1

(5 replies, posted in Starmada Unity)

I don't see anything off about your design for this "classic" ship. However a simple point, shouldn't the screens in this case be able to regenerate? I'm assuming the shields are functioning like facing armor from the game.

2

(51 replies, posted in Starmada)

When it comes to point cost I honestly don't see an issue. When discussing space issues its going to boil down to how "accessible" those weapons are. If I have a thousand seekers on board my ship and I can only launch them one at a time there use is extremely limited. If however I can launch them all at once as independent self guided spacecraft there usefulness and value increases exponentially. 

As I said before I found it very interesting that this is exactly what ends up happening in the "Honor Harrington" universe. Ships become little more than hollow missile packs due to technology allowing ships to depart from using "traditional" launchers. Naval warfare simply shifts to who can launch the most missiles, from the greatest distance, first. ...in my personal opinion kind of boring.

Seeing as I started this mess I should at the very least offer some solutions.

1. Make non-launcher seekers externally mounted. They are literally attached to the hull and so may be launched in any number desired. However you can then only mount say twice or three times the hull value to limit the number of seekers carried in this way. So a hull 10 ship could carry and launch 20 or 30 external seeking weapons. Remember the space of a ship takes into count its internal volume, if seekers have an unlimited launch rate we must assume they are open to space otherwise they would need a mechanism to move them from internal storage to a launching point, a.k.a they need a launcher. There is only so much surface area on a ship.

2. Require seeking weapons to be under the launching ships control. Modern weapons for all their guidance capability are still for the most part under human control even when they are moving to their target. There remain serious moral implications for removing the human component from the attack equation. So an easy solution is to simply set a launch limit on the number of seekers that may be controlled at one time by a single ship. This keeps players from simply turning there ships into giant missile packs for a single launch strike.

Additional options here could be for ships to hand off responsibility for controlling seekers to other friendly ships in their battle-group. Or even mounting special equipment to increase seeker control limits. Could also be interesting if you could kill the controlling ship and your opponent would then lose his launched seekers, something like what used to happen in Vietman when Intruders flew "Iron Hand" and allowed themselves to be missile targets to kill the launching radar system. This would discourage people from building hollow shells to quickly launch seekers.

3. Require seekers to be launched from a magazine, and the number of mounted launchers then controls the seeker limit.

Or do all three.

3

(51 replies, posted in Starmada)

mj12games wrote:

As others noted, this was something available in a previous edition of Starmada, of which the Expendable trait is an adaptation. Based on your feedback, and that from others, the "Ammo" rule is likely to be among the first to be re-implemented in a supplement. wink

Mj12games, thanks for the reply. I'm actually glad to hear I was correct in my assessment of the game. Not because I may have detected any serious flaw, but because it means I am picking up the rules correctly. Its always a little bit of a worry when I follow a rabbit hole and come out the other end that I understood everything correctly. I am after all new to these rules with no experience with previous editions.

I'm glad to hear that launchers and magazines will likely see a return as an option. I understand the desire and the need to simplify a game when and where possible. Needless complexity is the death of any good game, however I do believe this is a good trait to offer as an option. I do say option and not requirement. Here's a short list of setting that I know use this system.

David Webers "Honor Harrington" series.
John G. Hemry "The Lost Fleet" series.
Starfleet Battles: "Drones"
Renegade Legion: Leviathan
The Expanse (Sci-fi TV show, watch this if you haven't!), also a book series.

For the moment I'm thinking Ill limit myself to a base seeker limit equal to the "hull" value of the launching ship. So seekers in excess of this are just considered in the magazine. Perhaps what we need are two systems...

1. Use the current Seeker system with limit on the total seekers a single ship can control at one time. Seekers could still be destroyed by weapon loss.

2. A Launcher and Magazine configuration, where the launchers can be destroyed, but the magazine remains secure except maybe to some kind of major critical.

Consequently, I was able to design a seeker that was 2+ accuracy, damage 5, "expendable" and "catastrophic" that require 3.1 spaces each.  So a thousand spaces would allow me to load 322 of them. I don't have the experience with the game to call that a fleet killer, but I'm not prepared to say its not balanced, fair, or fun.

Ironically, this very situation is how David Weber directed the evolution of starship combat in his Honor'verse. Ships eventually just became massive launching platforms for scatterpack missiles, utterly overwhelming any hope of a battlegroups point defense.

4

(15 replies, posted in News)

Hello,

I just purchased Starmada for the first time. I decided to take advantage of the deal being offered for both the book and the PDF. So far I am liking what I am seeing, I think the greatest attraction for me is the chance to use a simple game system with diverse choices that produce deep gameplay. The fact that I am not stuck with someone else's premade ships is a nice bonus to be sure. I did just post a question about seeking weapons over in the "Game Design" section of the forum. If you guys have time to help me out I would be very appreciative.