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Harrigan's campaign system had one. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/887058/Harrigan%27s%20Starmada%20Campaign%20System%20V2.pdf
There are a number of after-action reports on the boards, but they don't have their own section, so they're scattered about the forum. Try searching for AAR (the abbreviation typically used). I'm not sure how much they'll help, though; most kind of gloss over the rules in favor of narrative (since recording every die roll would be a big of a pain).
They would provide some insurance against the critical hit rules, though, right? Is there any other benefit under the current rules to having multiple copies?
Very nice. I like that you kept it simple rather than getting all complicated like our previous conversion efforts did... the new rules also look entertaining and fitting for the setting. Your relatively low shield ratings and longer ranges should also help keep games fairly short (a problem I've noticed with my fleets is that things tend to drag on and on... particularly if the Imperials are involved).
Just for comparison, here's my most recent version of the Lunar (I did 4 versions of the Imperials, then decided I disliked some elements of the 4th revision and combined 4 and 3 into v3.5, which I think I'm sticking to):
Type: Lunar-Class Imperial Cruiser (278)
Hull: 8 7 6 5* 4 3 2 1
Engines: [TL0] 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1
Shields: [TL0] 5 5 4 4 3 2 2 1
Weapons : 1:[VWXZ], 2:[VWXZ], 3:[VWX], 4:[2WX], 5:[2WX], 6:[2WY]
Weapons
Battery V: Lance 30 TL0, 1-2/3-4/5-6, 1/4+/1/1
No Range Modifiers, Ignores Shields
[C] [C] [D] [D]
Battery W: Battery 30 TL0, 1-2/3-4/5-6, 1/4+/1/1
[C] [C] [C] [C] [C] [C] [D] [D] [D] [D] [D] [D]
Battery X: Torpedo TL0, 1-6/7-12/13-18, 1/4+/1/1
Double Range Modifiers, Slow Firing, Piercing +1
[G] [G] [G] [G] [G] [G]
Battery Y: Teleporter TL0, 1/2/---, 2/4+/1/1
No Hull Damage, Ignores Shields, Continuing Damage, Carronade & No Range modifiers
[ABCDEF]
Battery Z: Turret TL0, 1/2/3, 1/4+/1/1
No Range Modifiers, Fighter-Exclusive, Anti-Fighter //this weapon design follows from the fact that bombers are flight size 1 with speed 4. Under other circumstances, it would be quite useless. As it stands, I'm not entirely convinced I shouldn't upgrade the range to 6 if I want it to actually work.
[ABCDEF] [ABCDEF]
Special Equipment Equipment Tech Level: Individual TL
Armor Plating :
Ooh, and No * Damage. I forgot that one.
And yeah, I could really see using something along the lines of Extra Shield Damage, Ignores Shields, No Hull Damage with a long enough range to wear down their shields in the opening (maybe Minimum Range, too, if you don't mind exceeding the trait limits).
If playing Dai-Ken has taught me anything, it is not to make your main guns RoF1 and 5+ accuracy. It is painful, and made more so if somebody else brings Countermeasures to the table.
OTOH, your fleet design is coherently built around "close to short range using stealth, regeneration, and armor plating to soak up hits along the way, then lay waste with nasty close range weapons," which I can respect. The EF tentacles are kind of silly... the only things that tend to end up in EF are fighters, against which high impact, high damage, and Catastrophic are wasted SU. I guess the best way to employ them as is would be to try to pass through the enemy line... and they'd be mighty entertaining if you did manage to hit with them.
Perhaps two series of traits are optimal:
1) Extra * Damage - does a point of * damage per damage die, regardless of the result of the damage roll. Existing example: Extra Hull Damage.
2) Double * Damage - does an extra point of * damage whenever a point of * damage is rolled. Existing example: Double Damage (which applies to all damage types).
I believe that this has been officially answered with "everything" previously, but I don't recall where or when (and try finding a good search term to find that in the archives). I think it was ruled that way in an effort to keep everyone honest - with your ammo, for example, you could get away with firing stuff more times than you had shots and your opponent would not know (until the end of the game, if you do the full reveal then). Still, not knowing exactly what your opponent is capable of is a good way to keep people on their toes and liven things up a bit...
Also, welcome to the boards! (and nice username)
Hooray!
I agree 1.5 is probably too low for Extra Shield Damage; but probably too high for Extra Engine Damage... maybe something like 1.8 for ESD, 1.6 for EWD, and 1.4 for EED. Multiply them together, you get x4.
Those sound about right... of the three, though, EWD caused the most fearful grimaces in our group. ESD may actually be more effective, but our gut reaction said that being defanged sucks.
While you are thinking about the subject, how would you cost a trait common to many game systems. I have seen it called Point Fire, Precision Fire, Primary Beams, Needle Beams(in Full Thrust and in Starfire), and Non-Lethal Fire (in Star Fleet Battles where the Federation is obliged to use it). It consists of firing at a ship (usually at a penalty to Accuracy) and if the shot hits, the attacker chooses which system (Engines, Shields , or Weapons) is damaged. This looks to be equivalent to Extra Engine Damage, or Extra Shield Damage, or Extra Weapon Damage taken with the Trait: No Hull Damage, but should one take the highest multiplier or the average of the three multipliers? Further, should the multiplier be raised because which system is affected can be decided by the attacker during play (rather than being decided when the ship is designed)?
Couldn't you just increase your weapon's accuracy by 1 and then use Directed Fire all the time to achieve an analogous effect? Or have a trait that ignores the penalty for DF at a reasonably low cost (probably at 1.3 or 1.4, since Anti-Fighter is largely similar at around that price)?
Initiating a dogfight on CAP is perfectly legal (assuming both options are in use).
Coool... nice reminder about the options, though. Sometimes we forget that we don't need all the options all the time.
"layered" minefields, dedicated escorts, and fighters on intercept missions
That's true, CAP is quite good, especially if you allow flights to initiate a dogfight instead of making an attack coming off a CAP activation (though I don't think we ever got an answer as to whether that's actually legal or not). Have had some success with dedicated anti-fighter escorts, and haven't gotten to use minefields yet.
I can lose a game because my friend found a neat little interaction of weapon traits that works really well and he blew me out of the vacuum with it, but I know that I'm not stuck with the same force next time, I can change and adapt to the new threat and develop my own superweapon. With those other games my ability to evolve is limited to buying new models that have different stats.
Well said - one of the reasons my group never actually played BFG (the other being the cost outlay). Also one of the reasons we keep playing D&D ("Well now, that's a pretty trick you pulled off of the Character Optimization Boards, Mr. Munchkin. No, of course I'm not going to take it away from you. Being the DM, however, I will use it against you in ways that you could not possibly foresee, to the distinct detriment of your character. Consider yourself warned." Repeat until they learn...). At the risk of sounding tautological, the purpose of my BFG conversions was to convert the fleets to Starmada (a system I enjoy playing and making stuff up for), not to turn Starmada into BFG. Thus, a 'close enough for government work' solution seems to me close enough - it's more a question of "do they feel like Eldar" than "do they mimic the Eldar's capabilities in BFG." (not to say that when a nice, easy direct conversion comes along I won't take it, but when it doesn't I'm not one to shoehorn the system). As a result, I'm thinking I'm going to go with Cloaking for the 'hard to pin down' and 'surprise!' factors within the Starmada framework.
But I digress.
Also, Re: Time Limits (JohnRobert mentioned them tangentially): my group hasn't actually ever used turn limits. We play to Last Ship Floating rather than for VP. We tried playing for VP once or twice, but we found that it kind of skewed the results - sure, you might've gotten my carrier, but you overextended to do it and now I'm set up to annihilate all of your ships next turn. How is this a win for you?
You might could implement this as a negative fighter trait. A rough sketch of the idea:
Limited Maneuverability: Fighters with this trait are subject to the same restrictions on movement as a larger ship. It uses its Speed as its Engine rating, and while it is subject to the same physical restrictions on movement as a larger ship, it still acts in the fighter phase per the normal unplanned alternating fighter movement system (otherwise, if you have to do secret orders and such for fighter flights, you may have a mighty tough time getting within range 1 of the enemy except by chance).
Multiplier: x0.?
We considered some similar pre-emptive strike rules, but never really implemented them. Our current solution is longer-range anti-fighter weapons (per standard weapon construction rules, as opposed to just giving AFBs range) combined with uniformly low fighter speeds and flight sizes (and when I say low, I mean illegally low - speed 4, size 1, that type of thing). When bombers only have speed 4, a range 3 weapon has a reasonable chance of getting a shot in as they close, and small flight sizes mean that anti-fighter weapons that hit actually hurt (whereas with standard speeds and flight sizes, you need ranges in the teens and lots of RoF to put a dent in incoming fighters). Also, Point Defense is handy.
Other than that, we've put a cap on weapon ranges and allowed ranges that aren't congruent to 0 mod 3. That's about all on the HR front from my group...
Umm... just went and re-read the Eldar rules, not seeing anything about regeneration. I think Necrons have something like that, but Eldar definitely don't. I've been of the opinion for a while that the problem the Eldar are having with Starmada is the lack of a second movement phase - they rely on hit-and-run in BFG, implemented with a "move, shoot, change heading, move again" rule that applies only to them. Holofields also didn't convert well - Countermeasures don't quite cut it. Might end up stacking CM and Stealth.
I've been thinking about trying larger maps... the software I use (GameTable) supports infinite maps, so maybe I'll see how that affects play.
Re: speed vs. firepower: I've seen something similar to what y'all're talking about using my BFG-converted Eldar fleet (against both converted Imperial and Chaos) - they're fast as all get out, but it does them very little good. Haven't had them win one yet. Might need to rethink their tactics - we've been playing them using fairly standard 'close and shoot' procedures, but maybe maintaining range would work better (except that per strict conversion, they have short-ranged weapons almost exclusively... maintain range and use bomber saturation?).
Re: high speed and [CDEF]: one problematic build that you hear about on the boards sometimes is the high-speed ship with range 30 [EF] or [L] weapons. Never seen them in action, though.
Could Unarmed be done by taking both Bomber and Interceptor?
RNG-2 and -3 would be mighty convenient...
Except for dual-modes...
In this case (dual mode), the striker mode may be used only once, after which only the fighter mode is available.
Rules Annex p28
Another point. In SFB/FC, some fighters have only a phaser (I suppose that those with the phaser-3 would have the same stats as a regular fighter), but some others have one-shot weapons (missiles, fusion, whatever). I don't know how to resolve this but maybe note (with a marker, maybe) that they have such a one-shot weapon.
Not familiar with SFB at all, but the one-shots sound like something you could do with strikers or dual-mode fighters with one mode being a striker.
I believe the options are enabled somewhere in the depths of the Shipyard... yeah, the bottom row of the Tables spreadsheet allows them to be enabled (Armored Gun Batteries and Redundant Shielding).
Edit: Actually, the enable toggles are in Nation AH108 and AH109.
A quick point-by-point:
Weapon and fighter designs: cool. That was one thing I liked about the older versions of the Shipyard that you don't really get with the more recent versions - it only had 20 or so rows for weapons on the Nation table, so it basically had a software implementation of the limited weapon design rule. And yeah, I agree that it's a lot more important with player-designed fleets. I've been trying to work out a pricing system for special abilities so that, when designing fleets, you buy special abilities with Tech Points and can't use those you haven't purchased, but it hasn't seen the light of testing yet.
Mapping: I concur that the current map might be a bit large... that's a lot of systems to fight over.
Atmospheric: Ah, OK. I had seen it in the shipyard and was basically wondering if there were any further details / special rules text or if it was a largely 'flavor' ability.
Task forces: Hmm... I see what you're saying, and how it was implemented in the rules, but I think MoO3 task forces are going to be my weapon of choice. I'll have to work on some rules for them and post them later.
Tactical: true. We'll see if I can come up with anything satisfactory, or we might end up handwaving it; most of the battles we (my brother, father, and I) fight are straight-up slugfests without scenario rules, VPs, or victory conditions other than death and surrender. In narrative terms, scenarios put the battle on the center stage of a short story, while a campaign puts the battle in the broader context of a novel or other, larger story. We've also considered playing the Battlefleet Gothic's sub-plots to spice things up, but haven't tried them yet.
Hyperdrive: OK, that's pretty much what I expected. One thing that would be kind of cool would be to allow hyperdrive-capable ships to remain in reserve and port into an already-begun battle. Might change the pricing on it, though.
Income for victory: ah, OK. When I first read the SCS, I was skeptical of points for defeat for reasons like the one you mentioned, but I gradually warmed up to it (but haven't actually played under it, either).
Colonies: OK. I was thinking something simple like +1 to the die roll per level of colony above 1 or something like that - not horribly complicated, but makes bigger colonies stronger industrially. Might be broken, though.
Nomads: Yeah, I was thinking that randomly-generated systems were probably the way to go, perhaps with a modifier so that systems in the galactic core are, on average, richer, with average yields dropping off as you approach the fringes.
Refits: Actually, I realized later that there was one part of the refit wording that was kind of a sticking point. The clause "any Hull damage to the original vessel must be repaired as normal" can be taken to mean that "any hull damage must be repaired during a refit, per the normal costs for repairing hull damage". I don't think this was your intention (it seems possible to, say, replace a damaged ship's guns but leave the hull damaged due to lack of funds), but when I first read it, I did a double-take.
Resupply: Awesome.
Bases: Oh well... if I can't muster the funds for the book, I guess I'll just have to make stuff up. The horror! lol.
Victory conditions: truly, a sentiment after my anti-scenario heart!
And yep, if we get to play a Starmada campaign, we'll probably use a variant of this system and will certainly post the results. Sadly (kind of), we have a lot of gaming lined up for the summer (some Dark Heresy, some D&D 3.0/3.5/pi/Trailblazer/Pathfinder with two disjoint groups, and hopefully some 'mada) and only so much time to game in... fortunately, of said games, Starmada is the only one really built to run on two players, so that makes it reasonably likely to actually get played.
Ummm... wow. I'm extremely surprised that nobody else has replied to this yet. Thus, without further ado:
Players also need to decide whether the campaign will be played (at least started) with pre-generated ship designs or with the option of creating and deploying new designs at any time in the game. If it is decided to play through the Campaign with pre-designed ships, a player may only purchase replacement ships from that list of designs until after the third turn of the Campaign. After the third turn has been completed players may choose to add one new design to their list each turn during the Repair, Refit and Purchase Phase. If a player chooses not to add a design to his Empire at that time, the opportunity to add a design is lost; a player may only add one design each turn.
Any thoughts on creating Fighter and Weapon design rules along similar lines? For example, most of the prepublished fleets only use a few kinds of weapon with the same stats across all ship designs, but we find that (during the process of building a ship for a particular task), designing weapons specifically for the set of circumstances the ship is to operate under yields superior results at the cost of verisimilitude. Likewise, pre-published fleets usually only have two types of fighters (an interceptor and a bomber), which seems fairly reasonable when trying to build a supply and logistics chain for a fleet, but is not enforced/supported by the rules. I guess what I'm looking at implementation-wise is that you start with the fighters and weapons present in your prebuilt fleet, and then phase out a weapon or fighter to add a new one at a rate of one fighter or weapon per turn. Thoughts?
Also, do starbase and outpost designs count against your ship design totals?
The campaign strategic map consists of 25 hexes, each one representing a star system.
Hmm... I might have to use Battlefleet Gothic-style sector maps (just linked nodes rather than hexes). Makes some systems much more valuable strategically as chokepoints (or just because they have links to lots of places). Other than that, setup looks good.
Acquisition, Control, and Upgrades look pretty solid.
Only question about Conquering section is the location/rules for Atmospheric Capable. Looks quick and painless other than that (though I think I'd rather see/build/use rules for MoO3-style planetary defense systems that vary statistically; ie, Beam Bases fire direct fire weapons, Missile Bases launch strikers/seekers, and Fighter Bases launch fighter flights. I suppose this would be easily enough done by building such bases as speed 0 orbital defenses at a discount and ignoring the defensive fire rules).
Strategic movement and such look decent, but I'd rather use a variant of your task force rules where a task force is a group of ships designated by the player which move together. Finer degree of control in exchange for more paperwork.
Tactical Combat: Here I had some issues... I'm not a big fan of randomly rolled scenarios in campaigns. I'd rather the attacking player secretly choose a plan of attack, the defender secretly choose a plan of defense, look up the intersection of attack and defense strategy columns on a table (or not), and have that dictate the disposition of forces. Also not a fan of the point limits imposed by the scenarios... if I want to bring out the Big Hammer and I get stuck fighting the enemy reconnaissance picket, so be it.
I do like that you fixed terrain frequency from your previous version, though. You could change the wording to account for the specific case of a single terrain pieces (planet, black hole, etc) under the general case of "given an odd number of terrain pieces of a certain type, the defender chooses placement," but that's just my program-sense trying to get rid of an extra 'if' statement 
.
Also, what happens if a ship hyperspaces out of combat under the four possible outcomes (attacking and won, attacking and lost, defending and won, defending and lost)?
Is it possible to build mobile economic centers (starbases and outposts, I guess) to model Homeworld-style 'harvest and run' nomads? I'll probably end up adapting this anyways (shortly), but I'm curious what your thoughts on the notion are.
Income: A couple of thoughts here...
1) Points for victory instead of defeat? That runs counter to the methods of the SCS and makes the game more 'swingy'; a decisive tactical victory by either side not only destroys a good part of the enemy fleet, but lets you beat them economically, too, so you win twice per victory and lose twice per defeat (rather than winning 1/2 times per victory and losing 1/2 times per defeat in the SCS). Any particular reason you went with this? I'm thinking about trying 'victory has no effect on income other than letting you gain more systems.'
2) Do higher-grade colonies produce more resources for your greater investment, or are they just harder to crack?
3) Personal modding opinion: In my long quest for a Homeworld-style 'Mobile Nomads vs. Static Empire' campaign system, I've come to the conclusion that I'll probably use limited natural resources per system, with ships having Mining auxiliary capacity to harvest/refine/build from it (or maybe just make Repair or Cargo multi-purpose... maybe Cargo for mining and Repair for shipbuilding). So mining lets you extract a number of EPs from the system the ship is currently in equal to its mining capacity per income phase, until the system is out of 'minerals'. For a nomad fleet, build mobile ships with Repair and Cargo capacities and you're set. For a static/colonial civilization, build high-hull 0-engine 'colony' ships and leave them in system.
Repair and Refit:
I like your refit rules; I hadn't seen any for Starmada yet, but those should do the trick nicely.
I also like the 'everything but hull gets repaired' rule - minimized bookkeeping. One minor query, though - do other expendables (ammo, mines, and marines, mainly - can't think of any others) get restored as well?
Where are the rules for Bases from? Is there anything special about them, or are they just engines-0 ships?
Are there any limits to the number of EPs that can be banked after the first turn?
Finally, are there any victory conditions, or is it just play-to-surrender?
Awesome work, though. I may have some fun with this (tweaked a little) once my brother gets out of school.
That's a pretty reasonable conclusion. Any highly-specialized force has a counter, while a match between a specialized force and a generalist force could go either way depending on circumstance, luck, and tactics. However, there are some specialist fleets that are very hard to beat with a generalist force, notably fleets using only very long range weapons in the AB or G arcs who sit back and destroy you in detail before you can engage (there was a thread discussing these a while ago). There were a number of specialist fleets proposed as counters, but metagame solutions like restricting maximum range are also viable (and perhaps more fun) options.
Yeah, we houseruled AFBs to be one roll each. It just makes more sense that way.
I've been phasing Anti-Fighter weapons out of my fleet since I realized that in most cases, removing Anti-Fighter and increasing the accuracy of a weapon by 1 point leaves the cost almost identical (especially for cheap weapons - the difference becomes apparent with really heavy stuff, but is nonexistent on smaller guns), but improves performance against all targets rather than just against fighters.
And it's not that AFBs and other short-range anti-fighter weapons aren't useful in denying repeat attacks by fighters; it is just that, as with all short-range weapons, you basically end up sacrificing turns of firing (and against strikers, you only get one to sacrifice). Granted, to date my family has largely avoided fighters and their variants as being kind of annoying (especially after the Cruise Missile Massacre when, after seeing the number of seekers I deployed at the end of turn 1, my brother simply surrendered despite having crippled my capital ship group during the shooting phase), and has instead favored big-gun navies.
(also, nice Hiigaran emblem)
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