You are not logged in. Please login or register.
Play nice. (This means you.)
Logins from the previous forum have been carried over; if you have difficulty logging in, please try resetting your password before contacting us. Attachments did not survive the migration--many apologies, but we're lucky we kept what we could!
mj12games.com/forum → Posts by mj12games
If so, shouldn't the Phaser-3 have Anti-Fighter or similar to show it's use as a point defense weapon?
Good idea.
With the Shield Facets would it not be easier to refer to these by the GHIJKL weapon arcs rather than using the new F/FP/FS etc notation?
Perhaps... but the precedent's already been set by Starmada: Iron Stars.
Looks good. 8-)
Perhaps the range of the Phaser Ones should be increased to 18. In Star Fleet Battles, these phasers shot farther than any other ship weapon.
Is this true? I can't say I'm a veteran SFB player -- but a glance at the weapon charts for Federation Commander shows that all weapons can fire out to 25 hexes, with the exception of Phaser-3s and overloaded Disruptors/Torpedoes. What I tried to do was give a bit of variety to the ranges based on damage potential.
For example, at the longest range, a Phaser-2's expected damage is 2/3 that of a Phaser-1. Assuming a "base" rage of 15 for Phaser-1s, if you cut the long range band by 1/3, you get a maximum range of 13.333, which is close enough to 12.
Likewise, a Disruptor's expected damage in SFB/FC at 16-25 hexes is twice that of a Phaser-1; if you double the Phaser-1's long range band, you get a range of 20, which is close enough to 18.
The question is what to do with Photon Torpedoes... I've got them at 15, but they probably should be 18, since they have roughly the same damage potential from range 9-25 as Disruptors (average of 1.6 hits per shot, compared to 1.4 for Disruptors).
Also, make all the Klingon D7's phasers the Phaser Twos which could have a range of 15. Keep the range for the 'torpedos and the phaser Threes the same. :idea:
In Federation Commander, the D7 has three Phaser-1s... I don't know what it has/had in SFB.
It's not an automatic thing, but if you do order the hardcopy, drop me an email and I'll send the PDF along.
It COULD -- but why would you want to? 
Seriously, ARES is closer to what you're looking for...
And, because the Federation CA is useless without someone to fight...
Here's one of the ships we'll be using in this weekend's playtests at DieCon...
I'm actually quite happy with the "look" -- I may be adapting it for non-SFU data cards.
"aggressive feelings so any large battles near a bug-infested world" implies a HUGE jump in the range of 'mental fields' and assumes that they can sense the minds of another species. That - to me - is basically a magical ability. It outranges sensors and weapons in the game....
Well, to be honest -- Bren was describing the (very unique) effects of "bugs" in Silent Death. We certainly wouldn't be copying that in particular.
On the other hand, there's nothing inherently magical about the "hive mind" concept -- science still doesn't fully understand insect group behavior.
That okay with you Dan?
Let's talk offline a bit.
OK suspension of disbelief fully engaged. 8-)
Also, I am not trying to keep people from talking about the "technical" aspects of Iron Stars -- quite the contrary, in fact.
My concern is that too MUCH technical detail will make the background LESS accessible. Right now, we all can look at the Iron Stars universe and kinda "fill in the blanks" for ourselves. I'd like to be able to keep that aspect, even if some of the technical specs are fleshed out.
I was looking strictly at the momentum rules. If a ship travelling at a high velocity, loses it's engines, or kills it's engines to slow down wouldn't it, according to the momentum rules go from say a 100 inch move to a 50 inch move in one turn?
Yes, that is correct. I hadn't really thought about what that means at such high speeds -- in the game, you're almost never going faster than 10"/turn.
Having lived in North Central Texas for much of my life (born there)...I do agree that pillbugs may not wheel. They locomote in a strictly columnar fashion.
Indeed. Which is really weird for a creature that can turn itself into a wheel...
What is the time scale per turn? Each inch equals what distance? Each turn represents how much time?
The answers to these questions are indeterminate, and likely to remain so.
You would use tracers to track and adjust your fire.
...
But Aether Torpedoes would still look like photon torpedoes...sorry
...
They end up as red smears on the front bulkhead!
...
Aether Sails and propellors probably would not be enough to stabilize a ship while firing.
...
So recoilles rifles for guns? If so the pictures you've done are really off.
Assumptions, all.
Who's to say tracers "would be used"? It's one option, sure ... but not the only option. If we're going to get technical, with the only reference being the blackness of space behind the target, how exactly are you to tell how far off your tracer round was? Or in what direction? Unless the round passes directly in front of the target (or vice versa) you have absolutely no reference point. On the other hand, as you reference, shell splashes were used at sea -- and these had the effect of "telegraphing" your shots, so I'm not sure the drawback you propose is that much of a negative.
Torpedoes could look like photon torpedoes; then again, they might not.
Why would the crew end up as red smears? Two reasons why this isn't a problem: (1) a ship can't slow down faster than it can accelerate, and (2) the indeterminate scale means we don't know exactly how many G's are being pulled (see? it can be helpful not to be tied to specific numbers. )
I could say, "Aether Sails and propellors probably would be enough to stabilize a ship while firing", and be as "correct" as you are when you say they probably would NOT be enough.
I'm not trying to squelch discussion, or poo-poo your ideas; but when things are thrown around as "this is the way things HAVE to be", I feel the need to step in and point out that we are, after all, playing make-believe.
Let me preface this with the following disclaimer: I refuse to get drawn into specific details on tech. Ships do what they do because it works from a gaming perspective -- not because that's how they WOULD work in such a setting.
However, the basic assumption is 1900-1910 technology with the addition of two things: Cavorite (for anti-gravity purposes) and the aether (for space navigation).
That means at "typical naval ranges" (10 nautical miles approximately) you would have 20 seconds to react to incoming fire!
Yes. And your point is... ?
Not an issue on Terra Firma, you probably can't see incoming and your speed is limited.
Actually, wet-navy crews (at least those with nothing to do) could and did watch incoming shells, and counted the seconds before impact. As far as "speed" goes, that's not the issue -- if you're worried about the ability to react to enemy fire, then what matters is the time it takes to alter course. That's a different animal than speed.
Besides, changing course was a viable tactic -- ships would often steer towards the last shell splashes to throw off enemy rangefinders.
I say we let the Luminiferous Aether be our magic doohickey.
Yup.
The problem, of course, is that using the "Luminiferous Aether" doesn't solve anything. Whose version of the aether is "real"? What exactly does it do?
There wasn't/isn't exactly unanimity in aether theory...
I want to write some stories and it would help to know this stuff. If anyone could point me to the technical data it would be greatly appreciated.
There is no technical data to point you towards.
In response to a question on how fast a Starfury travels, JMS (creator of Bab5) once replied, "It travels at the speed of the plot." In other words, things work however they need to work in order to tell the story -- or in this case, in order for the game to work.
Finally saw it. Didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. The previews made it look like a two-hour Mountain Dew commercial, but it was actually well done. One of the best Star Trek films.
Thought it was ... interesting ... that they set it up as an "alternate reality" -- essentially short-circuiting any fanboys (like me) who would otherwise nit-pick every little inconsistency with the original series. 
Couple things, tho:
1) Leonard Nimoy doing the "Space, the final frontier" thing at the end. Could've (should've?) been given to Shatner -- smoothed over that whole "why did Len get a cameo but not me?" thing...
2) This is the second time (first with the Picard-clone from "Nemesis") that they've touted a villain as the "best since Khan". The thing they don't seem to get about Khan is that he was such a compelling character because he was ... COMPLICATED ... this "Nero" guy from the movie was just angry, through and through. No depth at all. I'm not saying he wasn't a good villain -- just that he could have been even better.
3) I don't care what he did -- would a last-year cadet EVER be promoted straight to captain and given his own ship?
But those are very minor things -- overall, highly entertaining.
(And a heckuva lot better than Terminator: Salvation...)
does this mean if I roll for the "XY" on a damage chart, I get back 1 X and 1 Y battery weapon? That seems to be what it means, but I want to be sure.
Yes.
My main concern was the maths behind actual construction of limited ammunition weapons. The numbers did not make any sense
Hopefully, I've helped with that.
Now, I will admit that it is POSSIBLE ammo is "broken". I have never played a game in which one side has ammo and the other does not, all other things being equal... that might be an interesting experiment...
Now I'm confused again. Consider the aforementioned Poton Torpedo. Assuming an ammo-free weapon, a battery of one of these firing into the A arc uses 12 SU. A one-shot version uses 3 SU. (The shipbuilder agrees with my calculations here.) That's 25%, no?
If you give one weapon one shot, the multiplier is:
(1 + 1) / 10 = 20%
If you give 5 weapons 5 shots, the multiplier is:
(5 + 5) / 50 = 20%
etc.
Wait, where did these numbers come from? I can't reconcile them with the table from (my copy of!) ISS, which has the battery ORAT divided by:
SUs is a prime factor in the ORAT calculation. Thus, the final ORAT, as a factor of what it would be without ammo, must first take the above 20% and then divide by the number from the book. Thus:
Hull 1-3: 20% / 0.4 = 50%
Hull 4-8: 20% / 0.6 = 33%
Hull 9-15: 20% / 0.8 = 25%
etc.
Qualitatively, this latter set of numbers means that there is a bigger discount for larger ships. This is appropriate, because large ships are actually losing something by limiting their ammunition; gunboats weren't going to live that long anyway.
That was the rationale, yes.
I agree that "Limited ammunition weapons are broken".
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, of course... but...
I'd like to hear/see some evidence to support such blanket statements.
Consider that at one shot per launcher (the cheapest option), a limited ammo weapon takes up 20% of the space. The offensive rating "discount" depends on the size of the ship:
Hull 1-3: 50%
Hull 4-8: 33%
Hull 9-15: 25%
Hull 16-24: 20%
Hull 25+: 17%
So, in the case of the largest ships, non-ammo weapons would only have to fire six times in order to account for their cost in relation to ammo weapons. For medium-sized ships, weapons need only fire four times.
In my opinion, it's not unreasonable to expect that, on average, a normal weapon is going to get (at least) four shots off...
Non-butt-cheek version...
And the first faction symbol... this one's for the Emperor in Exile...
In starship construction, a battery with limited ammunition has its total space unit (SU) cost multiplied by the number of "shots" plus the number of weapons, then divided by ten times the number of weapons, rounded up.
So...
Multiplier = (S + W) / (10W)
Assuming 10 shots for 5 weapons, that's a multiplier of 30%. If you double the number of weapons (but keep the number of "shots" the same), the multiplier becomes 20%.
Of course, that's on the overall SU cost, which itself was doubled when you doubled the number of weapons, so in comparison, 10 weapons costs 33% more than 5 weapons.
Coolness!
In IS it is the acme of success to cross an enemy's "T" with a broadside (as the broadside is area allowing all guns to fire unmasked). But, in the Starmada version the primaries seem to be set up to fire only in the ABCD arcs. Why the change if we are trying to get the feel of IS to Starmada gamers?
Not exactly. The turrets in Starmada: Iron Stars are given firing arcs based on their actual placement on the ship; in Iron Stars, a fair amount of abstraction is involved with the "Full power to the sides, half power to front/back" arrangement.
Faceted shielding/armor? That's not a staple of IS either but it's part of the crossover product and doesn't make sense again in the context of giving Starmada players a taste of IS. :?
Faceted shielding was introduced in Starmada: Dreadnoughts and is intended to reflect the thinning of armor towards the ends of the ship.
Was this really just an attempt to add a few more gee whiz gadgets and a new universe to the Starmada arena?
Nope. It is an honest-to-goodness attempt to model what the Iron Stars universe would look like in Starmada terms; it is not, however, an attempt to mimic the Iron Stars game in Starmada -- a subtle difference, but an important one.
...and yet I find it very funny, in its way:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090518/ap_on_sp_ot/bodybuilders_flee_1
BRUSSELS – The Belgian bodybuilding championship has been canceled after doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled.
A doping official says bodybuilders just grabbed their gear and ran off when he came into the room.
"I have never seen anything like it and hope never to see anything like it again," doping official Hans Cooman said Monday.
Twenty bodybuilders were entered in the weekend competition.
Cooman says the sport has a history of doping "and this incident didn't do its reputation any good."
During testing of bodybuilding events last year, doping authorities of northern Belgium's Flanders region found that three-quarters of the competitors tested positive.
Had an idea for the external threat that brought down the Empire... one word:
Bugs!
Not at the moment, no.
mj12games.com/forum → Posts by mj12games
Powered by PunBB, supported by Informer Technologies, Inc.