

If you are going to give them overthrusters, perhaps reduce their thrust by 1 as I added a bonus thrust to them for the nimbleness.

Also, I am pretty sure that the Romulan Nuclear Space Mines didn't make it into FC.  But I gotta say they were cool and would help the "eagles" be a more distinct class - plus you have mine rules in SNE - so wouldn't be tough to add.  The snipe, battle hawk, war eagle and king eagle all had one NSM.

-Tim

I've tried out both using thrust based on size (and then modified for warp power and turn mode) and also thrust based on turn mode (and then modified by warp power).

I have to say the turn mode one "feels" better.  I have to double check some numbers and then I'll post some examples.  I think one reason it feels better is because the turn mode already has the "size" of the ship accounted for.

Dan I know you aren't big on a D7 being faster than a constitution class - but as I see it there really is not upper limit on "speed" with the starmada movement system - if anything speeds become unpractically high quite fast.  If you want to maneuver you have to stay near your thrust mode in speed - and thus turn mode!

EDIT:
Here's some samples:
Fed CA: 5
Klingon D7: 7
Fed FFG: 8
Kzinit DN: 4
Fed CL: 6
Fed NCL: 7
Fed CF: 7
Fed DW: 7
Orion Light Raider: 10
Kzinti Frigate: 9
Rom Battle Hawk: 4
Rom Skyhawk: 8
Rom King Eagle: 5
Rom Fire Hawk: 6
Free Trader: 5
Small Freighter: 4
Large Freighter: 3
Heavy Freighter: 2

Based on "Turn mode" and then warp ratio and a misc bonus.  If warp ratio is 36 or more +1, if its less than 30 -1 and if its less than 20 -2.  Misc bonuses are for "dedicated fast ships" +1 and nimble +1.  I decided the CFs need a higher bonus than just based on warp to make them interesting.  The logic being they have less heavy weapons so more available power to engines as opposed to the war cruisers/raiding DN's/frigates that all have high warp ratios but still are packing their full compliment of heavy weapons. 

Edit 2: Okay, can't figure out how to do attachments in PM's so here's the spreadsheet with all the thrusts based on the method above.

Great Topic!  Thanks for giving us the opportunity to give you some input cricket.

In Starfleet battles (I'm not so familiar with the newer Federation Commander) the speed ships could attain was a complex relation of how much warp power they had and how much they were willing to dedicate to just movement.  Trying to port that over to another game would be painful at best.  However the extreme cases should probably be considered (e.g frieghters on the low power end and fast cruisers on the high end). 

Perhaps though the more pressing issue is maneuverability.  SFB (and I believe FC) ships have turn modes.  This is generally related to the class of the ship, but varies from race to race.  I think this is actually the most important aspect of movement to capture, given that most warships had similar speed limits.

So here's my two proposals:

1) Base thrust on turn mode
This should be quite straight forward since all the SSD's clearly list the turn mode:

Mode Thrust
F         2
E         3
D         4
C         5
B         6
A         7
AA       8

Ships with lots of spare warp power (e.g. fast cruisers or X-ships) should get some bonus thrust.  Ships that have less warp power than they need to go "full speed"  (e.g. monitors, frieghters, tugs - but not battleships or dreadnoughts) should get a bit of a penalty on thrust.

This would give a Fed CA a thrust of 4 and a Klingon D7 a thrust of 6 - which I think speak well to their relative turning ability.

Any ship listed as "Agile" should probably get overthrusters.  I wouldn't want overthrusters to be a really common thing on ships.

2) Add new Ship Traits for Maneuverability

Definitely a more complicated option as it requires coming up with sensible new traits AND finding an appropriate cost for them.  If this could be pulled off then I'd have some much different "thrust" suggestions - probably based on the ratio of warp power vs. warp movement cost - which would actually land most of the fighting ships in about the same area - but with some exceptions (e.g. new Romulan "hawk" series ships have lots more power than the original "eagle" series ships).

-Tim

I do like the idea of anti-armour traits.  As armour is now (and I'm okay with it), the anti-armour trait doesn't seem as necessary as armour is just kind of like having more hull.  But with front ended armour (which I think I like a bit more than the current), I think you'd want something; otherwise armoured ships are going to be able to absorb a lot of damage before losing any combat efficiency.  I see any of these being reasonable anti-armour traits:

1) Armour eater: When this weapon destroys a point of armour mark off one additional point of armour
2) Armour ignorer: When this weapon would destroy a point of armour mark off a point of hull instead
3) Armour penetrator: When this weapon destroys a point of armour mark off a point of hull as well

I like #2 the least.  While its simple it really only a good counter against armour if you have a lot of weapons with it.  #1 is quite effective and mitigating armour - no two bits about that.  #3 seems to me to be the most realistic - it defeats the armour (i.e. armour does not protect the hull) and damages it at the same time (big hole in your armour). 

I don't think it should matter what "boxes" the armour/hull points are in - you always just take the first available one to score damage against.

Cricket - fair enough on wanting it tested.  I'll see if I can get something done one evening - kind of tough these days as our gaming group had 3 babies over the past 6 months!

Hmm, you know, front-loaded armour plus reinforced systems = I get to keep my guns for a VERY long time.  I like it!

-Tim

P.S. Pardon my Canadian spelling of armoUr   

It would be really cool to have this made official and replace the existing armour rules.  That way the pricing could be revised and you'd actually buy the amount of armour you wanted instead of getting 2/3 of the armour you wanted (which I guess just means armour is 50% more expensive).

I can totally see this making "anti armour" weapons far more useful - given that the armour itself would be more useful.

-Tim