This unfortunate person could use C, G, R, V.

Nothing is cut off in the PDF when viewed in Adobe reader. The gap looks like less than 2cm both on screen at "actual size" an on the printed page. I notice the page size is "8.27x11.69". Is that one of those European "A" paper sizes?

(This printer always cuts off about the bottom 5/8" of a page.)

(Some of this is restated from a previous email conversation with Dan.)

I REALLY like this system.

I will argue for a slight modification: allow 2 OR MORE turns in the third category (what you've called "reverse course"). This would give a ship with plenty of engines a much wider range of ending hexes and allow for fancy weaving around any terrain.

Is it realistic? Hard to say -- this system doesn't really model what happens within a turn.

Also, I have concerns about the term "come about". It's not really accurate either the way it was used before (which is common in sci fi) or the new way; it has to do with the direction of the wind. Changing it from the old meaning could confuse some players. If you're going to use it incorrectly, you should at least be consistent. Alternately, you could simply not introduce any terminology.

So I'd argue for:

TURNS     MIN     MAX
0         s-t     t+s
1         0       t
2+        0       t-s

where s is speed and t is thrust. A ship may not turn if s > t.

Nope, the tech level fields are blank.

...or pencil on a tiny hex sheet on a clipboard. This could buy you fog-of-war, too.

This is something that's always bothered me about the whole starship miniatures genre: the table is taken up by a huge map, almost none of which is being used. On the other hand, the miniatures can be pretty, and pins/pencils could become problematic in a tight melee.

Indeed! The more testing (and the more testers) the better.

IMHO, the non-system hexes are pointless.
<glances meaningfully over at OoM tiles>

In our test, it seemed very rare for a system to be within striking distance of more than two or three enemy systems. This, combined with the move-one-stack-at-a-time rule (which itself is probably a good one) and the time it takes to cross one's own empire, made it difficult to attack. The target had plenty of time to mount a defense.

That's a very tough call, especially if you want a battle to have the same result distribution whether it's resolved simply or using Starmada.

My inclination is to leave the combat system alone and have the board game interest derive from movement, victory conditions, etc.

Hear, hear! (This may change if many optional rules are used, especially when incorporating with Starmada, but a stand-alone board game should at worst require pencils for scoring.)

I don't think that's directly the problem. The problem is when people choose to amass ships rather than exploring or fighting and the game becomes a stalemate.

Some kind of game "clock" would work wonders to prevent stalemates. The simplest clock is what older versions of Starmada scenario uses: the game ends after N turns. Games like Mastermind, Carcassonne, Agricola, and (to a lesser extent) Scrabble use this mechanism. More interesting is a clock that can be sped up or slowed down (but not stopped) by players' actions, as in Lost Cities, Tigris & Euphrates, Container, Ticket to Ride and Puerto Rico.

More discussion of this issue can be found here:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/32208/temporal-shifts-timing-mechanisms

I ran the Jan 7 version past some playtesters. It was not a success.

Like me, they did like the way you cut the tiles. If nothing else, it makes manually manufacturing them easier.

They didn't like the last sentence at the end of the "Starting Positions" subsection. It's unsatisfying to say, "This might lead to an unsolvable problem; if that happens, start over."

Handing out money and then immediately taking some back for maintenance seemed overly fiddly.

People kept getting confused by the fact that there was a VP bonus for controlling an entire sector, but not an income bonus.

The bonus for bases in shared systems was not strong enough. If an ally and I share a system, we're going to have to put at least three bases (total) in there before our total income exceeds what we'd get if we didn't share. That takes too much time and money to be worth the effort.

One playtester described the game as "very incremental". Moving three hexes was generally just enough to get from one system to the next. There was no opportunity for surprise attacks and no way for a player who fell behind to catch up.

Ironically, maintenance may have made things more turtly, because people couldn't afford to amass big enough fleets to attack. Players could also not afford to leave fleets in deep space.

Someone said there was "nothing innovative" about the game. Another described it as "like slow-motion Risk".

One player said, "I'm not making interesting decisions battle-wise." I know the combat system has been kept simple to make it easier to coordinate with Starmada, but this may make it too bland for a stand-alone board game.

The testers wondered if the game should have an inherent clock to ensure that it eventually ends. One obvious suggestion is having VP accumulate every turn, although this risks a runaway leader problem.

One asked how long the game was supposed to last. I guessed 90-120 minutes. (We played for an hour before giving up.)

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I guess it's better to find out now than after publication.

(If I may be bold, the OoM playtest I did went much better, although even that felt a bit bland.)

It just keeps getting better!

A thought: what about ordering movement by income, rather than by number of systems? This would avoid a redundant counting (once for income, again for order) and probably result in fewer ties.

In a fancy production version of this, I'd want an income track so that it would be easy to see who's next and who's winning.

One must be careful not to pin down allies while reinforcing them, but that's probably okay.

I prefer allowing the primary player (since you've designated one) to allocate all hits among players. Right now, if I have one fleet in a system with ten allied fleets, I'm disinclined to help my ally because one of the first two hit will affect me.

Again, I have a nice playtesting opportunity Thursday night. Would you like me to trot this out?