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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by GamingGlen
I think the current sizes are fine. Larger engines can be more efficient engines, so one could argue that the higher value shields should take relatively less space. Leave them as is.
Having just played with Mds on some experimental phasers (played Star Trek's Federation-style ships), against Beowulf's ships no less and despite losing (because some math teacher cannot add and had too many points :shock: ), I think the pricing is too low.
I would say you have been playing against very poor Klingon players.
I toasted many a Fed CA with my D7 back when. I was near toast many times as well, but gave more than got.
Also, for Fed ships in general, a common tactic in Fed Com/SFB is to fire half of your photons each turn, thereby having some heavy weapons to use each turn. I guess that tactic is not usable in Starmada?
Since when? When I played SFB many years ago you unloaded everything in one turn, called an alpha strike.
MRCAcct is correct about the use of the Mauler. Romulans came out with it first and could cloak to recharge the batteries.
Why not use regular game mechanics and make it, especially since based on the sample SSD that Shields are not used in Starmada SFU:
Mauler 3/7/10 1x1+/*/5 Gid; Sct; Slw
arcs: G
If you don't like 1+ as ACC, use "*" with Aut trait for Auto-hit. I suppose "*" would be better, if you have a roll value then 1's automatically miss.
What would a 1+ ACC cost multiplier be? 0.60?
Aut trait multiplier cost? 1.00?
Perhaps you do not want to introduce an ACC of 1+, which is why I also suggested a new trait.
What you see on screen is what the plot calls for or what the sfx people can create.
There is no true canon on how Star Trek weapons work. I have seen photon torpedoes curve as they track their target; especially in one of the movies where a torpedo was specially built to follow the trail of the cloaked Klingon's torpedo back to the Klingon ship. It curved quite a bit (plot device). TNG Enterprise's phaser(s) swung around under the main hull in a huge arc. TOS Enterprise were more limited, but then all you saw was two beams firing down or forward from either side or front under the main hull. I would give those ABC, GHI, ABD arcs (3 banks of 2).
You can look at the bumpy bits on a miniature and use that to deduce weapons and arcs. Foregoing the 3D aspect, seems to me that those bumpy bits have bigger range of arcs than you're portraying. My arcs tend to be wider, and then wider still because of my usual opponent. But those are your designs to play with.
Tactical maneuvering is fine, but Starmada's movement system is not all that great. Your designs should also consider the game mechanics, not necessarily to exploit them but to account how you think the weapons (or other systems) should work given the game limitations (i.e., no firing while on the move). If I think a weapon should normally be AB, I'll make it GHI so that after movement enemy ships that were probably in the AB arc during the move might still be within the GHI arcs during the Combat Phase, and also allows for your ship's maneuvering to have some wiggle in it to offset the limited 6 directions the miniature can be facing. We got used to using the 12 directions on a hex map a ship can be facing in Full Thrust (hex side or hex spine) due to its normal 12 points of facing when not using hexes. We haven't worked on how to do that in Starmada (adapting the movement system; firing arcs would be fairly easy).
Well, 360 is going a bit overboard, especially with the big guns. 
Your defense weapons is a problem. Klingons charge the enemy. Hard to destroy those seekers/fighters in front of you with rear-firing defense weapons. I tend to group them as a "Defensive Array Network" representing a variety of defensive measures (various short-ranged weapons, small capacity tractor beams, countermeasures to small warheads with tracking ability, etc.) all around the ship and give it 360 degrees arcs of fire. But that's me, preferring not to get too fiddly with the small weapons.
As for single arcs weapons (G), I save that arc for spinal mounts (Traveller), rail guns of a particular race from Full Thrust, or big anime one-shot-one-kill type of weapons. The Photon Torpedoes in Star Trek did have limited tracking and can veer their course (like underwater torpedoes). Even then I don't like playing those single arc weapons after years of frustration. Having a big gun that you might fire once is not much fun. Hmm, usually that happens on first approach, after that it's hard to get a single arc weapon on the enemy in a turning battle. Maybe I'll make a weapon with "Slw; Slw" since firing once only and early is the most likely scenario before the ship gets blown up.
My suggestion:
Use IMP as duration for seekers, so up to 5? Although, the book has no restriction on the value of ROF, IMP, or DMG; just Drydock does (and I've changed them for a weapon or two). Change the Evp (Evaporating) trait to affect the DMG value. I don't have Romulan Armada so I don't know how they constructed their plasma torpedoes.
Seeker's actual IMP value for damage purposes is always 1.
Don't change the cost equation. IMO (and I'm not the only one here), seekers are too cheap as is. This might help to alleviate that issue.
You're missing some equipment, and not taking advantage of a game *ahem* exploit.
Tractor Beams: your best defense against weapon loss. Put about 2-4 TBs on your ships and those fragile systems fail from the first weapon hit (or 2 or 3 if you have a lot of TBs).
TBs also make for backup anti-seeker/fighter defense, although their to-hit is low (but they are small and cheap).
Another thing: small arcs. That's great in SFB, where movement has a lot of wiggle room and firing can be done at any time during movement. I expand the weapons arcs by 1 arc compared to SFB ships to account for simulated on-the-move firing solutions. Also, I often play against someone with 300 degree arcs for his main weapons so it's really disadvantageous to have limited arcs when playing against him. IMO, arcs over 180 degrees should scale up faster but instead actually scale slower (1 arc to 2 arcs is 2x : 3x, 50% increase, 4 arcs to 5 arcs is 5x : 6x, 20% increase).
These designs are made to progress. The TNG ships will have the longer range weapons. If i was just doing TOS stand alone they would be longer.
I understand that, but locally we won't be doing anything like that. I do have some tech improvements for various generations, but lowest end range is 12.
As for the defense, do you put on more screen then you have hull? I have in my mind always used that as my personal high end (not house rule).
Sometimes more, sometimes less. I tend to get the CRAT values to be multiples of 50 or 100, makes the math easier to come up with spur of the moment fleet sizes. Or if a small ship ends up with a CRAT of 85, I'll make another ship with a CRAT of n15 to even both to some n00 value. My Klingons do favor less screens for more weapons (Hiv!).
I went with ROF 5 for each plasma torpedo so each one is like a flight of seekers and each hit on the torpedo reduces the warhead strength.
Plasma R: 5x2+/5/5 Evp, Slw
Plasma S: 5x2+/4/4 Evp, Slw
Plasma K: 5x2+/3/3 Evp, Slw (the Klingon experimental variant for the D7's nose)
Plasma F: 5x2+/2/2 Evp, Slw
Plasma D: 5x2+/2/1 Evp (anti seeker/fighter torp)
We also eliminated the save option for seekers. We finally barred seekers after a day of experimentation. Even the restriction of number fired did not help. Without the Evp trait they can go forever, which seems wrong.
Designs look good. I agree about no phasers for the Klingons, my designs have various disruptors as well.
My designs have a lot more armor, I mean screens, and longer ranged weapons (most go to 15-18). If the enemy has range 18 weapons then you are more likely to lose if you don't come close to it. Our local house rule is that 18 is the max range, although Long Range Sensors can extend that, and weapons on bases can have a range up to 30.
Was that the ship SSD you showed me with lots of CD2 mounts or was that the other anti-seeker ship SSD?
(edit, after seeing the SSD at another game time: it was the other ship)
Can seekers be put in multi-weapon mounts?
I had a ship with (my version of the weapons) 4x Plasma-Rs (5x2+/5/5 Evp; Slw) and 2x Plasma-Fs (5x2+/2/2 Evp; Slw), all MA-9, that either got shot down or were used to attack his massive wave of seekers. I did manage to destroy the first wave of his seekers using plasma torpedoes and the close-ranged "anti-seeker" weapons my ships had, but not so much any others.
Speed 9 was not fast enough for plasma torpedoes. I can't believe they are speed 8 in Romulan Armada. Ships could not go as fast as plasma torpedoes in SFB. Never. In Starmada ships can out run them fairly easily at speed 8 or 9. Mine are being upped to speed 12, not that we're allowing them any more.
I added Regeneration to my version of the spreadsheet with a cost equal to the Cloaking Device. I designed one ship with it, a Borg cube (more on that later).
One idea I had for how to use Regen is when you roll for Damage Control/Repairs, the 1s, 2s, and 3s fix Hull and when all Hull is fixed then fixes Screens. Regen also removes the limit of only one of each system that can be fixed per turn.
The Borg Cube. 14,000 CRAT. Yes, 14 THOUSAND. I stared at that a bit. I took off the Countermeasures-2 (in the shows others didn't seem to have much trouble hitting a Cube) and CRAT came down to about 9500, then took off the Ionized Hull which brought CRAT down to about 8500. That is a bit more manageable.
Some stats: 50 Hull, Shields-4, Engines-6, 50 Screens in each defensive arc, Fire Control-2, Anti-Fighter Batteries, Regeneration, 20 Tractor Beams, 28 Marines ("You will be assimilated.").
The main weapon: range 18, 1x2+/2/4 Knt; Mdl
I put one in each arc, one arc only. Later I thought it would be better to cut the IMP down to 1 and put 2 weapons in each arc (CRAT ~9000). That is still subject to change. By then it was 2:something in the morning after spending hours redesigning Star Trek themed ships, again.
These are in the Drake format. I would like to make picture SSDs using ship silhouettes, but the system seems unfriendly to that. How does one distribute various systems around the SSD, especially weapons, yet make it easy for the damage limits to be used? (it's why I proposed the players alternating damage allocation)
Anyway, I added Fighter Flight info, plus Shuttlecraft, on the SSD. I added input boxes for Fighter Flight choices next to the StarShip Systems options in the spreadsheet. Fighter Flight and Shuttlecraft ACC is shown as two numbers: ships:tiny. The bracketed number is the save or extra loss chance.
<#> after Marines is how many can try to board another ship in the same phase. Repair Crews is the number of damage control dice you can roll (maybe I should rename to Damage Control?). Perhaps I should change the () to <> for Repair Crews. It's the same number for maximum Flight launches so no need to add such a number after Carrier (like "Carrier (20/4)"), and double the <#> number if Launch Tubes are aboard... hmm. We use those optional rules here.
The dots are for spacing as this message board does not space well (or I don't know how to make it keep the spaces); I have spaces and not dots on the SSD.
Ship size is 16 to handle all the flights for this example. At ~1800 CRAT I would not fly it; I can get it down to ~1400 without major weapons and no Shields or Screens.
.
.
.
(3) Hyperdrive ☐ | Tractor Beam ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐
Marines <5>: 9 ; Shuttlecraft : 1
...Shuttlecraft : (1) MA-4 1x5+:5+/1/1 [4+]
Traits: Repair Crews (4); Carrier (20); Launch Tubes
...Fighter Flights (# in flight)
...3x Standard... : (6) MA-8 1x5+:5+/1/1
...1x Assault...... : (4) MA-8 2x5+:5+/1/1
...1x Bomber..... : (5) MA-8 1x4+:6+/1/1
...2x Heavy....... : (4) MA-8 1x5+:5+/1/1 [4+]
...4x Interceptor : (5) MA-8 1x6+:4+/1/1
...2x Light......... : (7) MA-8 1x5+:5+/1/1 [2-]
...2x Strike........ : (2) MA-8 2x5+:6+/1/2 [5+]
...4x Swarm...... : (9) MA-8 1x5+:6+/1/1 [3-]
...1x Super........ : (1) MA-8 2x4+:4+/1/2 [2+]
The last three are ones I made up, not too seriously. Whether balanced or not, they won't be used (unless my opponent agrees...hah). "Strike" is testing different values. "Swarm" came from thinking of Last Starfighter's massive number of opponents). "Super" is your special ace, worthy of an entire flight; despite the high save chance I have a feeling it won't last long as the enemy fleet will fire a lot of weapons at it just out of spite (I know my opponents). Maybe 20x Super flights? muhahahaha 8-)
Seeing how it would look if I made more changes:
Traits: Damage Control <4>; Carrier (20/8/2); Launch Tubes
Carrier #s show: # flights/launch limit/recovery limit.
(yeah yeah, my gearheadiness is showing 
)
That explains that. I have a new "Romulan" design to make use of the Cloaking Device. I'll test it out against Beowulf in the near future.
Hmph. Putting "Romulan" as the Faction cheapens the cost of Cloaking Device; it's not only on the SHIP5 worksheet, either. 
That's why it is expensive when it isn't a "Romulan" cloaking device. That has to change.
So far so good on comparing values among the unchanged spreadsheet and my altered one.
Back to designing...
Thank you for the time and effort. I noticed later with another system I was analyzing that ACC makes a difference on rating values.
BTW, I thought Cloaking Device was overpriced, but it may have been my first attempt at designing a Romulan DN that ended up with a very huge hull. A smaller hull made the CD not so expensive.
I also noticed that when I put the word Romulan in the Faction box of the SHIP5 worksheet the CRAT changes and I have looked to no avail at all the calculation as to why (yeah, yeah.. it's cloaked 
). Dang pesky Romulans, those tricky devils are always up to something. :twisted:
I'm using Excel 2013 so I had to make adjustments/fix some things (like putting FALSE as the 4th option in VLOOKUP to not look in alphabetic order or else it gives wrong values for Weapons), and made my own SSD worksheet as DISPLAY and DRAKE displays everything including all the empty cells (besides, I don't want to print gray, waste of ink).
Have you put the new Drydock on a website? Be nice to check my designs against it to be certain I didn't mess anything up. I usually enter book ships to test if I have but that won't cover everything. I don't think any have Screens? Just had a thought: I'll download Drydock again and leave it as is (already changed the name of my mine slightly).
Longer ranged versions are now available, now with the -LR added to their names. The weapon previously called Spray is now called Swarm. Burst has had its range extended to 2 for those squeamish ship captains.
Budgéte Emitter-B: */1/1 1×3+/1/1 Bls; Dfn; Pnp [SU=0.9]
Budgéte Emitter-LR: */1/2 1×3+/1/1 Bls; Dfn; Pnp [SU=1.9]
Budgéte Swarm-B: */1/1 4×3+/1/1 Bls; Dfn; Exp; Pnp [SU=0.8]
Budgéte Swarm-LR: */1/2 4×3+/1/1 Bls; Dfn; Exp; Pnp [SU=1.5]
Budgéte Burst-LR: */1/2 1×3+/1/1 Bls; Dfn; Pnp; Prx [SU=3.8] - quite an increase in space requirements
I see nothing indicating that the base SU of a weapon has to be a minimum value, as opposed to an actual weapon put on the ship with arcs (round up to nearest integer, so minimum of 1).
Just thought of another name for Burst: Bloom. I should put in the Rainbow trait (Rnb) for weapons, multiplier of 1. Has no combat effect, just has pretty colors for effects. 
(how's that for fluff?)
Ever consider having each side pick what weapons get damaged? With the first weapon damage hit the owner of the ship getting damaged get to pick the weapons to damage, the second weapon hit allows the attacking player to pick the weapons to damage, then back to the owner for the third group of weapons, etc.
Otherwise ships can take a few weapon hits without hindering their attacking potential much.
Here's an example of a ship that can take two weapon hits and not have it's primary weapons systems affected at all.
Ship Exploiter
(230)
Shields: 3 3 2 2 1
Hull : 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
Engines: 4 4 3 2 1
Weapons: 17 14 11 7 4
Heavy Ion Accelerator *-12-18 1×3+/1/4 Bls; Cts
AB ☐ //1
Ion Accelerator 6-12-18 1×3+/1/2 Cts
ABCD ☐ ABC ☐ ABD ☐ //2
Aegis Array 1-2-3 2×3+/1/1 Dfn; Pnp
360° ☐☐ //1
Hyperdrive ☐ Tractor Beam ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ ☐☐ //6
All 6 Tractor Beams will be damaged before any weapons will be.
What I'm proposing is that with this example, the first weapon hit will have the ship owner take 3 TB hits, then with the second weapon hit the attacker will choose 3 primary weapons. To counter it, it's best to put about only 3 or 4 TBs on the ship, which seems more reasonable than having a bunch of "free" hits.
My first idea is to just alternate with every weapon instead of each group of the Weapons track.
Trying to make an SSD with a ship silhouette and systems spread throughout it just does not work very well with the current damage system.
Playing around in the spreadsheet, trying to come up with defenses for massive seeker attacks, I came across an unwritten, or at least I could not find it in the rulebook, forbidden weapon trait combination: Bls & Dfn.
French weapon designer, Budgéte (pronounced Bud-jeet; yes, I'm making this all up 
), may have found a solution to the massive waves of enemy seeking missiles. Since this point defense system is devoted to anti-fighter and anti-seeker defense, the range was cut to 1 as no need to fire at range 0 (Bls) nor there was a need to fire at a supposed long range of 2 (Crn). [a range 1 weapon ends up being 0-1-1]. Several variants of her experimental point defense system are currently being tested.
Budgéte Emitter: *-1-* 1×3+/1/1 Bls; Crn; Dfn; Pnp [SU=0.5]
Budgéte Emitter-II: *-1-* 2×3+/1/1 Bls; Crn; Dfn; Pnp [SU=0.9]
Budgéte Spray: *-1-* 4×3+/1/1 Bls; Crn; Dfn; Exp; Pnp [SU=0.4]
Budgéte Burst: *-1-* 1×3+/1/1 Bls; Crn; Dfn; Pnp; Prx [SU=0.9]
The last one is quite controversial as it has a tendency to damage the firing ship. Spray is equivalent to the Scattergun from Full Thrust's Kra'vak (and the boys in the lab always snicker when she calls this weapon "Spray"... anyone got a better name? don't want to use Scattergun)
I went with ACC 3+ since a lot of my weapons have that ACC, and it's a lot easier to play a lot of ships or various weapons if there's some consistencies, especially since the ACC is buried in a string of text. I noticed that it's cheaper to go with ACC 2+ than ACC 3+ & Pnp.
[yes, one tends to get a little wacky when staring at a spreadsheet for days] :?
What's wrong with min/maxing?
You think naval ship designers did not min/max? Save the fluffy stuff for civilian ships. If you're going to design and build a racing yacht, it will be min/maxed to do just that: race. The most efficient design will get the building contract (barring corruption) and the winning designer gets the most accolades and payment award.
As for RPGs, I don't min/max there as much as some of the people I play with. I don't even come close, and don't want to. But RPGs are a different type of game.
The game is designed by math. I want the options to be mathematically viable. IMO, some are not (i.e., Cloaking Device is way over priced, it works out to be as much a defense for the enemy as the ship using it). Flavor/fluff wise does not matter much in that case.
I have a lot of Star Trek miniatures, from playing SFB back in the day. I never liked drones for Klingons, you never see such a weapon in the shows. So now I can design Klingon ships without drones, and disruptors are not the heavy weapon but the equivalent of Federation phasers. I have a Disruptor Blast Cannon as a variant heavy weapon (name may have changed). Thanks to Starmada and its designer(s), playtester(s), etc, I can do that.
You don't design ships in a vaccum. (sic) The French designed their Richelieu class battleship in response to Italy's and Germany's recent BB designs (pre-WW2 era). You build your weapons of war in response to your potential enemies' weapons of war. My common opponent, Beowulf, uses his WW2 naval miniatures as space ships, which I don't have a problem with (despite some grumblings from certain local individuals), besides that way I can also use my Italian fleet as space ships as well (naval games are very rare around here). I have to design ships to fight him. They'll still have the ST/SFB flair, but I've learned through bitter lessons that I do have to pay attention to his designs. If he uses Mdl as his main weapon's trait, then building ships with Shield 4 or 5 is a large waste of points and tends to make the battles one-sided. Now I have two designs: one with Shields 3 or 4 (as if the ST ships were fighting each other), and a variant with Shields 1 or 2 with the extra space being devoted to increasing Screens for his "front". After all, SFB Klingons and Federation ships have variant designs depending on which front they are stationed at (see Klingon C8 vs C9).
Since Beowulf is often an opponent of mine, I made a 700pt WW2-era BB based on my Italian Littorio class mini.
Ship name: Stella Roma
(700) Italiano Littorio-class Battleship
Tech: Engines +2; Shields +2; Weapons +2
Shields: 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Screens: 29-28-27-26-25-24-23-22-21-20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
Hull: 16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
Engines: 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1
Weapons: 21 19 16 14 11 8 6 3
15Mj Laser Cannon 9-18-* 1×3+/1/4 Crn; Pr1
GHIJK3 ☐☐ HIJKL3 ☐ //2
6Mj Laser Cannon 9-18-* 1×3+/1/1 Crn; Pr1
HIJK3 ☐☐☐☐ //2
Laser Defense Array 3-6-* 3×2+/1/1 Crn; Dfn
360° ☐☐☐☐☐ GHI ☐☐☐ //4
Hyperdrive ☐ Tractor Beam ☐☐☐☐☐ //3
Marines : 2 1
Traits: Repair Crews (4) <- I added this as a reminder
[SU: 651] <- added to show how much space was left over. could have reduce a TL, but that doesn't really matter; = Aux space.
Interesting.
One level may not be worth it, but several could be. Maybe I'll work on an example or two of such later.
But you roll so many 6s would let you still get a lot of rerolls.
mj12games.com/forum → Posts by GamingGlen
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