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2012-03-23 20:00:58

bpolitte wrote:

I'm all for broadside fleets! I was actually in the process of translating FASA's Leviathan to SAE when Nova was announced. Now I'm trying to evaluate whether to move to Nova or not. So far, Nova's the favorite for the reduction in die rolls among other things. The construction of weapons threw me a little though. I agree that weighting the effectiveness of arcs of fire should be an ORAT mod not an SU mod.

In conversations with Dan in the past it's been brought up as to the merit of weapons facing the direction of the drive being a little more expensive than weapons not facing the direction of the drive, with the logic that drive facing weapons would probably be easier to bring to bear.

I didn't know they were going to be weighted, but I think it's good that they are.
That being said, I agree that it probably should be an ORat mod versus an SU mod.

Kevin

2012-03-22 18:34:11

Marauder wrote:

My only little concern right now is regarding sequential combat and fighters. Overall fighters seem to have about the right power level - so its not the fighters themselves I'm concerned about - its the crazy initiative sinking you can do if you have a whole bunch of fighters accompanied by a small number of very heavy hitting ships. I could see cases where it would be very easy to outnumber your opponent 3:1 and then get to fire with the majority of your fleet's firepower in the first fire phase you get.

This is why our group has basically done away with the official rules for fighters.
We've decided to use the "Seeker" trait on a weapon that's representing fighters.
It works for us, and keeps the number of maneuvering elements manageable.

Marauder wrote:

My other thought is that you only allow ships that have a target in range to participate in the combat phase - so cloaked ships and fighters/other ships that don't have eligible targets can't contribute to initiative sinking.
-Tim

On thinking about this, why would you select a ship in the Combat Phase if it has no targets?
Unless I'm missing something, that seems like it'd be a wasted pick.
Kevin

2012-01-31 19:21:33

SNIP

diddimus wrote:

... but then what's the point of fighters.

I've been asking this question for years.
Kevin

2012-01-27 22:24:55

Based on our play-testing of the initiative based activation sequence, I'd prefer to see option 2.

Allowing fighters to react to capital ships during movement seems logical, while at the same time having them resolve their combat at the same time as the capital ships also seems logical.
Even with an outnumbering mechanic for activation, I don't think I'd allow fighter flights to bump up the number of activations a force has. In my opinion all of the capital ships should be moving at roughly the same time, without the benefit of being able to delay that movement because of fighters.
Kevin

2012-01-26 20:16:08

graydo wrote:

In an impulse system you move units one hex in a time during the impulses they are allowed to use based on their speed. Star Fleet Battles uses a similar system.
You could also insert the combat system into the impulses although you'd need to be able to track which weapons had fired and which hadn't.

We haven't play-tested the game with any movement system other than the initiative-based system, but I think you could use some sort of impulse system.
Whether you'd want to or not is a different question. We've been playing with anywhere from two to eight or ten ships per player, and I think any kind of impulse system would slow the game down.
Way, WAY down...
That being said, I don't think there's anything in any of the game mechanics that'd prevent you from using an impulse system.
Kevin

2012-01-23 17:02:40

Ozymandias wrote:

I don't know how you're handling a positive PEN versus armor (say a PEN of 5 versus an armor of 2), but in GF it's simply no effect, and not a positive column shift.
Same here. My goal was that high-pen weapons were inefficient if the pen was not needed on the target. I want to encourage certain weapons\ships having strong targeting priorities to get the most damage per cost out of them.
I'm curious how you costed the penetration. I had my mathy friend work out a formula for me but it's got a number of assumptions since I don't really know how the damage of a weapon is costed till the rules come out.

I don't know whether it'll do you any good, but in GF we're using it as part of the Orat equation.
It factors into the Orat equation as follows:

(2^(x/3))

Where x = penetration value

2012-01-22 07:52:54

Ken_Burnside wrote:

OK - I'm only running from what Dan's posting in the topics here.
Dan has made a standardized progression for how the number of dice rolled to make an attack are reduced/affected by damage, rather than having it be 1-to-1.
Think of the progression as "Leftmost box is 100%" and each box going to the right is a reduction in the number of dice, rounded up.
His progression is as follows:
100%/70.7%/50%/35%/25%/17.6%/12.5%/8.8%/6.25%/4.4%/3.1%
The formula that generates that progression is N/(2^0.5) where N is the prior percentage, and 2^0.5 is 1.414, or the square root of 2.
There are other progressions that give a shallower drop off than Dan's progression does. One of them is the Richter scale, which, because I was curious, I ran out the numbers.
100%/80%/64%/51.2%/40.9%/32.8%/26.2%/20.1%/16.7%/13.4%/10.7%/8.6%/6.8%/5.5%/4.4%/3.5%
It requires about 50% more "steps" to get down to the 3% level, which appears to be Dan's cut-off on "Don't bother.".
I happen to like it because it keeps ships in fighting shape a bit longer; I am mildly concerned that ships will erode in fighting capabilities too quickly with Dan's case, and am aware that my concern is more a play style preference.

If you think ten columns aren't enough, then you probably wouldn't appreciate the initial version at all.
It had six.
The percentages were 100%, 80%, 60%, 45%, 30%, and 15%, and the original intent was to use it for historicals.

We haven't found that the performance drops off too much, although your mileage may vary.
Kevin

2012-01-20 14:04:36

Ozymandias wrote:

Weapons have an armor pen rating, and ships have an armor rating. You column shift right a number of columns depending on how much you failed to pen by. For example, an armor pen 2 firing at an armor 5 will shift 3 columns to the right, and hit for squat.

It's interesting you should mention this, and is *exactly* how the new Grand Fleets works.
PEN versus armor is the main column modifier.
I don't know how you're handling a positive PEN versus armor (say a PEN of 5 versus an armor of 2), but in GF it's simply no effect, and not a positive column shift.
Kevin

2012-01-19 19:52:31

cricket wrote:

Ken_Burnside wrote:
I'd also seriously think about referring to these not as -1 and -2 modifiers, but as "column shifts". I'd also set your convention to the base shift as the left most column and make all the shifts go in the same direction, rather than your current minus-and-plus system. It saves a type of math step at the table.
Not sure I follow the "set your convention to the base shift" part of your suggestion...

I think what he may mean is have it so most, if not all shifts, are one direction.
At a bare minimum you could have close range be the default column, with medium range being -1, and long range being -2.
Instead of the +1, 0, and -1 mods that they are now.
Kevin

2012-01-17 16:33:14

Enpeze wrote:

cricket wrote:
No edition of Starmada to this point makes any distinction between port/starboard firing arcs and forward/aft arcs. All are point-costed solely on the width of those arcs.
Thanks alot to you and murtalian for your answers. What do you think could be a satisfying rule solution for such broadside flavored spaceship option? Maybe the "rebate" of 0.6 WP I suggested in my recent post? Or maybe a limit how many weapon batteries/point cost could be put in certain firing arcs?

I'm not sure I understand why you'd need an "official" rule, or change in the point costing, for this.
If you're going to be constructing ships to simulate Battlefleet Gothic, for example, it seems like you could simply construct the ships as they are in that universe, and let the point costs fall where they fall.
If you're going to have players other than you converting or constructing ships, and you feel that a large percentage of weapons should be firing to either broadside, then simply come up with some sort of gentleman's agreement that a certain percentage of the weapons on a ship must be in either broadside arc.
If I'm remembering correctly, a lot of the weapons batteries are broadside oriented, but not all. I believe the Eldar have almost all, if not all, of their weapons (both weapons batteries and pulse lances), mounted in the forward arc.
So I think any design restrictions you incorporate would need to be race specific.
Kevin

2012-01-17 16:18:36

cricket wrote:

I'm not sure I follow. You mean like the SAE "Faceted Shields" rule?

Yep, I believe that's what he's refering to.

2012-01-16 20:31:05

Ozymandias wrote:

Is there going to be an optional rule for hex-facing shields?

I'm not sure...
It's been requested, but Dan would be the one to answer this one.

2012-01-16 14:06:07

Ozymandias wrote:

How do shields work? What does "shields 4+" mean?

Shields award saving rolls on all hits.
A "shields 4+" rating is simply a 4+ roll to save.

2012-01-15 03:33:48

Ozymandias wrote:

Could you clear up what all the arcs are?
[FF3][FP4][FS4][AP6]
FF = Front Facing?
FP = Front Port?
FS = Front Starboard?
What is AP?

There are nineteen distinct arcs in the game, and they all have two letter abbreviations.

The four shown above are:
FF = Forward (120 degrees directly to the front)
FP = Forward Port (starts directly ahead of the ship, and extends aft 120 degrees to port)
FS = Forward Starboard (starts directly ahead of the ship, and extends aft 120 degrees to starboard)
AP = Aft Port (starts directly aft of the ship, and extends forward 120 degrees to port)

Kevin

2012-01-12 19:24:27

Are there any racing game enthusiasts out there?
I, along with a friend of mine, have been working on a set of stock car rules for the past several months.
The primary driving mechanic (pun intended) is a universal dice roll of six dice which are rolled every turn. These dice generate performance chips, as well as dictate the movement rates, for the cars. A turn consists of two rounds of car movement, the order of movement of which is first to last each round.

The game does require a track to play on, five of which I've drawn up.
The tracks are scaled to the 1/144 scale Racing Champions cars from a few years ago.
Currently we've got a short track, a small oval, a larger oval, a Daytona-esque tri-oval, and a road course that vaguely resembles Watkins Glen.
PDFs of these tracks are available, but to give you an idea of the size of them I've been plotting them out on our 36" plotter here at work.

The rules currently are in a very skeleton form, but I believe enough's there so that the rules could be understood and the game played.

I've anyone has any desire to provide some feedback just let me know.
Thanks.
Kevin
ksmith19@cox.net

2012-01-12 14:12:02

OldnGrey wrote:

Ozymandias wrote:
I notice that on the weapon readouts the strongest arcs are the ones with the lowest numbers.
It seems like it'd be nice if the arc #s were counted from the right, so the higher numbers were the stronger weapons?
I don't know if this would actually work, but high = bad seems somewhat counter-intuitive.
I think that you have it "back to front".
The arc numbers depend upon the total number of weapons in a battery and how many of the weapons fire into the arc.
"Low" numbers can mean that most or the weapons are covering that arc or that there are not many weapons opverall in that battery.
All will become clear when the rules are released and you have played with them.
I thought it odd at first but have come to like the system.
Paul

What Paul said...
Another way to look at it is to think of the firing arc modifiers as fractions.
The bigger the number (firing arc modifier), in reality the smaller the number of weapons firing into that arc for that weapon entry.

For example, take a weapon with the following entry: [FX2][AX2]
What this is telling us is that half of the weapons (dice) are firing into the forward extended arc, while half of the weapons (dice) are firing into the aft extended arc.

I don't think the firing arc mods can always be taken at face value for the percentage of weapons firing into a particular arc due to the formula involved, but hopefully you get the idea.
Kevin

2012-01-10 23:38:37

KDLadage wrote:

Dan -- any plans to account for (or allow) side-slips?

I'm not intending to be the answer man here, but I believe they're currently in the "Advanced Rules."

2012-01-10 23:36:08

Based on conversations I've had, I believe the new movement system duplicates the system currently used in S:AE.
So nothing is really changing.

I typically have always prefered cinematic movement systems over vector-based systems, as they're simply easier and less cumbersome to use. I've found this new one to be really easy. I guess we can debate just how fast a ship needs to be going before it can't turn, based on the time scale of a game turn, but that probably won't matter. As again, I believe the new system is trying to model the existing system.

Your observations about not being able to turn in the Full Thrust game are true, if the ships would have had a thrust of four or less. I use the basic cinematic movement in my Full Thrust games, so I can't vouch for how the vector system in More Thrust works. But the bottom line is that, in the new Starmada system, any kind of effective maneuvering is going to need to be done at speeds of thrust rating or slower.
I think this is a neat effect, and introduces a certain amount of maneuvering tactics, but may be a little too slow for some people.
Kevin

2012-01-10 21:55:29

mundungus wrote:

(Some of this is restated from a previous email conversation with Dan.)
I REALLY like this system.
I will argue for a slight modification: allow 2 OR MORE turns in the third category (what you've called "reverse course"). This would give a ship with plenty of engines a much wider range of ending hexes and allow for fancy weaving around any terrain.
Is it realistic? Hard to say -- this system doesn't really model what happens within a turn.
Also, I have concerns about the term "come about". It's not really accurate either the way it was used before (which is common in sci fi) or the new way; it has to do with the direction of the wind. Changing it from the old meaning could confuse some players. If you're going to use it incorrectly, you should at least be consistent. Alternately, you could simply not introduce any terminology.
So I'd argue for:
TURNS     MIN     MAX
0         s-t     t+s
1         0       t
2+        0       t-s
where s is speed and t is thrust. A ship may not turn if s > t.

I really like it also, and based on our playtesting, we've found that needing more than three turns in any given movement phase is fairly rare.
Mostly becuse you're (usually) not wanting to do a lot of maneuvering above a ship's thrust rating.
It's just not very efficient.
Kevin

2012-01-10 21:50:46

Ozymandias wrote:

Hmm I see the problem.
How's about this for an alternative: ship would move forward equal to its velocity, and then could use its thrust to move itself anywhere within its thrust rating of that end point. This wouldn't have to change its facing if you're set on ships facing their direction of travel. The current velocity would be equal to the distance from the final end point to the start point, and the facing could snap to the nearest hex facing along the vector between origin and end point.
This would let us perform those wide sweeping turns at high velocity and sounds almost as simple?

Have you actually played any games using the new movement system?
If not, I'd urge you to actually try using it before offering any "fixes."
There's nothing broken about it.

From my perspective, I didn't play much S:AE, so I never really developed an appreciation for the movement system in that edition. It seemed kind of convoluted, and not easy to understand.
This one, on the other hand, is so simple to use, the more I play the more I like it.
We've still not found it easy to make high thrust work as a primary factor in ship design, but I wouldn't play the game using any other movement system.
Kevin

2012-01-09 21:59:54

madpax wrote:

underling wrote:
In the standard rules, everything is sequential, so if something is eliminated before it can shoot, then it doesn't get to shoot.
Kevin
I'm a bit ambivalent on this point. Although I didn't like that fighters attacks were treated differently than ship attack (meaning, damages by fighters were applied immediately, damage by ships were applied at the end of the turn), I appreciated that fighters were acting at a diferent time from ships.
I'd rather see this sequence of play (everything is sequential within its own phase):
- Ships move phase
- Fighters move phase
- Anti-fighter weapons fire phase
- Fighter fire phase
- Ship fire phase
Although it's a bit mecanic and maybe less simple than the above, it looks like more realistic for me. And damage is applied immediately for every type of fire.
Maybe there is some room for alternate SOP...?
Marc

I'm sure there is (room for however you want to handle the turn sequence).

With respect to fighters, for example, my group doesn't really like fighter flights cluttering up the table, and also artificially bumping up the number of activations a force has.
So we're going to use seekers to simulate fighters.

Kevin

2012-01-09 21:55:27

murtalianconfederacy wrote:

Just have to hope there is a normal, non-sequential, movement system for those who don't like using it...:(

Yep, there is.

2012-01-09 16:19:05

Nomad wrote:

BeowulfJB wrote:
I guess with the new vwesion of Starmada coming just around the corner, this discussion could become irrelevant.
Yeah. I get the feeling that since this is one of the longest-standing / most discussed complaints with AE, it may be a priority fix. I have a suspicion that they'll do it by rolling fighter firing into standard firing (ie, move ships, move fighters, then alternate activating a unit, firing all its stuff, and applying damage immediately), but no real evidence.

Currently, I believe fighter movement is mixed in with ship movement.
For example, Force A has five ships and four fighter flights. It has nine "things" to move.
Force B has six ships. It has six "things" to move.

When a force selects one thing to move, either a ship or fighter flight can be selected.
Once everything has moved, combat is then resolved in much the same manner.
Force A will have nine "things" to shoot, while Force B will have six "things" to shoot.

In the standard rules, everything is sequential, so if something is eliminated before it can shoot, then it doesn't get to shoot.

Kevin

2012-01-06 14:07:30

Nomad wrote:

I thought it came up that in the next iteration, Stealth now works like ECM / Countermeasures (generates negative column shifts), except that it isn't damaged by crippling... Don't know if that's still the case, but if it is, then escort stealth ranging is not a problem.

Nomad is correct.
Stealth is now simply a column shift, so ships with it can be targeted at long range.
Kevin

2012-01-06 14:03:02

Starmada: The New Beginning.

Welcome to the new Majestic Twelve Games Forum!

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Posts found: 101 to 125 of 528

101 Reply by underling 2012-03-23 20:00:58

Re: Starmada Nova Comments (133 replies, posted in Starmada)

102 Reply by underling 2012-03-22 18:34:11

Re: Starmada Nova Comments (133 replies, posted in Starmada)

103 Reply by underling 2012-01-31 19:21:33

Re: Designer's Notes: Fighters (23 replies, posted in Starmada)

104 Reply by underling 2012-01-27 22:24:55

Re: Designer's Notes: Fighters (23 replies, posted in Starmada)

105 Reply by underling 2012-01-26 20:16:08

Re: Impulse System (18 replies, posted in Starmada)

106 Reply by underling 2012-01-23 17:02:40

Re: Designer's Notes: Defenses & Damage (63 replies, posted in Starmada)

107 Reply by underling 2012-01-22 07:52:54

Re: Designer's Notes: Vector Movement (51 replies, posted in Starmada)

108 Reply by underling 2012-01-20 14:04:36

Re: Designer's Notes: Defenses & Damage (63 replies, posted in Starmada)

109 Reply by underling 2012-01-19 19:52:31

Re: Designer's Notes: Vector Movement (51 replies, posted in Starmada)

110 Reply by underling 2012-01-17 16:33:14

Re: rules for broadside weaponry? (4 replies, posted in Starmada X)

111 Reply by underling 2012-01-17 16:18:36

Re: Designer's Notes: Defenses & Damage (63 replies, posted in Starmada)

112 Reply by underling 2012-01-16 20:31:05

Re: Designer's Notes: Defenses & Damage (63 replies, posted in Starmada)

113 Reply by underling 2012-01-16 14:06:07

Re: Designer's Notes: Defenses & Damage (63 replies, posted in Starmada)

114 Reply by underling 2012-01-15 03:33:48

Re: Designer's Notes: Attack Dice (76 replies, posted in Starmada)

115 Topic by underling 2012-01-12 19:24:27

Topic: Stock car racing (0 replies, posted in Game Design)

116 Reply by underling 2012-01-12 14:12:02

Re: Designer's Notes: Attack Dice (76 replies, posted in Starmada)

117 Reply by underling 2012-01-10 23:38:37

Re: Designer's Notes: Vector Movement (51 replies, posted in Starmada)

118 Reply by underling 2012-01-10 23:36:08

Re: Designer's Notes: Vector Movement (51 replies, posted in Starmada)

119 Reply by underling 2012-01-10 21:55:29

Re: Designer's Notes: Vector Movement (51 replies, posted in Starmada)

120 Reply by underling 2012-01-10 21:50:46

Re: Designer's Notes: Vector Movement (51 replies, posted in Starmada)

121 Reply by underling 2012-01-09 21:59:54

Re: Anti-fighter batteries firing Before fighters, etc. (32 replies, posted in Starmada)

122 Reply by underling 2012-01-09 21:55:27

Re: Anti-fighter batteries firing Before fighters, etc. (32 replies, posted in Starmada)

123 Reply by underling 2012-01-09 16:19:05

Re: Anti-fighter batteries firing Before fighters, etc. (32 replies, posted in Starmada)

124 Reply by underling 2012-01-06 14:07:30

Re: Question about fleet composition. (15 replies, posted in Starmada)

125 Reply by underling 2012-01-06 14:03:02

Re: Names for the New Edition (46 replies, posted in Starmada)

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