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cricket wrote:Blacklancer99 wrote:will you be posting a folder with counters/markers and other tidbits on the catalog page? I had thought they might be included at the end of the rules with the blank ship displays.
Full-color counter sheets will be made available from the Starmada page.
Cool. Thanks. I am hoping to play a few little test games soon and I was hoping there would be official counters and markers rather than my chicken scratch on a card-stock square... "is that a zero or a six???" 
Cheers,
Erik
cricket wrote:Pre-order customers, please take note... The ZIP file has been updated to version 1.0.
It can be downloaded here, with the username/password provided when you placed your order: http://zips.mj12games.com/mjg0130.zip
Done. Since this is version 1.0, will you be posting a folder with counters/markers and other tidbits on the catalog page? I had thought they might be included at the end of the rules with the blank ship displays.
Cheers,
Erik
cricket wrote:jwpacker wrote:What's the rule for splitting a battery into three or more targets? Say, I have a single battery that should, in reality, consist of six point defense guns?
I would assume that such a battery would be divided into multiple banks to begin with...
I think part of the issue comes from the conversion guide which lumps antifighter batteries into a single TT bank. I think it is much better to split them into as many banks as possible with overlapping arcs.
Erik
jwpacker wrote:cricket wrote:but is it really "Byzantine" to apply a -2 modifier if splitting fire between two targets?
Counterintuitive? Splitting batteries is counter to how I think of things, I guess.
What's the rule for splitting a battery into three or more targets? Say, I have a single battery that should, in reality, consist of six point defense guns? What's the method for splitting it six ways, to target six flights of fighters, drones and seekers?
Given a large enough target, I like the idea of an easy means of concentrating the fire into a single roll. But again, in my head, it's "concentrating on those star destroyers" not "splitting fire against those stunt fighters"...
Personally, I like the way the splitting fire rules work. In my mind's eye I can "see" how it would be more difficult for a targeting system to engage multiple targets simultaneously. A ship may have 20 individual gun mounts capable of firing at once, but the targets are moving at different velocities along different vectors, presenting different aspects to the sensors, etc...Now in contrast, if the same ship can dedicate a much greater proportion of its computational ability to a single opponent, and aims all of its like weapons that bear, it seems like it can be far more efficient. I think splitting too much would just be a record keeping problem.
At least that's the justification in my mind. Of course, Dan can defend his design choices himself. 
Cheers,
Erik
Marauder wrote:The SU modifier is now different than for Catastrophic:
http://www.mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3635&start=20#p26840
Ah, missed that. So much going on all the time lately. It will be nice when Dan says, "That's it. Done. Not changing anything else" and we can get on with the building and blasting!
Thanks,
Erik
The more I look at Volatile, it seems a bit overpowered. I realize it has a big SU mod, but how does the math break down on this? Since it has the same SU modifier as Catastrophic it would stand to reason that it would be roughly equivalent, but it seems to me like by having more chances to hit it would be much more flexible against targets like fighters and mines than a Catastrophic weapon. Please enlighten me, it's been a long day and maybe my synapses are just shutting down. Thanks,
Erik
madpax wrote:Good idea, Erik, thanks!
Marc
de nada.
Doing XO racks this way actually seems to work better in SNE than using expendable weapons in earlier versions of the game, primarily because of attack dice system. I used to do several individual expendable weapons all in the same arc with ammo equaling the number of weapons, but that never worked as neatly as the new and improved version.
Erik
madpax wrote:BTW, how do you modelize weapons carried outside the hull?
For example, in Starfire, ships can have external mounts for missiles which do not take room inside the hull.
Marc
Why not just model the external ordnance racks as Expendable weapons? You could say that the fixed launchers have enough ammo that they could last for an entire Starmada game. Doing it this way you would save SUs and you could design the XO battery to provide a single powerful alpha strike, while the internal launchers have a more moderate rate of fire (lower BAS).
Cheers,
Erik
mikeaxe wrote: 3. Anti-fighter fire I assume a Dx2 weapon would destroy a fighter flight on a hit.
According to Dan's errata here http://www.mj12games.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3647&start=50 it would not.
Erik
Nomad wrote:
Anyways, what I was really getting at was "What hard limits do you use?" Because I am quite curious about what works. My experience with banning things has been that new degenerate strategies are developed rapidly ("Oh, nothing from Rules Annex? OK, guess I'll just have to use 3+ Repeating Increased Hits...").
Well, in several games and at least one campaign I played we capped range at 12 which we found promoted a great deal more maneuver, I can remember placing restrictions of no Ignores Shields, no Piercing greater than +1, no fighter DEF greater than 2, and a few other things that I can't recall right at the moment. The biggest thing was the range restriction. That one thing dramatically altered games from "line up your ships on opposite sides of the table...ok, blast away" to something more like dogfights where one side or the other was trying to control the engagement range, either to get their shots in, or avoid the same. We never banned expendables, probably because nobody ever made a "eggshell sledgehammer" design. We never banned Strikers, but I always felt that they were way too powerful and flexible for the "cost", so I am glad that they will be gone in Nova. Even killer strikers could be dealt with though if you used the fighter CAP and Dogfight rules to intercept them and force them to attack short of their intended target. As far as traits go, I did play a series of games where we limited traits to one "ranged" trait and one other and had several enjoyable games. That still allowed for a lot of design options and vicious combos, but I felt it prevented the ugliest abuse. I think in the end, it is all about what you and your gaming friends want from the game. I've known people (and this extends beyond Starmada) that were not happy unless they could show off how good they were at exploiting the rules at every turn. I usually stop playing games with those people. Yeah, I've got issues.
Cheers,
Erik
Marauder wrote:I agree that's not exactly a broken ship, just highly annoying. Sure you can defeat it, but you can also catch someone off guard with it and just hose them. They certainly aren't what I would call "fun" ships.
IMHO there are two things that make it possible:
1) Tech - I understand wanting tech, but in my experience tech just leads to stupid glass cannon ships that make the game unfun. If you actually had to spend the extra space evenly between defense, movement, weapons and systems it would be cool - but its not - I hate it. Why have design constraints when you can just pick tech and then utterly ignore them?
2) Cost of range - I don't think it should be linear. Seems to me the game is very balanced when dealing with weapon ranges of about 9 to 18 - outside of this it breaks down. A range 3 weapon should not be 25% the cost of a range 12 weapon. I also think that the extreme long ranges should have an additional premium. If range 12 costs 1 then range 3 should be about 0.5 and Range 30 about 4.
Now most of this goes away if you just all build nice ships or have someone do up ships in a particular setting and use them, but if you play "lets kill each other" things like that get exploited.
-Tim
I am firmly of the opinion that all building mechanics, no matter how thoughtfully designed and executed will be exploited by someone eventually. The whole point of designing ships to defeat your opponents isn't to make a balanced design that is fun to play and makes sense, it is to find the loopholes and killer combos that allow you to smite your friends with giggling glee. The exitement comes from building the best beast rather than playing. All of the above is why I typically will not play one-of-a-kind build off games unless there are many restrictions in place. They just aren't fun to me. I'm weird that way I guess. When I have played some campaigns we have used all kinds of hard caps on tech and things like range and they were pretty fun games.
Of course this is me on my soap-box, so I will get down now and let the discussion continue.
Cheers,
Erik
OldnGrey wrote:What do you expect, with a steady stream of "I Want", "If I had" and "I need".
Maybe if Dan said no more often there might be a breathing space. House rules abound but people will always want the rules to say that it is ok for their super destroying - ultra range - death dealing - ship melting - borg eating - stupidly large dice throwing - uber what-not to be "rules legal".
Try saying that three times in a row!
Paul
Is that Stupidly Large Dice Throwing in terms of the number of the dice, or the scale? It had never occurred to me to make a d6 out of a washing machine box until tonight...
Somehow I always feel like Dan does exactly what he always intended to do, he just bounces stuff of of the forum to make us all feel like we are part of the process Either that or he is like Dr House and he needs a "team" to get his brain in gear!
Erik
Marauder wrote:cricket wrote:Is there a reason you couldn't just use "tough" fighters to simulate gunboats?
Its the weapon range that is the problem. Tough is good for a very sturdy fighter (or maybe one with shields) or perhaps a very agile fighter.
I realize we are throwing a lot of stuff at you, in what is essentially a finished product that just needs a few i's dotted and t's crossed. That's fair enough - but perhaps you can take all of this stuff as inspiration for Nova's first supplement?
-Tim
I have the feeling that Starmada since its inception has never been, and will going forward, never be a finished product. Every so often Dan just provides us with the most updated version, and promptly starts the next generation.
Erik
cricket wrote:Is there a reason you couldn't just use "tough" fighters to simulate gunboats?
In my mind, yes. Reason: gunboats are usually portrayed as having starship scale weapons while fighters cannot. For an example not from SFU there are arachnid gunboats (and later Gorm) in the Starfire books that are stated as mounting "all up", warship scale antiship missiles rather than fighter missiles, as well as point defense. I'm not looking to create outlandish eggshells with sledgehammers, but convert things that exist elsewhere.
Erik
OldnGrey wrote:Anyone having trouble moving over to using BAS could take a look at shipyard nova. Scroll right on the ship sheet
Paul
Exactly how I have been doing it. I ran through 5 college ruled pages of weapon conversions over the last few days. Just started doing some "new" designs. Thanks,
Erik
underling wrote:Blacklancer99 wrote:I'll just say that the way BAS works in designing ships is the single most difficult thing for me to digest in the new rules. I don't think I am the only one who has difficulty with "visualizing" a given weapon with the new system. Maybe it's just the limitation of my frequently overloaded brain, but it is far far easier for me to visualize a ship-killing laser cannon with beam-like qualities that slices up targets with the SAE statistic "string" and possible traits, than it is to do the same with SNE BAS and traits. I would compare it to someone that can speak a foreign language, but cannot think in that language and therefore has to do a mental translation in his head before speaking, and then translate anything spoken to him before he can comprehend it. It gets laborious, and often frustrating. I feel the same when trying to muddle out a weapon's BAS. I think, "ok, the laser is a single shot a turn, but rakes across a target it hits, so it would have say an IMP of three, ok so, is a BAS of 3.25 each good? Too much?" Maybe as I play around with the system more I will get a better "feel" for how it works, but as it is right now I must admit it is a lot easier for me to do the base weapon in SAE terms and convert it. At least I feel like I have some consistency that way. Maybe I just need someone to explain it to me r-e-a-l s-l-o-w, with visual aids.
Cheers,
Erik
I had a nice long post on my thought process about designing weapons, and the computer honked it up.
So in lieu of retyping it, I'll be brief(er) this time.
When designing a weapon system simply do the following.
Set the BAS at 1.
Repeat...
Set the BAS at 1.
Decide what arcs you want.
Decide how many dice you want in those arcs.
For example, a main battery might have the following:
FX8, PB4, SB4, AX8
And because it's a main battery, I might give it Dx2.
This gives me eight dice fore and aft, four dice to each side, with a really nice overlap to each side from the fore and aft arcs.
In Nova, think more about arcs, number of dice in those arcs, and any traits to help flesh out the weapon system's offensive capability.
And again, until you've designed a few weapons, simply leave the BAS at 1. Once you've designed a few, you can think about tweaking the BAS to slightly modify the dice progression.
Kevin
What, no visual aides?
I do get what you are saying, and I think it is just something that I have to play around with to get to know it better. I guess I'm stuck in old conceptions and that's holding me back. It is particularly difficult to narrow my brain down to a BAS 1 "base" after doing a ton of conversions of existing designs and the BAS varies madly all over the spectrum from weapon to weapon, with not one in dozens landing on 1. Thanks.
Erik
cricket wrote:jwpacker wrote:If you want to carry them, well, we'd have to figure that out. They're 60 and 147 SUs a piece, at TL0 (and let's not talk about what happens when TLs rise in the new system) so we'd probably be looking at maybe 70 and 170 SU each to be held in a hangar, maybe?
I'd probably go 50 and 100. Since these are meant to be "carried" into battle, they are likely smaller than a comparable 1- or 2-hull starship would be.
I too would like to see gunboats, if only because those types of ships turn up A LOT in science fiction. Some genres use these types instead of the classic "starfighter". I'm thinking that simply grouping them in a flotilla-type arrangement of sections where a hit or two (depending on the 1 or 2 hull size) just kills one and the flotilla is reduced proportionately would be the way to go. Treating gunboats individually seems like it would horribly muck up games using the initiative system.
Erik
cricket wrote:Nomad wrote:I do like the idea of Scouts being able to provide some degree of EPM for the benefit of other ships; it lessens the problem of "OK, they have no Escorts, so my Scouts are wasted points."
After some back-of-the-envelope calculations, I come up with this:
If a fleet includes at least one scout for every 500 points (or fraction thereof), all opposing ECM values are reduced by 1, to a minimum of zero.
Sweet! I have wanted desperately for scouts to have a "real" game (insert oxymoron joke here) reason for being. I like this so much better than limiting them to a rock-paper-scissors relationship with escorts.
Cheers,
Erik
PS please don't save all these cool, late to arrive things for the next SNE supplement!
I'll just say that the way BAS works in designing ships is the single most difficult thing for me to digest in the new rules. I don't think I am the only one who has difficulty with "visualizing" a given weapon with the new system. Maybe it's just the limitation of my frequently overloaded brain, but it is far far easier for me to visualize a ship-killing laser cannon with beam-like qualities that slices up targets with the SAE statistic "string" and possible traits, than it is to do the same with SNE BAS and traits. I would compare it to someone that can speak a foreign language, but cannot think in that language and therefore has to do a mental translation in his head before speaking, and then translate anything spoken to him before he can comprehend it. It gets laborious, and often frustrating. I feel the same when trying to muddle out a weapon's BAS. I think, "ok, the laser is a single shot a turn, but rakes across a target it hits, so it would have say an IMP of three, ok so, is a BAS of 3.25 each good? Too much?" Maybe as I play around with the system more I will get a better "feel" for how it works, but as it is right now I must admit it is a lot easier for me to do the base weapon in SAE terms and convert it. At least I feel like I have some consistency that way. Maybe I just need someone to explain it to me r-e-a-l s-l-o-w, with visual aids.
Cheers,
Erik
cricket wrote:Blacklancer99 wrote:Would it work to include the traits but with a ORAT/DRAT mod rather than an SU mod?
Probably not, since most players would take "exclusive" to cut down the point cost rather than the space requirement -- you've got Tech Levels for that.
Yeah, I see that. Min-wax gamers ruin everything.
Erik
cricket wrote:Blacklancer99 wrote:Ah, so it is a real world, bland, MilSpeak, euphamistic term. If that's not a good reason not to use it, I don't know what is!
At least it's better than "ECCM" -- which immediately makes me wonder about "ECCCM".
Isn't ECCCM just ECM against ECCM? Would that be ECM^2? :roll:
I guess I'll just stick with referring to EPM and trying never to think of what it stands for!
Erik
cricket wrote:FWIW, I don't see harm in including an "anti-fighter" trait (although I'd like to give it a better name). Where Admiralty probably went wrong was expanding it to "fighter-exclusive" and "starship-exclusive" (alhtough the latter was necessary for the Dreadnoughts setting).
I think there is a place for fighter exclusive and ship exclusive, if only for specific settings. A "light" gun firing an AA shell can be fighter exclusive, and a big naval rifle firing an AP shell is ship-exclusive. I think the problem is when people abuse the process to make more powerful guns without using as much space. Would it work to include the traits but with a ORAT/DRAT mod rather than an SU mod?
What's wrong with calling a trait specifically geared to shooting down fighters and fighter like objects Anti-Fighter?
Seems like an accurate description of the function and clips nicely to "AF".
Erik
cricket wrote:I'd still prefer to have "Command" do something else -- since many players will likely stick with the simultaneous play option.
What about using Command to modify fleet points in a manner sumilar to Morale? Higher command rating, more points available? Jus' a thought.
Erik
Edit: As I thought about this it makes less sense than what initially popped into my head. Carry on.
cricket wrote:This is why EPM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_warfare#Electronic_protection
Ah, so it is a real world, bland, MilSpeak, euphamistic term. If that's not a good reason not to use it, I don't know what is!
Erik
The combination of ECM and EPM seem to be natural, and I'm considering combining them as a Blanket EW (Electronic Warfare) stat that can be assigned either offensively or defensively, particularly for B5wars conversions.
Also, Why Electronic Protection Measures for the counter-ecm mode? Since it is "offensive" perhaps Electronic Penetration Measures?
Just digging through the rules for real for the first time today so I'm probably way off-base
Cheers,
Erik
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