As mentioned before, I am the one who must apologize.

I'm glad you've been a fan -- and I appreciate the offer for proofreading. I may take your wife up on it next time 'round.

Now, getting back to "business" -- do you think the two edits I proposed would help you better understand the system? Theoretically, it should be playable after a single read-through -- clearly, it's not quite there yet.

Having gone back and re-read this thread, I feel I must perform a public act of contrition. The "glass houses" and "rife with errors" comments were uncalled for -- and not really accurate. I have a pet peeve about lax standards in punctuation, capitalization, and all that in electronic communication -- but that's my problem, not anyone else's.

I apologize, especially as such pettiness detracts from what should be a productive conversation about how best to describe a movement system that I am very proud of. It meets all the criteria I think are necessary:

1) It maintains some continuity with previous editions of Starmada.

2) It accounts for inertia from previous turns.

3) It (somewhat) accurately computes the thrust required to alter a ship's heading from one direction to another.

4) It's easy to implement.

Unfortunately, it would seem that it is not as easy to describe on paper as I thought. At the moment, I am thinking of two "edits" that would need to be made:

1) Change "difference" to "absolute difference" -- while maybe not strictly necessary, it will prevent confusion of the kind expressed eariler.

2) A brief statement that, unlike FT and other vector-type systems, what is being plotted is not thrust, but actual movement. Thrust only comes in when determining if the engines can accommodate the desired movement in light of the previous plot.

Beyond that, I'm at a loss as to how it can be made any clearer.

Well, there's your first problem -- what are you doing with 32 flights of fighters?

So, trying to follow:

Your ORAT (without fighters) is 180, your DRAT is 534.4? This is a final combat rating of 310. With the 32 flights, you're adding 9600 and 320, respectively, causing a new combat rating of 2891 -- an increase of 2581, or about 80 per flight. This is 47% more than the flights would be on their own: (9600 x 320)^.5 = 1753.

There are two things going on here, and I will address them separately:

1) The final values are coming out differently in Admiralty than they did in X. This is intentional; note that in Admiralty you multiply capacity by 5 for the ORAT addition and divide by 5 for the DRAT addition. In X, you added the "capacity" as-is to both ORAT and DRAT. This change was made because it gives more accurate results (see my previous reply regarding Victory and Orion) -- but see (2) below.

2) The "cost" of adding fighters to a design is highly variable, depending upon what the carrier can do (or not do). This is because in order to get points for the fighters, you have to kill the carrier. If you've got a carrier that has a low ORAT but high DRAT, you're doing little but increase the survivability of your fighter flights (in terms of getting the VPs) -- and the relative cost of the fighter addition goes up. But on a ship that has a high ORAT relative to DRAT, more of the point value remains with the ship itself (since it has weapons of its own) and the relative cost of the fighter addition goes back towards 50 per flight.

Finally, remember that your launch tubes are increasing the cost of ALL your fighters -- not just adding +5 to each of the ORAT and DRAT.

All of this is combining to affect the final cost of your dedicated carrier.

The only way to have a set point cost for fighters that is not going to be affected by all these variables would be to separate their cost back out, as in the Compendium. Thus, your carrier (for example), would have a combat rating of 310 [+1600].

You're welcome. I think.

Now I'm confused.

Yes.

Now who's being catty?

Look, I'm not above taking constructive criticism -- and the fact that you didn't understand the movement rules in the first go means I should look to see if there's a clearer way to explain them. Nor did I ever say you can't read or understand proper English.

But to claim to have found a "severe grammatical error" in a post that was rife with them seemed... ironic... at best. That doesn't mean I take your concerns or critiques lightly, or that I dismiss your intelligence.

The plot is '3'.

Turn 2: move order: '3'      end of turn speed: '3'

Again, you're confusing cause and effect. You plot what you want to do. Period. You do not apply thrust and then determine where your ship goes.

Your new speed is zero. So your thrust requirement is 6 (previous speed 6 plus new speed 0).

Hmm... I don't think so. If anything, carriers should cost LESS.

Consider:

The Victory from the rulebook has an ORAT of 1208.7 and a DRAT of 40. In X, adding two flights of fighters would have added 100 to each value, for a final point cost of 428. In the Admiralty edition, you add 500 to the ORAT and 20 to the DRAT, for a cost of 320 (or exactly 100 more than the ship's Combat Rating without the fighters).

Likewise the Orion (at the back of the book), without its fighters, has an ORAT of 264 and DRAT of 24. In X, adding 300 points of fighters would result in a combat rating of 427; in Admiralty, it is 385 (or 305 more than without the fighters).

You have two problems:

1) How to deal with the hexgrid.

2) What cost to give seekers that don't "seek".

The most reasonable solution for (1) would be to have the torps choose a target hex, and "seek" towards that hex. It's not exactly a straight line, but closer than any other option you'll get without abandoning the hexgrid.

For (2), I'd start with a cost of 10 and see where that gets you. (For customization, the initial coefficient would be 7 instead of 183). The problem is that without playing, I have no idea how valuable these would be -- how often are they able to score hits in BFG?

Well, you should be able to cross SAE with VBAM soon enough.

But I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "any odd number of space units"?

Actually, I could go as low as 50%. Consider that a ship with Transport (100) is already "paying" for the mass of the troops -- so the "ground attack shuttle" would only need to account for the extra volume required to get the troops from the ship to the surface.

This idea is a good one. Maybe this is the new role for the point-defense system (PDS).

Sheesh... I weakened fighters and you're all STILL whining about how to defend against them?

Yes, fighters get to attack before ships -- but they pay for that opportunity (I believe the modifier is x1.5 or x2). Further, in order to attack a target, they must offer themselves up to retaliatory fire.

The best defense against fighters is your own fighters. Failing that, have some escorts with lots of short-range, high-ROF weapons. Failing that, remember that fighters are powerful, but not invincible. Don't panic. And DON'T, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, leave one ship out in front of your force. Enemy fighters will chew it up. Mutual support is the name of the game.

Strikers might initially seem to be a concern, since they attack and then go away before "revenge" fire (and if launched from close range, there is no chance of interception) -- but the good news is that they attack and then go away.

And if someone is relying on the ability to get strikers close enough to launch and attack in one turn, I'd say go ahead: it's almost always more cost-effective to use direct-fire weapons.

That being said, if I were inclined to add options for fighter defense, I would look at:

1) Combat "Air" Patrol (but this requires friendly fighters)

2) Reactive weapons -- they are "triggered" by a fighter attack, but cannot be used offensively (think a more active version of the old AFB)

3) An anti-fighter trait that ignores the -1 to-hit penalty.

So, if you sent me $15, we would both have spent the same amount...

I accept checks, money orders, and PayPal.

Our first review is a positive one:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/260322

The movement system is "frankly, brilliant".