Skip to forum content
mj12games.com/forum
Majestic Twelve Games Discussion Forum
You are not logged in. Please login or register.
Active topics Unanswered topics
Welcome to the new Majestic Twelve Games Forum!
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!
Search options (Page 1 of 6)
I was very happy to see that the Starbases in Battleships Armada Unity have an EPR of 12, giving them plenty of energy (as they are supposed to have), but what about the Base Stations (BS) and Battle Stations (BATS) already released? Am I the only one who feels that the EPR of 1 assigned to these has nerfed them badly? One cannot even overload heavy weapons on them given their low EPR.
I believe this issue could be corrected by assigning an EPR of 4 to BS, and an EPR of 6 to BATS. Those numbers, given the EPR of 12 on SBs, "feel" right. Does anyone else think that BS and BATS are nerfed in the SFU?
Also, if it isn't too late, the ship description for the Gorn DNH mentions plasma-D. There also seems to be some confusion over the name "Tarbosaurus" since the ship cards list the DNH as the Spinosaurus, and the Tarbosaurus as a DN variant.
After Battleships Armada will be (eventually) War and Peace, which will include Andromedans, the ISC (Interstellar Concordium), and the Vudar.
I hope this message finds everyone well. Since I've been spending a lot of time at home, I decided to work on a little project I've had in mind for a while...
As the standard Starmada Sequence of Play does not include many SFU-only actions, and does include a number of actions that the SFU does not use, I decided to create an SFU-specific Sequence of Play. I am posting it here for review, so if anyone has corrections, comments, or suggestions, please share them. Note that in some cases, it was unclear exactly when an action should be performed in relation to others that are performed in the same phase, so I have used my best judgement (sometimes influenced by my experience with SFB/FC). When it is finalized I will put it in the files area.
1 - In the section on using tractor beams for defensive fire (KR25), no range is specifically mentioned, however the discussion is about defensive fire against fighter flights, which make their attacks from range 0 (seekers) or 1 (true fighters). Since Hydran Stingers can attack from up to range 3, can tractor beams be used defensively against them at up to range 3, or only at range 1?
2 - Also, can Stingers HET? In the SFU, they can HET once per turn for free. In Starmada, they are considered shuttles, which can't HET. I'm unsure of how to handle this.
Plasma torpedoes can only be damaged by phasers or a Tholian Web Snare. Can they be damaged by Hydran Stingers? If Hydrans are fighting a plasma race, a good tactic would be to use their Stingers to "pare down" plasma torpedoes that are targeting their capital ships. A Stinger is armed with two fusion beams (useless against plasma) and a ph-g. Therefore, they should be able to damage plasma, but not with all of their potential attack strength.
I propose the following:
When attacking a plasma torpedo, a Stinger attacks with two dice instead of four. If using the optional rule where a Stinger takes two points of damage instead of using saving throws, a damaged Stinger attacks a plasma torpedo with one die instead of three.
Thoughts?
I never played Hydrans in FC or SFB, as the implementation of fighters (or "attack shuttles") in those game systems was just too unwieldy for my taste. Starmada is a different story. Now, I had assumed that Stingers were supposed to follow the standard Starmada launch limits. This would mean, for example, that a Ranger CA could launch at most three Stingers per turn, and recover two. Today, however, I was reading over the rules for Stingers in FC, and I noticed the following in section 5Q1b of the Federation Commander Reference Rulebook:
While most ships can launch or land only one shuttle per impulse, Hydrans can launch any or all of their Stingers (plus one shuttlecraft) on a given impulse (but can only land one shuttle or Stinger per impulse). This is because “launch tubes” are used to launch the Stingers, which must then land through the shuttle hatch normally.
What does this mean for Starmada? Can a Hydran ship launch all of its Stingers at once, only followijng the hull size-based limits for recovery, or should we just ignore this and use the standard Starmada launch limits?
The targeted ship may expend 1PP from its ESG to cancel one point of damage inflicted by a Hellbore.
I'm going to use this. Given the proximity of Hydran and Lyran territory, and their traditional enmity, it makes sense that the Lyrans would have developed something to counter the Hydrans most powerful weapon.
I'm sorry, Daniel, but I am unsure whether that means "Yes, it gets its saving throw" or "yes, its just toast." I am guessing it is "Yes, it gets its saving throw." Let me know if I'm wrong.
Does a suicide shuttle still get its saving throw when hit by an ESG defensive burst or a Tholian web snare, or is it just toast?
Also - merely a matter of curiosity - why was ESG Anti-Hellbore mode not included? Too fiddly?
If you mean values as in "1x3+/1/1", there are none. They hit automatically, much like the Tholian's web snare, and each PP used in the burst inflicts one PP of damage. I'm waiting for clarification on whether shuttles get their saving throw or not.
The intent is to reserve that entire section for weapon data. For ships with lots of different types, there wouldn't be enough room to list them twice.
I see. That makes sense.
In any case, I found an easy fix. Instead of printing the entire page of the pdf, use the "Select an area to grab" option of your screen grab app to select just the top ship card, with its adjacent weapon info, and print that. I also size the pdf to the same scale as the old-style ship cards before I grab it. And, if there are ever ship cards where the weapon info goes below the top of the lower card, one could quickly erase that part in any graphics app before you print and use the extra white space for notes.
My OCD is kind of triggered with the difference, they don't match the old ones
I agree. Plus, the weapon info is only next to the one on top, meaning I'll likely just throw the bottom one out. Yeah, I know, I could cut it out, use a paperclip, etc. In any case, I mostly just hate that they don't match the old ones. But it is what it is, and I'd rather have it like this than not at all.
PS - For everyone who complained re: the ship cards being sideways - there are programs like PDFShuffler that let you rotate, export, add. and delete pages from pdfs. For example, I have pdf files called "Federation Ships", "Klingon Ships", etc. I also made an integrated rulebook that incorporates the terrain rules and the extra SFU rules from Alien and Distant Armada. I think PDFShuffler is Linux only, but there are similar programs for Win/Mac.
You are correct that Stingers "should" move 8 when compared to shuttles; however, such a speed would allow them to outrun drones and keep pace with plasma torpedoes. That didn't seem right, so I stuck with 4...
In light of that, I think you made the right decision. It is more important to preserve the proportional relationship of Stingers with drones and plasma - especially drones - than with shuttles. So, essentially, Stingers aren't slower in Unity than in FC, shuttles are faster.
1 - I can find no mention of a speed for Stingers, which leads me to believe that they should move at speed 4, since they are considered shuttles. However, in FC, shuttles move at speed 8 and Stingers move at speed 16, which makes me think they should move at speed 8 in Starmada. Which is correct?
2 - Since Stingers are shuttles, and shuttles are considered single-fighter flights, a Ranger CA with hull size 11 can launch 3 Stingers per turn. Can these 3 Stingers be represented by a single counter, or should they each get their own counter?
For the record, in Federation Commander, the Paladin DN has only 8 Stingers.
Distant Armada Unity is now available! It is for sale on Wargames Vault only - not at Warehouse 23. It includes TONS of new ships - Hydran, Lyran, LDR, and WYN.
For those unfamiliar with these races from SFB/FC, the Hydrans are methane-breathing tripeds who use unique weapons and utilize fighters. The Lyrans are felinoids (probably cousins to the their sworn enemies, the Kzinti) who are allied with the Klingons, (Who knew they had friends?) The LDR is the Lyran Democratic Republic, a breakaway Lyran faction. The WYN are a group of renegade Kzinti, Klingons, and Lyrans who inhabit a radiation-shrouded star cluster at the juncture of those three empires. The Orion Pirates made a deal with them to place a shipyard there, in exchange for building ships for them.
Let the General War begin!
Jean didn't mention Battleships Armada - I thought they were coming out at the same time. Hopefully it will follow in a few weeks.
How do drones deal with Orion stealth? Do they not fire and remain available, like photons? Do they fire and waste a drone from your ammo? Or do they fire and resolve their roll against stealth upon "impact" when they make their attack?
As for plasma, I assume the rule for "slow" weapons applies, buy what about the PP you must spend? Do you lose them, or do you not apply them until after the stealth roll? Come to think of it, this applies to overloaded photons as well.
I see. So I guess they are going to have special rules that are different from the standard Starmada fighter rules. Thank you, Daniel.
The sample ship card of the Hydran Iroquois-F NCF that Daniel posted on Facebook has 2 Stingers listed. Is that 2 fighters, or 2 squadrons? I can't check as I don't have the ship card for the NCF, but I assumed 2 individual fighters, like the shuttle and probe tracks. Reviewing the rules for fighters, however, I see that Starmada requires them to be grouped into flights of 6. Is that rule changed for the SFU?
Also, If it is squadrons, what about ships like the Dragoon CA, which carries only 3 Stingers? Will the ship be "rounded up" to a full 6-fighter flight?
Yes, ADB's license predates ST-TMP. It is derived from the TOS Franz Joseph Technical Manual and includes only TOS and the animated series (that is where the Kzintis came from). This is why all their Fed ships have cylindrical nacelles. Since they negotiated their license before Star Wars was released, they got it in perpetuity for very little money, as Star Trek was, as Paramount saw it at that time, an old TV show that had been cancelled and no one but a handful of crazy fans were interested in anymore. Then Star Wars exploded upon the world, and the sci-fi boom began, and Paramount realized that the old show they had given little thought to for so long was actually worth something. You know the rest.
By "canon" I simply meant that fighters were not used in Star Trek. That was one of the distinguishing features between Trek and Star Wars. Fighters were a Star Wars thing, while Trek was all about combat between larger vessels, like naval combat before the carrier era.
The mention of the Admiral/Nova Editions reminds me of a question I wanted to ask: looking at the old ship cards from Captain's Log (I bought the collection from W23), it appears to me that plasma could only be bolted in Admiral Edition. Is that true? And what about drones? Were they represented by counters on the map in the earlier editions, or were they direct fire? Just curious.
I too hated the idea of fighters in SFB, both for the fact that they were non-canonical in the universe, and for the burdensome level of complexity they added to the game. Particularly onerous were fighters that launched drones: each fighter had its own counter and mini-ssd, and then each of those fighters spawned some number of drones, each also adding a counter to the map. All of those counters needed to go through the laborious 32-impulse movement procedure, so gameplay slowed to a crawl. Even in FC, I stayed away from fighters, since they had the same problems. It is only since I've been playing Starmada SFU that I am interested in playing them, since the way Starmada handles fighters is greatly streamlined. Also, I've softened my stance on the canon issue, since many other things have been introduced into the SFU that are non-canonical as well.
A side note: FC has recently introduced 6-fighter "flights" and drone "swarms" which can be represented by a single counter. I wonder where they got those ideas from? 
Will the Hydrans be the only race in either Distant Armada or Battleships Armada with fighters? I ask because I know that all battleships in SFB had a complement of fighters (I never had the battleships expansion for FC so I do not know if this was carried over to that game). I'm just curious if there will be any opportunities for fighter vs. fighter action.
Posts found: 1 to 25 of 129